The Kerala History Congress (KHC) has blamed the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) for trying to create falsified memories in the minds of the people by removing the martyrs of Malabar Rebellion from the Dictionary of Martyrs of India’s freedom struggle.
Expressing concern and protest over the decision by the ICHR, representatives of the KHC alleged that the move was a continuation of efforts by the right-wing forces to distort facts and promote their vested divisive interests.
“The Malabar Rebellion of 1921 has to be placed in the wider context of international and national politics that influenced outbreaks in different regions in India. The alliance between the Khilafat movement and the Indian National Congress coupled with the rise of communist ideas were disturbing developments for the British that made them promote Hindu communal politics,” V. Karthikeyan Nair, vice president of the Kerala History Congress, said.
“The undertones of such a political strategy of divide and rule were seen in the British characterisation of the 1921 Rebellion as anti-Hindu. The ICHR, through proposing the deletion of 387 names of people associated with the Malabar Rebellion, is following the footsteps of this colonial strategy to duplicate communal politics. This is detrimental to the interests of secular historiography,” he said.
Sebastian Joseph, General Secretary of the Kerala History Congress, said the report of the ICHR committee was highly prejudiced and tantamount to creating falsified memories in the minds of people.
“The present move aims at textualisation of critical historical findings, which all started with the demonumentalisation of history. Meddling with collective memories of the people, the move targets creation of collective memories based in communal lines. This will seriously affect secular, scientific history writing in the nation,” he said.
The Kerala History Congress stated that the mapping of the country’s Independence struggle would remain incomplete if the name of Malabar Rebellion leader Variamkunnath Kunhamed Haji was removed from the list of freedom fighters.
Not communal
The Malabar Rebellion cannot be seen as a communal riot, and the removal of the names of the rebellion leaders from the list of freedom fighters cannot be justified, historian and former Vice Chancellor of the University of Calicut K.K.N. Kurup said. He said those who took money without doing basic research were the ones who were coming up with new interpretations for the Malabar Rebellion.
The ICHR, which omitted Jawaharlal Nehru and leaders of the Malabar Rebellion from the poster for the 75th Independence Day celebrations, stood for narrow political interests. No government had the right to rewrite history.
He was speaking at a seminar on the rebellion organised by the Coordination Committee of Muslim Organisations, Thiruvananthapuram, on Monday. Historian M.G.S. Narayanan said those trying to distort the history of the Malabar Rebellion should be ready to accept the reality.
(With inputs from Thiruvananthapuram bureau)
