History remains our greatest teacher, offering invaluable lessons on how to assess and navigate our relationships with “The Others.” This is especially relevant in our times, as communal tensions continue to persist—not just in India, but across the world.
Though many of us may neither accept nor apply Mahatmaji’s solution to such problems—forgive, forget, and embrace—reading about incidents like these might inspire some to reflect on the kind of history they wish to create. The legacy we leave behind depends on the choices we make today.
Gurukulam, 22-12-2024
287. THE STARVING MOPLAH
I gladly print the following from Mr. Yakub Hasan :
I enclose a copy of the statement I have lately issued to the Press about Moplah Relief. You will no doubt be grieved to learn that thousands of women and children belonging to the Moplahs, who were killed in the rebellion or were shot or hanged afterwards or are undergoing long imprisonment, are almost starving.
Moplahs as a class have always been poor. Most of them cultivating lands under the petty landlords called Jenmies, who are almost all Hindus. The oppression of the Jenmies is a matter of notoriety and a long-standing grievance of the Moplahs that has never been redressed though unsuccessful attempts were made several times to ease the situation by means of legis-lation. The rebellion has reduced the poverty-stricken Moplah community to still lower depth of destitution. The forcible conversions have placed the community in bad odour with the Hindus in general and the Jenmies in particular, and the Government has also no love for the people who have not long ago fought pitched battles with it. Hindus have had their vengeance through the military who burnt the Moplah houses and their mosques wholesale. Thousands of Moplahs have been killed, shot, hanged or imprisoned for life and thousands are now languishing in jail. Of those who are left behind, several thousand are paying fines in monthly instalments in lieu of imprisonment for two years. These people are always under the thumb (p. 318) f the police. The few who have escaped death, jail or fine are not in any happier condition. They are frightened out of their wits and are constantly living in terror. Some of the people I talked to in the out-of-way places were trembling with fear in spite of the assurance given to them that I was their friend and the object of my visit was only to help them if I can.
This is the general condition of the Moplahs in South Malabar. The condition of the women who have lost husbands and fathers by death or imprisonment is still worse. Unlike their sisters in other parts of India, Moplah women do not observe purdah. They are intelligent and industrious and always work with their male relations in fields and elsewhere. They are now very much handicapped; for just when the burden of supporting the family is thrown on their shoulders and they are called upon by the untoward circumstances to be the sole bread-earners for their families, they find no work that would give them a living wage. Though Moplahs have always been poor, still there were no beggars among them. But now it is a common sight to see Moplah women and children in tatters begging in the streets. Among the poor Muslim women who beg in this alms-giving month of Ramzan, I find almost half are Moplah women in Madras, and I am told this is the case in all large cities in this Presidency.
As for children, their neglected condition can be more imagined than described.
Something has to be done and done immediately if the Moplah community is to be saved from moral, even physical, destruction. In spite of all his faults and shortcomings, the Moplah is a fine man. He has the bravery, the pluck and the grit of his Arab father, and the gentleness and the industry of his Nair mother. His religious zeal is more misunderstood than appreciated. He is as a rule peaceful, but he brooks no affront to his honour or religion.
Unfortunate circumstances, the causes of which I need not enter into on this occasion, forced him into the position of a rebel. He has done what anyone, Hindu, Muslim or Christian, under the same circumstances and in the same emergency, would have done in self-defence and self-interest. He has suffered the consequence of his deeds. Should the society also visit his sins on his wife and children?
I place this matter before you Mahatmaji, because you are the head of the Indian nation, and both Hindus and Mussalmans jointly and severally look upon you as their leader. It is not for me to say how this great problem should be tackled. In your wisdom and goodness of heart, you will, God willing, find ways and means to carry life giving succour to the suffering Moplah women and children. Your appeal will make the Hindus forgive and forget and show that magnanimity of the heart without which no nation can aspire to be great, and your appeal will make Mussalmans realize more fully their duty to (p. 319) irrespective of cast or creed or political thoughts, will join hands with you in bringing this humanitarian cause home to the people at large.
My appeal must necessarily be to the Hindus. I do not know how far it will be successful in the present tension between the two communities. But I must not think of the result. I should be guilty of cowardice if did not publish Mr. Yakub Hasan’s letter which commands my sympathy. I know that the Hindus feel sore over what the Moplahs in 1921 did to their Hindu neighbours in Malabar. I know that thousands of Hindus think that the Moplah atrocities were not as strongly condemned by the general body of the Mussalmans as they might have been. I know that many will (as I do ) take exception to Mr. Yakub Hasan’s sweeping assertion that ‘he (Moplah) has done what anyone, Hindu, Muslim or Christian, under the same circumstances and in the same emergency would have done in self-defence or self-interest’. No circumstance and no provocation however grave could possibly justify forcible conversions. I should hope that Mr. Yakub Hasan has not meant to include these among the pardonable acts of the Moplahs.
But even assuming the truth of the worst that the Hindus may have to say against the Moplahs and the contemporaneous or subsequent conduct of the rest of the Indian Mussalmans, I have no doubt that, if the Hindus allowed their prejudices to interfere with their charity towards their countrymen and countrywomen, the starving Moplahs, it would be counted as a sin before the Judgment Seat. We may not remember against posterity the sins of its forefathers. The Moplahs sinned against God and have suffered grievously for it. Let the Hindus also remember that they have not allowed the opportunity of revenge to pass by. Many have done all they could to take reprisals when they got the opportunity.
My point is simple. In face of the awful fact of starvation and homelessness, all argument and all opposition must be hushed. Generations hence, when all our evil acts will have been forgotten, posterity will cherish the treasured memory of every simple act of love shown by the one to the other. I therefore ask every Hindu reader who will extend the hand of love and fellowship to his starving Moplah brother and sister and their children, to send his or her mite, and I shall endeavour to see that it is properly distributed among the most deserving among the Moplahs.
Young India 1-5-1924, CWMG, Vol. 27, pp. 318-320
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