Malabar History journal

The Mysorean invasion introduced a range of new changes in land relations. The rulers of Mysore introduced land taxes and also recognized the rights of cultivators, which was favorable to the Mappilas. During this period, many Namboodiris and Nayars fled Malabar to Travancore, fearing persecution. The land thus passed into the hands of the Mappilas, and many of them became tenants. Some of them also emerged as new entrepreneurs.
The East India Company took over the administration of Malabar in 1792, leading to far-reaching changes in the status of Muslims and their relationship to the land. The Namboodiris and Nayars who had left Malabar started returning, wanting to restore their lands and rights. Additionally, the confrontation between the Nayars and Brahmins with the Mysorean rulers altered their previously friendly relations with the Mappilas. Both these situations—the claims and counterclaims over land rights and the changed inter-community relations—made it urgent for the British to devise a land policy. Consequently, the first joint commissioners, tasked with inquiring into the land tenure system in Malabar, hastily concluded that the jenmam right was an absolute proprietary right, and that jenmis were statutory owners of the land with the authority to increase rent and take legal action. They were also reinstated as agents for the collection of revenue. Retaining them as a class of landlords was a crucial step for the administration of the region because it secured a local ally for the British. The conflict between Mappila Muslims and the colonial government/landlords must be understood in this historical context.

The rights over land and the punitive actions of the landlords became a crucial issue in the dispute between the landlords and the Mappila cultivators. The colonial government, its courts, and police took the side of the landlords. Thus, between 1836 and 1854, there were twenty-two uprisings, two of which were very serious. The typical forms of these outbreaks were as follows: Mappila youths would attack a jenmi or his upper-caste officials or servants; sometimes, temples were defiled or burned; even the landlord’s house would be looted or burned. The rebels would take refuge in a mosque or temple, wait for the troops to arrive, and then fight them until they died, becoming martyrs. Such martyrs were widely revered. The participants in these outbreaks belonged to the working class—field laborers, porters, and timber floaters—and many of them were young people.

There was a growing realization that something was wrong with the land policy system. Thus, T.L. Strange (1808–1884), who served as a judge in Malabar, was appointed in 1852 as a special commissioner to ascertain the causes of the outbreaks. He was also instructed to examine relations between landlords and tenants and to suggest modifications to land rights if necessary. Despite the stipulated aims of the commission, Strange was instructed to keep in mind that his primary goal should be “to secure to the Nair and Brahmin population the most ample protection and safety possible against the effects of Moplah fanaticism” (Dhanagare 1970, p. 120). Examining thirty-one instances of outbreaks, Strange concluded that the persecution of tenants by landlords was never the cause of an outbreak or threat of an outbreak. Instead, he attributed the Mappilas’ violence to the intolerance of their faith. He reasoned that both Hindu and Muslim tenants bore the brunt of the measures taken by the landlords, but only Mappilas responded violently. He used this to argue that the violence had religious roots.

The British did not know how to act on these instructions, given the colonial administration’s non-intervention policy in religious matters. Yet, measures were undertaken by the colonial government in response to Strange’s findings. For instance, Connolly, who served as the district collector and magistrate of Malabar, managed to deport (or persuade to exile himself) Sayyid Fazl Pookoya Thangal in 1852, attributing the rebellion, especially one that occurred in 1849, to him. Connolly was assassinated at the Collector’s Bungalow three years later by Mappilas in protest against the deportation of Sayyid Fazl. True to Strange’s findings, issues related to land administration policies were ignored, while the religious origins of the outbreaks were emphasized.

In 1881, William Logan was appointed as a special commissioner to investigate Malabar land tenures. This appointment was in response to an anonymous petition sent by some educated Mappilas illustrating the grievances of Mappila peasants against the landlords. Logan conducted an extensive study and produced a monumental work. He received 2,200 petitions from 4,021 individuals, of which 2,734 were Mappila tenant-cultivators. Geographically, 85 percent of the petitions came from the four southern taluks of Malabar, the region where most of the outbreaks occurred, and 89 percent of petitioners were from the same region. Logan was convinced, and tried to convince the colonial government, that they had imposed a land ownership framework that was fundamentally different from the pre-British customary pattern of ownership. In the latter, there was no proprietary right for Jenmis, and the statutory right given to the landlord by the colonial government, conferring on them the absolute right to evict tenants, was a new right unknown in local customs. He suggested that the “British authorities mistook [the landlord’s] real position and invested him erroneously with the Roman dominium of the soil” (Logan 582, quoted in Ansari 2015, p. 79).

Logan criticized the courts and magistrates for failing to understand the nature of the land tenure system, allowing Jenmis to use their absolute power by issuing eviction decrees and sanctioning rent increases. He also criticized Strange’s reasoning, which attempted to isolate the religious roots of the agrarian problem. Logan debunked Strange’s suggestion that Muslims responded violently because of their religion, citing crime statistics that disproved this claim. Crime statistics for the period from 1865 to 1880 show that the crime rate doubled by 1880, and a large number of those convicted for gang robbery were Hindus. Thus, Muslim and Hindu peasants rebelled, but in different ways. Logan also made an appeal for granting occupancy rights to certain kinds of tenants, including verum pattakkars, to curb Jenmi power. The government was not willing to concede to Logan’s suggestions but did pass the Compensation for Tenants’ Improvement Act of 1887, although this was in response to another report discussed below. According to this act, if a tenant was evicted by the landlord, the Jenmi was required to pay for any improvements made by the tenant, at a rate determined by the court commissioners. However, this did not solve the problems of either tenants or verum pattakkars.

The revenue department was embarrassed by the findings of the Logan commission report, and it was shelved. Another committee, the Malabar Land Tenures Committee, was formed in 1885, consisting of members who represented the interests of Jenmis, Kanakkars, and Verum Pattakkars. The committee was unable to bring about any conclusive measures, and there was no consensus on granting occupancy rights to tenants (Kanakkars) and cultivators. As mentioned above, the Compensation for Tenants’ Improvement Act was a result of this commission.

References

• Abraham, Santhosh. 2014. “Constructing the ‘Extraordinary Criminals’: Mappila Muslims and Legal Encounters in Early British Colonial Malabar.” Journal of World History 25 (2): 373–95.
• Ansari, M. T. 2015. Islam and Nationalism in India: South Indian Contexts. London: Routledge.
• Dhanagare, D. N. 1977. “Agrarian Conflict, Religion and Politics: The Moplah Rebellions in Malabar in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries.” Past & Present, no. 74: 112–41.
• Wood, Conard. 1975. The Moplah Rebellion of 1921–22 and its Genesis. PhD Thesis. School of Oriental and African Studies.