One section of Māppillas at Calicut is known as “Clap the hand” (Keikottakar) in contradistinction to another section, which may not clap hands (Keikottāttakar). On the occasion of wedding and other ceremonies, the former enjoy the privilege of clapping their hands as an accompaniment to the processional music, while the latter are not permitted to do so.[71] It is said that at one time the differences of opinion between the two sections ran so high that the question was referred for decision to the highest ecclesiastical authorities at Mecca.
The Māppillas observe the Ramazān, Bakrid, and Haj. “They only observe the ninth and tenth days of Muharam, and keep them as a fast; they do not make taboots.[72] A common religious observance is the celebration of what is called a mavulad or maulad. A maulad is a tract or short treatise in Arabic celebrating the birth, life, works and sayings of the prophet, or some saint such as Shaik Mohiuddin, eleventh descendant of the prophet, expounder of the Korān, and worker of miracles, or the Mambram Tangal, father of Sayid Fasl. For the ceremony a Mulla is called in to read the book, parts of which are in verse, and the congregation is required to make responses, and join in the singing. The ceremony, which usually takes place in the evening, concludes with, or is preceded by a feast, to which the friends and relations are invited. Those who can afford it should perform a maulad in honour of Shaik Mohiuddin on the eleventh of every month, and one in honour of the prophet on the twelfth. A maulad should also be performed on the third day after death. It is also a common practice to celebrate a maulad before any important undertaking on which it is desired to invoke a blessing, or in fulfilment of some vows; hence the custom of maulads preceding outbreaks.”[73]
For a detailed account of the fanatical[74] outbreaks in the Māppilla community, which have long disturbed the peace of Malabar from time to time, I must refer the reader to the District Manual and Gazetteer. From these sources, and from the class handbook (Māppillas) for the Indian Army,[75] the following note relating to some of the more serious of the numerous outbreaks has been compiled.[76]
Towards the end of the seventeenth century, the Māppillas massacred the chief of Anjengo, and all the English gentlemen belonging to the settlement, when on a public visit to the Queen of Altinga.[77] In 1841, seven or eight Māppillas killed two Hindus, and took post in a mosque, setting the police at defiance. They, and some of their co-religionists who had joined them, were shot down by a party of sepoys. In the same month, some two thousand Māppillas set at defiance a police guard posted over the spot where the above criminals had been buried, and forcibly carried off their bodies, to inter them with honours in a mosque.
Māppilla mosque.
An outbreak, which occurred in 1843, was celebrated in a stirring ballad.[78] A series of Māppilla war-songs have been published by Mr. Fawcett.[79] In October, 1843, a peon (orderly) was found with his head and hand all but cut off, and the perpetrators were supposed to have been Māppilla fanatics of the sect known as Hāl Ilakkam (frenzy raising), concerning which the following account was given in an official report, 1843. “In the month of Mētam last year, one Alathamkuliyil Moidīn went out into the fields before daybreak to water the crops, and there he saw a certain person, who advised him to give up all his work, and devote his time to prayer at the mosque. Moidīn objected to this, urging that he would have nothing to live upon. Whereupon, the above-mentioned person told him that a palm tree, which grew in his (Moidīn’s) compound, would yield sufficient toddy, which he could convert into jaggery (crude sugar), and thus maintain himself. After saying this, the person disappeared. Moidīn thought that the person he saw was God himself, and felt frantic (hāl). He then went to Taramal Tangal, and performed dikkar and niskāram (cries and prayers). After two or three days, he complained to the Tangal that Kāfirs (a term applied by Muhammadans to people of other religions) were making fun of him. The Tangal told him that the course adopted by him was the right one, and, saying ‘Let it be as I have said,’ gave him a spear to be borne as an emblem, and assured him that nobody would mock him in future. Subsequently several Māppillas, affecting hāl ilakkam, played all sorts of pranks, and wandered about with canes in their hands, without going to their homes or attending to their work. After several days, some of them, who had no means of maintaining themselves unless they attended to their work, returned to their former course of life, while others, with canes and Ernād knives (war knives) in their hands, wandered about in companies of five, six, eight, or ten men, and, congregating in places not much frequented by Hindus, carried on their dikkar and niskāram. The Māppillas in general look upon this as a religious vow, and provide these people with food. I hear of the Māppillas talking among themselves that one or two of the ancestors of Taramal Tangal died fighting, that, the present man being advanced in age, it is time for him to follow the same course, and that the above-mentioned men affected with hāl ilakkam, when their number swells to four hundred, will engage in a fight with Kāfirs, and die in company with the Tangal. One of these men (who are known as Hālar), by name Avarumāyan, two months ago collected a number of his countrymen, and sacrificed a bull, and, for preparing meals for these men, placed a copper vessel with water on the hearth, and said that rice would appear of itself in the vessel. He waited for some time. There was no rice to be seen. Those who had assembled there ate beef alone, and dispersed. Some people made fun of Avarumāyan for this. He felt ashamed, and went to Taramal Tangal, with whom he stayed two or three days. He then went to the mosque at Mambram, and, on attempting to fly through the air into the mosque on the southern side of the river at Tirurangādi, fell down through the opening of the door, and became lame of one leg, in which state he is reported to be still lying. While the Hālar of Munniyūr dēsam were performing niskāram one day at the tomb of Chemban Pokar Mūppan, a rebel, they declared that in the course of a week a mosque would spring up at night, and that there would be complete darkness for two full days. Māppillas waited in anxious expectation of the phenomenon for seven or eight days and nights. There was, however, neither darkness nor mosque to be seen. Again, in the month of Karkigadam last, some of the influential Māppillas led their ignorant Hindu neighbours to believe that a ship would arrive with the necessary arms, provisions, and money for forty thousand men; and that, if that number could be secured meanwhile, they could conquer the country, and that the Hindus would then totally vanish. It appears that it was about this time that some Tiyyar (toddy-drawers) and others became converts. None of the predictions having been realised, Māppillas, as well as others, have begun to make fun of the Hālar, who, having taken offence at this, are bent upon putting an end to themselves by engaging in a fight.”
Since the outbreak near Manjeri in 1849, when two companies of sepoys were routed after firing a few shots, European troops have always been engaged against the Māppillas. On the occasion of that outbreak, one of the Māppillas had his thigh broken in the engagement. He remained in all the agony of a wound unattended to for seven days, and was further tortured by being carried in a rough litter from the Manjeri to the Angādipuram temple. Yet, at the time of a further fight, he was hopping to the encounter on his sound leg, and only anxious to get a fair blow at the infidels before he died. It is recorded that, on one occasion, when a detachment of sepoys was thrown into disorder by a fierce rush of death-devoted Māppillas, the drummer of the company distinguished himself by bonneting an assailant with his drum, thereby putting the Māppilla’s head into a kind of straight jacket, and saving his own life.[80] In 1852 Mr. Strange was appointed Special Commissioner to enquire into the causes of, and suggest remedies for, the Māppilla disturbances. In his report he stated, inter alia, that “a feature that has been manifestly common to the whole of these affairs is that they have been, one and all, marked by the most decided fanaticism, and this, there can be no doubt, has furnished the true incentive to them. The Māppillas of the interior were always lawless, even in the time of Tippu, were steeped in ignorance, and were, on these accounts, more than ordinarily susceptible to the teaching of ambitious and fanatical priests using the recognised precepts of the Korān as handles for the sanction to rise and slay Kafirs, who opposed the faithful, chiefly in the pursuit of agriculture. The Hindus, in the parts where outbreaks have been most frequent, stand in such fear of the Māppillas as mostly not to dare to press for their rights against them, and there is many a Māppilla tenant who does not pay his rent, and cannot, so imminent are the risks, be evicted.” Mr. Strange stated further that “the most perverted ideas on the doctrine of martyrdom, according to the Korān, universally prevail, and are fostered among the lower classes of the Māppillas. The late enquiries have shown that there is a notion prevalent among the lower orders that, according to the Mussalman religion, the fact of a janmi or landlord having in due course of law ejected from his lands a mortgagee or other substantial tenant, is a sufficient pretext to murder him, become sahid (saint), and so ensure the pleasures of the Muhammadan paradise. It is well known that the favourite text of the banished Arab priest or Tangal, in his Friday orations at the mosque in Tirurangādi, was ‘It is no sin, but a merit, to kill a janmi who evicts.’” Mr. Strange proposed the organisation of a special police force exclusively composed of Hindus, and that restrictions should be put on the erection of mosques. Neither of these proposals was approved by Government. But a policy of repression set in with the passing of Acts XXII and XXIV of 1854. The former authorised the local authorities to escheat the property of those guilty of fanatical rising, to fine the locality where outrages had occurred, and to deport suspicious persons out of the country. The latter rendered illegal the possession of the Māppilla war-knife. Mr. Conolly, the District Magistrate, proceeded, in December, 1854, on a tour, to collect the war-knives through the heart of the Māppilla country. In the following year, when he was sitting in his verandah, a body of fanatics, who had recently escaped from the Calicut jail, rushed in, and hacked him to pieces in his wife’s presence. He had quite recently received a letter from Lord Dalhousie, congratulating him on his appointment as a member of the Governor’s Council at Madras. His widow was granted the net proceeds of the Māppilla fines, amounting to more than thirty thousand rupees.
In an account of an outbreak in 1851, it is noted that one of the fanatics was a mere child. And it was noticed, in connection with a more recent outbreak, that there were “several boys who were barely fourteen years old. One was twelve; some were seventeen or eighteen. Some observers have said that the reason why boys turn fanatics is because they may thus avoid the discomfort, which the Ramzan entails. A dispensation from fasting is claimable when on the war-path. There are high hopes of feasts of cocoanuts and jaggery, beef and boiled rice. At the end of it all there is Paradise with its black-eyed girls.”[81]
In 1859, Act No. XX for the suppression of outrages in the district of Malabar was passed.