Chapter 12 Insult to injury

Renjith woke up the next   morning  after his  daily  rituals which  surprisingly   which included a visit to  the family  temple he  had changed   he  had become more religious and more concentrated  on  family matters

He had a gut feeling that his grandfather was grooming him to take over the   family  

But he decide to play along all that aside he reached   for his grand dad’s dairy from 1971

He started to read the same

Dear dairy,

Today is  a  black day in my life not only mine but  every  victim of  the  malabar rebellion of 1920-23 today the  government of  Kerala  yes my  home state  has  notified that due to its magnitude and extent, that it was an unprecedented popular upheaval, the likes of which has not been seen in Kerala before or since. And that while the Mappilas were in the vanguard of the movement and bore the brunt of the struggle, the fact that several non-Mappila leaders actively sympathized with the rebels' cause, gives the uprising the character of a national upheaval therefore the Government of Kerala officially recognizes the active participants in the events as "freedom fighters".

That is not all The Variyankunnath Kunjahammad Haji memorial town hall which will be built in Malappuram Municipality shall be   named after the leader of the rebellion while the Tirur Wagon Tragedy memorial town hall will commemorate the incident. The Pookkottur war memorial gate will be dedicated to those killed in the Pookkottur battle

They  call the death of 67 rebels as a tragedy  so what about my mother my siblings  and my  siblings the thousands  of  dishonored  women and flayed men the number of  dishonored  temples 

Wasn’t that a tragedy for these people?

Or is it ok because it was the Hindu that bore the brunt of this barbarity???

A spific case comes to mind when I   write this entry

...it was not mere fanaticism, it was not agrarian trouble, and it was not destitution, which worked on the minds of Ali Musaliar and his followers. The evidence conclusively shows that it was the influence of the Khilafat and Non-co-operation movements that drove them to their crime. It is (his which distinguishes the present from all previous outbreaks. Their intention was, absurd though it may seem, to subvert the British Government and to substitute a Khilafat Government by force of arms. (Judgement in Case No. 7 of 1921 on the file of the Special Tribunal, Calicut.)

But  I hope  that one  day  the wrongs  that were committed on  us  will  be  bought to light

And the restless spirits given closure and deliverance from their pain

Regards

S.S. Raman Nair

This  was not  all even  after  years  of  this barbaric  revolt  Renjith found it  hard to stomach  the  fact that

The Maphillas and  not the Hindus  were the  heroes and the victims he found it  confusingly   bizarre that history would  be  twisted in such   a  brutal and sick  way  but  what  he  felt  even more sickening  is the  fact that

There was that such lies were being taught to young kids   because it was the “truth”

He felt that this was wrong   no  he  knew it  was  wrong   and  from now on he  would  no  stone unturned  to deliver justice  to  the  wandering souls of the  victims  of the  so  called rebellion

He  promised on  his life  and walked  a head to  announce the same to  his  extended  family  who had now  settled in  the grand dining room of  his ancestral palace.