By Muslim Mirror Staff
New Delhi: A panel constituted by the Hindu nationalist Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government has recommended deletion of at least 387 leaders of 1921 Malabar Rebellion including Variamkunnath Kunhamed Haji and Ali Musaliar from the Dictionary of Martyrs of India’s Freedom Struggle, The Hindu reported.
The panel found the rebellion was never part of the independence struggle but a fundamentalist movement focused on religious conversion.
The ‘Dictionary of Martyrs of India’s Freedom Struggle’ was jointly published by the Ministry of Culture, Government of India and Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR).
The panel also noted that the rebellion was an attempt to establish a Caliphate, according to The Hindu. Had it succeeded, a Caliphate would have been established in the region too and India would have ended up losing that part from its territory, says the three-member panel, which reviewed the entries in the fifth volume of the dictionary, brought out by the Indian Council for Historical Research (ICHR).
This comes in the wake of a smear campaign run by BJP and RSS leaders against martyrs of the 1921 Malabar rebellion. RSS leader Ram Madhav, at a meeting to commemorate the victims of the rebellion, had stated that the movement was one of the first manifestations of the Taliban mindset in India. However, Speaker M.B. Rajesh described Haji as a warrior who refused to tender an apology to the British and chose martyrdom over deportation to Mecca.