दंगा पीड़ित महिलायों का पत्र

सन १९२१ में केरल राज्य में साम्प्रदायिक दंगे भड़के थे जो मोहन दास गाँधी की मूर्खता, राजनैतिक महत्वाकांक्षा अथवा धूर्तता का परिणाम थे. ये दंगे कई महीनों तक चले थे और एक मुस्लिम बहुल क्षेत्र में थे इसलिए इस का परिणाम हिंदुयों को और विशेषतया हिन्दू महिलायों को भुगतना पड़ा था. निम्नलिखित पत्र केरल राज्य के मालाबार क्षेत्र की महिलायों ने वहाँ भड़के हिन्दू मुस्लिम दंगों के उपरान्त भारत के वाइसरॉय की पत्नी 'लेडी रीडिंग' को अपनी व्यथा बताने के लिए लिखा था.

सेवा में:

लेडी रीडिंग,

दिल्ली

मालाबार की शोकग्रस्त और वंचित महिलायों की और से एक विनम्र स्मृतिपत्र

हम, मालाबार के भिन्न भिन्न स्थितियों और श्रेणियों की हिन्दू महिलायें, जो पिछले कुछ समय की 'मोपला विद्रोह' नामक विपत्ति से परेशान और अभिभूत हैं, आप से सहानुभूति तथा सहायता के लिए याचना कर रही हैं.

निःसंदेह आप इस तथ्य से अवगत हैं कि हमारे मंडल में यूं तो गत १०० वर्षों में कई मोपला प्रकोप हो चुके हैं, किन्तु वर्तमान विद्रोह की न तो भीषणता का कोई सानी है और न ही इस की भयंकरता का. कदाचित आप इस की भीषणता से और इन पैशाचिक विद्रोहियों द्वारा की गयी बर्बरता और अत्याचारों की सीमा से अवगत नहीं हैं. 

न ही उन कुओं और तालाबों से जो हमारे उन प्रियजनों के अर्ध मृत शरीरों से भरे पड़े हैं जिन्होंने अपने पूर्वजों के धर्म और पूजा पद्दति को छोड़ने से इनकार कर दिया. 

न उन गर्भवती महिलायों से जिन्हें टुकड़े कर के सड़क के किनारे जंगलों में फेंक दिया जिनके विकृत शवों में से अजन्मे बच्चे बाहर दीख पड़ते थे.

न उन असहाय और निरपराध बच्चों से जिन्हें हमारी बाहों से छीन कर हमारी आँखों के सामने मार दिया गया.

न हमारे उन पिता और पति से जिन्हें जीवित जला दिया गया अथवा खाल उतार ली गयी.

न हमारी उन अभागी बहनों से जिन्हें बलपूर्वक हमारे बीच में से उठा कर वो सब शर्मनाक और नीच कृत्य किये गए जो इन अमानवीय दरिंदों का घिनौना और क्रूर मस्तिष्क कल्पना कर सकता है.

न हमारे उन हज़ारों घरों को जिन्हें बर्बरता से राख का ढेर कर दिया गया है.

न हमारे पूजा स्थलों से जिन्हें अपवित्र अथवा नष्ट कर दिया गया है और देवतायों की मूर्तियों पर जहां पुष्पमालाएँ डाली जाती थीं, गाय की आंतें माला की भांति डाल कर अपमान किया गया है अथवा तोड़ दी गयी हैं.

न उन पुरुषों से जिन का परिश्रम से अर्जित धन और पीढ़ियों की सम्पति लूट कर संपन्न व्यक्तियों को कालीकट की गलियों में भीख मांगने पर विवश कर दिया गया है. 

ये  कल्पित कथाएं नहीं हैं.

सड़ांध मारते नर कंकालों से भरे कुंएं, वो अवशेष जो कभी हमारे घर थे, वो पत्थरों के ढेर जो कभी हमारे पूजा स्थल होते थे अभी भी प्रमाण के रूप में उपस्थित हैं. हमारे मार दिए गए बच्चों की मरते समय की पीड़ा की आहें अभी भी हमारे कानों में सुनाई पड़ती हैं और जीवन भर हमें सुनती रहेंगी जब तक मृत्यु हमें शान्ति नहीं दे देगी. हमें स्मरण है कि किस प्रकार जब हमें हमारी बस्ती में से भगा दिया गया और हम भूखे और नग्न जंगलों में भटकती रहीं. हमें स्मरण है कि किस प्रकार हम ने अपने बच्चों के रोने को घोंट दिया ताकि कहीं उन के रोने से हमारे निर्दयी शत्रुओं को हमारे छिपने के स्थान का पता न लग जाए. हम उन हज़ारों की आध्यात्मिक और नैतिक दुविधा को समझ सकते हैं जिन्हें बलात इन वहशी असामाजिक तत्त्वों का संप्रदाय अपनाना पड़ा. अभी भी हमारे सामने हमारी उन अभागी बहनों का जीवन है जो सभ्रांत घरों में पली और बढ़ी हैं किन्तु अब इन दुर्दांत कुलियों से ब्याह दी गयी हैं. सौभाग्यवश इन की गिनती कम है. 

पाच माह से एक भी दिन ऐसा नहीं गया जब कोई भयावह घटना न हुई हो.

हमने  बिना अतिश्योक्ति किये सब बताने की चेष्टा की है ताकि आप को कुछ अनुमान दे सकें कि हमारे जैसे हज़ारों बहनों को गत पांच महीनों में किस प्रकार की भयावह परिस्थितियों से सामना करना पड़ा है जिसे खिलाफत के नाम से आरम्भ किया गया था.

हम, शोक ग्रस्त याची, कोई प्रतिशोध नहीं चाहते. इस वहशी और क्रूर संप्रदाय पर विपत्ति ला कर हमारी विपत्ति कम नहीं हो जायेगी और न ही हमारे मृत प्रियजन लौट आयेंगे यदि उनके हत्यारों की हत्या कर दी जाए.

यदि हम  कहें कि हम कभी इस सम्प्रदाय, जिस से हमने सदा मैत्रीपूर्ण और पडोसी वत व्यवहार किया, द्वारा किये गए घिनौने और लज्जाजनक अत्याचार को भुला पायेंगे तो वो पाखण्ड होगा. हमारी याचना है कि हमारी संपत्ति लूट कर जो दरिद्रता हम पर थोप दी गयी है, उसके लिए हमें कुछ क्षतिपूर्ति प्रदान की जाए. हम मूर्ख होंगे यदि इस सम्प्रदाय के असामाजिक रुझान और सांप्रदायिक कट्टरता को जान लेने के पश्चात् भी इस न्यायप्रिय और सशक्त शासन द्वारा आपकी बहनों की लाज और जीवन बचाने के लिए प्रार्थना नहीं करते जो विद्रोहियों द्वारा नष्ट किये क्षेत्र में हैं.

हमारी इच्छा केवल इतनी सी है कि हमें इतनी क्षतिपूर्ति दी जाये जिस से हम अपनी और अपने बच्चों की भूख से रक्षा कर सकें और  हमारी जान और लाज की रक्षा के लिए समुचित सेना की व्यवस्था कर दी जाए. हमारा आप से निवेदन है कि सरकार पर अपने दयालु प्रभाव से हमारी प्रार्थना स्वीकार करवाएं. यदि सौम्य सरकार ऐसा समझती है कि हमारी क्षतिपूर्ति और सुरक्षा करने में असमर्थ है तो हमारी प्रार्थना है कि हमें आस पास के क्षेत्र में भूमि का आबंटन किया जाए जहां प्रकृति की उपज भले ही कम हो किन्तु बर्बरता से सुरक्षित हो. 

हम आप से भिक्षा मांगते हैं और सदा आप के विनम्र और आज्ञाकारी दास रहेंगे.

Petition of Malabar ladies

This is one of the most heart rending letters written by victims on their helplessness. This letter was written by the women of Malabar about five months after the moplah riots had started by the muslim moplah community of Malabar, Kerala. These riots started on 1st of August, 1921, exactly one year after the death of Sh. Bal Gangadhar Tilak. After his death, M.K. Gandhi had acquired prominence in Congress and along with the notorious Ali brothers had started what is known as Khilafat movement. One of the promises made at the start of the movement was 'self rule' in one year. And exactly after one year, these riots broke out. To know why this movement was anti national, pro British, anti muslims and anti Hindu, read about the reality of the khilafat movement.

The moplah muslims, according to the contemporary news reports, started an orgy of loot, murder and rapine on Hindus. What is ironic is that the word 'moplah' means son-in-law in Malayalam. The reason for the name of the community is that the muslim traders came from Arab in eighth century and settled in Kerala. With time, they married the local women and became permanent settlers there. Hence the name. For them self rule meant rule of Islam and for Islam all those who are not muslims are kafir (काफ़िर) . They are either to be killed or converted to Islam. Their wives, children and properties belong to the killer of 'kafirs'.

It was in this background, the terrible riots took place. Here is the petition which the women of Malabar sent to the 'countess of reading'.

To

Her Gracious Excellency

THE COUNTESS OF READING,

Delhi.

The humble memorial of the bereaved and sorrow-
stricken women of Malabar.

May it please your gracious and compassionate ladyship.

We, the Hindu women of Malabar of varying ranks and stations in life who have recently been overwhelmed by the tremendous catastrophe known as the Moplah rebellion, take the liberty to supplicate your Ladyship for sympathy and succour.

2. Your Ladyship is doubtless aware that though our unhappy district has witnessed many Moplah outbreaks in the course of the last one hundred years, the present rebellion is unexampled in its magnitude as well as unprecedented in its ferocity. But it is possible that your ladyship is not fully appraised of all the horrors and atrocities perpetrated by the fiendish rebels ; of the many wells and tanks filled up with the mutilated, but often only half dead bodies of our nearest and dearest ones who refused to abandon the faith of our fathers;

of pregnant women cut to pieces and left on the roadsides and in the jungles, with the unborn babe protruding from the mangled corpse ;

of our innocent and helpless children torn from our arms and done to death before our eyes

and of our husbands and fathers tortured, flayed and burnt alive ;

of our hapless sisters forcibly carried away from the midst of kith and kin and subjected to every shame and outrage which the vile and brutal imagination of these inhuman hell-hounds could conceive of ;

of thousands of our homesteads reduced to cinder- mounds out of sheer savagery and a wanton spirit of destruction ;

of our places of worship desecrated and destroyed

and of the images of the deity shamefully insulted by putting the entrails of slaughtered cows where flower garlands used to lie.

or else smashed to pieces ;

of the wholesale looting of hard earned wealth of generations reducing many who were formerly rich and prosperous to publicly beg for a piece or two in the streets of Calicut, to buy salt or chilly or betel-leaf — rice being mercifully provided by the various relief agencies. These are not fables.

The wells full of rotting skeletons, the ruins which once were our dear homes, the heaps of stones which once were our places of worship — these are still here to attest to the truth. The cries of our murdered children in their death agonies are still ringing in our ears and will continue to haunt our memory till death brings us peace. We remember how driven out of our native hamlets we wandered starving and naked in the jungles and forests. We remember how we choked and stifled our babies' cries lest the sound should betray our hiding places to our relentless pursuers.

We still vividly realise the moral and spiritual agony that thousand of us passed through when we were forcibly converted into the faith professed by these blood thirsty miscreants ; we still have before us the sight of the unendurable and life long misery of those — fortunately few —of our most unhappy sisters who born and brought up in respectable families have been forcibly converted and then married to convict coolies. For five long months not a day has passed without its dread tale of horror to unfold.

3. Your gracious Ladyship's distracted memorialists have endeavoured without exaggeration, without setting down aught in malice to convey at least some idea of the indescribably terrible agonies which they and thousands more of their sisters have been enduring for over five months now through this reign of inhuman (rightfulness inaugurated and carried on in the name of the Khilafat. We have briefly referred without going into their harrowing details to our heart rending tale of dishonour, outrage, rapine, and desolation. But if the past has been one of pain and anguish, the future is full of dread and gloom. We have to return to a ruined and desolated land. Our houses have been burnt or destroyed ; may of our breadwinners killed ; all our property looted ; our cattle slaughtered. Repatriation without compensation means for us ruin, beggary, starvation. Will not the benign Government come to our aid and give us something to help us to begin life anew? We are now asked to settle down as paupers in the midst of the execrable Sends who robbed, insulted and murdered our loved ones — veritable demons such as hell itself could not let loose. Many of us shrink from the idea of going back to what there is left of our homes; for though the armed bands and rebels have been dispersed the rebellion cannot be said to be entirely quelled. It is like a venomous serpent whose spine has been partly broken, but whose poison fangs are still intact and whose striking power, if diminished, has not been destroyed. A few thousands of rebels have been killed and a few more thousands have been imprisoned, but as the Government are only too well aware many more thousands of rebels, looters, savagely militant evangelists and other inhuman monsters yet remain at large, a few in concealment, but most, moving about with arrogance openly threatening reprisals on all non-moslims who dare to return and resume possession of their property. Many refugees who went back have paid for their temerity with their lives. In fact, repatriation, if it is not to be a leap from the frying pan into the fire, must mean for the vast bulk of your Ladyship's impoverished and helpless memorialists and their families a hard inexorable problem of financial help, and adequate protection against renewed hellish outrages from which immunity would be utterly impossible as long as thousands of men and even wom6n and children of this semi-savage and fanatical race in whom the worst instinct of earth hunger, blood-lust and rapine have been awakened to fierce activity- are free to prey upon their peaceable and inoffensive neighbours who — let it be most respectfully emphasized — because of their implicit trust in the power an I the will of a just and benign Government to protect them, had suffered their own art and capacity for self defence to emasculate and decay.

4. We, Your Ladyship's humble and sorrow-stricken memorialists do not seek vengeance. Our misery will not be rendered less by inflicting similar misery upon this barbarous and savage race; our dead will not return to us if these slayers are slaughtered. We would not be human, however, if we could ever forget the cruel and shameful outrages and indignities perpetrated upon us by a race to whom we have always endeavoured to be friendly and neigbourly! we would be hypocritical if, robbed of all our possessions we did not plead for some measure of compensation to help us out of the pauperism now forced upon us; we would be imbecile, if knowing the ungovernable, anti-social propensities and the deadly religious fanaticism of the raoplah race v.e did not entreat the just and powerful government to protect the lives and honour of our humble sisters who have to live in the rebel-ravaged zone. Our ambition after all is low enough ; sufficient compensation to save us and our children from starvation, and enough military protection against massacre and outrage are all that we want. We beseech Your Compassionate Ladyship to exercise all the benevolent influence that you possess with the government to see that our humble prayers are granted. But if the benign Government does not consider it possible to compensate us and to protect us in our native land we would most fervently pray that free grants of land may be assigned to us in some neighbouring region which though less blessed with the lavish gifts of nature may also be less cursed by the cruelty and brutality of man.

We beg to remain

Your Ladyship's most humble and obedient servants.

Since then there have been scores of riots throughout the country, including the infamous noakhali riots in which similar treatment was meted out to the hindu women of Bengal. The ferocity of this outrage was surpassed during the second partition of the Bharatvarsh in 1947. It seems that we have not learnt anything from our history and are waiting for the third partition of Bharat. That is why we are witnessing the same distressing signals in Kashmir, West Bengal and Kerala.