Malabar was British territory from 1792, not a princely state, so resistance here was always directly against the government of the day rather than against a durbar. It came in three separate waves with little organisational continuity between them: the chiefly and forest resistance to Company revenue between 1793 and 1812; the Congress and Khilafat organisation of 1920-22, which in the southern taluks ended in the rebellion of 1921; and the tenancy and peasant-union organising of the 1930s and 1940s in the north, which grew directly out of the land question William Logan had named in 1882. The 1921 events are set down here strictly as dates, figures and ranges. They have been written about as a communal episode by every side at various times; this file does not do that, and where sources differ on numbers, the difference is stated rather than resolved.
The Cotiote wars1793-1805
Kerala Varma Pazhassi Raja of Kottayam, who had fought Mysore alongside the Company, turned against its revenue demands after 1792 and against its annexation of Wayanad after 1800. The fighting was conducted from forest country with Kurichiya and Kurumba archers, and the Company's losses in the first phase were heavier than in the Third Anglo-Mysore War.
Outcome: Pazhassi was killed at Mavila Thodu on 30 November 1805 and the Kottayam and Wayanad country was brought under direct administration.
The Kurichiya rising in Wayanad1812
Kurichiya and Kurumba cultivators of the Wayanad plateau rose against a revenue assessment demanded in cash rather than in grain, taking government posts across the plateau.
Outcome: Suppressed within months by troops moved up from the coast; the assessment stood, and the plateau was thereafter administered as part of Malabar District.
The rebellion of 1921 in South Malabar20 August 1921 - February 1922
Khilafat and Non-cooperation committees were organised through Ernad, Valluvanad and Ponnani taluks from 1920, in a district where the Malabar Special Commission had reported in 1882 that cultivators held land without security of tenure. On 20 August 1921 police entered Tirurangadi to make arrests and seize records. Fighting began the same day, spread across the southern taluks within a week, and government authority lapsed over parts of Ernad and Valluvanad for several months. Martial law was declared later in August; military operations ran through the winter and the last organised resistance ended in February 1922. On 10 November 1921 about a hundred prisoners were moved from Tirur station in a closed goods wagon; sources give between 64 and 70 deaths from suffocation, an event recorded as the Wagon Tragedy.
Outcome: Official returns gave 2,337 killed and 1,652 wounded among those in arms, and 43 killed among government forces. Arrest and imprisonment figures are given between about 45,000 and 50,000, and substantial numbers were transported to the Andaman penal settlement. Estimates of total deaths and of deportations differ very widely between the official returns and later accounts, and no single figure is agreed.
The Salt Satyagraha in MalabarApril 1930
A jatha walked from Kozhikode to the coast at Payyanur, where salt was made in breach of the salt law. K. Kelappan led the march; Muhammad Abdurahiman and others were arrested in the weeks that followed, and a parallel action at Kozhikode beach ended in the volunteers being beaten.
Outcome: Mass arrests across the district, and the establishment of Congress organisation in North Malabar that carried into the tenancy and peasant agitations of the following decade.