Ramosi And Moppila Rebellion - Farmer's Movement In British India

Former’s Movement

Even before the revolution of 1857, there were many rebellions and movements in which the middle class and the farmers actively participated for their rights. Of these, the farmer's movement is important. The British entered India with an imperialist ideology. To achieve this goal, they adopted many types of methods on Indians. The British imposed various types of taxes on the farmers and the middle class to get revenue and empire, due to which the farmer class was forced to take loan from the moneylender or landlord to pay the rent or tax. In this way two classes emerged – the first class of farmers and the second class of moneylenders. The peasant class organized various revolts against these classes, whose main objective was to break or weaken the feudal bonds. He protested against increasing land rent, eviction and usury of moneylenders. But due to lack of well-organized organization, the farmer's movement or the farmer's movement could not take a political form and it was suppressed.

There are some major peasant movements , which are described below -

• Ramosi Movement
• Mopla Rebellion or Moppila Rebellion
• Indigo Rebellion
• Pabna Rebellion
• Deccan Rebellion

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1.Ramosi Movement ( 1822 – 41 )

• The Ramosi rebellion mainly started in the Western Ghats of Maharashtra.
• Due to the rebellion by the people of Ramosi caste living in the Western Ghats, this peasant movement was named Ramosi rebellion.
• The main leaders of the Ramosi movement were Chitar Singh and Narsingh Petkar.
• This movement started in 1822 under the leadership of Chitar Singh.
• In this movement, the Ramoses looted the areas around Satara and also attacked the fort.
• The main reason for this movement was the problem of famine and hunger.
• Due to famine again in 1825-26, this movement started again under the leadership of Umaji and continued till 1841

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2. Moppila Rebellion ( 1836 to 1920 – 21 )

The Moplas were farmers from the Malabar region of Kerala, on the other side of India. These were mostly small farmers or traders who were Arab, Malayali or Muslim. In the Malabar region, the British government increased the power of the upper caste Hindu class by expanding the land owners. Thus a peasant movement was born which was called the Mopla Rebellion.

First Mopla Rebellion

• The root cause of this revolt was the upper caste Hindu land owner and tenant Muslim class. Whenever the landowner wanted, the tenants would evict the Muslim class from the land, collect arbitrary rent and commit various kinds of atrocities.
• On the other hand, the upper class land-owning class like Namboodiri and Nair were protected by the government, the police and the court.
• The Malabar District Congress Conference held at Manjeri in April 1920 fueled the discontent of the peasants. A resolution was passed in this conference, according to which there was a demand to make such a law, which would decide the landlord-tenant relationship. After the Manjeri conference, a cultivators' organization was formed in Kozhikode, and later, cultivators' organizations were formed in other districts as well.
• At the same time the Khilafat Movement was also at its peak. Because of this it became difficult to differentiate between the Khilafat Movement and the Mopla Movement. But the main basis of the Mopla movement was the protection of the rights of the Mopla tenants.
• On February 15, 1921 AD, the Khilafat movement and its meetings were banned by the prohibition of the government because the government argued that the Moplas could be instigated against the government and Hindu landlords through the Khilafat movement.

Longest River of South India - Godavari 

• On February 18, 1921, the Khilafat Movement and Congress leaders Yakub Hasan, Gopal Menon, Moiddin Koya and K. Madhavan Nair were arrested. As a result, the leadership of the movement passed into the hands of the local Moplah leaders.
• The magistrate of Ernad taluk decided to arrest a local leader without warrant on the instigation of a zamindar, which led to a revolt by the Moplas.
• 20 February 1921 Magistrate raided the mosque of Nirurangadi with army and police personnel to arrest the local leader Ali Musaliar. Ali Musaliar was the main leader of the Khilafat movement and the religious leader of the local Muslims. The raid failed but the magistrate arrested three activists of the Khilafat movement.
• After the above incident, the news spread all around that the British army raided the holy mosque and destroyed it. Thus, on hearing the news, people from all around started gathering there, and demanded the release of the workers. Everyone was calm. When the officials asked them to sit, everyone sat on the ground. But as soon as these people sat down, the police started firing on the unarmed crowd, killing many people. The Moplas also resorted to violence. In this way the Moplah rebellion started and it was called the first Moplah rebellion.
• The Moplas looted the government treasury, destroyed the offices, burnt government documents.
• The rebels roamed from village to village and set fire to the houses of the landlords. Liberal landlords and poor Hindus were hardly bothered. Some rebel leaders like Kunhammad Haji would take full care that no Hindu should be persecuted. If someone raised his hand on them, he was punished.
• Seeing the ferocity of the Mopla rebellion, the government suppressed it by military rule (Marshall Law).

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Second Mopla Rebellion

• Later in the year 1921 AD, this movement started again under the leadership of Ali Musaliar, which was called the second Mopla rebellion. In the first phase, the discontent among the farmers was the root cause, while in the second phase it took the form of a communal movement. The reason for this was that in the first phase of repression, the British forced Hindus to join them, while some Hindus openly supported them. Due to this, anti-Hindu sentiments flared up among the Moplas. Most of the Moplas were illiterate and were under the influence of radical ideology. As the repression increased, the communal disharmony also increased.
• The suppression of this rebellion alienated the Moplas. By December 1921 the rebellion was completely crushed.
• According to official figures, 2337 Moplas were killed while 1652 Moplas were injured. But according to non-official figures, about 10,000 people were killed. About 45404 rebels were either caught or surrendered.
• After this incident, the morale of the Moplas was completely broken and they did not cooperate at any level in any freedom struggle. He had nothing to do with any politics.
• Vinayak Damodar Savarkar wrote a novel named 'Moplah' on the Moplah rebellion.

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