Short Essay on the Kurichya Rebellion

After the suppression of the Pazhassi rebellion, Wynad was brought under strict surveil­lance of the British and the Kurichyas and Kurumbas, two aboriginal tribal communities who were the main supporters and militiamen of Pazhassi Raja, were subjected to untold abuses and privations. They were left to languish in enforced poverty and the revenue officials and military men made their life a veritable hell.

The most grievous injury to the life of these tribal came from the new revenue settlements effected by Thomas Warden after the Pazhassi Rebellion. It created havoc in the economic life of Wynad and lay waste the whole valley, driving the inhabitants from destitution to mad fury. T.H. Baber has noted that it pressed “much harder upon them than cultivators in their insulated situation can bear.”

Moreover the revenue officers practised rapacity and wanton oppression: the extortive land juma was more tolerable than the mode of collection and the cruelty of the revenue collectors. Large amounts collected from the poor cultivators were kept and enjoyed by them as unaccounted money. Baber was a witness to this pitiable plight of the people of Wynad.

The discontent of the people steadily increased as the Sheristadars and Parbatties, the revenue officers, started seizing and selling the property and personal effects of the revenue defaulters. Innumerable cause of such distrait and sale of properties (leaving nothing for the peasants to live on) and forcible entry in private houses are on record. The Kurichyas were also often seized and made to serve as slaves by the revenue officials and Englishmen, reducing them to a despicable condition of existence by depriving them of their caste.

All these unjust and violent acts against the people of Wynad were done with the knowledge and concurrence of the Collector, Mr. Warden. His stubbornness and his officers’ stupidity and cruelty combined to produce a strong spirit of resistance and aggressive attitude on the part of the people of Wynad in 1812. It was in this background that the Kurichya Rebellion of 1812 erupted.

The rebels, especially the well-informed section consisting of the disaffected revenue servants and village officers, wanted a total general uprising against the British not only in Wynad, and Malabar, but also in Travancore and Cochin.

They regularly informed the young Pazhassi Raja (the nephew of the late Raja Kerala Varma) who was in Travancore as state prisoner at the time of the course of events in Wynad. Col. Wilson says that one Faqueer who was behind the Mutiny of Quilon in 1812 which was organised with the object of killing the European officers and men of the subsidiary force of Travancore was in Wynad at the beginning of the revolt. This provides a significant link between the Wynad revolt and the Travancore discontent.

The Kurichayas and Kurumbas under the leadership of some Nayars and Tiyyas, made preparation for the final contest with the British tyrants it was a typical peasant revolt. It is interesting to notice how these people organised themselves and enlisted supporters for the terrible war.

The Kurichyas and Kurumbas made arrow-blades from the iron pulled out from the railings of bridges. Letters were sent out by the rebel leaders to the police Kolkars and revenue servants belonging to the rebel castes to support their cause by taking part in the rebellion with their arms. That, they were informed, was the mandate of their gods whose wrath every tribal feared. This had the desired effect; the call for support was instantaneously answered by all except four of the Kurichya and Kurumbar members of the police establishment, leaving their post and joining the rebels.

The rebels kept all their movements and preparations a guarded secret till the rebellion broke out. James Tagg, who was stationed in Wynand with two companies of troops to maintain law and order in the area after the suppression of Pazhassi rebellion, was completely in the dark about the brooding storm.

The rebellion was, as Baber noted, mainly “to expel the Watta Topykar (Europeans) out of the country”. The unity among the people was such that the English considered Wynadians to the last man as a “treacherous and active enemy.”

The conflagration was of so alarming and extensive a proportion that Baber reported, “Had the insurgents been able to make a stand or to have remained undisturbed a month longer, they must have had possession of the country.”

The rebellion started on 25th March 1812. They attacked the police and committed severe atrocities against Englishmen. The rebels’ call for unity was in the name of Pulppally Murikkanmar (the protecting deities of Wynad) and with crusading zeal, the local inhabitants flocked to the rebel camp to fight the Whitemen. Within two days rebellion spread to all parts of Wynad; all roads leading to Wynad were guarded by the Kurichyas and supplies to British troops were effectively prevented.

There were several instances of police establishment in some places totally defecting and joining the rebels. Baber writes: “a party of Kolkars, twenty-two in number, who had been ordered to Baisala Pora, basely delivered up their arms to about 30 Rebel Coorchers, without the smallest resistance, although they had twenty cartridges each, and four of them actually received back their arms and served the Rebel leaders.”

It is clear from this that the police and revenue servants in Wynad had their loyalty to the British surrendered in favour of the rebel cause. Unlike many rebellions, this Kurichya rebellion was a mass uprising with a wider appeal.

To quell the rebellion Baber had to requisition the military forces from Malabar, and Canara, as James Tagg’s troops were completely crippled by the local militia. The insur­gents mobilised the hostility of the local people to the British to such a pass that the administration crumbled like a house of cards and it could not find provision for its army stationed there.

The alarming proportion of the rebellion is evident from the nature of the British troop movements to this troubled hill tract. The British Resident in Mysore detached 2000 Mysore troops to protect the frontier and Major General Wetherall sent a strong detachment of troops of the garrison of Seringapatam. From Cannanore also another battalion was sent to relieve the distressed troops.

Such a vastly numerous army slashed the jungles in different directions and combed out the rebels and their leaders. The devastating march of the soldiers through the length and breadth of Wynad and the terror they produced in the minds of the people through cruel spoliations had an immediate effect. Several of the inhabitants submitted to the authority of the Government and pledged to give up their leaders on promise of pardon to the rest. Baber made very good use of these men who betrayed one by one all their leaders.

By 8th May 1812, quiet returned to Wynad and people took their lot with patience. Still 50 rebel Kurichiyars could not be induced to submit; nor could they be caught either. Even though the rebellion continued only for less than two months and its scope was severely restricted to the Wynad area, it caused considerable concern to the British authorities.

Apart from its sorrowful effect on the English army engaged in the operation which Welsh has described in his Military Reminiscences thus: “hardly one of my servants lived to return with me to Bangalore; several of our officers who were in Wynad, died shortly afterwards; and the casualties amongst our men and their families were truly distressing”, it helped to open the eyes of the Company Government to the bad effects of the extortionate revenue policy followed by them.

Necessity for a humane approach toward problems of poverty among the peasantry was brought home to the revenue hungry administration. It was not nationalism or patriotism but the fury and desperation caused by the mad revenue policy of the English that gave birth to this rebellion. The poor peasants and labourers who were hit hard by the official rapacity and plunder, naturally nostalgically looked back to see their happy days in the earlier regime, which they fondly desired to return.

This was, therefore, a full blooded peasant uprising of the classical type-one of the earliest jacqueries of modern Indian history. Shortness of its duration, and the fact that it had no haloed heroes of known name, do not, any the less, minimise its importance. At all hands it was considered as a total uprising of a people. As Stevenson, one of the army commanders in Wynad operation commented, “Indeed there is ground to apprehend that all the inhabitants in the part of Wynad are inclined to favour the cause of the insurgents.”

The Kurichya Rebellion of 1812 was as important, if not more, as the rebellions of Pazhassi, Kattabomman, Marudu and Velu Tampi, as an internal resistance movement against the British authority. However, its nature as a pure and simple peasant revolt, with no charlatan leader to claim superiority over others, and with no stigma of a feudal uprising attached to it, makes the Kurichya Rebellion all the more important.

An Estimate

Thus we find that the last decade of the 18th and first decade of the 19th century’s were years of turbulence. It was a period of palace cliques, plots, mutinies and mass revolts. To evaluate the importance of all these revolts, and one should be familiar with the process evolution and background of the revolts. All these revolts, generally, had mass support. But many of them began due to reasons not particularly connected with the anti-British feelings peculiar to the areas of revolt.

In some cases it was the mistaken revenue policy of disaffection and discontentment in the army, or the loss of territory, or the difference opinion between the leading personalities of the countries affected. Actually these revolts gathered momentum not because the people were intensely aware of the evils of alien rule, but because the agent provocateur was the British. In many cases we find that the clashes might have occurred even in the absence of the British in the areas concerned.

In cases like Marudu Pandyan, Velu Tampi and Pazhassi Raja, the innate desire to free them from alien rule can be noticed. The importance of these revolts lies in the fact that they were fought in a period when there were no such notions as nationalism or political independence. The people of the areas of revolt did not feel the need for complete independence at all. The Vellore Mutiny and the Military Rising of 1808-9 were purely due to military reasons. The other revolts, whatever is the motive of their leaders, can definitely be taken as having resulted in awakening a political consciousness in South India.