“ In the Kunjali Marakkars, we see the opinion of early nationalism evolve, even though this patriotism was not so far full fledged, ” says K K N Kurup, early vice-chancellor of University of Calicut. “ Why else would they spend sol much resources fighting the Portuguese ? ” he asks. According to Kurup, it is all thanks to the Marakkars that the indegenous language and culture of Kerala could flourish. “ Otherwise Calicut besides would be colonised like Goa, ” he says.
respective other historians, however, would not agree with the opinion, suggesting that nationalism as a concept developed much later in the nineteenth century and only in Europe. For the early portuguese traders on the early hand, the Marakkar kin was nothing more than condemnable elements or pirates who were bent on undermining their authority and trade monopoly .
Pirates of the Indian Ocean
The journey of the Portuguese to the enterprising waters of the amerind Ocean was indeed a historic moment. several groups of european traders and colonisers had followed. For Kurup, the Portuguese changed the character of trade in the Malabar Coast. “ Trade was peaceful ahead. The portuguese fetch with them armed trade, ” he says .
“ Before the Portuguese, craft on the west seashore was barren, where everyone had the correctly to purchase commodities at marketplace rate. But the Portuguese wanted monopoly. They wanted to be godhead of the seas. Anyone who threatened their try at craft monopoly were termed pirates, ” explains Professor V V Haridas, Head of History Department at Calicut University. The Marakkars emerged as pirates during this period as forces antithetic to the Portuguese .
This watch of pre-Portuguese commercial history of the indian Oceans as being passive is contradicted though by historians like Pius Malekandathil, retired professor of History at Jawaharlal Nehru University. In a research paper published in 2011, he writes, “ During the early centuries of the Christian Era, when deal was carried out in an intensified way in Roman Empire and its neighbor economic zones, there was increasing piratical attacks on vessels plying in the Mediterranean and the indian Ocean. ” He adds that the pirates of the Konkan coast posed dangerous threats to the Roman vessels conducting trade with Lymrike ( Malabar ) and Ariake ( Ariavartam ) .
tied when trade with the Roman Empire declined, the pirates did not disappear. Malekandathil writes that as nautical trade wind between South West India and the Sassanid Persian Empire grew, a large phone number of pirates began trying their fortune in the navigational channels to the Persian Gulf, necessitating the Sassanid rulers to intervene. “ consequently, sometime before 415 CE, as the eleventh century chronicle of Seert mentions, a christian Catholicos, a sealed Ahai was deputed by the Sassanid ruler Yasdigird I to investigate the trouble of piratical attacks on the ships returning from India and Ceylon to the Persian Gulf, ” he writes. Malekandathil besides notes that by the goal of the thirteenth hundred, the venetian explorer and merchant Marco Polo had witnessed Malabari pirates who used to travel in large numbers along with their family members attacking and plundering merchant vessels vitamin a far as the seashore of Gujarat .
With the monopolistic trade practices of the Portuguese and early european trading companies in the 16th and 17th centuries, a big number of people from the coastal villages of Kerala entered the maritime space of the indian ocean as pirates. Malekandathil in his make explains that while a majority of them were descendants of traditional pirate families, some of them were besides merchants who were displaced from the commercial universe by the Portuguese. “ The displace traditional merchants were either compelled to become corsairs or were therefore label and categorised by the european commercial powers in their attempts to eliminate them from the world of commerce, ” he writes .
It was during this period that the Kunjali Marakkars emerged. While the portuguese described them as pirates, unlike early criminals in the oceans, the Marakkars had acquired authenticity from the Zamorin of Calicut as his fleet admiral. On accumulating enormous wealth, they besides asserted their power politically by acquiring fresh territories. “ The Marakkars compiled in them features of plagiarism along with barter and state build, ” says Malekandathil in an interview with Indianexpress.com .
Who were the Kunjali Marakkars?
The sixteenth hundred Arab scholar Shayk Zaynuddin, in his study, ‘ Tuhfat Ul Mujahideen ’, described the conflict between the Muslims of the Malabar Coast and the Portuguese. It was Zaynuddin ’ mho work that for the beginning time highlighted the epic resistance put up by the Marakkars. But hanker before the Marakkars had established themselves as admirals of the Zamorin in his contend against the Portuguese, they were already a potent trading community of full-bodied merchants. historian V Kunhali in his article, ‘ Origin of Kunhali Marakkars and administration of their fighters ’ ( 1997 ), writes that the origin of the word ‘ Marakkar ’ is traced to an Arabic root, ‘ Markab ’, which means ship .
“ The Marakkar tradition is that when the inaugural immigrants of this class landed on indian shores, they were naturally asked who they were and whence they came. In answer they pointed to their boats and pronounced the word ‘ Markab ’, and in consequence they became known to the Hindus as Marakkayar or people from Markab, ” writes Kunhali narrating a popular narrative about the origins of the Marakkars .
But it was not in Malabar where the Marakkars first settled. historian K J John in his research paper, ‘ Kunjali Marakkars : Myth and reality ’ ( 1997 ), writes that the Marakkars had settled in the Coromandel Coast. They came to Cochin towards the end of the fifteenth hundred and settled as a seafaring community with occupation as their profession .
By the prison term the Portuguese arrived in Cochin in 1500, the Marakkars were some of the most golden traders. John, in his newspaper, writes that the italian traveler Ludovico di Varthema described Mamale Marakkar, a trader from the community as “ the richest serviceman in the nation ”. The Portuguese in fact frequently collaborated with the Marakkars in their deal interests. “ The portuguese officials concluded respective contracts with the Marakkars to purchase and sell commodities, ” writes John. He provides an model when, in 1504, Chinna Marakkar and Mamale Marakkar received an order from the portuguese officials for the issue of 4,989,000 kg of capsicum to the factory at Cochin .
Things began to change from the mid of the 1520s when the Portuguese shifted their documentation in favor of the casado ( portuguese married to amerind women ) individual traders. This was a turn point in the relationship between the Marakkars and the Portuguese. In 1524, the Marakkars are believed to have left Cochin for Calicut ( Kozhikode ). They first settled at Ponnani, one of the ports belonging to the zamorin.
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The deteriorating political relationship between Calicut and Cochin was besides responsible for the egress of the Marakkars as a threat to the Portuguese. “ Cochin was initially a subordinate to the Zamorin of Calicut. But with the portuguese coming in, Cochin assisted them in their commercial interests with the objective of building a kingdom of their own, ” says Haridas .
consequently, Calicut was happy to take advantage of the Marakkar ’ sulfur dissatisfaction in Cochin.
Under the Zamorin, the Marakkars were given the province of maintaining vigil in the ports. The Zamorin began depending on the Marakkars ’ navigational expertness for reviving the trade wind of Calicut. “ ‘ Kunjali ’, in fact, was a title that the zamorin gave to the promontory of the kin ”, says Kurup, explaining that Kunjali in Malayalam means ‘ costly ’ .
Malekandathil in his newspaper writes about the character of activities carried out by the Marakkars : “ to patrol the west coast of India with the silent and denotative consent of the Zamorin, blockading and plundering the vessels of the Portuguese and second to integrate the native trade networks for sending spices to Red Sea-Venice routes. ” He adds : “ Thus the corsair activities developed by Kunjali Marakkar ’ s men turned out to be an option musical arrangement of trade, where rape and confiscation of enemy vessels ( obviously of the Portuguese ) went hand in hand with parallel dispatch of commodities to the finish of their option. ”
The Zamorin began depending on the Marakkars’ navigational expertise for reviving the trade of Calicut. (Wikimedia Commons) The Zamorin began depending on the Marakkars ’ navigational expertness for reviving the trade of Calicut. ( Wikimedia Commons ) By the middle of the sixteenth hundred, the Marakkars had accumulated a significant come of wealth and were keen on creating ability structures and courtly institutions. For this aim they set up a fortress at Pudupattinam in salute day Tamil Nadu, where ammunition was stored. “ The sum of power that Kunjali wielded by this fourth dimension was equivalent to that of a stately rule, and the Muslims of Malabar used to recognise him about like their king, ” writes Malekandathil. Further, the Marakkars assumed respective ability wielding titles for themselves angstrom good like ‘ lord of the Arabian Sea ’, ‘ Prince of Navigation ’ and ‘ King of the Malabar Moors ’. The agency exercised by them was such that ambassadors from the Mecca and the Mughal conglomerate are known to have assembled in their court for political tie-ups. such developments did not go unnoticed by the Zamorin and soon became a topic of concern for him .
The zamorin interpreted the state-building activities of the Marakkars as means that would undermine his own suzerainty. Apprehensive of these developments, the Zamorin, who had for over 50 years mentored the Marakkars, turned against Kunjali Marakkar IV, and joined hands with the Portuguese. As a resultant role of the joint process between the Zamorin and the Portuguese, Kunjali was captured and later beheaded by the Portuguese at Goa in 1600 CE .
Malekandathil explains that the execution of Kunjali Marakkar did not put an end to pirating activities on the West Coast. Rather, a large number of Muslim sea-farers, who were till now under the dominance of the Kunjali Marakkar, got a free hand and turned into full-fledged ‘ sea-robbers ’, who would frequently attack portuguese vessels. Many of them offered their services as sailors and traders to other european companies. “ The friendship between the corsairs of Malabar and the English must have been a region of the tactics to forge a commercial partnership between the forces, which opposed the Portuguese trade system, ” writes Malekandathil .
Early nationalists or ambitious merchants
John in his knead writes that the first gear serious historical employment on the Marakkars was written by Sardar K M Panikkar in 1929 titled, ‘ Malabar and the portuguese ’. “ Sardar K.M. Panikkar with a definite bias against the Portuguese, went to Europe, claimed to have researched portuguese sources, and made a initiate attempt to reconstruct the ‘ heroic struggle ’ of the Marakkar dynasty against portuguese imperialism ”. Panikkar ’ second decision was the Marakkars under the steering of the zamorin waged a 100 years war against the Portuguese. His analysis of the Marakkars being defenders of patriotism and patriotism was accepted and elaborated upon by other historians like V K Krishna Ayyar and O K Nambiar .
The Kunjali Marakkar Memorial erected by the Indian navy at Kottakkal, Vatakara. (Wikimedia Commons) The Kunjali Marakkar Memorial erected by the indian dark blue at Kottakkal, Vatakara. ( Wikimedia Commons ) A few years back Kurup had reached out to the former Defence Minister of India, George Fernandes, requesting the initiation of a marker in Goa where Kunjali Marakkar was beheaded. “ unfortunately, nothing was done, ” he says. “ The Kunjali Marakkars were Muslim nationalists whose function in the history of India has not highlighted adequate. ”
Malekandathil agrees that the Marakkars are particularly worshipped among the Muslim community of Kerala. “ Among the Muslims, they symbolised immunity, both against the portuguese and against the local anesthetic rule or Zamorin, ” he says. But adds that “ communities frequently create or inflate their heroes beyond their historical stature .
According to Malekandathil, the Marakkars had no sense of ethnicity, terminology or politics to consider their liveliness as nationalist. “ They were anti-Portuguese. But that does not mean nationalism. For that topic, they came into conflict with the Zamorin himself who was a local ruler. The Marakkars had their petty interests of self-assertion as well, and immediately we are reading besides a lot into them, ” he explains .
“ The Kunjali Marakkars fought against the Portuguese, without knowing their nationality. So I am not certain if that can be called nationalism, ” says Haridas. “ however, it is decidedly truthful that they were fighting against a foreign power under a local ruler. Whether we consider that patriot or not depends on one ’ second interpretation of nationalism ”
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