In the Indian education system, particularly in Kerala, history teaches the 'Wagon Tragedy' next to the 'Jallianwala Bagh Massacre'. Naturally, one tends to conceive the Wagon Tragedy and its victims as part of the Indian Independence movement. There is no question that the act committed by the British against the Muslim detainees is merciless – squeezing over 90 people into a freight wagon, ultimately suffocating and killing 67 of them. Everyone knows this much of the history but not much about the events that led to this incident. We need a flashback from the Tragedy to know the truth. Those who were bundled into the wagon weren't freedom fighters; they were rioters who brutally murdered thousands of Hindus and displaced tens of thousands in the Malabar region of Keral

When I joined Janam TV, a Malayalam TV channel, I was assigned to direct a documentary series on various historic events. The first one was the 'Malabar Riots', also known as the 'Moplah Revolt' in Kerala. By the time I joined the TV channel, K P Kailasnath, a journalist, with the help of Vinod A of Vidyabhyasa Samrakshana Samiti and Tirur Dinesh of Oral History Research Foundation, did most of the research and interviewed the subjects in Malappuram district. I was given these interviews and tasked with making a four-episode documentary series on the subject. I did my research and interviewed some politicians as well. I believe that it might be the first time in Malayalam television history that the true story of the Malabar riots was being showed.

Going through the history and each of the events that occurred from August to November in 1921 is beyond the scope of this article. Although the first riot ensued in August 1921, the entire sequence of the history can be traced back to the Khilafat Movement and the final years of the First World War, when the Khalif of the Ottoman Empire was dethroned by the British. Here, I will put forward some personal accounts of the descendants of those who suffered during the Malabar riots rather than explain the whole history.

It was a four-month period in the Malabar region of Kerala when Muslim rioters conducted mass genocide against Hindus. What supposedly started as a freedom revolt against the British, ended up being an excuse to wipe out the Hindu population of northern Kerala.

The Malabar riots are seen differently by different people.

1. The Malabar riots as the Malabar rebellion, an Indian Independence movement against British colonialism. This is backed by most politicians.

2. The Malabar riots as an agricultural revolution aimed at dismantling the feudal landlords and establishing an egalitarian society. Some leftist historians and communist politicians introduced this theory.

3. The Malabar riots as a genocide against Hindus. The people who actually survived the ordeal will accept nothing other than this description of the incident. Although the Hindu community at that time in Kerala had caste system as a predicament, the Mappila rioters showed no such discrimination in murdering them. Any Hindu, be a feudal landlord or a labourer on the field, fell victim to the swords of the Mappilas. However, Mappilas didn't kill them in an instant. They would ask if the person at the edge of sword was willing to convert to Islam. Mappilas didn’t take 'no' for an answer; they would slice the throat of the victim at that very moment.

During the production of the documentary, I chose to interview Aryadan Mohammad, a senior politician of the Congress party. He was a minister at the time. What caught my attention is that in a press conference that same year (2014), he admitted that his forefathers were Hindus. I knew I would get authoritative answers from him instead of the usual rhetoric of common politicians. Unlike other politicians from the Congress party these days, he talked in a straightforward fashion without any intention to please anyone. He said, “Even though the initial idea of Khilafat Movement was to fight against British colonialism in India, what happened in Malabar riots was a catastrophe. Acts like attacking Hindus, invading and claiming their lands, robbing their properties, forced religious conversions were part of the riots. Such assaults against Hindus forced them to flee from their homelands. It is a fact that Hindus were harmed and tortured at that time and nobody should disagree with this fact!”