On what date did the British hang Ali Musliyar?
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Kozhikode: Ali Musliyar, the celebrated hero of Malabar's freedom struggle against the British, has come in the news again following a revelation that the American newspapers of those days had given different information about the date of hanging of the leader of Malabar Rebellion in 1921.
Newly discovered information reveal that Ali Musliar may have been hanged by the British government at least a month or two before the date he generally believed to have been hanged. According to the books of RH Hitchcock, Superintendent of Police, Malabar District, and British Government Under Secretary GRF Tottenham, and author of 'The History of the Malabar Rebellion, 1921', Ali Musliyar was hanged at the end of January 1922. The same is the information in the then British Under Secretary GRF Tottenham's book 'The Mappila Rebellion 1921-22' too. However, books written by local historian K.K. Mohammad Abdul Kareem and former Congress leader K Madhavan Nair state that he was hanged on February 17, 1922. But the US newspapers report that he was taken to the scaffold earlier.
Ali Musliyar's was one of the first photographs published by the Chicago Daily Tribune in the United States on January 17, 1922, entitled 'The first exclusive photos of the uprising in India against the British rule'. The caption beneath the photo states that 'One of the Mappila rebel leaders, Ali Musliyar was captured and hanged in the early days of the rebellion'.
Two days later, on January 19, 1922, similar photos of the Malabar Rebellion were released by the Daily News from New York titled 'The first exclusive photos of the Mappilas, the fierce rebels among Indian Muslims'. Here too Ali Musliyar's picture was followed by the words 'Leader Ali Musliyar, hanged'. The report suggests he may have been hanged in December 1921 or early January 1922.
Thomas Ryan, Special Foreign Reporter of the Chicago Tribune, had visited Malabar and reported the news directly at the climax of the Malabar Rebellion in November 1921. Thomas Ryan was an 'embedded' journalist during the British raid there on Eranad.
The said picture of Ali Musliyar was published by the Chicago Tribune with photos of the raid that happened then. In addition to the Chicago Tribune, special reports by Thomas Ryan from Malabar used to be published by several other American newspapers as well.