Akbar the Mughal in a WWII Bunker

One of the 2 WWII bunkers that constitute the Navy Museum

India’s new history-writers haven’t entered the WWII bunkers of Fort Kochi yet. So you’ll meet “Akbar the Great” as well as a few other Muslim rulers of older India there in their glory of the pre-BJP days. We meet a handsome young Akbar on the inner wall of a bunker which has been converted into a museum by the Indian Navy. Akbar is credited with founding the Mughal Navy which had “over 3000 vessels… (which) played a key role in defending trade routes (and) suppressing piracy.”

While Akbar and Tipu Sultan are known to Indians who studied history before the NCERT started doctoring it, the Kunjali Marakkars of Kerala are likely to be new to most. There were four Kunjali Marakkars who served the king of Calicut (Kozhikode) in the 16^th century. The Indian Naval Maritime Museum in Fort Kochi honours them for organising the first naval defence of the Indian coast, successfully resisting Portuguese colonial expansion for nearly 100 years (1507-1600).

Maggie with Kunjali Marakkar IV
Behind: Vasco da Gama and his Gujarati Pilot

Kunjali Marakkar IV (the last of them) was betrayed by his own king, the Zamorin (Samoothiri) of Calicut. The Hindu Zamorin Manavikraman betrayed Muslim Kunjali Marakkar to the Christian Portuguese. It was an act of blatant political chicanery.

Kunjali Marakkar’s fame had spread from the Cape of Good Hope to China and it’s only natural that his king didn’t like that. Moreover, Marakkar was claiming certain hegemony for himself. He started taking certain autonomous decisions and called himself the “King of the Moors.” ‘Moor’ was the label given to Muslims by the Portuguese.

Zamorin Manavikraman decided to put the Marakkar in his place. He formed an alliance with the Portuguese, who were his former enemies, and asked them to attack the Marakkar’s fort in Kottakkal. Subduing the Marakkar was no easy task even for the mighty Portuguese. After a long siege, Kunjali Marakkar IV surrendered to the Zamorin on a promise of pardon. However, the Zamorin handed him over to the Portuguese who took him to Goa where he was paraded in chains and executed. His body was quartered, and the head was sent back to Kerala to be exhibited as a warning to potential rebels.

Today Kunjali Marakkar IV stands tall in Kochi’s Navy Museum. The ancestral home of the Marakkars in Kottakkal is also a museum today, known as the Kunjali Marakkar Museum.

How much of this history will remain in India’s official records is not certain. Too many things are undergoing changes in the country and not for the better. For example, the education minister of Kerala has had to issue a warning to certain right-wing political forces which prohibited Christmas celebrations in the state’s schools. Such a situation would have been unimaginable in Kerala, though they keep happening in other states, especially in the North. Kerala has always allowed every religion to celebrate their festivals with pomp and show. The present threats that non-Hindu festivals face made me recall some old history as Maggie and I visited the maritime museum in a place where volumes of history lie dormant even in a war-bunker.

Outside the Bunkers

PS. Recently I wrote a 4-part series on Fort Kochi and its history.