The rebellion of the Muslim community of Malabar, the Moplahs, in 1921–22 is well known to scholars of Indian history. The violent but small-scale Moplah disturbances which were a recurring feature of the south Malabar interior between 1836 and 1919 have also received attention. The present writer has argued elsewhere that these ‘out breaks’ were attempts by rural Moplahs in the south Malabar taluks of Ernad and Walluvanad to curb the British-fortified power of the high-caste (mainly Brahmin and Nair) Hindu jenmis or ‘landlords’ by means of what were, in effect, ritual challenges to British rule. What is little realized is that defiance of British power by the Moplah agricultural population of interior south Malabar dates from the earliest period of the rule of the East India Company, the decade after the Muslim ruler of Mysore, Tippu Sultan, ceded the province in 1792.