98 SOCIAL SCIENTIST ondary, yet catalytic role of religious solidarity. Regarding the Mappila peasants, Pannikar correctly observes: The religious identify distanced them from the Hindu propertied classes with whom they hardly had any cultural or communitarian consciousness*. But this gulf was founded on the material reality of Hindu jenmi oppression of the Mappila peasants in Mappila populated areas of Ernad and Walluvanad taluks. This was the basis for the sharp cleavage in which religious consciousness acted as a vehicle for anti-landlord mobilisation. As Panikkar himself records at the outset, 'there were only 12 Mappilas among the 829 principal jenmis holding more than 100 pieces of land in an amsam in 1881'. Further, Panikkar notes the 'comparative quiescence* of the Hindu peasantry, though there was a limited participation of Hindus also in rebel actions against landlords in 1921. He points to the socio-religious bonds of the oppressed tenants in the Hindu fold with their jenmis as the reason for their passivity. While this is a valid reason by itself, it should also be properly emphasised and linked to the fact that the tenancy movement of the period, dealt with by Panikkar, had a specific class orientation. That of the intermediary kannakkar tenants who did not articulate the demands of the verumpattakar, the actual cultivators. Given this class limitation, the real mass of the 'Hindu* cultivating peasants remained outside the fold of the movement in a real sense. Secondly, unlike in the thirties, when the CSP and later the Communist Party organised the peasantry on class lines, in the period of the 1921 upsurge, the nature of the Congress leadership prevented any significant attempt to reach out to the Muslim peasant mass and forge bonds of unity with the non-Muslim peasants. The betrayal by the Congress middle class-kanakkar dominated leadership was rightly highlighted by EMS Namboodiripad in his analysis of the Malabar revolt. Panikkar touches on this but does not draw out its implications. It required another one and a half decades for the left-led Congressmen to mobilise all sections of the oppressed peasantry into an organised movement. The same conditions of economic exploitation provided the basis for the militant anti-feudal peasant movement. The movement in which the oppressed Hindu peasants broke out of existing social and ideological bonds in a big way. The sweep of this anti-landlord movement once again drew significant sections of the Mappila peasantry also on a class basis. Panikkar is right in concluding that 'Although the rebellion was not intrinsically communal, its consequences were decidedly so'. The failure of the leadership of the Congress in Malabar to stand by this militant anti-feudal, anti-imperialist struggle of 1921 snapped the bonds which were beginning to be forged with the Khilafat movement. It is true that in the final phase, when the British armed forces had the upper hand, some of the rebels targetted Hindus for attacks and attempted conversions to Islam. But this should not detract from the