WILIAM LOGAN- MALABAR MANUEL
Haneef
Malabar by William Logan (popularly known as the Malabar Manual) was an 1887 publication commissioned by the Government of Madras, and originally published in two volumes. It is a guide to the Malabar District under the Presidency of Madras in British India, compiled during Logan's tenure as Collector of Malabar. It is an exhaustive volume giving the details of the geography, people, their religion and castes, language and culture. It depicts the life and style of the vernacular people of Malabar District, with some interesting notes on the English Raj's life then. The work was later followed up by the Malabar Gazetteer of 1908, written by Charles Alexander Innes.
There were many Scotsmen, Irish and Englishmen who have spent long tenures in India, and some have spent their entire adult lifetimes in India but have done little. Logan Sayipp as he was known, spent only a few years but left a huge mark, for unlike many others who followed, he loved the land (and the people) which he was sent to administer. This man of Scottish farming stock went on to write what we still consider as source book on Malabar and his history, the Malabar manual. Let’s now try to get to know the man behind it all, his life and times.
William Logan’s thesis “Malabar Manual” is studded with facts and figures and meticulously compiled .He drew heavily on his position as District Collector of Malabar to compile statistics and access historic records. It helped that he could speak Malayalam, Tamil and Telegu and his scholarship stands out, through his attention to detail, and his striving to piece together the likely course of history. As he writes in the preface “…I have drawn nearly all my information from the district records. the earliest of these ,in my office at Calicut, go back to the seventeenth century, and from the year 1725 an almost unbroken series of very ponderous manuscript volumes records …”.But scholarship has its limitations in the absence of documented records and the need to piece together historic events based on popular beliefs. Logan has this to say of his thesis ,” Many things I would no doubt find wherein my knowledge was defective , and many more still in which fuller investigation would through new, and perhaps altogether different light on what seems plain enough now.” Nevertheless his sense of balance, notwithstanding the European slant from time to time, is arguably the best commentary we have on the people of Malabar.
William Logan was born at Ferney Castle, a farmland near Reston Berwickshire, Scotland to David Logan and Elizabeth Hasti on 17th May, 1841. Berwickshire was a rich farm land and the Logan's were tenant farmers for two centuries in these rolling arable lands of the Merse, lying a few miles north of the River Tweed and bordering England.
He was educated at Musselberg School, Edinburgh, where he possessed Dux Medal for distinguished scholarship in 1856. At the University of Edinburgh, he applied for the Madras civil Service examination and entered the service on 16th August, 1862. After passing the vernacular language tests in Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam, he was appointed the Assistant to Collector and magistrate of North Arcot in 1864 and later that year was transferred to Malabar. in 1867, he was the Sub collector and Joint Magistrate of the district. In 1873, he was the acting District and sessions Judge of North malabar at Tellicherry. In 1874, he was appointed as acting District and sessions Judge, South Malabar.
He was then moved to Malabar as an assistant to the collector, but was quickly reposted to Tanjore and soon enough, right back to Malabar in 1866, as acting head assistant and then head assistant. He then took a number of positions within the Tellichery and Calicut Collectorate till he finally became the chief administrator of Malabar – The collector and magistrate, in 1876, aged 35.
When Lt. Henry Valentine Conolly, the then district collector was murdered in 1855 during the civil unrest caused by the Malabar Mapilla Rebellion, William Logan succeeded him as the District Collector. William Logan having lived in this part for a score of years, underlined "the agrarian discontent and poverty among the Mappilas as the causes of the unrest."
But in between all that he did find time to settle himself by finding a wife, in 1872, while on furlough. His wife, Anne Selby Burrell Wallace, daughter of a banker, accompanied him to Tellichery where they begot a child Mary Ord. By 1876, moved to South Malabar, they had settled down at the East Hill collector’s Bungalow at Calicut and went on to live there for the next 12 years.
Sub
collectors Bunglow Logan was often seen on horseback touring the areas of Malabar frequently, accompanied by one or two servants, constantly stopping and talking to small groups, and asking questions. His care for the people of Malabar, his passion for doing what was right, his built in faith in God, all of these were put to work during his stay in Calicut.
One of his first and notable involvements was related to the administration of the Lakshdweep or Laccadive Islands and the Ali Raja’s monopolies related to the coir trade. The islands had been controlled by the Ali Rajas and the Beebi of Cannanore and generally accepted so by the British who had agreed to a status quo, until W Robinson visiting the islands in 1847 suggested much needed reforms. The islands were later attached by the British due to unpaid arrears and it was in 1869 that Logan was deputed to the islands for a review, with the Ali Rajah in tow and trying his best to obstruct him from getting information. Logan completed his investigations and submitted different schemes for raising revenue, entailing the abolition of the monopoly but these suggestions were not accepted and from the time of the British government taking over the control of these islands in 1875, the prices paid were assimilated to those paid on the South Kanara islands.
But a bulk of his work was done in the mainland, all resulting from his love and sympathy for the people of Malabar. Even though he was a mainstay for the British Raj in Malabar, his appreciation for the unique culture of Malabar can be seen in his writings.
As a collector he had a tremendous amount of work to do. He was very much involved with the plantations of Wyanad, starting of garden schools, and the development of the Calicut port. The railway link to Beypore had been completed and Logan wanted to link it to Trivandrum and other sections of the South eastern railway through Cape Comorin.
His efforts in understanding the issues with the Moplahs of Malabar is well documented. As a political and economic analyst Logan had done a wonderful job in finding out various reasons connected with the peasant revolts of Malabar. He thoroughly goes through the economic grievances which precipitated Mappila revolts and at the same time he brings out the ideological factors behind them. However sympathies aside, he administered the law in very strict terms as was the case during the Trikkaliyur riots.
Perhaps his biggest contributions were in the understanding and documentation of the traditional land and agrarian systems of Malabar. While it is said that he erred on the side of the peasant and did not quite side with the landlord due to his own background as a Scottish peasant, his recommendations on land tenure decisions did not find favour with his masters who for the sake of smoother administration decided to maintain a status quo. Ironically, some of the succeeding Kerala administrators of independent India, though many decades later, found many of his arguments perfect.
Following all this, in 1881, Logan took on the role of special commissioner to study the issues in the Moplah districts after the government’s receipt of an anonymous petition with public opinion explaining certain agrarian reasons as the reason behind Moplah violence. Logan found fault with the implementation of British law in tenancy cases and presented a very detailed study of the rules of the land vis-à-vis the situation faced by the tenants, coupled with their abject poverty, ending usually with forceful evictions. He also outlined various religious issues affecting Moplahs as well as the issues faced by Hindu lower caste tenants within the tenurial system, resulting in others describing his outlook to be one of a ‘primitive socialist’. The government did not agree and kept Logan out of the final committee drafting the revised Malabar tenancy bill. Eventually more revisions took place and the act came out in 1887, something which was to Logan’s complete discomfiture and the principal reasoning behind the British governments transfer orders for Logan to Andhra, culminating in his resignation and departure from India.
During this period, while different committees were analyzing the various issues relating to Logan’s report, he was given numerous differing responsibilities. While he was an acting resident of Cochin and Travancore between 1883 -84, he was again on special duty relating to land tenures and finally sent back to Calicut as collector. Calicut remembers him for many an interesting action when he served as its collector. He was the first to record the peculiar trail of chastity or smartavicharam where an offending Nambudiri woman was cruelly made outcast. One should also not forget his relentless effort to create a classic botanical garden in the area where we have the SM Street these days. The idea for the government to acquire a 7 acre piece of land from the Zamorin’s family did not quite pan out due to the arrival of the railway and the resulting increase in land prices. Even when Logan changed his plans to have a much smaller 1 acre garden, the idea did not eventually get an approval from his superiors.
He was the person who decided the location of Calicut’s railway station (the Chaliyam railway station lost out in the bargain) upon what once was the route of the dried up Robinson canal or the bazar canal. Logan was a just man, who was severe not only on people who disobeyed the law, but also errant government officials. He was also against the small-time kuris of Malabar mainly because many of them were dishonest and robbed the poorest off their little earnings. He was once tasked with determining if explosive gunpowder was being misused to make crackers in Calicut (this was during the Moplah disturbances), and Logan after a careful study explained that gunpowder was as such only used in temples for the “kathana’ and not in any crackers. He also had some tiffs with the Zamorin’s family over matters such as appointments in their schools and college.
William Logan Logan’s involvement in the Attapadi silent valley suit and his recording of facts and evidences helped in the preservation of the Attapadi forest including the Silent Valley, something ecologists of Kerala proudly mention even today. RJ Herring observes, citing Logan - the effect of colonial law was to simplify, collapse and locate concretely the bundle of rights in land with the objective of creating property rights in the sense of market property. Simultaneously, vast tracts were "reserved" for the state on the claim that unused "waste" land had traditionally been "the property of the state"
But his superiors were in general not too pleased with all this, for Logan was transferred in 1888 to Cudappah as the district and sessions judge, and for Logan, that it was the last straw, and just two months later he resigned and went back aged just 47, to Scotland to lead a life in obscurity, to retire as they say and become a gentleman hunting and playing golf. His picture from Scotland does show a portly country man in breeches, with his cap and a bent pipe hanging from his lips. It is mentioned that for a while he continued correspondence with some of his friends in Malabar. He died in 1914 at the age of 73.
"He was appointed Collector of Malabar in 1875, at a crucial stage of the history of Malabar, and he was well equipped for the role, having served the area for more than 20 years as judge, special commissioner, and magistrate, and had gained a wealth of knowledge in the process. Logan loved the land and the people, and his tenure made him a real "Kerala man.
But he left behind what is considered to be his magnum opus- the Malabar manual in 3 parts. A fine 1200 page manual later printed in two parts, he recorded all that he could about the people of Malabar, their history, culture and varied practices. (‘A Collection of Treaties, Engagements and other papers of importance relating to British affairs in Malabar’ written by him was earlier referred to as the Part 3).
Logan is sometimes titled the Gazetteer of Malabar. Now what was a Gazetteer supposed to do? Gazetteers became popular in Britain in the 19th Century, many of whom were Scottish, documenting activities to meet public demand in Britain for information on an expanding Empire. Logan simply put, produced in ‘Malabar manual’, the work of an enlightened administrator, an assiduous scholar and an authority on British affairs in the region. "Logan was sincere and serious about the task entrusted to him. He was an efficient Collector who had an affinity with the people of Malabar. The personal contribution is evident all along. The details given by Logan with regard to dress, festivals and other social customs go a long way in providing insights on the social history of Malabar. The cultural heritage of Malabar, the race for hegemony in the trade of pepper and spices, the Mysorean invasion, and finally British supremacy find mention in his book”.
It’s been a century since the death of William Logan, former District collector during British administration. His book - the Malabar Manual, written and published in two volumes in 1887, is even today considered and referred to as an authoritative description of the history of Malabar.
Those who want to take a peek at the exhaustive accounts of life in Malabar in those days can try out the Malabar manual.
Logan's Road in TellicherryThere is a road in Tellicherry, the town up north, where he had served, carrying his name but William Logan's presence was not very much visible anywhere in Calicut, save for a recent a nice sculpture of the famous Malabar manual.
Sculpture of famous Malabar manual.
Taj Residency Calicut has a Logan suite that has a Scottish flavour that is one way of remembering the man!!