KOZHIKODE: A play based on the Keezhariyur bomb case, a major incident in Malabar during the Quit India movement, is making waves in the United States. The Hindi play, Vande Matharam produced by Naatak, a prominent Indian theatre company in the US, was staged in August 1998 and is still attracting crowds. It was shown before a packed audience in San Jose, California, for eight days in June. The Young Turks of Indian National Congress, who were dissatisfied with the Gandhian path of non-violence, considered Keezhariyur, a village hardly 30 km off Kozhikode, as conducive for making bombs.
They were led by Dr K.B. Menon, a Nehru protégé who had earned a doctorate in economics from the University of Colorado. He had drifted away from Nehru and recruited a Malayali journalist, Keshavan Nair, and two social activists from Bombay, N.A. Krishnan Nair and C.P. Sankaran Nair, to help him in organised sabotage of the British empire.
Their plan was to observe November 9, 1942 as sabotage day, pulling down government structures all over Malabar in one stroke with bombs manufactured at Keezhariyur. But the plan was leaked out and the police arrested the revolutionaries. Of the 32 accused, 13 were punished and five went underground. In the play written and directed by Sujith Saraf, the story was moved from Keezhariyur to Patna. According to Saraf, the play is a lament for Indian nationalism and an expression of shame at the absurdity of being an Indian rebel in the forties. “The play takes a critical note of the incident.
The revolutionaries also used the scheme to advance their own interests. On the sabotage day, the man responsible for setting off the bombs slept off and missed his deadline. During their trial, explosives experts declared that the bombs were merely zinc tubes filled with gun powder, glass and gravel pieces held together by a string and would have blown up on the perpetrators' faces had they been used,” said Sujith Saraf. Salil Singh, Mukund Marathe, Sujit Saraf, Surendar Singh and Soumya Chakravorty play the lead characters. Meanwhile, Keezhariyur is set to celebrate the platinum year of the bomb case on August 13.
