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Pazhassi Raja: The Lion of Kerala

He fought the same company twice, a decade apart, over two different grievances. Both times, the forests of Wayanad were his real ally.

📑 Contents

Kerala Varma, known as Pazhassi Raja (3 January 1753 – 30 November 1805), was the de facto head of the Kottayam royal family in northern Malabar, Kerala.
The East India Company took control of Malabar from Tipu Sultan in 1792. It imposed heavy taxes and reduced local rulers to mere revenue agents.
His first uprising, from 1793 to 1797, resisted this tax regime. It ended with a treaty granting him an annual pension of 8,000 rupees.
His second uprising, from 1800 to 1805, began after the Company annexed Wayanad, his traditional territory.
He waged guerrilla warfare from the forests of Wayanad and the Puralimala hills, allied with Nair, Kurichiya, and Thiyya fighters.
He was killed on 30 November 1805, near Pulpally, in a surprise Company attack.

His commander, Edachena Kunkan, led the capture of Panamaram Fort in 1803, a major setback for Company forces in the region.
In 1797, his forces ambushed a Company detachment at the Periya Pass, a notable early victory of the second uprising.
He earned the epithet “Kerala Simham,” the Lion of Kerala, for his sustained resistance across both uprisings.
Kerala today commemorates him through parks, institutions, and a dam that carry his name.

His two uprisings show colonial resistance evolving with colonial policy itself. The first fought taxation; the second fought outright territorial annexation, a decade later.
His alliance with Kurichiya tribal fighters points to a wider pattern in regional resistance movements. Local rulers and tribal communities often made common cause against a shared colonial threat.
His reliance on Wayanad’s forest terrain for guerrilla tactics mirrors other regional resistance leaders of the era. Facing a better-armed colonial force, terrain became the real equaliser.
A century later, Variyamkunnath Kunjahammed Haji led another major armed uprising in the same broader Malabar region, during the 1921 Malabar Rebellion.