അമിനിയിലെ 'പാമ്പിന്‍ പള്ളി'യും രക്തസാക്ഷി സ്മാരകവും

 Though there are no snakes in Lakshadweep, there is a mosque in the name of snake in Amini Island. There is a tale behind the mosque and it will tell us how it got this name. It is said that, during the sixteenth century Portuguese navigators frequently attacked and looted the people of Lakshadweep Islands. They humiliated and ravished the women folk also. When this activity started for many days and it becomes of their frequent activity, the clever ‘Quazhi’ of Amini Island planned to end this nasty play of Portuguese. So he made a fake friendship with the Portuguese navigators and invited all of them for a feast in the mosque. Secretly, the foods were poisoned with the snake poison brought from mainland by the Quazhi. Subsequently all the navigators died.

Then the brave Quazhi became the hero for the people of Amini, but shortly within, the news spread to the other Portuguese navigators and they came to Amini Island to attack and kill the Quazhi. Quazhi with the help of some other courageous men of island resisted the armed navigators with their indigenous weapons like sand, stone, wooden pieces etc. But they couldn’t defend the guns of Portuguese navigators, so they killed the Quazhi and others who defied them. Later on the mosque, in which the Portuguese were poisoned, was known as ‘pambin palli’ and all of the freedom fighters, who fought against Portuguese army, were buried. This is a tale about the freedom fights in Lakshadweep. When the Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi visited Amini Island he asked the Lakshadweep administration to build a memorial for the tribute of those great warriors who fought against the colonization.

Still the memorial is a grand symbol of freedom fights of Lakshadweep. It is marked in the memorial that: “This memorial is a tribute to Quazhi Aboobekker and the hundreds of people who fought against the colonization in the islands during the Christian era 1549 (Hijra 966). This memorial is constructed as per the request of Rajiv Gandhi, the Prime Minister, who visited the Lakshadweep on 6^th January 1988”.