Wayanad's past runs from the Ampukuthimala caves to Pazhassi Raja's Kurichiya militia against the British

Background

Green groups in the district have backed the proposed Kozhikode to Sulthan Bathery rail corridor, and roads from Kozhikode and Thalassery are how the plateau was first opened up. The district administration puts Wayanad's area at 2,132 sq km and holds that organised human life existed here at least ten centuries before Christ, with New Stone Age evidence on its hills. Two caves at Ampukuthimala, between Sulthan Bathery and Ambalavayal, carry wall pictures and pictorial writing. Recorded history begins only in the eighteenth century. The land was ruled by Rajas of the Veda tribe and later by the Pazhassi Rajahs of the Kottayam royal dynasty. Hyder Ali of Mysore invaded and took it; under Tipu it went back to the Kottayam line, and after the Sreerangapattanam truce Tipu handed all Malabar to the British. Kerala Varma Pazhassi Rajah then fought them from the Wayanad forests, organising Kurichiya tribals into a people's militia, and the British obtained only his body. They opened the plateau to tea and other cash crops.