Kannur

Kannur is a city in the Kerala state of India. Kannur district derived its name from the location of its headquarters at Kannur town. The old name ‘Cannanore’ is the anglicised form of the Malayalam word Kannur. According to one opinion, ‘Kannur’ is a derivation from Kanathur, an ancient village, the name of which survives even today in one of the wards of Kannur Municipality. Another version is that Kannur might have assumed its name from one of the , deities of the Hindu pantheon, a compound of two words, Kannan (Lord Krishna) and Ur (place) making it the place of Lord Krishna. In this context, it is worth mentioning that the deity of the Katalayi Sreekrishna temple was originally installed in a shrine at Katalayi Kotta in the south eastern part of the present Kannur town.

History

The earliest evidence of human habitation in the district are rock-cut caves and megalithic burial sites of the Neolithic age. The Taliparamba-Kannur-Thalassery area abounds in rock-cut caves, dolmens, burial stone circles and menhirs, all of megalithic burial order. The district was part of the Chera kingdom, which ruled most of Kerala during the first several centuries CE. Later Kannur was the capital of the Kolattiri Rajas, whose kingdom had trading relations with Arabia and Persiain the 12th century and 13th centuries.

Kannur District witnessed one of the longest and bloodiest resistance to British rule in India. This revolt led by Pazhassi Raja in the 1792–1806 period kept a large part of the district in a state of war.

Kannur District played an important role in the Indian freedom movement. The Indian National Congress, founded in 1885, established a Malabar District committee in 1908. A branch of the All India Home Rule League, founded by Dr. Annie Besant, functioned in Thalassery during this period and among its active workers was V.K. Krishna Menon. By the end of 1939, a branch of the Communist Party of India was formally established at Pinarayi, a village near Thalassery.