Malayalam Literature Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

This Malayalam article which appeared in Ezhuthu masika takes a historical-anthropological view of dowry and domestic violence in Kerala from the take-off point of increased incidents of domestic violence and dowry deaths during the covid pandemic. The article also examines the 'gender paradox' in Kerala and how education has not broken traditional patriarchal structures. Specific suggestions to remedy the situation are given at the end.

- by Linda Luiz
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- Gender Studies, Women's Studies, Domestic Violence, Gender

The idea of public sphere is defined as a realm of our social life in which something approaching public opinion can be formed (Habermas 1964). Literature irrespective of genres has always constituted an important part of the public sphere. Indian literature is not an exception for this and it is observed that that public sphere in India first formed as literary public sphere and then transformed into different types of public spheres. Public sphere in Kerala is not an exception of these phenomena. Emergence of Malayalam prose and novel is generally observed as the beginning of literary public sphere in Kerala. Based on this background the proposed seminar is intended to debate following. How Malayalam literature constitutes the emergence of public sphere in Kerala? How public sphere is represented in the Malayalam literature? What extent Malayalam literature can be used as means to rationalize the public sphere in Kerala?

The work, written in Malayalam language, is a study on the Brahmana texts of Vedic lietrature

- by Sundareswaran N.K
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- Vedic Sanskrit, Malayalam Literature, Vedic Philosophy, VEDA

കുമാരനാശാന്റെെ ക്യതികളിലെ മലയാള ഭാഷയുടെ ചില പ്രത്യേകതകളെ കുറിച്ചുള്ള പ്രാഥമികമായ ചില നിരീക്ഷണങ്ങളാണ് ഈ ലേഖനത്തില്‍ ചര്ച്ചാ ചെയ്യുന്നത്. ഭാഷ ഉള്പെ്ടെയുള്ള എല്ലാത്തിന്റെതയും മൂല്യം വിനിമയമൂല്യത്തിന്റെക അടിസ്ഥാനത്തില്‍ നിര്ണ്ണറയിക്കപ്പെട്ടു തുടങ്ങിയ പത്തൊമ്പതാം നൂറ്റണ്ടിലെ കേരളത്തിലെ മുതലാളിത്ത ബൂര്ഷ്വാ് കാലഘട്ടത്തിന്റെന തുടക്കത്തിലാണ് കുമാരനാശാന്‍ ആദ്യകാലത്ത് സോത്രങ്ങളും പിന്നീട് കവിതകളുമെഴുതിയത്. സോത്ര രചനയില്‍, മനുഷ്യനെ കുറിക്കാന്‍ ദ്രാവിഡ പദങ്ങളും ദൈവത്തെ കുറിക്കാന്‍ സംസ്ക്യത- ദ്രാവിഡ പദങ്ങളുമുപയോഗിച്ച ആശാന്‍ പിന്നീട് തന്റെ കവിതകളില്‍ മനുഷ്യനെകുറിക്കാനും സംസ്ക്യത പദങ്ങളുപയോഗിച്ച് തുടങ്ങുന്നു. അതുകൊണ്ട്, ദ്രാവിഡ സംസ്ക്യത ഭഷാസമന്വയത്തിലൂടെ വളര്ന്നന കേരളഭാഷയുടെ ഭാഷാനാഗരികവത്കരണ പ്രക്രിയയെ ആശാന്റെന ക്യതികളെ അടിസ്ഥാനമാക്കി ചര്ച്ചഗ ചെയ്യുകയാണീ ലേഖനത്തില്‍.

This is a small write-up on collaborative work currently under progress on Mundambra’s Arabic Malayalam poem "Vellappokkam", guided by Dr. Abin Sha and the eminent linguist Prof. T. B. Venugopala Panicker, and initiated by me with two Malayali students at the University of Glasgow, Haritha Venu (Geography) and Shihab Kallupalam (Social Sciences). We intend to translate the text into English and explore its implications on environmental humanities and cultural geography.

The Varthamanappusthakam is the description of the travel to Rome performed by Paremmackal Thoma Kathanar and Kariyattil Joseph Malpan both of whom were members of the Kerala Nazrani Church. This is one of the early travelogues in the Indian languages and the first one in Malayalam. This book is considered from different angles in the history of literature. This work is not to be confined to the limits of the literary branch of travelogue; instead, it is a work that embraces literature, language, history and religion with its emphasis on difference of opinions. In other words, it is a narration that extends to different spheres of knowledge. It represents an important stage in the standardization of language. The basis of the historical importance of the Varthamanappusthakam is that it is the first Malayalam work in which the national feeling of India and the Indians was manifested. For the appreciators of travelogue, it is a historical document that gives in a picturesque manner the life styles and particulars of Europe and America which two Malayalis visited at a time when distant lands were a nightmare.

The first comprehensive anthology of Malayalam Dalit Poetry from Kerala. Published by Vikas Adhyayan Kendra, Mumbai. Edited by M B Manoj and George K Alex and Translated into English by Ajay Sekher. Foreword by K M Sherrif and illustrated by Shashi Memury. Mumbai 2008. A few pages are given as highlights here.
vak@bom3@vsnl.net.in www.vakindian.org

- by Ajay Sekher
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- Subaltern Studies, Malayalam Literature, Dalit studies, Dalit and Bahujan issues
- by Midhun Nileshwar
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- Malayalam, Malayalam Literature

This study presents a text of considerable historical interest, found in two Indian manuscripts belonging to St Joseph's CMI Monastery, Mannanam in Kerala, Kottayam District, and written in Malayalam language, in Garshuni script, also containing transcriptions of original historical documents, partly in Syriac and partly in Malayalam Garshuni. It also gives a commented translation of the first part of the Church history from Saint Thomas to the early 18th century as well as a critical edition and a commented translation of one of the documents contained in the Church history, namely a letter by Mar Shem’on of Ada, an East Syrian bishop who arrived in India in 1701, was captured, kept in house custody in Surat, Gujarat, until he was taken to Kerala in order to consecrate Angelo Francisco, the first non-Padroado Latin bishop of India and to be deported to Pondicherry, where he died in 1720. Finally, the study also traces the adventurous life of this bishop.

The study of the poetry of S Joseph in Kerala and the genealogies of the unique dalit idiom and articulation with reference to early dalit voices like Poykayil Yohannan or Appachan or Kumara Gurudevan of early 20th century. The poetic works are analysed from various anthologies in Malayalam and the select translations are used to illustrate the salient features of S Joseph and his poetic world. The politics of poetic representation and the aesthetic and political renewal in poetry are also explicated and critiqued.

- by Ajay Sekher
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- Poetry, Contemporary Poetry, Malayalam Literature, Dalit Bahujan Studies

L ate nineteenth century has been a turning point in the history of India. The English East India Company consolidated its position in India by the mid nineteenth century. English education that had begun to take roots in India even before Macaulay's minutes of 1835, slowly paved the way for a new awakening in the field of intellectual thought and literature. By the turn of the 20 th century, writers in Indian languages were writing novels and short stories that increasingly became the favourite mode of expression. The western values of fraternity, equality and liberty imbued from the writings of the English literary masters inspired a feudal India to reconsider their own position. This new awakening gave the much required impetus not only to the freedom movement but also to various struggles for social transformation. Women's cause was just one among these struggles, and women writers all over India responded to this clarion call. In Kerala's literary scape too things were not very different. In my paper, I would discuss the role of two women writers of the early twentieth century who paved the way for subsequent feminist writings in Malayalam literature. In the course of the paper, I intend to engage with the ways these writers articulated the concept of womanhood in a comparative framework, and critically analyse the responses their works generated. Kerala has always been considered to be a progressive state in the history of Modern India. From the first democratically elected Communist government to the high human indices it maintains to this day, Kerala has been unique in the way it responded to political, intellectual and social challenges. The idea of the Kerala model of development with its many contradictions still manages to linger on. Even when the economy of the state has been qualified as a remittance economy, and the suicide rates are high, Kerala still scores in the fields of education, health and social welfare. The state still has relatively fewer number of caste conflicts and while the undercurrents cannot be completely ignored there has been a semblance of peace and unity in the State. This progressiveness has been the result of many factors including an early awakening amongst the lower castes and women, missionary activities, charismatic social reformers and communist interventions. The nineteenth century bore witness to the beginnings of many struggles that led to social reformation movements resulting in sweeping social transformations. One of the very first of such struggles was the fight of the Christian women converts from the channar caste who wanted to wear a 'melmundu' over their 'chatta', the long white blouse worn by Christian women. This enraged the upper castes since the use of an unstitched cloth to cover the upper part of the body was allowed only to the Namboodiri women when they go out of their homes. Tthis is an instance when patriarchy and caste converged to claim right on the women's bodies by trying to manipulate what they should bare and

- by Sanju Thomas
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- Women's writing, Malayalam Literature

Pengenalan Biografi adalah karya mengenai orang. Banyak sekali karya seumpama itu sudah diterbitkan setiap negara sepanjang. masa. Jumlah yang besar itu adalah kerana semua orang suka segala macam kisah orang lain, terutamanya orang yang terkenal. Ini disebabkan banyak soalan tentang diri mereka itu boleh dijawab dalam karya itu. Antaranya berapa apa yang menyebabkan mereka menjadi terkenal? Berapa usia mereka? Bangsa apa? Mengapa mereka mempunyai kelebihan yang tidak dipunyai orang lain? Mengapa orang lain tidak boleh mencapai tahap kejayaan setinggi itu? Sehubungan itu, sudah lahir pelbagai jenis biografi. Antaranya, biografi orang yang masih hidup dan yang sudah berpulang. Secara umum, biografi boleh dibahagikan kepada lima jenis: yang sejagat, yang lokal, yang retrospektif, yang semasa dan yang khusus. Tentunya biografi sejagat adalah yang paling besar dan yang paling banyak maklumat kerana ia cuba memuatkan biodata semua orang yang terkenal, tidak mengira tempat dan masa. Sebaliknya, biografi retrospektif hanya memuatkan biodata orang yang sudah meninggal. Kalau demikian, biografi semasa adalah sumber rujukan tentang orang yang masih hidup semasa ia disusun. Demikian juga skop biodata dalam biografi khusus atau yang lokal. Hampir setiap negara mempunyai kamus biografi seumpama Who's Who yang lazimnya menerbitkan serpihan kisah hidup orang yang terkemuka di negara itu, sama ada di jabatan awam atau swasta, malahan yang kerja sendiri. Antara persoalan yang boleh dibangkitkan berkenaan kisah hidup di dalam biografi itu ialah adakah semua maklumat itu tepat, lengkap dan terkini? Jawapannya ialah tidak. Ini disebabkan maklumat yang dicetak itu adalah berdasarkan jawapan yang diberi informan sendiri kepada borang soal-selidik yang diedarkan penerbit tanpa disemak dan disahkan pihak ketiga. Dalam proses itu, banyak serpihan kisah hidup mereka yang berkenaan itu sudah tertinggal, atau sengaja ditinggalkan, malahan sengaja disembunyikan, maka kisah hidup mereka itu sudah berbeza daripada yang sebenarnya, yang hanya diketahui orang lain yang rapat dengan mereka. Kisah hidup itu, tidak kira yang baik atau yang buruk, mungkin tidak akan diketahui orang lain untuk selama-lamanya. Pendek kata, biodata dalam kebanyakan biografi, kamus biografi, memoir, obituary dan autobiografi mempunyai unsur arbitrari, kerana perbuatan " penyorokan " , " penyembunyian " dan " penipuan ". Tetapi, ini tidak sekali-kali bermakna kita merasa syak dan ragu-ragu tentang semua kisah hidup yang dicetak itu. Kamus Biografi Orang Cina Malaysia

- by Choo Ming Ding
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- Malayalam Literature

The waves of the freedom movement , which swept all over colonial India in the first half of the twentieth century made its presence in Kerala also, resulting in a renaissance of far reaching changes in the creativity and thought process of the land. It is interesting to note that the impact of independence movement was most acutely felt in the arena of poetry in comparison with other literary genres. It changed the very nature of the then neo-classic Malayalam poetry in form and spirit as a result of which literature ceased to be a mere pastime and became a catalyst for social and political change. Language shed its thick shell of scholasticism and became lucid and down to earth. The engagement with the past became more meaningful and critical to superstitions and caste oppressions. A sense of brotherhood of the citizens of India cutting across language, religion and culture and an egalitarian spirit pervaded the entire poetic discourse of the time; rosy dreams of the not yet realized freedom permeated the imagination of the poets. The inferiority complex viciously created and nurtured by the alien masters on their subjects came to be challenged in a spirited manner by the projection of the glories of ancient Indian civilization. Malayalam poetry became at once influenced by the political realities of the times and the vehicle of transformation and dynamic action to resist colonialism. The poets of Kerala joined their counterparts elsewhere in the country in the unprecedented struggle of an ancient and proud nation against the insensitiveness and exploitations of an alien rule. The poets whose enlightened compositions celebrating liberty and decrying slavery sensitized and inspired people are far too numerous to be recounted in a paper like this and included the major poets of Malayalam. Those whose lines have inspired generations include Asan,

- by Rajendran Chettiarthodi
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- Indian Literature, Malayalam Literature, Kerala History, Indian History

Pengajaran dan pembelajaran melalui TMK dilihat penting dalam menyampaikan maklumat secara efektif kepada para pelajar. Sekali gus dapat menarik minat terhadap kesusasteraan Melayu. Kertas kerja ini membuat penelitian terhadap salah satu koleksi perisian, iaitu ”Cerita Unggas 4” diterbitkan oleh Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka pada tahun 2006. Penerbitan perisian ini adalah salah satu usaha untuk memperbanyakkan bahan-bahan sastera dalam bentuk multimedia sebagai bahan pengajaran dan rujukan kepada pelajar-pelajar sastera. Perisian ini merupakan sedutan beberapa cerita terpilih yang terdapat dalam buku Koleksi Terpilih Cerita Unggas yang diceritakan oleh Aripin Said. Penelitian ini dilihat menerusi penerimaan pelajar terhadap pengajaran dan pembelajaran yang dilakukan dengan menggunakan perisian tersebut. Penelitian keberkesanan dan pandangan pelajar dilakukan dengan mengedar borang soal selidik kepada para pelajar yang mengikuti kursus sastera komersial. Mereka dibahagikan kepada dua orang satu kumpulan untuk menilai serta memberi pandangan terhadap cd interaktif yang digunakan. Pengajaran dan pembelajaran melalui TMK digunakan di dalam kelas sebagai satu kepelbagaian dalam menyampaikan ilmu pengetahuan.

- by Tengku Intan Marlina Tengku Mohd Ali
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- Multimedia, Malayalam Literature
- by Mousir Khan
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- Malayalam Literature, Indian Writing in English, Indian Novels, Author's Voice

Abstract: My paper seeks to explore how Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s Vidheyan complicates our perception of power and our understanding of class subjugation apropos internal migration and regional identity in the Kerala-Karnataka border of feudal Dakshina Kannada. In Vidheyan, what occurs when desire for home disturbs and challenges class order is an instance of the paradox of the master-slave relationship, a confrontation between freedom and domination as delineated by G.W. F. Hegel’s dialectic of the Lord and Bondsman.

- by Priya Menon
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- Postcolonial Studies, Hegel, Resistance (Social), Migration Studies

The film industry in Kerala (popularly known as ‘Mollywood’ in the mediasphere) is an
obvious example of the changing face of the regional film industries in India in
accordance with the varying socio-cultural values and demands of the audience. These
films claim a multifaceted ‘newness’ in their narration, ranging from the themes
explored to their techniques of production and narration. This article seeks to analyze
whether this ‘newness’ is contemplated in the conceptualization of female characters
within films. We conclude that although women are conceptualized as part of a
globalized culture in which ‘she’ has an identity, they are nevertheless subject to the
familiar gender hierarchy and marginalized identity.

- by Dr. Sony Jalarajan Raj
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- Malayalam, Hindi Cinema, Indian Cinema, Malayalam Literature
- by Sathyaraj Venkatesan and +1
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- Cultural Studies, Media and Cultural Studies, Film Studies, Postcolonial Studies

Novel, as a literary genre has always struggled to capture the anxieties embedded in national histories. The politics, ideologies and cultural conflicts of nations have always been part of the history of novel. Infact there need not even be a separate category called novels of national history. Every novel is woven by the threads and strands of the nation in making. The spatio-temporality of the genre in its European origin and its colonial dissemination, made the novel an integral unit of the nation state. Most novels of national history of the colonial period thus write new representations of colonial histories, sometimes even by inventing scores of intricate discursive methods. The novels of C. V. Raman Pillai in Malayalam confront the colonial dilemma by inventing many linguistic time-spaces within a single historical periphery that ranges from pristine Sanskrit to the most local vernacular expression 1. Raman Pillai was infact one of the first writers in Malayalam who had to face the trauma of reconceiving locales as nations. This is why heperhaps painted his Travancore rather ahistorically as asovereign nation state, a historical replica of the colonial state whose domination it was facing at the time. In his historical novels, he takes the pain to avoid any reference to colonialism and Travancore's subordination to the British, while he has authored several articles decrying colonialism as the root cause of the political problems that Travancore was facing. Bewildering diversity of Malayalam dialects that Raman Pillai uses in his works were for him only one of the tools and raw materials in the kind of imaginary nation building exercise that he ventured into through his novels 2. Such meta nationalist politics was an inseparable aspect of both nationalist and literary histories of the colonial era. Raman Pillai imagined Travancore state as one giant state in opposition to the furtive threats against it, existing outside the socioeconomic history of the world at that time. In its illusoriness and in its unaccountability to the colonial history, Raman Pillai's Travancore was actually representing the inferiority of the very subjugation that he was being silent about. His conception and use of novel was rooted in its capacity as a medium that could contain this unspeakable politics as well. In this manner, through his novels, Raman Pillai could dodge and forget the violence, the injustices and unethicality of the state of Travancore and imagine that he could conquer the inferiority instilled by colonialism by staying close to the general socio-cultural politics of nation 3. On the other hand S.K Pottekad and ThakazhiSivasankara Pillai, two prominent novelists who followed Raman Pillai's generation, did not have these conflicts while writing their novels. OruDeshathinte Katha [The Story of a desham (loacle)]' by Pottekad (1971) orKayar ['The Coir] by ThakazhiSivasankara Pillai (1978/2013) and Tattakam by Kovilan (1995) are grounded in the liberal landscape of postcolonialism. They also reinvented counter-national histories, albeit through different narratives that sought to overcome the garrulousness of nationalist politics through the ironical interpolation of the histories of the small locales (desham). K. P Appan, the foremost literary critic of high modernism in Malayalam, showers eloquent praises on S K Pottekad's material historicizing and his 'objective subjectivism' that makes him craft his novels as though they were 'Kerala's monologues'. But Appan compares the historical objectivity in Pottekad's narratives to the objectivism in journalism and eventually goes on to make a parallel to Dickens's fictional landscape. An aesthetic methodology rooted in the writing of regional histories as against the grand narratives of nation building that was evident in Pottekad was thus mostly overlooked.

- by T T Sreekumar
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- Malayalam Literature, Fiction

This great novel is one of the celebrated novels of veteran writer Patmasree Vaikom Muhammed Basheer(1908-1994) known as " Sultan of Bepur ". This interesting novel was published in 1951. This one single work is perhaps the most successful novel in Malayalam, having sold over one hundred thousand copies (Thomas, 2002). The theme of this novel is the experience of Kunjipathumma (literary meaning little Fathima), a girl born in an orthodox rich Muslim family but unfortunately in the rotation of time cycle they lost their wealth and pull up the stake for near village. From there she fell up in love with an educated man and her family connects with modern ideas and they change their attitude to modernity. The name of the novel Entuppooppakkoranendarnnu means my grandpa had an elephant which denotes the boasting of Kunjipathumma's mother on their past glory. Basheer portraits the grooming of a girl in two domains of contexts. One is socially and economically rich with staunch orthodox belief; second is in poverty and modernity. Kunjipathumma going through her childhood teenage and entering to the adulthood. Basheer put forward the social and cultural believes on girl and what she had to face in her time line of life. Basheer criticize the interpretation of pure Islam and its belief by the narrow minded ignorant adherents (Thomas, 2002) and he draw the picture how it effect in the life of a girl. Basheer narrate the development of a girl in situation that influence her to belief and behave in order to the social concerns and how help her in her conceptual development. Here basher use the local dialects and idioms which are very difficult to translate to English as Ronald E Asher the translator of this novel in the name of me grandad 'ad an elephant said (Satchidanandan, 2008) this help us to understand the social and literal awareness and rate in the characters.

- by Midlaj CH
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- Child Development, Malayalam Literature, Child Psychology

Here I wish to conduct a study of a poem named 'Vazhakkula', meaning 'a bunch of bananas' in English by one of the renowned Malayalam poets, Changampuzha Krishna Pillai. I have used the Marxist approach in my analysis of the poem. The paper brings in the social backdrop of Kerala during the time the poem was written, the feudal rules and practices that existed on the land, the coming of Marxist ideology to the Kerala soil and how the poem tries to relate with the Marxist ideologies. The paper brings out the various images and tone of the poem. Without going deep into the theories of Marxism, I have tried to make my reading of the poem with the approach.

The essay in Indian Literature 2018 critically contextualizes the poetry of S Joseph in the social and political spaces of exclusion and the periphery of being. The first ever book carrying the English translation of his poetry is reviewed and the intense and intimate experiences of exclusion and othering in a society that is becoming extremely in-equal and intolerant are illustrated and elaborated with reference to concrete poetic contexts and articulations rendered into English by a variety of translators and authors.

- by Ajay Sekher
- •
- Poetry, Contemporary Poetry, Postcolonial Poetry, Subaltern Studies

Setiap pengarang lazimnya akan mempunyai simbol tertentu untuk pembaca boleh mengesahkan bahawa itulah karya pengarang tersebut. Kebanyakan penulis di dunia ini mempunyai satu tema tertentu untuk disampaikan. Gaya bahasa lazimnya sama... more

- by Naim Abd Aziz
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- Literature, Malayalam Literature

Middle East (ME) migration is a recurrent theme in Malayalam cinema. This paper analyzes four decades of Malayalam cinema's engagement with ME migration in order to conceptualize its multiple imaginings and to investigate geopolitical experiences and practices of this trend in Kerala. Accordingly, these films can be broadly classified into three major categories: (a) ME as a site of emancipation and economic empowerment; (b) ME as a 'haunting presence,' thus problematizing the earlier abstractions of the region as a safe place; and (c) ME as 'precarious presence.' In so doing, the paper not only identifies and differentiates key shifts in the representation of ME migration in Malayalam cinema, but also teases out the complex stories of desire, space, and geography.

- by Sathyaraj Venkatesan and +1
- •
- Cultural Studies, Film Studies, Diasporas, Immigration

The paper examines the ambivalences, tensions and conflicts around the cultural engagement with modernity in colonial Keralam in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, a period that witnessed the origin of a literary public sphere and elite intelligentsia in the region. The Eighteenth chapter of the novel, Indulekha (Oyyarathu Chandumenon, 1889) (“A Conversation”) portrays a long, intellectual debate between three characters who take three unique standpoints on modernity. The paper contrasts the philosophically loaded elite intellectual debate presented in the Eighteenth Chapter with another novel from the same period, Parangodeeparinayam (Kizhakeppattu Ramankutty Menon, 1892) that parodies the former. This novel has a chapter titled “A Conversation or the Eighteenth Chapter”, that satirises the arguments in the Eighteenth Chapter of Indulekha. Based on these textual sources, the paper discusses the discursive strategies of the nascent public sphere that excluded a divergent view of colonial modernity propsed by a different group of modern intellectuals from Malabar, Kerala.

The theme of subalternity with its inherent ramifications is yet to find favour among film makers in India. Progressive film makers of the 1960s attempted to address the theme of subaltern and dared to give the subaltern a voice, but they remained singular attempts. Through a case study on a Malayalam film (a regional film industry from the state of Kerala in India) Papilio Buddha this article tries to analyze the representation of Dalit community in Indian cinema. Though Malayalam film industry has tried to address the concern of Dalits, they have been stereotyped in many ways and reduced to being sidekicks to villains or unskilled labourers having no identity. They remained as instruments to idolize the hero, to act as a contrast to the elite protagonist or as the poor helpless victims who offer the protagonist an opportunity to display his heroism. Papilio Buddha grabbed media attention when it was denied clearance by the censor board as it explores the territory of Dalit consciousness by focusing the lens on the land strike by the Dalit communities and creating a counter narrative to the hitherto idealized images created by the state.

- by Dr. Sony Jalarajan Raj and +2
- •
- Indian Philosophy, Film Theory and Practice, Film Studies, Film Theory

This paper offers a social history of the relationship between Islamic reform and malayāḷi Muslim in the context of colonial Kerala. Kerala Muslims are one of the largest Muslim communities in India, and a majority are the de- scendants of Arab traders and local women, or of local converts known as Mappilas. This article relates the re- formist agenda in the writings of Sayyid Sanā’ullāh Makti Taṅṅaḷ (1847-1912), who argued for a reinterpretation of Islamic principle based on scriptural purity and return, to pristine Islam. Makti Taṅṅaḷ believed direct access to, and proper understanding of, the Quran and the Hadith would distance Muslims from accretions to Islam that he thought of as impure. Invoking the distinction of ‘harām and halāl,’ as the cornerstone of Islamic law, he argued against the legitimacy of un-Islamic elements of Popular Islam. These efforts took place in late nineteenth-century Kerala, and had a huge impact on the socio-religious landscape, particularly on the inevitability and imminence of Islamic reform in the colonial era. Furthermore, this paper highlights how Makti advocated textually defined Islamic codes of practice to safeguard ‘Muslimness’ and shape a new vision of a moral community for malayāḷi Muslims.

- by Muhammed Niyas Ashraf
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- Malayalam Literature, Kerala History, Marginalization, Arabic Malayalam

The introduction to the edited volume problematises the category of 'region' as exclusively defined in terms of nation and nationalism by the dominant methodologies. The central argument is that region is not pre-discursive a category, but actively participating in shaping experiences of modernity. Thus this paper explores the possibilities of studying Kerala modernity by foregrounding the multiple space-times of the region by reviewing the methodologies of the scholarship on Kerala modernity as well as wider methodological takes on modernity such as multiple/national modernities.

- by Shiju Sam Varughese and +1
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- Social Theory, Geography, Space and Place, Cosmopolitanism

This paper explores the negotiation of identity in K R Meera's novel Hangwoman, in the light of Michel Foucault's deliberations on power, subjectivity, and critique. The novel's layered delineation of the way power shapes subjectivity, and its insightful detailing of the scope for resistance the very process itself entails, echoes the thoughts of Foucault. Meera's protagonist exudes an exemplary resilience when she confronts multi-faceted subjugation. The resistance that she makes is characterised by a resourcefulness to actively engage in the mechanics of power and to remake her own sense of identity. Thus power, as depicted in the novel, is a force that creates 'identities' and at the same time a productive network which gives room for remoulding identities. The paper, also, discusses the protagonist's gritty resistance to the hyperrality of the postmodern visual media.

- by Hari M G
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- Literary Theory, Indian Literature, Malayalam Literature

Discuss how F. W. Ellis initiated modern linguistic studies in Malayalam.

- by P Sreekumar
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- Malayalam, Malayalam Literature, Dravidian Linguistics, Indian Linguistics
- by Didier COSTE
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- World Literatures, Comparative Literature, Cosmopolitanism, Literary Theory

Postface du traducteur: "Quelques jours, une vie, là-bas, ici, partout… "
Pandavapuram (1979) est un "classique moderne" du roman indien qui a marqué un moment de modernité tout à fait révolutionnaire avant même les avant-gardes indiennes anglophones. Traduit en anglais en 1997 et dans plusieurs langues indiennes, publié aussi plus récemment en allemand et en turc, une édition française manquait à l'appel. C'est aussi une lecture fascinante et inépuisable, douloureusement belle et épurée, de la condition féminine dans l'Inde d'aujourd'hui et d'hier, et bien au-delà, à travers la pensée schizophrène d'une institutrice de village abandonnée par son mari, inventant un monde réel de substitution, plus vrai que le vrai, sans parvenir à combler son désir, ni à construire définitivement son objet, ni à le détruire.

- by Didier COSTE
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- Schizophrenia, Nouveau roman, Malayalam Literature, Indian Mythology