Pothikkettu is a monthly editorial that ‘wraps up’ the issue for our readers.
Dear Readers,
This issue of Ala features three reflective pieces focussing on a range of objects: the Malayalam novel, cinema, and the mushrooming ‘luxury flats’ in Kerala’s present. Together, they reflect the myriad ways in which social hierarchies and marginalisation are, on the one hand, shaped into common sense that we take for granted, and on the other, resisted by reshaping the way we see the world so that the ideology behind ‘common sense’ is bared.
The Malabar region in Kerala has a storeyed history of being the very site of making a Muslim ‘Other’ in the space of Kerala (and is the site of rich Islamicate culture and intellectual production). Colonial governance, which sought to control working-class Mappila resistance by framing Mappilas as ‘fanatics’ (Ansari 2015) or ‘Jungle Mappilas’ (Abraham 2014), marks one aspect of this history. In this issue, Ahnas Muhammed traces the afterlives of these tendencies in present-day cinematic representations of the Mappila figure. Cinematic representations, he argues, shapes and reshapes the forms of ‘qualia’ or visual, verbal, and aural cues through which we subconsciously shape a Muslim other in our minds. The very name of ‘Mamukoya’, a particular lilt in spoken Malayalam, the bubbling of laughter—Ahnas shows us how these fleeting sensations feed into the ideologically loaded public perceptions of the Malayali Muslim.
However, Ahnas’ attention to the ways in which new directors are consciously reshaping representations of Malabari Muslims indicates that cultural productions can overturn norms as well as they enforce them. Anees K. T., in a wide-ranging exploration, looks at how the form of the Malayalam novel, in its modern, late modern, and postmodern avatars, have always engaged with history in subversive ways. Anees’ observations are reflected across Ala’s range of articles on the novel form. Be it Malabar at the turn of the 19th century or Kochi in the 1980s, novels bring history alive in innovative ways through its intimate framing of the past, fleshing out protagonists and regional space-times that are erased in nation-centric ways of writing history. He points to the ways in which the ‘Dalit novel’ and novels centering Adivasi lives envision the past in ways that radically blur myth, memory, and history. Anees distinguishes between how the politically conscious novel reimagines history, and the ways in which present-day fascist forces are rewriting history. Whereas the former challenges the colonisation of history by elites, the latter reinforces this tendency.
Siddharth Menon looks to the space of the city in Kerala to see how power dynamics play out. Digging into a phenomenon that has become commonplace for urban Malayalis—giant billboards, newspaper ads, and festivals pushing ‘luxury flats’—Siddharth notes that it is important to see how the non-resident Malayali elite has become the main driving force of urban real estate. His rich observations stand alongside other pieces on Ala which have noted the implications of this shift for Dalit-Bahujan urban populations, and the need to critically understand and urgently rethink how cities are taking shape in Kerala in the wake of increasing inequality and environmental catastrophe.
And that wraps up this month’s reads from Ala. Happy reading!
The Ala Team
References:
- Abraham, Santhosh. 2014. ‘Constructing the “Extraordinary Criminals”: Mappila Muslims and Legal Encounters in Early British Colonial Malabar’. Journal of World History 25 (2): 373–95. https://doi.org/10.1353/jwh.2014.0022.
- Ansari, M. T. 2015. Islam and Nationalism in India: South Indian Contexts. Routledge.
