A Kerala Studies Blog
Clerks occupied an ambiguous position in the colonial middle class and left almost no writing of their own, except when a disciplinary charge forced them to explain themselves. This essay reads one such case from the Kozhikode Regional Archives to ask what a colonial clerk’s dismissal file can, and cannot, tell us about his life.
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What does it mean to call a mosque, church, or synagogue in Kerala “temple-like”? In this essay, Percy Arfeen-Wegner challenges this familiar framing. She explores Kerala’s religious architecture as a shared and contested world shaped by people living in the same landscape, working with the same ecology and climate, while giving different meanings to the world they built together.
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The Mappila rebellion of 1921 has been the subject of much debate and analysis in the historiography of Malabar. Colonial accounts at the time and popular discourse thereafter portrayed the rebellion solely as an instance of religious fanaticism. Fazal Rahman reviews Abbas Panakkal’s 2024 book, Musaliar King, which meticulously examines primary data to counter this image, showing instead that the rebellion was a milestone in anti-colonial resistance in India.
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In season 3 of Ala podcast, we hold a series of conversations with educators, academics and activists on Education in Kerala. We begin the season with an exploration of the legacy of Protestant Mission schools in Kerala and how they informed childhood-making in colonial Kerala. Who was the good educated child? What kind of values were refracted through these constructions?
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മലയാള സിനിമ OTT വഴി ഇന്ത്യയിലുടനീളമുള്ള നഗരങ്ങളിലെ ഉന്നതർക്ക് എത്തുന്ന ഈ കാലത്ത്, മലയാള സിനിമകളെ വളരെക്കാലമായി ആസ്വദിച്ചിട്ടുള്ള ഗൾഫ് കുടിയേറ്റക്കാർക്കിടയിലെ പ്രദേശാന്തര കാഴ്ച്ചക്കാരെ നാം മറക്കുന്നു.[…]
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In light of a lack of conventional historical sources, Sadik weaves a cultural and Islamic history of Tirurangadi using available archival materials and oral narratives from his fieldwork.
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Even as OTT brings Malayalam cinema to urban elites across India, we forget the transregional viewership that Malayalam cinema has long enjoyed among Gulf migrants. Drawing from his own life, Nehal reflects on how Malayalam cinema speaks to the Bihari Gulf migrant experience.
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മലബാര്‍ മാന്വൽ രചയിതാവായ വില്യം ലോഗന്റെ മലബാര്‍ കാലജീവിതം ആവിഷ്‌കരിക്കുന്ന ചരിത്രനോവലാണ്‌ കെ. ജെ. ബേബിയുടെ “ഗുഡ്‌ബൈ മലബാര്‍”. നോവൽ വ്യക്തികേന്ദ്രീകൃതമായ ആഖ്യാനത്തിലൂടെ നടത്തുന്ന ചരിത്ര നിർമ്മിതിയെക്കുറിച്ച് സമദ് എഴുതുന്നു
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How can we rethink the preservation of historical buildings beyond salvaging relics of a lost time? Niyati Pavithran takes up the case of Design Ashram to explore how the idea of ‘preservation’ can also accommodate the dynamic passage of time and the living present.
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C.K. Ramachandran writes about an unlikely friendship forged in early-twentieth-century, between Gopalan Nair, a scholar from Malabar, and Philip Braithwaite, an English school inspector.
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