P K Yasser Arafath

"The essays in this volume explore the myriad ways in which caste (varna and jati) has been theorized and critiqued in multiple philosophical, religious, logical and narrative traditions in India. Spanning ancient, medieval and modern times, and in diverse classical and vernacular languages, the chapters show how the social fact of caste, and imaginations of kinship, community and humanity were historically subject to epistemological, spiritual, and existential debate in both elite and popular circles in India.Textual Lives of Caste Across the Ages seeks to bridge the interdisciplinary gap between historians and sociologists by focusing on texts that help us think across the sociological and philosophical, the political and the religious, the epistemological and the aesthetic, and indeed, the elite and the popular. The volume also sets up a conversation between scholars specializing in different regions, archives, and historical periods and demonstrates how caste imaginaries have been deeply diverse and contested in India's past. Reconstructing these diverse traditions of social and existential criticism helps us in our contemporary struggles against caste hierarchy and untouchability and enriches our contemporary critical repertoire." (From Publisher)

This article is an attempt to investigate the connections between Muslim ulema of Malabar and the general Muslim population in the Indian Ocean region. The ulema were part of an ever-evolving transnational knowledge network of this region in which various kinds of scholars and texts were in continuous motion. In the sixteenth century, in the wake of the expansion of Portuguese imperial ambitions, the ulema conceived of the importance of building Islamic communities of multiple resistances around shafiite texts and discourses. It looks at the complex scribal and hortatory engagements of the Malabar ulema and examines three major forms of resistance—pietistic, jurisprudential and physical—that they produced in the larger Indian Ocean region. Therefore, this article moves beyond the existing historiography that focuses on jihad (armed resistance) narratives, and demonstrates alternative ways of reading the period—which included the multiple ways in which the ulema constructed a consist...

This chapter examines the unique and interlocking dynamics of fertility rituals and practices of different cultural traditions in the Malabar region, on the western coastal area of Kerala, between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries. Healing traditions in this region reflected the plurality and interdependence of different cultural frameworks that contributed to the range of medical knowledge in this period. Concepts of illness, including those relating to fertility issues, were constructed through the religious-cultural consciousness of the people. This chapter tries to explore some areas of what may be termed fertility psyche, beliefs and practices, in relation to the binding factors of religion, social functioning, caste institutions, and various concepts such as pollution. Although humor-based healing traditions such as Ayurveda coexisted with magico-spiritual practices, the belief in the supernatural was very predominant in the region. These beliefs created a large complex of rituals and festivals that also created a network of fertility geographies and cults across the Malabar region. These constituted a parallel world of alternative and non-textual fertility healing practices.

National Archives of India, Imperial Records Department, Calendar of Persian Correspondence: Being Letters, referring mainly to Affairs in Bengal, which passed between some of the Company’s Servants and Indian Rulers and Notables, Vol. 1, 1759–1767, Delhi: Primus Books, 2013, pp. 509; National Archives of India, Imperial Records Department, Calendar of Persian Correspondence: Being Letters which passed between some of the Company’s Servants and Indian Rulers and Notables, Vol. II, 1767–1769, Delhi: Primus Books, 2013, pp. 470 + supplement; National Archives of India, Imperial Records Department, Calendar of Persian Correspondence: Being Letters which passed between some of the Company’s Servants and Indian Rulers and Notables, Vol. III, 1770–1772, Delhi: Primus Books, 2013, pp. 285; National Archives of India, Imperial Records Department, Calendar of Persian Correspondence: Being Letters which passed between some of the Company’s Servants and Indian Rulers and Notables, Vol. IV, 1772–1775, Delhi: Primus Books, 2013, pp. 365; National Archives of India, Imperial Records Department, Calendar of Persian Correspondence: Being Letters which passed between some of the Company’s Servants and Indian Rulers and Notables, Vol. V, 1776–1780, Delhi: Primus Books, 2013, pp. 507.

"It is in this context that a couple of recently published books that focus on the Malabar region in the Indian Ocean littoral shall be located. They are Sebastian R Prange’s monograph, Monsoon Islam: Trade and Faith on the Medieval Malabar Coast (2018) and a collection of translations, Malabar in the Indian Ocean: Cosmo­politanism in a Maritime Historical Region (henceforth Malabar in the Indian Ocean [MII] 2018), a jointly edited volume by Mahmood Kooria and Michael Naylor Pearson. These works not only revisit some of the older arguments in the light of new archival findings, but also bring out certain fresh materials before historians for their further perusal. While Prange’s primary focus is on the pre-British Malabar from the 12th to the 16th century, some chapters in MII bring out some fresh research materials, despite the fact that a good number of them overlap with the existing works of the same contributors who already published slightly altered/shortened/enlarged version of their works elsewhere (Kooria and Pearson 2018: 1–63; 76–120; 307–37; 338–54)."
https://www.epw.in/journal/2021/4/book-reviews/monsoon-malabar.html?0=ip_login_no_cache%3D0b7355ff07530bd46e5773b6199c49d9

This article examines the relations between trade, faith, and textual traditions in early modern Indian Ocean region and the birth of Arabi-Malayalam, a new system of writing which has facilitated the growth of a vernacular Islamic textual tradition in Malabar since the seventeenth century. As a transliterated scriptorial-literary tradition, Arabi-Malayalam emerged out of the polyglossic lingual sphere of the Malabar Coast, and remains as one of the important legacies of social and religious interactions in pre-colonial south Asia. The first part of this article examines the social, epistemic and normative reasons that led to the scriptorial birth of Arabi-Malayalam, moving beyond a handful of Malayalam writings that locate its origin in the social and economic necessities of Arab traders in the early centuries of Islam. The second part looks at the complex relationship between Muslim scribes and their vernacular audience in the aftermath of Portuguese violence and destruction of Calicut-one of the largest Indian Ocean ports before the sixteenth century. This part focuses on Qadi Muhammed bin Abdul Aziz and his Muhiyuddinmala, the first identifiable text in Arabi-Malayalam, examining how the Muhiyuddin-mala represents a transition from classical Arabic theological episteme to the vernacular-popular poetic discourse which changed the pietistic behaviour of the Mappila Muslims of Malabar. This article proposes that the transregional and trans-local mobility of Malabar trading communities in the Indian Ocean region facilitated a complex range of translingual recipro-cities that finally resulted in the emergence of what is generally known as Arabi-Malayalam literature.

This article is an attempt to investigate the connections between Muslim ulema of Malabar and the general Muslim population in the Indian Ocean region. The ulema were part of an ever-evolving transnational knowledge network of this region in which various kinds of scholars and texts were in continuous motion. In the sixteenth century, in the wake of the expansion of Portuguese imperial ambitions, the ulema conceived of the importance of building Islamic communities of multiple resistances around Shafiite texts and discourses. It looks at the complex scribal and hortatory engagements of the Malabar ulema and examines three major forms of resistance— pietistic, jurisprudential and physical—that they produced in the larger Indian Ocean region. Therefore, this article moves beyond the existing historiography that focuses on jihad (armed resistance) narratives, and demonstrates alternative ways of reading the period—which included the multiple ways in which the ulema constructed a consistent consciousness of resistance against the Portuguese. Arguments in the article are located within the concepts of fasad (social and political disorder) and fitna (collapse of internal cohesion)—two major Islamic social and political categories. They, I show, attained very specific scribal and theological significance in the Indian Ocean textual network in the sixteenth century, and also acquired particular kinds of textual idioms. Acknowledgements: I am grateful to G. Arunima, Seema Alavi, Raziuddin Aquil, Kesavan Veluthat and Sana Aziz for sharing their thoughts at various stages of this research.

National Archives of India, Imperial Records Department, Calendar of Persian Correspondence: Being Letters, referring mainly to Affairs in Bengal, which passed between some of the Company’s Servants and Indian Rulers and Notables, Vols. 1-V, 1759–1780,

Five recently reprinted volumes of the Calendar of Persian Correspondence
show that both British and local rulers believed that the British were the legitimate
successors to the Mughals. The volumes included for review here, especially the
first three, show the first phase of indirect rule by the British. But the last two
volumes show an increasingly aggressive British intervention in the later part
of the eighteenth century, with no aversion to violent methods.

This book traces the genealogy of 'women's fiction' in South Asia and looks at the interesting and fascinating world of fiction by Muslim women. It explores how Muslim women have contributed to the growth and development of genre fiction in South Asia and brings into focus diverse genres, including speculative, horror, campus fiction, romance, graphic, dystopian amongst others, from the early 20th century to the present.

The book debunks myths about stereotypical representations of South Asian Muslim women and critically explores how they have located their sensibilities, body, religious/secular identities, emotions, and history, and have created a space of their own. It discusses works by authors such as Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, Hijab Imtiaz Ali, Mrs. Abdul Qadir, Muhammadi Begum, Abbasi Begum, Khadija Mastur, Qurratulain Hyder, Wajida Tabbasum, Attia Hosain, Mumtaz Shah Nawaz, Selina Hossain, Shaheen Akhtar, Bilquis Sheikh, Gulshan Esther, Maha Khan Phillips, Zahida Zaidi, Bina Shah, Andaleeb Wajid, and Ayesha Tariq.

A volume full of remarkable discoveries for the field of genre fiction, both in South Asia and for the wider world, this book, in the Studies in Global Genre Fiction series, will be useful for scholars and researchers of English literary studies, South Asian literature, cultural studies, history, Islamic feminism, religious studies, gender and sexuality, sociology, translation studies, and comparative literatures.