Kerala Society

The book is a critical exposure and analysis of the Buddhist foundations of Kerala culture. The cultures of literacy, universal education, healthcare, martial arts, arts, architecture, music and performance, sculpture and painting along with a lot of folklore and popular cultural practices are contextualized in the long Buddhist period of Kerala that was part of the ancient Tamilakam from Asokan times to the middle ages. The global linkages of Kerala and the greater Sangam or Changam legacy of Kerala are also explored in the light of new Dhamma script discoveries from Pattanam and Keezhadi. Photographs and exclusive details are provided with an index of keywords and more than twenty detailed chapters of various facets of Kerala culture and history. It is also a pioneering work in trans disciplinary and multi disciplinary studies in Kerala culture and history. It is also part of a multi cultural and democratic new cultural historiography in Kerala coming up from the bottom.

Kerala is considered as Gods own country blessed by nature with boons of abundance: plentiful rains, backwaters and numerous rivers. It has a copiously diverse vegetation, beautiful landscape and climate. It is also this region that takes so much interest in literature. Malayalam is one of the more versatile of Indian languages. Kerala can boast of a lot including their agricultural lands and culture. What they can also boast about is M.T. Vasudevan Nair and his Naalukettu.

Ph.D. Thesis (in French), Université Paris-III Sorbonne Nouvelle, Arts & Medias (theatre studies), 3 vol. (546, 490 et 450 p.) & 3 DVD-DL with booklets.

***Mention très honorable avec les félicitations.

*** French short abstract (to downlowd) published in Cahiers d'Ethnomusicologie 27, 2014 (see abstracts)

**** English abstract : From the person to the persona: an ethnoscenological approach to Kutiyattam as epic theatre of India. Kutiyattam of Kerala is an epic theatre that interweaves drama and narrative, characterized by an acting technique wherein the performance of the central actor makes constant recourse to a distancing effect. This hypothesis – esthetic in nature while "epic" refers to Brecht – is demonstrated through a multidisciplinary, ethnoscenogical approach. Everything begins with a so-called "first performance" in which a child plays at being an Actor-character, and then becomes a storyteller. This ceremonial, which serves as a common thread throughout our study, contains "everything", i.e. all of the foundations and ingredients of the epic esthetic, which we go on to explain using the example of the Ramayana – one of the numerous ancient Sanskrit texts that Kutiyattam brings to the stage. Book I first proposes an ethnography of the Chakyar-masters of Kutiyattam (first part), emphasizing their unique skills. It then analyses the training that underpin the codification of the actor’s body, demonstrating the challenge of being an actor in itself, before even assuming a character/persona (second part). Book II is dedicated to the performances. It begins by examining the texts (third part) of the five Ramayana cycles that are performed in the temples: five acts in Sanskrit into which are interwoven narratives in Malayalam, written in performers’ acting manuals. Taken together, these texts form a unified repertoire characterised by iterative embedded structures that interlock the principles of stop-in-time, change in point of view and flash-back. The acting (fourth part) enhances this dramaturgy. The performer who has multiple functions – character, storyteller, dancer, and director – juggles these principles, especially when he enters into the "substitution" process, a role-play that engenders striking effects of simultaneity. The annexes (Book III) contain the additional analyses (annex I) and the texts (annex II) and audiovisual materials (3 DVD-DLs with booklets) related to the performances. The thesis itself, including the montage of the films, is structured in such a way that it reflects the dramaturgy of Kutiyattam, and notably its use of stop-in-time.
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Librairies :
BnF (site Opéra national de Paris, Garnier),
Musée du quai Branly,
Bibliothèque du CEIAS (Maison de l'Asie, Paris),
Théâtrothèque Gaston Baty (Paris 3),
Bibliothèque universitaire Paris-8.

In Kerala : L.S. Rajagopalan foundation + Rama Chakyar home.

The paper in Bhashaposhini  May 2020 rereads and contextualizes the literary and cultural politics and early democratic contributions  of Muloor  S Padmanabha Panicker and his pioneering battles that democratized culture and literary institution in Kerala in early 20th century as the first Avarna poet who fought caste exclusions and inequalities through his poems and prose. He paved the way for Asan, Karupan and Sahodaran to follow. The detailed analysis of his poetry and literary wars with caste feudal system are explained, historicized and textualized with an accent on resisting and surviving all consuming totalitarian hegemonic discourses in the present, especially in Kerala where the regression into the pre-modern primitive state of affairs is imminent post Sudra Lahala or Kshudra mutity 2018. Muloor's defense of the modern values of democracy through his salutations to the English language and education eagerly situated in the contemporary context where modernity is in peril in India and Kerala.

Science communication, once the exclusive preserve of a scientific elite, has not been immune to the growing influence of mass media over society. As mass media becomes the most prominent site of public deliberation over science, multiple voices—both expert and non-expert—have begun to emerge, rewriting the social contract of science.

In the new millennium, the Indian state of Kerala saw a number of scientific controversies being discussed in the regional newspapers. Set against the backdrop of three major public controversies, Contested Knowledge explores how these mediated disputes brought the otherwise hidden dynamics of scientific knowledge production into full public view. The book contends that this new mode of public engagement with science radically differs from its earlier form nurtured by the Kerala Sasthra Sahithya Parishad, the largest people’s science movement in India. It explores critical questions about ‘medialized science’ such as: What is a scientific-citizenry? How did a ‘scientific public sphere’ develop in Kerala? How does public contestation of knowledge contribute to deliberative democracy by re-instilling politics into science? Are there limits to such a democratization of science?

A fascinating commentary on the relation between science and society, this volume is a pioneering work that examines the science–media–public interaction in a non-Western context.


for downloading the book;
http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199469123.001.0001/acprof-9780199469123

The essay in Bhashaposhini 2011 critically illustrates the subversive politics of C Ayyappan's short fiction using comparative contextual readings of his works.How he explicates and deconstructs the elitist aesthetics, canonized in contemporary Malayalam literary circles by the caste Hindu and Syrian Christian consensus against representation and inclusion are being elaborated with citations from his short fiction. The indulgence in local and minor histories of the former untouchables of Hinduism exposes the purity - pollutions riddles of Brahmanism and its literary and cultural manifestations. When caste killings and persecutions like that of Kevin and Rohit or Vinayakan  are growing all around Kerala and India the fiction of C Ayyappan and its new adaptations in new digital mediated arts are becoming significant.

This Malayalam article analyses the ruling of the Indian Supreme Court permitting passive euthanasia - the withdrawal of artificial life support systems when there is no hope of life in its absence. The implications of this ruling are analyzed examining various possible scenarios and a note of caution is sounded regarding the possible misuse of the provisions of this judgement. The article concludes by stressing the right to a healthy life, and also the importance of palliative care.