ISSN (Print) - 0012-9976 | ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846

Articles by P K Yasser ArafathSubscribe to P K Yasser Arafath

Monsoon Malabar

Monsoon Islam: Trade and Faith on the Medieval Malabar Coast edited by Sebastian R Prange, Cambridge University Press, 2018; pp xvi + 344, £90.

Malabar in the Indian Ocean: Cosmopolitanism in a Maritime Historical Region edited by Mahmood Kooria and Michael Naylor Pearson, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2018; pp xxvii + 396, 1,495.

Southern Hindutva

Even though Hindutva’s modus operandi in Kerala has not been significantly different from other places in India, the strategies it evolved in the state have certain interesting characteristics. In order to comprehend those, the intrinsic connections between the growth of Hindutva and the elements of violence, sexual politics, and the notion of purity need to be analysed. It is important to see how the parivar designed its scheme in Kerala where all three of its declared internal threats— Communist, Muslims and Christians—have powerful shares and decisive presence in every walk of life.

The Nadapuram Enigma

This paper delineates the social history of insidious communal political violence in north Malabar. It focuses on Nadapuram, a rural region in Kerala's Kozhikode District. The complexities of communal proliferation are products of entanglements of caste, conversion, economic mobility and land relationship. Political discourses at the global stage and efforts in building identity-based alliances have a direct bearing on this region. Changing politics of both the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) also has a direct bearing on the social life of the Hindus, while the communitarian politics of Indian Union Muslim League, Islamic doctrinal debates and neo-Salafisation are no less significant in the making of a new Muslim mindscape. These particularities then facilitate in the making of two oppositional and clannish identities in the region.

Communal Violence in Kozhikode Village

We strongly condemn the unprecedented communal violence at the end of January 2015, in Tuneri, Vellur and Kodanjeri villages, Nadapuram in Kozhikode, Kerala, in which more than a hundred Muslim families and homes were singled out, attacked, and crores worth of property destroyed.

Should Muslims Fear the Kiss?

This article questions the ways in which certain Muslim/Islamist groups engaged with the "Kiss of Love" protests in Kerala. These protests openly challenged certain dominant perspectives about the "body", sex and morality, apart from expressly resisting the penetration of Hindutva into Kerala. The author argues that Muslim/Islamist organisations that conducted counter-protests against the "Kiss of Love" failed to comprehend the trajectory of Hindutva's urbanspatial intervention, and have misread Islam's own engagements with the "body".

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