Historical studies on Malabar are an expanding field that has generated extensive interests in recent times. However, some of the historical representations are out of the line with reality as they still center on specific images of ‘rebellion’ and ‘violence’ that occurred in this region in relation to the colonialism. Therefore, general mutations and deliberate pauses associate with raw exotics of the Islamic community of the region have become a self repeating normativity in most of the studies. Explorations into the plurality and flexibility of this community have mostly ended up in certain unilinear fashion in which concentration was given to the frameworks of ‘given’ and ‘taken’. This happened as the major works on Malabar Muslims established through such concepts as Islamization and Identity creation without deeply going into the processes of innovations and new expressions of deviations in intellectual, scriptural and practical spheres. These were made possible through multiple interactions in social-strategies, political negotiations and creative discourses.
For a more nuanced understanding of these themes, the proposed volume will bring together chapters engaging with Malabar Muslim’s multi-dimensional approaches in creating and sustaining a unique socio-cultural life in the region. Papers are supposed to re-examine the idea of Malabar region in history, its Muslim population, textual culture and intellectual space, Muslims and colonial modernity, partition, layers of migration and so on. Repository of an expanding scholarly network concerning this region and its communities can hopefully ensure the desired diversity with refreshing epistemological and methodological clarity.
Papers for consideration may include, but are not limited to:
•Malabar; History Location and Discourses
.Conversion, Syncretism and Assimilation
•Resistant Literatures: Muslims and European Encounters
•Muslims in Colonial Modernity; Print and Intellectual Awakening
•Migration; South Asia, South East Asia and West Asia
•Hindu-Muslim Relations and Identities; Post 1921 experience
•Malabar Muslims and Partition
•Muslim Women; Gender, Mobility and Modernity
•Genealogy and Control; Castes and Taravadu among Muslims
•Ritual Participations, Performance, consciousness and Islamic Formation
•Argumentative Muslims; Purity, Transgression and Islamism in Malabar
•Malabar Muslims and Education
•Creative Representations and Malabar Muslims
The due date of proposal (500 words) is June 30, 2013. Selected contributors will be informed by July 15, 2013. The deadline for Final Papers is November 30, 2013.
Please send proposal including your name, a working title, and affiliation to Dr.Yasser Arafath.P.K., Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Delhi (yasserhcuATgmail.com).