For An Informed Ambedkar Age
Umar Nizar “No, not a single letter is seen On my race So many histories are seen On so many races” –Poykayil Appachan (Tr: Ajay Sekher) English is the unacknowledged Creole of the world. Chandramohan, the Indian English poet, uses the colonial patois to craft an intergenerational dialogue with the Malayali social reformer Poykayil Appachan. …
KK Baburaj If I were to write about Wayanad at some point, I had already noted in my mind that it would start with evoking ‘Memoirs’ by Pablo Neruda. After watching films by the African filmmaker, Mahamat Saleh Haroun, I observed that the landscapes in them appeared so much like those in Wayanad. However, …
Carmel Christy K J The road gets narrower as you go to Chithralekha’s grandmother’s house where she used to live at the rear end of the village in Edat, Kannur in Kerala. The road ends at her house and there is no way to go further. Dalit houses at the end of the village is …
What do they know of Kathakali, Who they only Kathakali knows? Mistaken Modernities in Kerala Umar Nizar The cultural ecosystem in southern India, has been at the forefront of heralding an Indic future, from APJ Abdul Kalam on the Veena to TM Krishna performing live at the beaches of Kerala and TN, the southern …
Bobby Kunhu I have already received a lot of flak for the bits and pieces of opinion that I have expressed on social media, a collation of which is what I propose to write in this essay. At the outset, I would like to make it clear that my intention isn’t to undermine the …
Umar Nizar The most political of India’s literary awards, the Jnanpith has went to a chip off the old feudal coconut block, Akkitham Achuthan Nambudiri. This was long predicted, even before CAB was a twinkle in the right wing eye. Akkitham is one of those rarities in the right wing intelligentsia that he has …
Umar Nizar There is a ‘scramble for Muslim intelligentsia’ going on along with a clamour for token inclusivity from the left-leaning, upper-caste politically correct elite, and yet even this tokenistic Islamic presence proves elusive. Islam has become that wide gaping wound on the side of a cancerous polity that festers. The agalma of Islam, as …
Umar Nizar In the wake of the election of Narendra Modi, the sociologist Shiv Vishwanathan made the startling claim that Modi’s OBC credentials were obliterated by the fact of his fair skin, which for working class Indians heralded upper class antecedents. (Shiv Vishwanathan himself was caught in a rather strange double bind, having supported …
Umar N The Malayalam speaking Muslims of Kerala, often mythically trace their lineage to Arab merchants traveling to the West Coast of India, and evangelical sojourners in the post-Islamic phase, who won royal patronage and sometimes married local women and settled down. In the course of time, the community has been buffeted by the winds …