The Postgraduate and Research Department of English

FMNC Kollam
FYUGP Semester III- MDC- Kerala Studies: History and Society

Module I: Historiography
Ancient Kerala – Sangam Period –Pattuppattu- Perumals of Kerala- Vazhappally
inscriptions- Tharisappally copper plates- Medieval period- Colonialism – Portuguese,
French, Dutch, English- National Movement- Formation of Kerala State- Participatory
Democracy. (To be discussed only in the Introductory Level)

Required Reading
1. M. Mukundan - Mayyazhippuzhayude Theerangalil (On the Banks of the
River Mayyazhi).
2. Oru Vadakkan Veeragadha (1989) Film by Hariharan.

Module II: Society and Culture

Land ownership – Naduvazhis- Swaroopams- Agrarian society- Feudalism-
Colonisation- Trade in Kerala – European hegemony- Post independence- Land
Reforms- Kerala Model Development -Dalit and Indigenous Movements and Land
Struggles- Migrant Labourers in Kerala(To be discussed only in the Introductory
Level)

Required Reading
K.M. Sheeba “Modernity in Social Reform Discourse: The Woman Question in
Colonial Kerala” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 2002, Vo.63. pp 931-
938 (Separate PDF)

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 “Identity Card” – S. Joseph
In my student days
a girl came laughing.
Our hands met kneading
her rice and fish curry.
On a bench we became
a Hindu-Christian family.
I whiled away my time
reading Neruda's poetry;
and meanwhile I misplaced
my identity card.
I noticed, she said
returning my card:
the account of your stipend
is entered there in red.
These days I never look at
a boy and a girl lost in themselves.
They will depart after a while.
I won't be surprised even if they unite.
Their identity cards
won't have scribblings in red.

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 Module III: Renaissance and Modernity

Renaissance movements- Major Figures and Movements- Women in Renaissance

movements.- Channar Revolt- Kallumaala Samaram- Malayali Memorial- Ezhava
Memorial- Peasant Movements- Guruvayoor Satyagaham – Vaikom Satyagraham –
Temple Entry Proclamation- Working Class movements- Aikya Kerala Movement (To
be discussed only in the Introductory Level)

Required Reading
No to “Harijan”: Dakshayani Velayudhan
[Proceedings of the Cochin Legislative Council, 11 August 1945, p. 642]

Dakshayani Velayudhan (1912-1978), the only dalit woman member of the

Constituent Assembly of India, was born in Kochi. She distinguished herself early in
life as the first dalit woman in Kerala to obtain a college degree, which she remembers,
was won in the face of continuing caste discrimination in college and outside. She
worked as a teacher after her education and also served in the Cochin Legislative
Council during 1945-48, actively participating in the debates. At the age of 34, she
became a member of the Indian Constituent Assembly.
Mrs Dakshayani Velayudhan (nominated): I move the following resolution standing in
my name —
“This Council recommends to the Government that the name “Depressed Classes” may
be eliminated and in its place the term “Scheduled Castes” may be inserted.
There are two reasons that prompted me to move this resolution. The first thing is that
the term “Depressed Classes” sound an inferiority complex. It shows inequality and
inferiority. Over and above that, the objection to using the words “Depressed Classes”
is that it has got a bad psychological effect. That is the most important thing which
prompted me to change the name. The Depressed Classes when they are often called
that are always depressed — they always think that they are depressed and they always
think they will always be depressed. It is to avoid this psychological effect that I
recommend to change this name.
The second factor is that in British India the term “Scheduled Castes” is used to denote
certain, particular communities which the Government has placed together for the
convenience of giving them educational and other concessions. Our Sister State of

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Travancore also does not use the name “depressed”; but the word “backward”. That
term “backward” also I do not want.
Mr P Govinda Menon (Ernakulam): Why not “Harijan”?
Mrs Dakshayani Velayudhan (nominated): With all my respect to the authors of the
name, the name “Harijan” is like calling a dog “Napolean” or “Hitler” as long as
untouchability remains. You know how far the name is correct. We do not want any
other name. All over India the term “depressed classes” is not used but instead they use
“Scheduled Castes”. For the sake of uniformity and as I said before to avoid that
detrimental psychological effect, I recommend to this house to eliminate the term
“Depressed Classes” and insert in its place “Scheduled Castes”. With these words I
commend this resolution for the acceptance of the House.

Dr Sheeba K.M - Clothing Matters: Visiting the Melmundu Samaram in

Kerala (Separate PDF)

Thakazhi – Two Measures of Rice

https://ia800802.us.archive.org/28/items/twomeasuresofrice-Ethazaki-
pillai/twomeasuresofrice-E-thazaki-pillai_text.pdf

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 Module IV: Gender and Society
Beginnings of Women‟s Education- Early Gender and Caste Movements- Matriliny-
Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Kerala- Break the Curfew- Queer Pride- Labour
Movements
K. Saraswati Amma: “Half-Chaste” (Translated by J.Devika)
Like every day, she had been walking alone down the Lovers’ Lane in the Museum
Gardens at Thiruvananthapuram. She flinched when she saw the person walking
towards her smile. Was it a post-meeting ritual, or a pre-meeting overture, she could not
make out. She felt that it was best to walk past him with a puzzled look in her eyes as
if trying to recall. He made out that trick. With the happiness of someone who had
stumbled upon what he had been looking for, he asked, “Don’t you remember me? Did
you forget – you sang at a meeting at the Vijaya Tutorial College some days back?”

“Oh! The Principal!” She paused to exclaim.”I tend to forget people very fast; but I do
make friends sooner. But it isn’t fair to forget a Principal, such an important job!”

Thinking that the pleasantries were done, she moved on, but he now walked with her.
“Oh, yes indeed, so easy to reach that position this way. Maybe my fate to become a
Principal in my horoscope is getting knocked off thus!”

For courtesy’s sake, she pretended to laugh at the joke. But she didn’t like him walking
beside her. So she thought of a way to get rid of this nuisance without being rude.

She stopped when they reached the otters’ residence in the Zoo. He too stopped like a
bogie connected to an engine. She bent down and picked up a stone, threw it up and
caught it in the other hand, and looked in turn at the man who was staring quite fixedly
at her and the otter who had started a low snarl sensing human presence. Then, throwing
the stone absently at the otter, she said, “My companions have gone ahead agreeing to
wait at the Museum. So now I have to take this path there.”

“That’s fine,” he said, ready to show the way ahead. “I can go that way too.”

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The two walked on the path silently. She had not come across such instantly-fastening
friends. Still, she felt reluctant to openly express distaste. It is that failing in my behavior
that spoils everything always, she told herself.

A twig by the path got caught in her sari. She tried to kick it off unsuccessfully. Thinking
that she could make use of the situation, she remarked, “Chhi, what a bother, and won’t
leave too? Won’t let me walk in peace!”

Those words roused him. He paused and quickly said, “Oh, I just remembered I have to
meet someone. Forgot that when I said I’ll come up to the Museum!”

She felt relieved. But then he continued, “Do you come here every day?”

“Sometimes,” she replied cautiously, “not really regular.”

She took two steps forward, stopped, turned, and asked, “What is your name?”

“Divakaran Nair.”

“Just asked, no other reason. It happens that stories get shaped if I even just exchange a
few words with a man. If tomorrow such a story arises, I won’t have to feel foiled not
knowing who that person is!”

———————–

When she went there the next day, the acquaintance from the day before was already
waiting for her, sitting on the handrail near the otters’ bedchamber. “The song that day
was stupendous,” he said, “I forgot to compliment you!”

“You didn’t have to wait here to say that,” she said, not wanting to go away without a
single word. “Not hearing it yesterday didn’t offend me.”

6
It was after a week that they met again. She was standing behind the monkey’s cage
holding out a leaf to it when he turned up; she smiled heartily at him. Surveying her
from head to toe, he asked, “You were in detention, were you, in the past few days?”

“Oh no,” she said, trying to deflect his hungry gaze.”Look here, this monkey was a bus
conductor in its past birth.”

“And what makes that evident?” His eyes were still devouring a feast of sight.

“Look,” she said, pointing to the monkey who was taking the leaf. “Look, his idea is
not to take the leaf but to hold the hand holding out the leaf. I know how it was with the
card-sized season ticket, how the conductor took it, when I was in High School.”

Noticing that he was done with the general survey and was now embarking on a limb-
by-limb inspection, she bent down and started gathering the fallen leaves. “I didn’t
know you were such a precious gem in your family. Easier to apply for a job actually!
Education, good character, family status … nothing suffices! Your father seems to
require his son-in-law to put you in an ivory altar and worship …”

She continued gathering the fallen leaves without a word in reply. Some spectators left
the monkey and started looking at the young woman with interest. His sense of
entitlement didn’t savour that. “Let’s talk a walk, get up.”

She stood up. She walked silent and doll-like up to the aviary. Inside a few birds were
meditating on one foot. Two others who sounded like they were ululating, were engaged
in a fierce quarrel. That sight made her natural liveliness overcome the temporary
reticence completely. “Can’t get enough of this sight even if I saw it every day!”

“I am the one who interrupted it for four or five days?”

“Who said?” she countered, “Father told me about it only yesterday.”

“And what did you decide? Your father said that nothing can be decided without you
agreeing completely.”

7
She looked at him smilingly.

“I don’t think it is a great thing to be the husband of a wife who has a superiority
complex,” he said. “I think that well of myself.”

They continued to walk. When they reached the top of the steps going up from beside
the bear’s cage, he said, “Was determined to jump off these steps if my desire was not
fulfilled.”

“How sad! So because of me the bear has lost a hearty meal!”

His hands were struggling under some urges. How adorable were her ways! As if to
stop himself from crossing a line, he tied his hands behind himself and said. “I am
moving to a new house in a couple of days. Have been put up in bachelors’ quarters till
now.”

Her eyes were filled with mischief as she looked at him. “Oh, so you were a bachelor
till now? I have heard that the president of the Bachelors’ Club in someplace has
fourteen kids?”

They had reached a place where there were more visitors crowding. Otherwise she
would have been properly punished for that mockery of all bachelors, he thought.
Instead, he said, “I am a writer.”

“Are you a bard of love?” She put on a worried face. “They prefer Shringara. And me
– even old women past sixty would have more shame and shyness than me.”

“I don’t write poetry,” he smiled. “I write about economic affairs. If you are in the habit
of reading the papers regularly you may have come across my name.”

“Oh, I who won’t touch a book, read the papers! I am a great enemy of paper. I like
only the spoken word, and never the written.”

8
“That’s my good luck. I am not likely to get an inferiority complex!”

—————————-

On the very day of their wedding, Divakaran Nair’s alma mater decided to bother him
by offering felicitations. Though he had planned to get back home early, they made him
stay back till ten at night.

When he reached home, Padmini was waiting for him with a heap of paper on the table.
Seeing him, she stood up and said, “These are the letters and photographs of certain
men. I think half of my chastity has been consumed by these. Only half of it is left, and
so I am a pseudo- pativrata!”

The novelty of the sweet talk he had expected on their first night together startled him
somewhat. He went up to her and asked, “Did you keep them all here so that I would
see?”

“You don’t have to see, you can just hear. Sit there and listen, I will read out loud.”

He settled down in the easy chair. She read out the letters one by one. He couldn’t see
any budding romance being encouraged in them.

When the letters were done with, she turned to the photos. Like things are sold in the
Fancy Fair melas, she picked up each and spoke aloud of her relationship with the owner
of the face, and its origin, limits, shifts and so on. He lit a cigarette and kept looking at
her.

In the end she piled all of it on the floor. He handed her a lit match-stick. Padmini set it
alight. They held each other’s gaze steadily. She said, “I had decided when I got each
of these – that I will get rid of them only on such a day. Told you right in the beginning
– I am a so-called pativrata.”

9
He kept looking at her through the haze of cigarette-smoke. She continued, “Wonder
why I had this foolish thought! When I get some bits of admiration from men, I can’t
help feeling think that’s a thing to be proud of! Only when it becomes a nuisance do I
realize how petty it is!”

He felt that sitting there silently will only make her spend all night talking. Getting up
and throwing the cigarette-stub out, he said, “Let’s go and get some dinner if you’re
done talking. I am utterly famished.”

“Oh yes, sorry, it slipped my mind. I should be serving you, right?” Sweeping up the
ashes into a piece of paper, she asked. “How is it to be? Do I need to fan you after
serving the meal, like in the Hindi movies? And how do you want to be addressed? As
Aryaputra, or Swami? Which one do you like better?”

He discovered that she spoke so much only because he let her lips have the space to
move …

Divakaran Nair was absorbed in his writing. Padmini went behind him and peeked at it
over his shoulder. He did not notice her. He was busy putting ideas to paper before they
flashed past and disappeared in his mind. Suddenly his eyes were shut forcefully.
Putting the pen on the table and trying mildly to ease her hands off his eyes, he said, ‘I
know how to take revenge for this. When you sing, Padmam, do you know what I will
do?”

“See, you don’t understand,” she said, not removing her hands. “Today is your birthday,
should I not give you a gift?”

“Your gift is to not let me write?”

“ No, no, here, hold this: tumne mujhko prem sikhaayo!”

“Wasn’t it I who taught you that? Still you sing the other way round, Padmam! How
hard it was to please you back then! And such fear about his daughter’s future in your
father!”

10
“Better safe than sorry, haven’t you heard?” She took her palms off his eyes and placed
them in his. “Won’t Father be in trouble if his son-in-law is a chronic skirt-chaser? He
doesn’t need the kind of luck that brings back to him the double of what he gave away!”

Padmini sat on the table. She moved all the paper to a corner and put the pen on top of
the pile. “What is this you are so urgently writing about?” she asked.

“About the inflation of our currency.”

“Oh, of course I understand! Is not my vocabulary limitless? Tell me, what is this thing
called ‘inflation’ in Malayalam?”

“If I knew that would I not have given up this fate-to-be-Principal and applied for the
job of the head translator? But let me instruct my wife privately: inflation means excess
flow of notes.”

“Understood. It was because of the excessive flow of notes in school that I failed and
got stuck. So let’s not even discuss that thing.”

Her sari-edge slipped off her shoulder and fell on his lap carelessly. He replaced it on
her shoulder. She said laughingly, “If I weren’t so convinced that all this is the
husband’s duty, I would have thanked you!”

He said, “Padmam, there is a new girl in my college, from my place. Know what her
name is? Pushpita Das.”

“What caste?”

“Christian.”

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“Good name!” Padmini giggled, “Fathers who name their daughters this way are settling
some grouse!”

“I too thought, what a name. But she is a great dancer. So I am thinking, for College
Day, why don’t we have you singing and her dancing? As Mrs. Principal you are obliged
to come!”

“But,” she frowned, “to entertain men other than your husband, is that not against
Bharateeya Streedharmam? The descendents of Sita and Arundhati …Oh, I forgot! I am
someone who threw away half of my patrivratyam in the sea of friendships before my
pati made his appearance!”

“There she goes again,” Divakaran Nair got up. “My ears are fairly deaf from this!” He
got her off the table and made her stand before the clock. “Look, see what time it is? If
we are going to be so late…” He moved towards the wall to switch off …

————–

When they returned after the college day celebrations, Divakaran Nair asked, “Why
didn’t you invite Pushpita here? Isn’t that your courtesy?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Her sarcasm was harmless. “No end to student-teacher affection it seems!
Today it looked like the girl students will kick me out of here and occupy this place!”

“I think it is great good luck to have people like Pushpita to come stay in one’s home,”
he responded, “ Those who love an art form can’t help loving those who perform it
well.”

“Oh, nothing to worry because we do have something called Civil Marriage. By the
way, I too liked someone there today,” she said when she was changing back to home
clothes. “Will I ever escape that infatuation?”

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He, who usually promoted all her crushes, was silent then, his thoughts were elsewhere.
Not paying attention to that, she continued: “Know who? That very big man in your
college? I forgot his name?” Shaking him, she asked, “What’s the fat man’s name?”

“Chidambaram Nadar.”

“I have named him in my mind ‘His Heaviness’. What a stout man! “

Divakaran Nair hadn’t changed. He was seated on his chair, checking the proofs of the
group photo taken during the college day celebration. She didn’t bother to check on
who his eyes were glued upon. Holding out her hand she asked, “Give it to me. I can’t
get enough of seeing him! If I don’t see him at least here, I will start shouting stuff like
‘the paper fan, to me, verily, is like the blow-pipe flame…’!

He didn’t hear any of that.

——————–

Padmini sat before her father like a guilty one. “Didn’t I not raise you with such freedom
so that you wouldn’t be the meek kitten in front of men? Why did you become so
namby-pamby at a moment when you ought to have been self-possessed?”

She did not reply, traditions were far stronger than your socialization, Father. She kept
playing with her little nephew Ravi who was tucking into sweets. Seeing her nonchalant
expression, Father flew into a rage. “Alright, be complacent! He’s just waiting for a
chance to throw off your grip and flee with her! That’s not going to happen in this life.
You wait and see him running from case to case, court to court and becoming a beggar!
Chasing that dancing hussy…”

“Softly, Father,” she broke her silence. “How shameful if the servants overhear.”

“The whole world knows, and you are still hushing and shushing! Are you so fond of
whores?”

13
“Don’t call Pushpita such names. Her Father gave her more freedom than you gave me.
Just because of that–”

“Chhi! If you tried seducing some fellow like her, I would have cut you in two! These
are two different things. Now, are you coming with me?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Father, didn’t you hand me over to someone before sending me here?” Her voice rose
a bit. “I am not such a big feminist. How am I to come without letting him know?”

He was so angry; he couldn’t speak for a while. “Your respected man, when will he
grace the house this evening?”

“Heard him say that from today he’s going to teach in the evenings too.”

“To see her all the time!”

“I didn’t ask.”

“I am around to ask him that. Leaving only after I know what is what.”

Padmini saw in her mind the confrontation between these two who had lost their minds
from completely different kinds of emotions. It scared her. This has to end, she
surmised. Putting her hand on father’s shoulder, she begged him tearfully, “Please go
home for today, Father. I will talk with him and settle it all tonight.”

“Why can’t I settle it?”

14
“Does a wife get the chance to scold her husband that easily?” She smiled through her
tears. So come tomorrow morning.”

“If he doesn’t promise to my face that he will live a decent life, you are coming with
me,” he put his son’s child on the floor. “How dare he hurt my child!”

He’s past the age in which he’d had understood what brought me more pain, Padmini
thought. Picking up Ravi, she said, “I will come with you to the Museum, Father. It is
such a long time since I went there.”

They chatted about many things as they walked on. When they reached the Museum
Gardens he took the boy from her. He bought her a two-chuckram ticket. “I will come
tomorrow morning. Tell him that he won’t escape me so soon.”

She had come that far to take a walk once more in her old haunt, the Lovers’ Lane. The
monkey who slipped off his swing and held his hand out when he saw her, the yellowed
fallen leaves — all these aroused old dormant memories in her. Those days, no matter
what troubles she carried within on her way out of her home, a walk here would make
her joyful. But wifehood makes some indelible changes, irrespective of whether you are
new-fangled or old-school.

She walked on, thinking about the random things she saw. That bird standing on one
leg, what was it in its former birth? If it were human, was it male or female? Pythons
who inspire fear and loathing in humans, did they become so because of any fault of
theirs? If so, what prompted that folly? … The bear was stretched out, eyes shut,
relaxed. It has neither the dilemmas nor the seductions that humans have to endure. The
man who had threatened to jump into the bear’s cage if he could not get her, the same
man is now racking his brains to think of a way to get rid of her … Is it really true that
the deer is a gentle creature? She had heard that among them, the stags fought and killed
each other for the does. Is the natural instinct of the human race any better? … A screen
had been tied to mark out a space in which a pregnant lion was to give birth. The shame
that Adam and Eve did not feel before they ate the Fruit of Knowledge, how did the
animals start feeling it? A lion was licking its newborn. These creatures too love their
offspring. Only that it is not as firm and steeped in selfishness as in human beings.
Gradually, her thoughts drifted to her own life. Why is Father plunging her into such a
dilemma? Won’t he suffer much pain and burden if she returned to him? Is that

15
daughterly Duty? Whose fault is all this? Not her fault for sure. Not the fault of her
husband who is embroiled in another attraction. Not also Pushpita’s who caused it.
Them who’s? God’s? But would it be enough to say, in that case, let God give an
answer?

She stepped on the road. How to return home without finding a solution to this messy
affair? What was the way out …? She saw before her a big board which said ‘Drugs
Store’. Will not all this turmoil end if her sleep that night could be converted into
unending slumber? Father will take relief in the fact that his daughter was now beyond
earthly sorrow; her husband will rejoice seeing the hurdle in his path removed …

—————–

Hearing the sound of Divakaran Nair’s motorbike, the students crowded before the
college building. Before he stopped the vehicle, a student shouted to him, “Sir,
Chidambaram Sir hasn’t come today. He and …”

Impatient, another one said, “… Pushpita Das have registered their marriage and have
left for Kanyakumari for their honeymoon.”

The pallor on Divakaran Nair’s face broke past even the light of dusk falling and
emerged clearly; many co-sufferers experienced that pain. A student who had been an
admirer of Pushpita’s body said, “This College couldn’t have suffered a worse loss.”

Slowly, Divakaran Nair regained his ability to speak. “No class today. Tell the peon to
lock up,” he said, and left.

He sat in the park for a while. Nothing seemed comprehensible. Even if he followed
them to Kanyakumari, what was the use? Never did he expect such a turn in his
romance.

Anyway, let me think about it coolly, he thought, and went to the beach. The place was
becoming empty after darkness fell.

16
He lay on the beach, his elbow sinking into the sand.

His searing brain soon fell into a stupor.

He woke up before dawn. Where was he to go now? The steadily-blowing wind had
cooled his head. Where else to go, but home? Who else could he rely upon to greet him
after all the foolish acts and crimes and in whatever shape?

The love of the wife, from old times, now flowed strongly into his heart. He went there
at once.

To the servant boy who opened the gate, he asked, “Where is Padmam?”

“Inside,” he said.

Pushing open the closed door of the room, he said, “Padmam, big news! Your Heavy
Highness and my Pushpita have left for their honeymoon to Cape! Shouldn’t we send
them our congratulations?”

There was no answer from the cot. “Haven’t been in here since long,” he said, and
switched the lights on. Going up to the cot, he shook her body and said, “What sleep is
this! Or are you angry? Tell me, what penance should I do?”

Her eyes opened somewhat. But she did not speak. He grew impatient at her expression.
“What’s this? Did you smoke ganja?”

“Pills,” she said, her voice slurring.

He leaped up. “Pills, what pills?” Picking up a crumpled piece of paper from the table
he smelled it. “Isn’t this the wrapping of peppermint candies?”

Padmini’s eyes opened fully wide. In a clear but worried voice she asked, “Really?”

17
“Yes, how did it come here?”

“Ravi had them.”

He found another packet next to it and opened it. “This is the stuff from the shop. You
didn’t open this at all, did you, Padmam?”

“No.”

She tried to get up. He threw away the packet and pulled her close. “Don’t try to get up.
Lie down. Let the imagined fatigue wear off. Nice try at suicide. Except that you ate the
sweets instead of the pills!”

Ecstatic, she did not find the energy to say something – not even that the pills should be
stored away carefully. He didn’t let her have a chance.

Outside the servant boy sang raucously, Premayil yaavum maranthome, premayil …

[Paati-pativratyam]

“The Goddess of Revenge” by Lalithambhika Antharjanam -Separate PDF

18
 Module V: Migration and Diaspora (Practicum)
Migration from Kerala- Malayali diaspora – Literature from the diaspora
Required Reading/Viewing
Benyamin: Goat Life

Menon, Priya. “Kerala‟s Own Petro fiction: Literary Interventions in Gulf

Migration Studies”

The discovery and subsequent drilling for oil1 in the Arabian Gulf States, since
the late 20th century, continue to have explicit repercussions for Kerala’s
economy, polity, and society. Despite the recent decrease in migration, the Gulf
States still profit from Kerala in numerous ways—around 2.2 million emigrants
from Kerala form the crux of its labour force,2 not only in the hydrocarbon
industry, but also by extension, in its medical, banking, transportation,
hospitality, and educational facilities. The developments of these service and
rentier industries have further resulted in large-scale recruitment of “guest-
workers,” which reflect the magnitudes, trajectories, and potential future
concerns of a primarily oil-dependent Gulf economy.3 Symbiotically, Kerala
has also gained significantly from its Gulf migratory resources. Twenty-five
percent of Kerala’s GDP is still based on Gulf migration.4 Therefore, it is not
surprising that Gulf migration has left a significant mark on Kerala’s everyday
political, physical, and vernacular landscapes. For instance, its built
environment—gold markets, malls, export industrial complexes, restaurants,
airports, and enormous gulf-houses,5 have all been made possible, to a large
extent, by the petro-currency from the Gulf.

Consequences of the present-day return of Gulf emigrants due to the current

COVID-19 crisis along with a recent apathetic disposition for migration6 are
bound to reverberate on the oil-dependent fabric of Kerala’s quotidian lived
experiences. How are these experiences recorded in Kerala’s cultural archives?
While the material realities of Gulf emigration get registered in diverse fields
ranging from economics to sociology and policymaking, oil’s human affects
remain scantily recorded and examined in Kerala. Can cultural production of
narratives—especially the composition of literary fiction, that creates sites of
interpretation, augment the currently dominant policy-oriented, legal, and
economic discourse of this distinctive petro-cultural interaction between Gulf
and Kerala? Are the (un)equal distribution of oil’s benefits and consequences
imaginatively recorded in Kerala’s literary productions? What aspirational
values might these texts offer through their interpretational bearings and creative
possibilities for a truly sustainable Kerala Model,7 should the efficiency, attained
by petroleum, become scarce or limited? What might such oil-texts mirror for
Kerala’s post-oil cultural futures?
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In the early 1990s, when Amitav Ghosh coined the term petrofiction in his
analysis of Abdelraman Munif’s quintet of novels, Cities of Salt, to designate a
literary genre that engages with the oil industry in the Arabian Gulf, he may not
have anticipated its evolutionary forms in the cultural production of narratives
from contemporary Kerala. While Petrofiction formerly signified fiction that
directly involves any “oil-encounter” on a global scale, more recent discussions
are commodious enough to include texts in which oil works “behind the scenes
in very significant ways, but is never physically present.”8 If petrofiction entails
a genre that is self-conscious of the fact that oil is everywhere, especially in those
places where it often appears abstract, scarce, or unseen–then literary texts by
Keralan writers like Benyamin, Deepak Unnikrishnan, Muzafer Ahamed, T.V.
Kochubava, Methil Radhakrishnan, Shahul Valapattanam, Joy C. Raphael,
Soniya Rafeek and Shihabuddin Payyuthumkadavu, to name a few, contribute to
Kerala’s own evolving genre of petrofiction.

On closer scrutiny, oil’s hidden affective presence—those unique human

emotive experiences represented in dance, music, and literature—is fathomable
in Kerala’s cultural and literary productions as instructive aesthetic experiences
for Kerala’s Gulf migratory practices. Novels such as Aadu Jeevitham by
Benyamin, or lyrical performative Malayalam poetry uniquely crafted as Kattu
Pattu, enacted by artists such as S.A. Jameel, and travelogues like Camels in the
Sky by Muzafer Ahamed succeed in subversively documenting a unique Keralan
petroculture.9 By registering oil’s complex dependencies to reveal a whole set
of emotional and imaginative non-visible forms and forces of life associated with
Gulf migration10—for example, a desire to persist, to make retributions and
restitutions, to apologize, to resolve, to even find pleasure in migration—such
literary texts offer a more generous reading of extenuating circumstances, social
conditions, psychological states, and human frailties. As a result, these cultural
productions from Kerala complement various existing institutional practices
(such as legal, economic, or policy reforms) to restore the humanity of its
emigrants.

One such text, Aadu Jeevitham—the much-acclaimed work by Benyamin,

explicitly focuses on the atrocities of the inhuman but very prevalent Kafala
system that exploits “guest-workers” in the Gulf by making visible human
dispossession while in extremis. However, the novel also inevitably reveals how
oil’s vitality tempts its protagonist, Najeeb with migration in the first place, as
much as it discloses the ethical toxicity that petroleum propagates in ordinary
lives of Keralans:

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Meanwhile, I dreamt a host of dreams. Perhaps the same stock dreams that the
1.4 million Malayalis in the Gulf had when they were in Kerala—gold watch,
fridge, TV, car, AC, tape recorder, VCP, a heavy gold chain. I shared them with
Sainu as we slept together at night. ‘I don’t need anything, ikka. Do return when
you have enough to secure the life of our child (son or daughter?). We don’t need
to accumulate wealth like my brothers. No mansion either. A life together. That’s
all. Maybe the wife of every man who is about to leave for the Gulf tells him the
same thing. Even so, they end up spending twenty or thirty years of their lives
there. And for what reason?11

In this light, Benyamin’s literary interpretation examines Najeeb’s distress as

generating key emotional and imaginative non-visible forms of psychic
aspirations during migration—the will to overcome, to survive, to reconcile, and
even to find joy at times. Equally significant is the novel’s ability to depict
Najeeb’s material desires (gold watch, fridge, TV, car, AC, tape recorder, VCP,
a heavy gold chain) to register oil’s worldmaking12 capacities that shape his
daily life and govern his choices and mobilities.13 Similarly, “In Mussafah Grew
People,” Deepak Unnikrishnan conjures up a Sultan who “stinks of petrol” and
orders a “Canned Malayalee Project” to “grow Malayalees on secret farms
cocooned inside industrial-size greenhouse […] in twenty-three days […] to
multiply its workforce by a factor of four.”14 However, fed on a formula
“designed to prioritize reason,” a new batch of Malayalee workers take to “the
streets near what was going to be the tallest structure in the world, and went on
a strike in a country where dissent is not tolerated.”15 Here, just as the strike
creates room for dissent and resistance to function as aspirational goals for
Keralan emigrants, it also spectacularizes oil’s slow-violence,16 commodifying
the production and consumption of workers in an apocalyptic industrial oil-farm.

Yet another text, Herbarium by Soniya Rafeek, directly addresses in a larger

context, oil’s imperialism leading to environmental degradation that cuts across
states, species, and scale. These texts challenge us to interpret and examine
varied human—specifically the emotional and imaginative—consequences of a
Keralan petroculture, while also inspiring migrant-senders and receiving state-
apparatuses to initiate restitution for the costs oil-regimes extract on both human
and nonhuman resources. Kerala’s petrofiction provides opportunities to craft
new visions of ethical migratory practices while registering the humanity of its
“guest workers” whose acknowledgement by both the oil-dependent host and
home states have been distant, if not fully inimical.

Such Keralan literary texts, then, represent—perhaps not deliberately but

significantly, how oil not only penetrates the geological and geopolitical but also
invades the local, individual, family, and place. They allow us to interpret and

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 live the lives and times of “others” hidden from mainstream petro-histories or
are its victims. They offer the potential to alter human relationships and historical
practices to make visible petroleum’s far-reaching tentacles and provide
aspirational values through the empathetic act of interpretation.

About the Author: Dr Priya Menon is Associate Professor of English at Troy

University, USA. She is at work on a monograph on migrant fiction from the
Gulf States. Her research has been supported by a Fulbright-Nehru Excellence
Fellowship, during which she was affiliated with The Centre for Development
Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala.

• S, Ahmed (Dir): Pathemari (2015)

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