Devotional contextures: the māla songs and Muslim ethical formation in contemporary Kerala

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores how a devotional performance genre called the māla in Arabi Malayalam continues to fashion devotional piety for many Mappila men and women in contemporary Kerala. My analysis will focus on the practices of Mappila literary culture – especially that of reciting literary texts composed in Arabi Malayalam. Highlighting the performative dimensions of two māla songs, the early seventeenth century Muhyiddin Māla and the early twentieth century Nafisat Māla, I map out, in ethnographic detail, how these devotional song-poems punctuate everyday life for many contemporary Mappilas, thereby helping shape and hone these Mappilas’ affects of piety and their larger ways of being and acting in the world. In so doing, my aim will also be to underscore the social life and tone of Mappila literary culture and to reiterate that literary genres are not mere ideas but also constitutive practices that are highly consequential for the practitioners’ self-fashioning and ethical formation. The article urges a contextural approach to the study of devotional literature whereby due attention is paid to both the ‘context(s)’ and ‘texture(s)’ of genre and literary cultures.