Mappila literature as a paradigm for countercultures: Reading Moinkutty Vaidyar in context

Abstract

Abstract Recent studies on Mappila literature revisit Mappila culture in an attempt to understand the 'Mappila Muslim' beyond earlier representations by colonial and nationalist scholarship. Mappila literature is studied as a paradigm for understanding traditions of dissent and resistance by indigenous communities in colonized contexts. This article positions Mappila poet Moinkutty Vaidyar in a lineage of Mappila writings of resistance in Arabic, Arabimalayalam and Malayalam, and studies Vaidyar's works as a continuum of Mappila counterculture while also placing him as a link between two distinct eras in Kerala's literary history through synchronic and diachronic reading of Malayalam literary history. It critically explores the reasons behind marginalization of Mappila literature by mainstream academic studies until the early years of twenty-first century. While considering Moinkutty Vaidyar as a continuum of the Mappila counterculture, this research also presents a case for Vaidyar as an anti-orthodox social reformer, a secular thinker, a successor of the pāttu and bhakti traditions, a harbinger of romanticism and modernism in Kerala's literature and finally as the creative genius who created a new linguistic and literary landscape for Mappila society.