Mappila Muslim Masculinities: A History of Contemporary Abjectification

Abstract

This article explores multiple dimensions of stereotyping Mappila Muslim masculinities in the south Indian state of Kerala, as abject and demonized other. I begin with a survey of the British colonial construction of Mappila masculinity as, for example, militant religious fanatic, against the historical background of encounters between the two. It follows an examination of the new ways of reproducing these constructs in a changed yet hegemonic narrative public domain of the contemporary where Hindu majoritarian nationalism gathers its momentum. In so doing, this article also scrutinizes the larger mythological and structural elements of the contemporary refiguring. Drawing from these historical and contemporary trajectories, I argue that abjectification of Muslim masculinities is one of the basic ingredients of Islamophobia at work, often in banal forms.