Shaping Historical Consciousness and Religious Identity: Text and Practices and Cultural Memory in The Mappila Community

Book: Cultural Memory in Translation: Revisiting Cultural Memory Through Interpretative Lens from India by CSMFL Publications

Shahid Panambra
Post-graduate Student, Indira Gandhi National Open University, Department of History,India.

10.46679/9789349926639ch17
This chapter is a part of: Cultural Memory in Translation: Revisiting Cultural Memory Through Interpretative Lens from India
ISBN (Ebook):978-93-49926-63-9
ISBN (Hardcover Print):978-93-49926-41-7
ISBN (Softcover Print):978-93-49926-75-2

© CSMFL Publications & its authors.
Published: November 10, 2025

Panambra, S. (2025). Shaping Historical Consciousness and Religious Identity: Text and Practices and Cultural Memory in The Mappila Community. In A. G. Uppal & D. Barot, Cultural Memory in Translation: Revisiting Cultural Memory Through Interpretative Lens (pp 237-250). CSMFL Publications. https://dx.doi.org/10.46679/9789349926639ch17

Abstract

As a community, they hold the distinctive cultural traditions, Mappila of Kerala, India have their own heritage that is being transmitted over the generations via their local religious medium of expression like Va’lu (oration), Malappattu (hagiographical hymns on holy saints), and other ritual practices (for instance Nerccas, Mawlid Majlis, and Ratib). These ritual practices of Mappilas, in the course of initiation and as the routine of Mappilas, the local religious texts like Sabeena and Edu perform the crucial role, which Sheldon Pollock (2000, 2003) named the literary culture, and Muneer Aramkuzhiyan (2015) developed upon it, the Mappila literary culture. Apart from the study on Mappila Muslims’ historical trade connections, Arabic-Malayalam language or script, cross-cultural traditions, anti-colonial resistance, religious customs, and so on, the discipline of history and cultural anthropology didn’t explore its cultural realm of preservation and transmission of their past through the lens of cultural memory unfolded by Assman (2006). This chapter investigates this gap in research and what the texts of Mappilas, the Edu, and Sabeena comprise in their cultural heritage and how textual practices make the community live in their memory on the past and historical consciousness. The paper also addresses the methods and ways of the community confronting modernity challenges of preservation and transmission fleet-footed by technology and digitalization.

Keywords: Mappila, Literary Culture, Textual Practices, Modernity Challenges.

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