Cosmopolitan Cultures and Oceanic Thought [1 ed.] 1032057084, 9781032057088

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COSMOPOLITAN CULTURES AND OCEANIC THOUGHT

This book imagines the ocean as central to understanding the world and its connections in history, literature and the social sciences. Introducing the central conceptual category of ocean as method, it analyses the histories of movement and traversing across connected spaces of water and land sedimented in literary texts, folklore, local histories, autobiographies, music and performance. It explores the constant flow of people, material and ideologies across the waters and how they make their presence felt in a cosmopolitan thinking of the connections of the world. Going beyond violent histories of slavery and indenture that generate global connections, it tracks the movements of sailors, boatmen, religious teachers, merchants and adventurers. The essays in this volume summon up this miscegenated history in which land and water are ever linked. A significant rethinking of world history, this volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of history, especially connected history and maritime history, literature and Global South studies. Dilip M. Menon is a historian and currently the Mellon Chair in Indian Studies at the University of Witwatersrand. South Africa. Nishat Zaidi is Professor and former Head, Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India.

COSMOPOLITAN CULTURES AND OCEANIC THOUGHT

Edited by Dilip M. Menon and Nishat Zaidi

Designed cover image: Getty Images First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 selection and editorial matter, Dilip Menon and Nishat Zaidi; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Dilip Menon and Nishat Zaidi to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Menon, Dilip M., editor. | Zaidi, Nishat, editor. Title: Cosmopolitan cultures and oceanic thought / edited by Dilip Menon and Nishat Zaidi. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2023. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2022048488 (print) | LCCN 2022048489 (ebook) | Subjects: LCSH: Indian Ocean Region--Civilization. | Indian Ocean Region-History. | Indian Ocean Region--Historiography. | Ocean and civilization. Classification: LCC DS339 .C65 2023 (print) | LCC DS339 (ebook) | DDC 909/.09824--dc23/eng/20221214 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022048488 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022048489 ISBN: 978-1-032-05708-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-29297-7 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-30093-9 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003300939 Typeset in Bembo by Taylor & Francis Books

CONTENTS

List of figures List of contributors Introduction: Oceanic Imagination and Cosmopolitan Cultures: Thinking Through History Across the Waters Nishat Zaidi and Dilip M. Menon

viii ix

1

PART I

The Poetics of Fluvial Cosmopolitanism

21

1 Going Below the Waterline: Hydrocolonial Methods, Creolised Water Isabel Hofmeyr

23

2 Fellowship and aversion in the South: The challenges of South– South collaboration Elleke Boehmer

37

3 Found in Prison: The Poetics of Oceanic Histories Geeta Patel

47

4 Remembering the Bengal Delta ca. 1450–1850 Rila Mukherjee

63

5 “The wind sketches landscapes of words”: Reading the wind in the Horn of Africa Kelsey McFaul

81

vi Contents

PART II

Oceanic Narratives 6 Padmabati of the Oceans: Unfreedom and belonging in Syed Alaol’s Padmabati Swati Moitra 7 Pat.appa-t.t.us in the Indian Ocean: Connected Literary Sensibilities and the Circulation of Texts and Sounds across Arabic, Persian, and Sanskrit Cosmopolises Ihsan Ul Ihthisam

97 99

115

PART III

Constructing Space 8 Of Those on Shore: The Dhow Trade and Mobility in the Indian Ocean Nidhi Mahajan 9 Towards an Architecture of the Indian Ocean: Mapping the Syncretic Grammar of Coastal Cities and Architecture through Ibn Battuta’s Water Journeys (1342–47) Iqtedar Alam 10 Through the Eyes of the Boat People: Redefining Oceans in the twenty-first century Chrisalice Ela Joseph and Vinod Balakrishnan

135 137

152

168

PART IV

Religion, Knowledge and Law Across the Oceans 11 Literate Illiterates: Arabi-Malayalam and Parallel Process of Knowledge Production among Muslims in Kerala M.H. Ilias and Shamshad Hussain - Networks across the Seas: Understanding the 12 ʿUlamaʾ Trajectory of Islam in Medieval Malabar Mohammed Shameem K.K. 13 Encountering the ‘Other’: Pilgrims at Sea and Accounts of Journeys to Hejaz in the Age of Oceanic Mobility Muhamed Riyaz Chenganakkattil

179 181

197

212

Contents vii

14 Christianity, Conversion and Caste: Reflecting on Identity in Dalit Christian Malayalam Writings in Post-Colonial India Steven S. George

240

15 Rainbow Waters: Towards a Queer Coalition between India and Botswana Kashish Dua

252

Index

267

FIGURES

9.1 9.2

9.3

9.4

Settlements on the route of Ibn Battuta's Land Journey from Delhi to Cambay Ibn Battuta's Journey in the Indian Ocean (List of Port Towns, Feeder Port Towns and Villages along Western Coast of India, Eastern Coast of India, Ceylon, Maldives, Sumatra and Java) List of Settlements visited by Ibn Battuta during his journey in the Indian Ocean (within India), with details of foreign footprints The Cosmopolitan Map: Settlements with Foreign Footprints (as per Ibn Battuta's description based on his travels in the Indian Ocean, within India)

155

161

164

165

CONTRIBUTORS

Iqtedar Alam is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Architecture & Ekistics, Jamia Millia Islamia, India. Vinod Balakrishnan is Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli, India. Elleke Boehmer is Professor of World Literature in English in the English Faculty, University of Oxford, and Director of the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing, based at Wolfson College, UK. Kashish Dua is a PhD scholar at the Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India. Chrisalice Ela Joseph is a Research Scholar with the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli, India. Steven S. George is a PhD Scholar at the Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India. Isabel Hofmeyr is the Global Distinguished Professor, NYU and Professor of African Literature, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. Shamshad Hussain is Professor at Department of Malayalam, Sree Sankara University of Sanskrit, Kerala, India. M.H. Ilias is Professor and Dean at Faculty of Social Sciences, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala, India.

x List of contributors

Nidhi Mahajan teaches Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the Department of Anthropology, University of Santa Cruz, USA. Kelsey McFaul is a PhD candidate at the Department of Literature, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA. Swati Moitra is an Assistant Professor at the Department of English, Gurudas College, University of Calcutta, India. Rila Mukherjee is a Professor of History at the University of Hyderabad, India. Geeta Patel is a Professor of Middle Eastern & South Asian Languages & Cultures at the University of Virginia, USA. Muhamed Riyaz Chenganakkattil is a PhD Scholar at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India. Mohammed Shameem K.K. is a PhD scholar at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India. Ihsan Ul Ihthisam is a PhD Scholar at the University of Chicago, USA.

INTRODUCTION Oceanic Imagination and Cosmopolitan Cultures: Thinking Through History Across the Waters Nishat Zaidi and Dilip M. Menon

Oceans have always existed at the edge of human imagination, invoking awe, fear, and the lure of the unknown; all at the same time. This sense of ineffability has been enhanced by the affect generated by a Romantic imagination in poetry, art and literature, which circulates through a vast scape ranging from school pedagogy to tourist advertisements. Provoked by the ocean’s unfathomable depths and inscrutable vastness, humans have braved them – for trade and commerce; for knowledge; to conquer continents; found empires; and subjugate other races. Others have had to comply with the will of conquerors and masters, and suffer, serve, and die in different lands on plantations and battlefields. In all these representations, oceans have always been treated both as instrument and medium, as a void meaningless in itself, and serving as a means to human aspirations. Oceans have largely remained peripheral to the imaginaire of historiography even though the edifice of modernity undergirded by colonialism has rested on the mobility offered by maritime fluviality. Ironically, both colonialism as much as contending nationalisms created largely terrestrial imaginations of space and identity. The ocean remains on the horizons of academic theorising and is largely seen as the space of the liminal, the marginal, and the supplementary. A body of historical scholarship on oceans has attempted to counter this myopic vision of human history by foregrounding the concurrent, coeval, and continuous nature of oceanic connections and their deep imbrications with territorial histories. Fernand Braudel in his magisterial work on the Mediterranean wrote a history undergirded by what he called the longue dureé of geography and environment, emphasising the rhythms of the ocean and its influence on events and conjunctures in human history (Braudel, 1949[1996]). Whether it is histories of slavery and indenture, of trade on the ocean, of incarcerative islands under empire, dissemination of religious ideas, legality and crime (from the spread of legal precedents to the histories of piracy), or indeed the ship itself, the last three decades have seen an extension of the categories of a terrestrial social history to maritime spaces. Sanjay Subrahmanyam was among the DOI: 10.4324/9781003300939-1

2 Nishat Zaidi and Dilip M. Menon

earlier scholars to point out the connected histories made across the waters which linked non-contiguous spaces and sat athwart empires (Subrahmanyam, 2004). This marked a move away from a classical maritime history such as that of K.N. Chaudhuri which studied histories on the ocean away from the rise and fall of empires on land. Merchants, goods, and ships were the actors here rather than peasants, crops, and states (Chaudhuri, 1983, 1990). This history stepped ashore gingerly on to the littoral and hinterland, much as terrestrial historians were loath to get their feet wet. It is not as if thinking the sea and land together required a new theoretical literature to emerge. Kamau Brathwaite, the distinguished Caribbean poet had spoken of the idea of “tidalectics” – the dialectical relation between land and sea – late last century, emphasising fluidity, flux and moving away from “fixity, assuredness and appropriation” (Brathwaite, 1999). As the Sri Lankan geographer Suvendrini Perera has put it we need to start thinking with terra infirma and she asks the plangent question: what if the land under our feet turns out to be the sea? (Perera, 2009). In the move to writing transnational and postnational histories, the turn to the ocean in the social sciences and humanities is arguably the most significant departure. This volume pushes these arguments further through trying to articulate a new approach of oceans as method (Menon, Zaidi et al., 2022). The papers take for granted the presence of the ocean as central to the imagination of the world and its connections in history, literature, and the social sciences more generally. Apart from exploding the sea onto the land, as Edouard Glissant put it (Glissant, 1990), the papers in the volume engage with longer time spans than colonialism and nationalism in the making of constantly shifting spaces of human interaction and imagination. We need to move away from the tired triad of the precolonial, colonial and postcolonial, and think with the idea of the paracolonial – the multiple times and spaces that sit alongside the colonial and both precede and exceed it (Menon, 2020). The constant flow of people, material and ideologies across the waters makes their presence felt in a cosmopolitan thinking of the connections of the world. It is not only the violent histories of slavery and indenture that generate global connections, but also the movements of sailors, boatmen, religious teachers, merchants and adventurers. Having said this, we may yet be too hesitant in our engagement with the maritime and fluvial. In the 18th century, as Britain built up its formidable navies, one of the significant features of those who worked on ships above and below decks, was that they did not know how to swim. In fact, not knowing how to swim was regarded as an added qualification since it made sailors, deckhands, and lascars less inclined to jump ship. While our narratives may sail the oceans, as social scientists, we have been reluctant to jump overboard, as it were. How does one engage with the ocean itself, as agrarian histories and studies on the environment on land have involved themselves with the very texture of soil, diversity of plants, and geological formations across time and space? Philip Steinberg has argued for what he calls “wet ontologies” that require an attention to the materiality of the ocean, its winds, depths and marine life (Steinberg, 2015). Our histories and social sciences in that sense skim across the surface of the water like windsurfers, carrying the predilections of landed imaginations. Melody Jue in her work shows how another

Introduction 3

level of engagement is possible by learning how to engage in deep sea diving and immersing herself in the medium of her narrations. The body, its flexibility, and gravity itself which we take for granted in our dexterous physicality on land, becomes subject to other forces where horizontality, for example, becomes more meaningful than verticality (Jue, 2020). These might seem like merely intellectual concerns, an exercise of pure logic in the extension of an argument. One could argue that such theorisations do not allow us to engage with the realpolitik of capitalism, whether manifested in container shipping and the undergirding of the world economy (after all, about 90% of the world’s trade is transported on water), or in the creation of a precariat that survives through shipbreaking on the west and east coasts of South Asia (see Khalili, 2020). We could point to those who live almost entirely at sea as a counter, whether the dhow operators on the Arabian Sea so sensitively documented by K.R. Sunil (2018), or the fisher people along the worlds coasts for whom waves, winds, storms and character of water are central to their lives. Traversing the space of the waters reminds us of the enacting of the hubris of states, whether they are the histories of the atomic tests on the Bikini atoll; the expropriation of lives and land on Chagos Islands; or indeed, the inhuman acts on political prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. The water is never far away from the intransigent encroachment of state or capital. We continue to imagine, however, that the depths of the ocean are safe from humans, and stories of mysterious creatures living on the seabed, unknown to marine biology, fuel these fantasies. Given the environmental damage that has led to, and accelerated, global warming, there is a search for alternative and renewable forms of energy. Moving away from coal towards solar power, and away from fossil fuel powered automobiles to electric cars have become some of the quick panaceas on offer. The seafloor has emerged as the next horizon for exploitation of resources and there is a rush to extract minerals like cobalt, nickel, copper and manganese from polymetallic nodules on the seabed. New players have emerged and small island nations like Mauritius and Nauru are at the forefront of this extension of capitalism to the seabed. The International Seabed Authority (ISA) has extended the traditional control of nations over their territorial waters, which was 12 nautical miles, to a distance of 200 nautical miles from the coastal baseline. While these Exclusive Economic Zones are not part of a state’s sovereign territory, the state has the exclusive right to exploit marine resources from fish to minerals and gas. India was an early entrant in the race and has been exploring for nodules since at least 1981 (www.isa.org.jm/news/government-indiasigns-exploration-contract-international-seabed-authority, accessed 12 July 2022). In 1987 it was allotted 150,000 square km of the Central Indian Ocean basin near the Chagos by the ISA to explore. By September 2013 it had identified a potential site to mine and in 2016, was allotted an exploration licence for polymetallic nodules by the ISA for 75,000 square km in the Central Indian Ocean basin until March 2022 (www.un.org/en/chronicle/article/international-seabed-authority-and-deepseabed-mining, accessed 12 July 2022). Given all these developments, social science imaginaries need to explore the close relation between sea and land and also move beneath the surface of the water,

4 Nishat Zaidi and Dilip M. Menon

empirically as much as theoretically. Even though we tend to imagine this relation in binary terms, once we remind ourselves of the ancient myths of Atlantis, the early modern obsession with the lost land of Lemuria (the sign and proof of the lost continent of Pangaea when the Earth was not split into multiple continents), and the ancient land of Kumarikandam lost to the sea which has been absorbed into the political imaginary of Tamils after the devastating civil war in Sri Lanka (Ramaswamy, 2004), lands lost under water have been central to landed imaginations. The ocean far from merely being on the horizon is ever present in histories of land. Arguably, in India, the territorial conquest by the East India Company and the subsequent revenue settlements that established its dominance based on revenue from land, meant a turn inwards. The emphasis on landowners, settled peasants, paralleled by a distrust of moving groups like pastoralists (Bayly, 1988) masked the excision of the sea from the imagination of landed elites. While seaborne coastal trade continued, the big Asian merchant princes were beggared in a generation, as Ashin Dasgupta’s poignant account of the decimated fortunes of Ezekiel Rahabi on the Malabar coast shows (Dasgupta, 1966). While along the Bay of Bengal the Coromandel and Malabar coast, earlier geographies of circulation with South-East Asia and west Asia continued (Amrith, 2015; Rudner, 1994), the dominant imaginary was that of land and territory. This was to culminate in the idea of a territorial nationalism and the imagination of a map of India that excluded both the sea as well as the Indian diaspora of labour and capital. We need now to recover an imagination that in many senses was excised by colonialism and its territorial paradigm that rested on a forgetting of its own maritime histories of expansion and conquest. The multiple histories of movement and traversing of the ever-connected space of water and land, is sedimented in literary texts, folklore, local histories, autobiographies, music, and performance. The essays in this volume summon up this miscegenated history in which land and water are ever linked. Thinking with the ocean allows for a fuller archive of human creativity. It is pertinent to ask what we mean by cosmopolitan cultures and oceanic thought? Have oceans merely served as theatres showcasing human movements in the longue durée of human history: as Michael Pearson put it, the difference between histories on the ocean and histories in the ocean? What different does it make to think through history across the waters? What does it mean to move beyond the territorial historiography predicated on political economy and redefine it in amphibian terms centred on ontological and material aspects of the ocean? In a world where neo-imperial aspirations have subjected oceans to territorialising impulses, can the oceanic approach help us steer out of the binarism of the dominant historiography and widen the remit of global history? These and many other questions have been addressed in the papers included in this volume.

The Many Trajectories of Cosmopolitanism In the context of raging identity politics, resurgent nationalism, and rising exclusionary politics on the one hand and globalisation, world systems theory and planetarity on the other, it is important to revisit the term cosmopolitanism. The

Introduction 5

debates around the concept of cosmopolitanism have always veered between a perception of the inherent aspiration to human connection beyond the hardness of identities and a suspicion of elitism; that cosmopolitanism is a performative reserved for etiolated elites who believe that they represent the world. As we know, the word derives from the Greek word kosmopolitês which means ‘citizen of the world’. With a genesis in Greek and Roman cosmopolitanism, the modern European notion of the term is founded on Immanuel Kant’s concept of the universal polis (a city or political community that would include the whole world), implying universal rights and justice. In his 1795 cosmopolitan manifesto “To Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch”, Kant underlined the need for a cosmopolitan model of rule as he surmised that all human beings hold equal value. Though rife with contradictions given his racist leanings1, Kant’s cosmopolitan political project became the basis of European cosmopolitanism. Marx and Engels perceived cosmopolitanism as a legitimising factor in offering the citizens of the world ‘free’ trade. As Pheng Cheah argues, Marx’s “proletarian cosmopolitanism is no longer just a normative horizon of world history or a matter of right growing out of international commerce. It is a necessary and existing form of solidarity grounded in the global exploitation that has resulted from the global development of forces of production” (Pheng and Robbins 2006, 490). Cosmopolitanism has often been viewed as synonymous with globalisation. Loaded with both positive [openness, mobility, modernity] and negative [‘rootless, dabbling, parasitic’] connotations, the term is often suspected of promoting European liberal, elitist beliefs in the guise of shared universal values. This has resulted in the interpretive efforts of the scholars of global, transnational histories to recuperate the term from its roots in European modernity and to address the cosmopolitan moorings of the Global South. Besides, the notion of a universal, borderless, cosmopolitan community seems incapable of accounting for a world inhabited by millions of refugees and migrants fleeing violence and poverty. Ulf Hannerz proposed a distinction between cosmopolitans who are ‘willing to engage with the Other’; locals, who are ‘representatives of more circumscribed territorial cultures’; and transnationals (1992, 252), who share ‘structures of meaning carried by social networks’ (1992, 248–9). Focusing on the status of companion servants, guides and migrant labourers, James Clifford also draws attention to the grounds of equivalence between privileged and unprivileged travellers (1992: 106–7). Clifford further argues that ‘the project of comparing and translating different travelling cultures need not be class- or ethnocentric’ (1992: 107) and proposes the term ‘discrepant’ cosmopolitanisms’ (1992: 108) to bring out the differential, often violent, displacements that impel locals to travel. Homi Bhabha, too, underlines the tension between the ‘national identity’ and the ‘cosmopolitan’ and argues with reference to the migrants and the diaspora, “it is to the city that the migrants, the minorities, the diasporic come to change the history of the nation” (Bhabha, 1990: 320). Bhabha has posited the term ‘vernacular cosmopolitan’ that appears an oxymoron, to account for a border zone, a ‘cosmopolitan community envisaged in marginality’ (1996, 195–6). Kwame

6 Nishat Zaidi and Dilip M. Menon

Anthony Appiah (2005) takes cognisance of the fact that postcolonial migrants may feel at home in several homes in several countries. Hence, he speaks about the twin facets of cosmopolitanism, underlining the fact that we have an obligation to others and affirming that we must ‘take seriously the value not just of human life but of particular human lives, which means taking an interest in the practices and beliefs that lend them significance. For Appiah, the cosmopolitan question implies not only how different nation-states relate to each other but also relations within the postcolonial states on subjects ranging from citizenship, and equality to cultural rights. Appiah proposes the idea of a ‘rooted ‘cosmopolitan’ who is simultaneously committed to their own country and to universal values. Aligned with this is the idea of the ‘local’ cosmopolitan, who regardless of their particular location and inability or lack of desire to travel, nevertheless cultivates an affinity towards the world and its affective geography. In other words, the idea of cosmopolitanism being a uniquely modern or European/Western standpoint has been challenged by an array of scholars who have reviewed it from the perspective of marginal communities and groups. They have proposed ways of getting around the disjunctures between elements of postcolonial and pre-colonial forms of travel, movement and migration by combining apparently contradictory opposites: cosmopolitan patriotism (Appiah, 1997), local cosmopolitanism (Ho, 2002), colored cosmopolitanism (Slate, 2017), and workingclass cosmopolitanism (Werbner, 1999). In an attempt to wrench the cosmopolitan project from the monological discourse of colonially /modernity, Walter D. Mignolo has proposed ‘critical’ and ‘dialogic cosmopolitanism’ – a vantage point that will rest upon “diversality as a universal project” and “border thinking as a necessary epistemology… in the postnational world order governed by global capitalism and new forms of coloniality” (Mignolo, 2011). This according to Mignolo can only be enacted from a prior understanding of and engaging with the idea of “colonial difference”. Oceanic cosmopolitanism builds upon this alternative diversity of cosmopolitan thoughts.

Oceanic Cosmopolitanism Oceanic thought can be interpreted in myriad ways but has mostly been used to push the limits of territorial and anthropocentric historicising to encapsulate oceanic fluviality, its deep temporality, its multiplex and multitudinous biology, and their environmental ramifications. This is viewed as a compelling force to transcend the ‘nation’ and border centric narratives encompassing histories and geographies of fault lines, displacements, and migrations belonging to one contingent and connected narrative thread. As argued earlier, a new historiography has pushed the engagement with the ocean to connect more traditional narratives of state formation, migration and community formation with the understanding of ever-present maritime connections. This spilling over into the sea forces an engagement with larger and more fluid geographies of affinity and forces us to think with connected histories rather than the hermetic imaginations of nation-states alone.

Introduction 7

The historical depth of the Indian Ocean world provides a unique perspective on these shifts. As Engseng Ho brilliantly demonstrates, the Indian Ocean is home to the world’s oldest transoceanic long distance trading systems and folds together old diasporas (like the five-hundred-year-old Hadrami network from Yemen, which Ho analyses (2006) with a range of Western imperial formations, including those of Portugal, Holland, Britain and the United States. The interaction of old diasporas with modern empires produces what Ho describes as a “tight embrace of intimacy and treachery, a relationship of mutual benefit, attraction and aversion” (Ho, 2004, 212). Western imperial structures weaken and re-energise older diasporic networks in the Indian Ocean, in interactions that feed into forms of indigenous capitalism, one of the long-term trajectories behind current Asian economic successes (Subramanian, 1996). Isabel Hofmeyr’s well-known statements about the universalising aspect of Indian Ocean (2010) are complemented by Sugata Bose who argues that “The colonized did not simply erect defensive walls around their notions of cultural difference. They were keen to be players in broad arenas of cosmopolitan thoughts and zones and wished to contribute to the shaping of a global future. Their cosmopolitanism flowed not from the stratosphere of abstract reason, but from the fertile ground of local knowledge and learning in the vernacular” (2018: 3). Other scholars like Kenneth McPherson (1994) and Michael Pearson (2003) through their work on port cities and the littoral; Pedro Machado on the circulation of textiles (Machado and Campbell, 2018); and Edward Alpers’ work on maritime connections between East Africa and the Indian Ocean world (Alpers, 2009) have underscored the cosmopolitan aspects of transoceanic exchanges as also how the European empires with their global aspirations subsumed these pre-existing oceanic linkages, which in turn were amalgamated into the world economy. The fictional writings of Amitav Ghosh, Abdulrazak Gurnah and JMG Le Clezio have foregrounded transoceanic movements to challenge the supremacy of the nation-state augmented by European imperialism. For these writers, oceanic spaces are sites that connect remote continents, blur boundaries, and facilitate movements and islands are hyphens in these fluvial spaces. Their writings merge history and geography in a series of interconnected narratives that bear witness to the migrant experiences of the eighteenth and nineteenth century as a fleet of migrants and refugees cross the waters, suffer hardships, and chase their dreams of building new lives away from their homelands. This is presented in the novels of these writers “as a way of relativising the nation-state” as Hofmeyr writes, “For Ghosh the cosmopolitanism of the older diasporic networks offers a counterpoint to the narrowness of the modern nation-state system. For Gurnah, the nation-state is subsumed into the transnational networks above it and the loyalties of lineage below it” (2010, 723). The traditional trade route in the Indian Ocean, for instance, that connected the Malacca Strait to Sri Lanka and India, the Persian Gulf and Red Sea, and Roman ports in the Mediterranean, and facilitated transportations of goods like silk, satin, musk, spices, exotic foodstuffs, medicines, gemstones, ceramics, and glassware gave

8 Nishat Zaidi and Dilip M. Menon

rise to thriving bazaars in the port cities and the merchant markets deep inland. Such maritime trade circuits, sustained by the cycle of monsoon winds, acted as conduits for the exchange of ideas, culture, knowledge and even for the spread of spiritual and religious ideas. In bringing indigenous communities into contact with the world at large, they constituted early manifestations of cosmopolitan zones. Despite a consensus among the oceanic scholars about the ‘cosmopolitan’ nature of oceanic movements, the import of the term has been debated by the same scholars. Nile Green, for instance, contests Isabel Hofmeyr’s projection of Ghosh’s novels as the evidence of oceanic cosmopolitanism and argues that Indian Ocean should be “conceived as a heterotopia rather than a “cosmopolitan thought zone” (2018, 848). There is perhaps a misunderstanding of the idea of cosmopolitanism here as implying an easy fusion of horizons between differences. If this were true, then the concept loses its complexity and is reduced to the simplicities of an anodyne idea of everyone getting along. Nile Green sets up a straw figure here: as we know historians and litterateurs have always engaged with the idea of cosmopolitanism as situated within a field of what Anna Tsing might call ‘friction’ (Tsing, 2004). It is from within an engagement with difference that affinities beyond the presumed hardness of identities are generated.

The Poetics of Fluvial Cosmopolitanism The first section sets out the idea of a fluvial cosmopolitanism through five papers that engage with what it means to read engagements on and with the waters of the oceans. They consider the question of seascapes – oceans, waves, islands, inlets, bays – and the narratives that arise from the constraints of geography, the actions of states, the movement of individuals, and the tangibility of water and wind. Movement across a space without borders (albeit subject to the hubris of state control and maritime law) requires one to think with the particularities of the travel of commodities, ideas and persons across the ocean. Isabel Hofmeyr in her paper on ‘hydrocolonialism’ riffs on the idea of postcolonial theory and its terrestrial affinities bounded by nations and geography. She re-engages with the postcolonial by exploring the literary implications opened by overlaying the hydrological cycle onto imperial and post-imperial cartographies. The idea of the hydrocolonial not only describes the imperial attempt to control the waves (‘Britannia rules the waves’) through the control of trade, movement, and piracy on the waters but also addresses the creation of incarcerative spaces; the penal settlements so vividly described by Clare Anderson. Hofmeyr raises the resonant question of the implications of ‘immersion’ in oceanic histories. In line with recent work, this may require getting our feet wet – literally – as also thinking about the materiality of water with its microbes and forms of life. On the other, it requires us to read for water as a constant penumbral presence within our histories and literary artefacts, just as much as colonialism itself is a shadow on all literary production as Edward Said reminded us. The history of slavery while it is enacted in its horror and cruelty on the plantations and the social death of the slave, has a

Introduction 9

prior record of slaves drowned or thrown overboard where the very idea of ancestry and geneaology requires an engagement with the depths. As she argues, this move requires us to think laterally, vertically, and contrapuntally between different water-worlds and hydro- imaginaries while exploring how such circuits have been or may be narrativised. The paper engages with colonial custom houses and their attempts to control the circulation of ‘illicit’ commodities – from banned susbtances to books – in an attempt to regulate influences that erode terrestrial power. In a sense, hydrocolonialism remains merely an aspiration towards power, seeking to extend terrestrial influence on the fluid surface of the waters. Elleke Boehmer in her paper “Fellowship and Aversion in the South: The Challenges of South-South Collaboration” explores the historical difficulties of cross-ocean interaction and cosmopolitan collaboration in the southern hemisphere. Postcolonial historians and geographers have pointed for some time to the strategic value of joining forces across the South, not least for the purposes of resisting northern dominance. To date, that dominance continues in many cases to be inimical to the South–South connection. The metropolis, the model we have for cosmopolitan interaction, is an entity conceived and developed in the Global North. Taking two illustrative scenes of non-fellowship in the biosphere of the nineteenth century southern Indian Ocean from Herman Melville and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, she offers speculations as to why this has been and still might be so – why geopolitical conditions appear averse to southern ‘handholding’ and collaboration. And yet, within the present conjuncture on the Anthropocene and the need to reconstruct cosmopolitanism, Boehmer invokes the Glissantian idea of archipelagic geographies of affinity within the fluid spaces of the ocean. If Kipling imagined a masculine affinity on the borders of empire (‘when two strong men stand face to face’), this essay while thinking through Melville and Coleridge, engages with a deeper philosophical proposition through the figures of the albatross and whale that extend the idea of a human empathy. Within a fluvial space free of the hierarchies of terra firma, the relation between human and animal becomes suffused with affect and aspiration within the boundaries of the need to kill and let live. In her paper “Found in Prison: The Poetics of Oceanic Histories” Geeta Patel probes how one may write about oceans, and speak the oceanographies of voyaging, when voyages are not the main or highlighted stories in the archives one pursues. Patel investigates a series of petitions sent by Captain Lynch, ‘a mariner of no account’, from his endless sojourn in debtor’s prison in Calcutta. Lynch sailed the Arabian Sea, through the Indian Ocean all the way to China, encountering shipwrecks, pirates, working with conclaves of islanders struggling against colonial trussing, and his own hounding by East India Company officials. Conversant in many languages but with his base in India, Lynch’s petitions lay out, through an aesthetic as finely honed as his ships, a political oceanography of the seas around the Indian Ocean. Patel’s paper goes on to show how, as he becomes more and more desperate, it is through the details of oceanic life that Lynch begins to argue for an entirely different rendition from below (unlike those given by the usual

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stable of philosophers) of belonging to a nation, one that accounts for the compensatory capitalisation of the emotional and physical labour invested by those who have no value (such as himself) in composing oceanic nationalisms. Lynch, the indebted free mariner reminds us of the histories of capital on the ocean and through the petitions to the East India Company of a “non-entity” such as Lynch we are shown how debt creates its own affinities and affiliations within skeins of affect. Rila Mukherjee turns to the littoral geography of Bengal delta in her paper “Remembering the Bengal Delta: ca. 1450–1850” to prioritise the sea as central to the imagination of the world and its connections in history, literature and the social and human sciences. It attempts to push the engagement with the sea to connect traditional narratives of state formation, community formation and migration with the Bengal delta’s formerly pervasive marine character. Braudel reminded us of the long duration of natural forces and geography as opposed to the events that characterise the flow of conventional history writing. Mukherjee’s paper assiduously shows the ebb and flow of water as it rearranges territory and social formations and reminds us of the hubris that lies behind the suppositions of humans making their own histories within landscapes. The formations of water – deltas, bays and floods – become the parentheses within which a history of region can be imagined. Following water and the territories that it creates (rather than thinking of territory as that through which water flows), she makes us aware of the unexpected affinities generated by the concatenation of natural forces that shape geography. The space of cosmopolitanism is conditioned by the actions of the fluvial which regulate the movements - old, new and contingent – of populations. Poetry is political, and a poetics that draws on the ocean – as history, as abyss, as reservoir of memory, as diasporic connection – knits together dispersed geographies through what Édouard Glissant calls “subterranean flows” of anticolonial and antiimperial affinity. Based on this assumption, Kelsey McFaul’s paper explores oceanic poetics in the Horn of Africa and the western Indian Ocean. What does it mean to read a twentieth- and twenty-first-century Horn of Africa literary archive deeply shaped by its relationship to the Indian Ocean in conversation with the black poetics of the Atlantic and Caribbean? The paper develops an analysis of weather patterns, after Toni Morrison’s phrase “just weather”, to theorise the ways in which imperial languages like English and the novel form blow into and out of the Horn of Africa’s rich indigenous language literary tradition. As an analytic, reading the weather broadens our understanding of empire and colonialism in the western Indian Ocean and Horn of Africa as comparative, entangled and iterative, including but not centring Euro-American formations. Reading the weather – as also winds, smells, etc. – makes visible processes of racialisation outside those formed in the Black Atlantic, allowing us to think complex oceanic racialisations beyond a spatiality that conflates blackness and nothingness. Reading the weather, and reading for the weather, decentres the human as the site of perception and knowledge and theorises regional ecocriticism which includes plants, animals, spirits, ghosts, ancestors, and the earth. McFaul undertakes a close reading of Igiaba Scego’s novel Adua

Introduction 11

and Nadifa Mohamed’s Black Mamba Boy (both set in Somalia), that centres the weather, as much as the olfactory element of the ocean winds as a method for attending to and contextualising the vectors of imperial language and form within the longue durée of oceanic poetics and their anticolonial and anti-imperial networks of relation.

Oceanic Narratives This section takes up narratives that are premised on the ocean and travel; it adopts the strategy of what Hofmeyr calls reading for the ocean. While both texts here – a Bengali epic and Mappila Muslim collections of battle songs – are seemingly located within courts, shrines and festivals on land, there is the constant penumbral presence of the ocean present at their making and suffusing their ethos. Swati Moitra turns to the Sufi transitions rooted in oceanic movement by focusing on the epic of Shah Alaol in her paper “Padmavati of the Oceans: Syed Alaol’s Migrant Epic”. The tale of Queen Padmini, imagined in the harsh tones of the desert and the flames of the funeral pyres, is seldom envisioned in contemporary imagination as a narrative of high seas and turbulent waters. This, despite a prominent ship-wreck episode in Malik Muhammad Jayasi’s Padmavat (1540). Syed Alaol, the early modern Bengali poet, however, begins his Padmabati (c. 1651) on a note of oceanic turbulence as he writes of his encounter with the Luso-Arakanese pirate ships that operated out of the Bay of the Bengal coast, “There was much warfare, and death/It was my good fortune in the battlefield that I came here”. Alaol’s journey ‘here’ – that is to say, to the city of Mrauk or Rosanga, the capital of the Arakan kingdom – as a slave, and his eventual rise to a renowned court poet who would adapt Malik Muhammad Jayasi’s Padmavati to Bengali, is the staple of literary histories of early modern Bengal. Reading the Padmabati (c. 1651) reveals a poet well-versed in literary traditions in Bengali, as well as Persian, Arabic, Sanskrit, Brajboli, and Awadhi. Literary studies in India have long grappled with the complexities of such ‘linguistic environments’ in which multiple languages and their literary traditions impact each other, while contemporary scholarship such as Ramya Srinivasan’s recent work on the Padmini legend explores the reimagination of the Padmavat as it traverses the subcontinent in space and time. In the light of connected histories and the rich body of Indian Ocean historiography, addressing the question of the slave trade and slaving practices in South Asia, new insights emerge into the early modern Indian subcontinent’s ties with East Africa, Southeast Asia, and China. This paper, placing Alaol – minister’s son, slave, court poet – at the centre, seeks to explore the implications of such connections for literary studies in our fragmented times. The Padmabati of Alaol is cast as a narrative of the turbulent waters, and the perils of migration. The Indian Ocean is a cultural pool of highly mobile texts and sounds. In his paper Ihsan Ul Ihthisam, examines the Pat.appa-t.t.u (war songs) genre of eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, surviving among the Muslims of Malabar, on the

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southwestern Indian coast of the Indian Ocean. Pat.appa-t.t.us enact a transoceanic translation of the senses, by transcreating warfare themes in the Arabic historio. graphical S-ıra-Mag-azı- texts and the Persian Qis.s.ah or Da-sta-n literatures into the Arabi-Malayalam Pa-t.t.u genre which bears too the influence of Sanskrit literary conventions. These translations were not a merely literary act, but a sensual recreation of the events in a vernacular Malabari soundscape, by reproducing historical experiences of the original text through the genre-specific means of Pat.appa-t.t.us. This study explores the genesis of the Pat.appa-t.t.us in colonial historical time connected through the Indian Ocean and its meta-textual claims to be part of Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit literary traditions. These texts offer a panoramic view of the socio-political atmosphere of the eighteenth and nineteenth century Indian Ocean world, addressing the conundrum of ‘connected literary sensibilities’ in the Pat.appa-t.t.us, from a Malabari perspective. These narratives are premised on the travel, over a millennium, of religious figures, traders, and labourers on the western Indian ocean between the Arab lands and the southwestern coast of India. While the patappa-ttus have come to be seen as truly regional, and located within a particular religious community, reading for the ocean reveals the long histories of circulation and a literary cosmopolitanism that undergirds the space between the middle east and southeast Asia.

Constructing Space This section engages with the construction of territory through the movement of people – voluntary and involuntary – and also engages with architecture; the actual constructions within a maritime geography that bear the impress of the travel; and the circulation of aesthetic influences. Between the occupationally motivated mobility of the dhow trade and the deep sedimentation of material forms occasioned by centuries of the movement of capital and labour, lie the contemporary forced migrations under the shadow of states and borders. States have imagined themselves as bounded territories premised on landed control and the ocean is seen as the treacherous border through which the stranger enters. Lesbos and Lampedusa have gained a purchase on global imagination ever since 2015 and the movement of large numbers of migrants from the Middle East and North Africa to Europe braving the wild seas of the Mediterranean. Here again, the binaries between land and sea have been collapsed as the migrants re-enact the movement 40000 years ago of the first anatomically modern humans out of Africa and across the oceans to as far as Oceania. Nidhi Mahajan’s paper explores a form of labour, typically undertaken by women in mobile societies that makes the seasonal movement of men possible. In societies across the Indian Ocean, mobility has been shaped by the monsoon, merchants and sailors moving seasonally between “network centres” to port cities across the Indian Ocean. As a result, homes in network centres are filled only with women, children, and the elderly for much of the year. While scholars have largely focused on the mobility of itinerant merchants or sailors (typically men), how can

Introduction 13

we understand the relationship between the labour of men on the move, and the labour of women who do not leave with them? In her paper, Mahajan argues that labour at sea, and labour at home are marked by seasonality, the monsoon providing not only an environmental backdrop for mobility across the Indian Ocean, but also shaping labour, debt, patronage and kin relations for seafaring communities in the Gulf of Kachchh. Seasonal dhow labour functions through systems of patronage, women being key economic actors in these patronage systems as they are ones who undertake the ‘labour of being in relation’, this labour maintaining existing patronage systems and creating new ones. This labour of being in relation ultimately allows men to move across the Indian Ocean whilst still being moored to the home or “network centre”. Mobility and circulation across the Indian Ocean cannot be thought of without the labour of those who do not move, maritime labour being dependent on labour at home. This paper picks up on themes raised by Gita Patel – of histories of debt on the ocean – as much as McFaul of the centrality of weather to the life rhythms of those who engage with the ocean. The monsoon winds determine the regularities of the dhow trade within which the question of a gendered labour is imbricated. Cities and architecture have shown a great propensity to being influenced and inspired through cultural interactions with other regions within or outside their political boundaries. Historically trade exchanges have engendered multidirectional flows of bodies, capital, power, culture and aesthetics. Many traders across the Indian Ocean often settled in the lands they traded with, and, over a period of time, got deeply enmeshed in local politics, culture and geographies. Among other things, these immigrant settlers became involved with new planning and architectural developments, translating their native grammar onto the local architecture resulting in a new syncretic style. Settlements along the coastal belt of India are witness to such exchanges of design aesthetic, on account of their maritime networks with cities in the Arab world as well as those in South-East Asia. Iqtedar Alam’s paper explores the effect of these collateral exchanges on the spatial grammar, structures of space, the sense of place, morphologies of concepts, inspirations, influences, and the tradition of form, function and orientation in the planning and architecture of the cities that are described in the travelogue of Ibn Battuta. In addition to descriptions of buildings, the narrative engages with city morphology, the trading commodities, the local flora and fauna, naval architecture, and the various people [local and global] he met during his journey across the Indian Ocean as an ambassador to China. Most of these syncretic styles exist to this day and are now embedded in the building tradition of these places. Alam’s paper attempts to build on the continuity of such historicity in contemporary port towns and cities like Cambay, Calicut, Kollam and Madurai. Chrisalice Ela Joseph and Vinod Balakrishnan examine the refugee crisis in the 21st century which has resulted in a shift in the character and identity of oceans from being trade and navigation routes to sites of refugee migration. Although not a recent phenomenon, migration by sea has become the centre of discussion, owing to the increased frequency of pushbacks, refoulement and sinking of the

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refugee boats. The Boat People have emerged as the face of the refugee crisis as they point to the conflict between sovereign rights and refugee rights as well as the shift in focus from terrestrial borders to oceans as alternative borders. The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nyugen and The Boat People by Sharon Bala throw light on the plight of the boat people on the open sea as well as the distrust and suspicion they face in their places of asylum. They also throw light on the imagery and discussions about the Boat People in political discourse and mainstream media. This chapter, highlights, through these texts, how refugees are denied agency and are rendered subaltern by mainstream media as well as political discourse. Drawing on Mbembe’s concept of necropolitics, it throws light on the increasing role of oceans in refugee migration and explores the concept of oceans as alternative borders as well as sites of necropolitics. The authors extend Arendt’s concept of the ‘right to have rights’ and make a case for more inclusive policies that will consider the nuances of sea migration and strengthen the case for safeguarding the rights of the Boat People. While Arendt’s work was premised on the dislocation of peoples amidst the devastation of nations following the second world war, the authors show how in the contemporary period they have become valid again in the context of the breakup of the Cold War order in Asia.

Religion, Knowledge and Law Across the Oceans The final section takes up the question of fluvial cosmopolitanism through issues of language traditions, the transmission of theological precedents, the Hajj pilgrimage and finally, the more contemporary circulation of legal precedents across the Indian Ocean. The texts that underlie the analyses in this section bear the impress of oceanic circulation and the geographies summoned up exceed both the maps of colonialism as much as the nation. Whether it is the question of the Arabic language or the map of Islamic theology, the Indian Ocean is ever present in the decisions that form and bind the community of Muslims along the coast, summoning up both the Arab cosmopolis (Ricci, 2016) as much as the space of Indian Ocean Islam. The last essay provides a horizon case to this elaboration of fluidities and movement that characterises the essays in the volume. While Dalits experience mobility, anonymity and even prosperity through their engagement with labour on and across the ocean, their terrestrial histories act like a chain around their ankles. The deep construction of hierarchy means that the processes of governmentality never live up to the aspirations of the imagination: there is no passage to dignity that is afforded to the Dalit. M.H. Ilias and Shamshad Hussain’s paper is based on their field research conducted in connection with the language documentation project on Arabi-Malayalam in Kerala. The authors engaged with hundreds of women who came to be classified as ‘illiterate’ when people turned to modern education in Malayalam and English. A sense of the ‘public’ and ‘literacy’ emerged under the sign of developmental governmentality within which the popularity of the Arabi-Malayalam language came to be seen as a sign of social and educational backwardness. Ironically, the recitation of the

Introduction 15

Mohiyuddd-ın Ma-la, a popular devotional classic depicting the history of the famous Sufi - Abdul Kader al-Jilani of Baghdad, the founder of the Qa-diri saint Sheikh Mohiyuddın order which was once considered to be an obligatory asset for girls of marriage age and an indicator of literacy in Arabi-Malayalam2 became the major target of the state campaign for ‘eradication’ of illiteracy. Muslim women whose education was confined to Arabi-Malayalam were the major victims of this campaign; they were portrayed as ‘marginalized’ in most of the narratives depicting them as illiterate and uneducated. This paper takes up the longer history of Arabi Malayalam and represents in many senses a counterpoint as well as supplement to Ihsaan Ihteshaam’s paper. It also highlights in many senses the friction encountered by an oceanic cosmopolitanism in the face of a national-secular project under the sign of an abstract modernity. ArabiMalayalam comes to be seen by the state as sectarian, notwithstanding its historical location within a wider geographical and cultural space, and modern education seeks to wean individuals away towards a uniform “regional” language and a “national” belonging. The Indian Ocean has played a central role in the formation of an Islamic cosmopolis, and recent studies have worked with the idea of the space of an Indian Ocean Islam. This again has generated productive connections between west Asia, South Asia, and South-East Asia looking at the circulation of texts, religious personnel and theological precedents. It speaks to an oceanic cosmopolitanism that while under the carapace broadly of Islam is multilingual, and multicultural (Ricci, 2016; Green, 2011; Kooria, 2022). Mohammed Shameem K.K.’s paper turns to the sixteenth century, a unique time period as far as the history of the evolution of the Islamic community in Malabar is concerned. The century had seen local ʿulama-ʾ in Malabar often being involved in intellectual interactions and correspondence across the seas with contemporaneous scholarly circles of West Asia, while at the same time coming under the scrutiny of the Portuguese imperial enterprise in the Indian Ocean. The outcome of these interactions was the production in Malabar of several religious texts belonging to the genres of fatwa- and jurisprudence literature, which in turn were to have long-lasting effects on the shaping of various aspects of Muslim life in the region during the subsequent centuries. Mohammed Shameem examines some of these fatwa- and jurisprudence texts, which have so far been little utilised by the existing scholarship despite their potential to add significantly to our understanding of the world of ideas and of the history of human interactions across aquatic spaces. His paper investigates the chief actors involved in the interactions between Malabar and West Asia, and some of the major themes of their intellectual exchanges. Probing why theologians of medieval Malabar endeavoured to network with their counterparts on the other side of the ocean despite the geographical distance, Shameem’s paper investigates how the local ʿulama-ʾ tried to address the legalistic issues arising out of Muslims’ everyday life in the socio-political setting of Malabar. While over time, local interpretation and precedent became more central to community formation, the paper explores a conjuncture in which Malabar Islam was still involved in maritime rhythms and influences.

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Muhamed Riyaz Chenganakkattil engages with hajj narratives in the age of oceanic travel, focusing on how the hajj has influenced the trans-oceanic mobility of Muslims from various Indian Ocean regions to Hejaz, a religious cosmopolis, and how they have shaped the experiences of the pilgrims and their self-narratives. These narratives written from a particular worldview explicate the nature of Muslim writings and their exchanges and encounters with the Other. Studying select narratives produced from different historical backgrounds set in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries (1870–1930), this chapter grapples with the role of cosmopolitanism and imperial encounters in forging the peculiar persona and lifeworld of Muslim pilgrims. The pilgrimage to Mecca served as a connective space across the Indian Ocean and the hajj accounts written in the period of oceanic mobility provide ways to understand political encounters of pilgrims with the imperial Other – British, Ottoman, and Wahhabi – and make sense of how Muslims articulated their experiences from their specific pilgrim habitus. The article further analyses the potential of these ‘connected stories’ to decentre the dominant discourse on travel in colonial times – the coloniser travels, the colonised do not - and how they are imbued with a decolonial possibility. Narratives written from diverse backgrounds are characterised by their deep description of pilgrim’s perceptions of various ‘Others’, especially in their encounters with the imperial and co-religionists. The world in which hajj narratives are set is deeply personal and political, leading to a conscious act of writing the self, a pilgrim self, structured on these experiences at sea and encounters of various kinds. Steven S. George explores contemporary Dalit Christian writings from Kerala. The presence of Christianity (as with Islam and Judaism) on the southwestern coast reflects oceanic travel and migration across millennia. The hybrid and cosmopolitan community of the Syrian Christians – theologically known as eastern Christianity – rests on a hierarchisation of Syrian Christians and Dalit Christians (more recent converts from untouchable castes) under colonial rule). The nation-state with its policies of affirmative action inflects the question of identity for the Dalit Christian. The paper draws theoretical arguments from the Presidential (Scheduled Castes) Order issued on 10 August 1950, and an interpretation of the first amendment of the Constitution. The former limits SC status to Hindus and the latter allocates reservations based on historical background. The paper then engages with conversion narratives of the nineteenth century and those which emerged in the twentieth century as part of Dalit movements and draws a contrast between them. The former was centred on the Bible and the Church was seen as a source of emancipation, education, and liberation. The latter is in opposition to the Church and engages with the politics of governmentality. A final section presents the short stories of Malayalam Dalit writers in a post-independent India, where they feel rejected both by the State and the Church. This portion highlights the crisis of intermediate identity and alienation felt by Dalit Christians. This paper too engages with the frictions that militate against a cosmopolitan identity and looks at the poignant instance of the transformation of an egalitarian religion by local hierarchies.

Introduction 17

Kashish Dua engages with the transoceanic history of the present. On 11 June 2019, when the Botswana High Court decriminalised homosexuality, several news reports on this court decision invariably also mentioned the 6 September 2018 judgment of the Indian Supreme Court that repealed Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. Taking this cursory reference as a starting point, the essay closely examines the reasons for such a mention and subsequently through a legal examination, ventures a comparative study of the socio-cultural and political positioning of queerness in India and Botswana. It is to be noted that the issue of homophobic law as a colonial import remains under-addressed in Indian Ocean studies. Indian Ocean studies have primarily focused on the connections the Indian Ocean has helped to establish between Africa and Asia in terms of trade relations, movement of labour, and sympathetic involvement in struggles of independence. One aspect that often gets excluded is how the Indian Ocean not only connected precolonial Africa and India but also became the route for the gradual domination of Victorian morality and the associated puritanical homophobia. What was set in place by a law under the carapace of empire, now comes to be challenged by that very structure, as dissenting judgements traverse the ocean. Dua’s essay charts the similarities between India and Botswana vis-a-vis a vocabulary for queer individuals and relationships in Indian and Batswana languages; the introduction of homophobic punitive measures through colonisation; and the transformation of this homophobia into “protective homophobia” in the post-colonial context. Keeping in view Vijay Prashad’s understanding of the “Third World as a project” and Sukarno’s 1955 speech at the Bandung Conference, the essay makes a case for global South association in the form of a coalition between India and Botswana as a step towards strategy formation for queer liberation from a local standpoint.

Conclusion To go back to the beginning and invoke again the idea of tidalectics – the constant dialectic between the land and the sea -we cannot afford to succumb to the terrestrial hubris of the nation-state with its passports and borders and notions of differential belonging. What does it mean to summon up the fluvial, the maritime, and the oceanic? What it does is to resuscitate a history of human engagement with the ocean from the very early move out of Africa; to the settlement of the earth; the voyages of travel and discovery culminating in conquest and devastation of large swathes of the Earth’s territory; the domestication of the ocean as the chief carrier of the movement of commodities; and finally, back to square one. The contemporary wave of migrations of people from Cambodia and Vietnam on to the Sri Lankan Tamils, the Rohingyas, Syrians and North Africans remind us that we are not yet fully creatures of the land. Global warming and the melting of the ice caps has meant the rising of the ocean waters submerging islands, coastal cities, and cultivable land. Jakarta, the Indonesian capital is sinking through subsidence, and a new capital must be found for Indonesia. There is speculation that the city of Mumbai may be reclaimed by the sea by 2050. Ghosh, one of the keenest

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observers of the contemporary crisis of the Anthropocene, links up the Sundarbans and Venice (two non-contiguous spaces) through the rising of the waters causing ecological devastation and creating its own refugees. Ecological migrants have become the exigent contemporary phenomenon and the fact of the rising waters will submerge both the offshore tax havens of the super-rich as much as the fragile livelihoods of those living along the coast. We need to go back to thinking with water and the oceans, if only because the narrative of nations and of the subordination of nature to human needs has generated an amnesia about the place of oceans in human life. Invocations of Derek Walcott’s magnificent poem The Sea is History usually stop at quoting the title. However, the last verses serve as a direction to the future and indicate a renewal. Looking beside us to the sea, hearing it in our narratives, speaking to sedimented memories, and touching once again the briny grain of our lives we can remember: and in the salt chuckle of rocks with their sea pools, there was the sound like a rumour without any echo of History, really beginning. These verses require us to listen to what appears distant, the sounds of the ocean that comes to us as Chinese whispers on the wind. They also require us to be attentive to the playfulness of the waters lying in a companionate relation with rocks and the land. Above all, they remind us of continuous waters, little rock pools that are a microcosm of the vastness of the fluvial expanse; what we have come to associate mundanely with taps and plumbing in our homes is connected to a vaster time and space. This is indeed a History that is really beginning redolent with the tanginess, wetness and aural force of the oceans.

Notes 1 It was he, after all, who wrote disparagingly that “the Negroes can become disciplined and cultured, but never civilized […and] the Whites are the only ones who will always strive towards perfection” (Kant, 1795: 878). 2 Within the family circle, the Mohiyudd-ın Ma-la was read, especially by women, on special occasions.

References Alpers, Edward. 2009. East Africa and the Indian Ocean. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers. Amrith, Sunil. 2015. Crossing the Bay of Bengal: The Furies of Nature and the Fortunes of Migrants. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press. Appiah, K. Anthony. 1997. ‘Cosmopolitan Patriots’, Critical Inquiry, 23(3): 617–639. 2005. The Ethics of Identity. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 2006. Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. New York: W.W. Norton.

Introduction 19

Bayly, C.A. 1988. Indian Society and the Making of British Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bhabha, Homi. 1990. ‘Dissemination’, in Homi Bhabha, ed. Nation and Narration. London: Routledge. 1996. ‘Unsatisfied: Notes on Vernacular Cosmopolitanism’ in Laura Garcia-Morena and Peter C. Pfeifer (eds), Text and Nation. London: Camden House, pp. 191–207. 2004. The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge. Bose, Sugata. 2006. A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire. Delhi: Permanent Black. 2010. ‘Different Universalisms, Colorful Cosmopolitanisms: The Global Imagination of the Colonized’, in S. Bose and K. Manjapra, Cosmopolitan Thought Zones. New York, pp. 97–111. Brathwaite, E.K. 1999. ConVERSations with Nathaniel Mackey. New York: We P. Braudel, Fernand. 1949[1996]. The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, Vols 1 and 2. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Chaudhuri, K.N. 1983. Trade and Civilization in the Indian Ocean: An Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1990. Asia Before Europe: Economy and Civilization of the Indian Ocean from the Rise of Islam to 1750. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cheah, Pheng and Bruce Robbins (eds). 1998. Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. 2006. ‘Cosmopolitanism’, Theory, Culture & Society, 23(2–3): 486–496. 2007. Inhuman Conditions: On Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Clifford, James. 1992. ‘Traveling Cultures’, in L. Grossberg, C. Nelson and P. Treichler (eds), Cultural Studies. New York: Routledge. Dasgupta, Ashin. 1966. Malabar in Asian Trade, 1740–1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Glissant, Edouard. 1997. The Poetics of Relation. Minnesota, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Green, Nile. 2011. Bombay Islam: The Religious Economy of the West Indian Ocean, 1840–1915. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2018. ‘The Waves of Heterotopia: Toward a Vernacular Intellectual History of the Indian Ocean’, American Historical Review 123(3): 846–878. Hannerz, Ulf. 1990. ‘Cosmopolitans and locals in world culture’, Theory, Culture and Society, 7(2–3): 237–251. 2004. ‘Cosmopolitanism’, in David Nugent and Joan Vincent (eds), A Companion to the Anthropology of Politics. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 69–85. Ho, Engseng. 2004. ‘Empires through Diasporic Eyes: A View From the Other Boat’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 46(1): 210–246. 2006. The Graves of Tarim: Genealogy and Mobility across the Indian Ocean. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Hofmeyr, Isabel. 2010. ‘Universalizing the Indian Ocean’, PMLA/ Publications of Modern Language Association of America, 125(3): 721–729. Jue, Melody. 2020. Wild Blue Media: Thinking Through Seawater. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Khalili, Laleh. 2021. Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula. London: Verso Books. Kooria, Mahmood. 2022. Islamic Law in Circulation:Shafi’I Texts Across the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

20 Nishat Zaidi and Dilip M. Menon

Machado, P, Sarah Fee and Gwyn Campbell (eds). 2018. Textile Trades, Consumer Cultures and the Material Worlds of the Indian Ocean: An Ocean of Cloth. London: Palgrave Macmillan. McPherson, Kenneth. 1993. The Indian Ocean: A History of People and the Sea. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Menon, Dilip M. 2020. ‘Walking on Water: Globalization and History’, Global Perspectives. doi:10.1525/gp.2020.12176. Menon, Dilip M. and Nishat Zaidi et al. 2022. Ocean as Method: Thinking with the Maritime. London: Routledge. Mignolo, Walter, 2011. ‘Geopolitics of Sensing and Knowing: On (de) coloniality, border thinking, and epistemic disobedience’, Postcolonial Studies, 14(3): 273–283. Pearson, Michael. 2003. The Indian Ocean. London: Routledge. Perera, Suvendrini. 2009. Australia and the Insular Imagination: Beaches, Borders, Boats, and Bodies. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Ramaswamy, Sumathi. 2004. The Lost Land of Lemuria: Fabulous Geographies, Catastrophic Histories. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Ricci, Ronit. 2016. Islam Translated: Literature, Conversion and the Arab Cosmopolis of South and Southeast Asia. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press. Rudner, David. 1994. Caste and Capitalism in Colonial India: The Natukottai Chettiars. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Slate, Nico. 2017. Colored Cosmopolitanism: The Shared Struggle for Freedom in the United States and India. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Steinberg, Philip. 2015. ‘Wet Ontologies, Fluid Spaces: Giving Depth to Volume through Oceanic Thinking’, Environment and Planning: Society and Space, 33(2): 247–264. Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. 2004. Explorations in Connected Histories: Between the Tagus and the Ganges. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Subramanian, Lakshmi. 1996. Indigenous Capital and Imperial Expansion: Bombay, Surat and the West Coast. New York: Oxford University Press. Sunil, K.R. 2018. Seafarers of Malabar. Kochi: URU Art Harbour. Tsing, Anna. 2004. Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Werbner, Pnina. 2007. ‘Global Pathways. Working Class Cosmopolitans and the Creation of Transnational Ethnic Worlds’, Social Anthropology, 7(1): 17–35.

PART I

The Poetics of Fluvial Cosmopolitanism

1 GOING BELOW THE WATERLINE Hydrocolonial Methods, Creolised Water Isabel Hofmeyr

Taking its cue from the oceanic theme in the title of this conference, this chapter explores the concept of hydrocolonialism. Modelling itself on postcolonial theory with its cultural remit, the idea of hydrocolonialism explores the literary implications opened up by overlaying the hydrological cycle onto imperial and post-imperial cartographies. This move requires us to think laterally, vertically and contrapuntally between different water-worlds and hydro- imaginaries while exploring how such circuits have been or may be narrativised. There is now an exciting repertoire of scholarship exploring related themes: critical oceanic studies, coastal and hydro-critical approaches, elemental and atmospheric methods. The chapter will touch on these while setting out the remit and reach of hydrocolonialism.

Hydrocolonialism, Oceanic Studies, Critical Approaches The second chapter of Orhan Pamuk’s novel The Black Book takes the form of a newspaper column entitled “When the Bosphorus Dries up”. The Black Sea, we are told is heating up, the Mediterranean cooling down. Caught in between, the Bosphorus empties. The residents of Istanbul face a festering bog dotted with artefacts: mussel-encrusted Byzantine treasures, bottle tops, moss-covered cuckoo-clocks, coffee grinders and a Cadillac amidst the skeletons of galley slaves and barnacle-covered Crusaders (Pamuk, 2011: 18).1 The receding water uncovers different ages – Byzantine, Crusader, Ottoman, and the Republic – chaotically intermingled. This submarine imbroglio reminds us that Istanbul and its maze of meanings sprawls across both land and sea. Pamuk’s chapter might usefully be taken as a speculative method for thinking about other port cities. Take as an instance the Indian Ocean port city of Durban, located on the eastern seaboard of southern Africa. For most of its length, this littoral is flanked by a narrow continental shelf. However, about 200 km north of DOI: 10.4324/9781003300939-3

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Durban the shelf bulges out and then tucks back in immediately south of the city. Durban hence has an unusually generous continental margin, or in oceanographic terms, a “terrace-like bathymetry” (Schumann, 1982: 43). Its immediate “hintersea” reaches down ten meters and then deepens gradually towards the continental shelf about twenty kilometers away. What detritus might we expect to find on this terrace? Let’s posit a date somewhere in the 1890s when the most prominent waste would have been shipwrecks. The entrance to Durban harbor had long been blocked by a sandbar with most ships having to anchor in the roadstead. Conditions were so perilous that Lloyds was reluctant to insure vessels sailing to Durban (Bender, 1988: 23). By the 1890s, however, the sandbar was being regularly dredged and Durban had become an important deep-water port, handling ever-increasing volumes of cargo to supply the burgeoning gold mining city of Johannesburg in the interior. The port personnel expanded including those in the Custom House who from time to time, added to the waste on the “terrace” by dumping unclaimed commodities or seized goods three miles out to sea. Rifles, perished sand shoes, jewellery, cigars, umbrellas were pitched into the ocean (Colonial Secretary’s Office, 1884; Attorney General’s Office, 1863, 1879; Natal Treasury, 1896). Another form of debris would have been the ritual paraphernalia from religious festivals. Durban was home to an Indian diasporic community which celebrated a range of religious events. As part of the annual Muharram festival indentured workers, both Hindu and Muslim immersed highly decorated taziyas, fifteen- to twenty-foot-high pagoda-like structures (saving only the bamboo frame for the following year) (Vahed, 2001, 2002). Hindu deities like Ganesh might have been immersed as part of visarjan ceremonies. Retired statuettes of gods and goddesses used for domestic worship might also have had a submarine ending: decommissioned religious images could not be thrown away but had to be returned to nature (Sinha, 2011). This submarine pantheon was not solely “Indian”. For African societies on the eastern seaboard the ocean was the realm of the ancestors. In Zulu cosmology, the sea housed the ancestors and was hence a place of pilgrimage, healing, purification, training as a diviner and in versions of African Christianity, baptism (Bernard, 2010). Many of these items, religious or otherwise would not have lasted beyond a few days, battered by current, corroded by salt, and consumed by microbes. Yet, adopting Pamuk’s conceit, let’s imagine for a moment that they all survived in some form. Or, to borrow another term from oceanography, we could line them up on an isobath, a line on a map that connects all points having the same depth below a water surface. These objects did not come to rest at the same depth, but in terms of their analytical consequence we might imagine them as doing so, and as forming an intellectual contour. The religious paraphernalia might suggest a contour of submarine cosmopolitanism created by the metaphysical presences implied in the physical remains (or projected onto the ocean): Hindu deities, the afterlives of Hussein (commemorated in the Muharram festival), Zulu ancestors, or in the case of the shipwrecks, the

Going Below the Waterline 25

spirit of British imperialism itself replete with the romance of maritime adventure stories – in the case of shipwrecks, gone badly wrong, but even in its failure, adding to the mystique of the ocean. The goods dumped by Customs might constitute another contour, this time of port city government and its regulations which reached below the water line (although the two contours may at times cross since both involve decommissioning of objects via the ocean – in one case, household gods put to rest and in the other, commodities that could not be sanctified for the market). A lively body of work has long taught us about port cities, their motley crews and plebeian cosmopolitanisms, on the one hand, and on the other, the heavy hand of colonial governmentality, enclosure and fortification of the harbour precinct (Basu, 1979; Broeze, 1989; McPherson, 2002). Yet, most of these studies keep their eye on land and above the waterline. How might we proceed if we wish to go below the waterline? What methods and models exist for analytically investigating the submarine world? This chapter sets out a range of answers to this question. We begin by surveying an exciting repertoire of cultural studies scholarship – critical oceanic studies, coastal and hydro-critical approaches, elemental and atmospheric methods –that provides a range of experimental underwater methods. I then outline my own entrant in this field, the concept of hydrocolonialism. This idea is briefly explained and then some of its methodological implications are explored under two headings: water in books and books in water.

Underwater Aesthetics and Submarine Methods One focus of much recent underwater scholarship has been to make visible the deep-seated land- and human-orientations of much humanities and social science research. Terming these “dry technologies”, this work aims to “immerse” concepts and theories to produce new modes of analysis. This immersion takes different analytical forms. Scholars like Melody Jue and Stacy Alaimo literally go underwater, using experiences of diving to relativise land-based epistemic perspectives (Jue, 2015: 1–12; Alaimo, 2019). Others travel underwater analytically (rather than actually) in order to “conceptually displace” technologies like writing, photography or databases to estrange “dry” ideas of inscription and archive (Jue, 2015; Jue, 2018). A related strategy involves “thinking with” species like kelp, starfish or coral, to generate new viewpoints on old topics (Hayward, 2018; Ette, 2017). Jason DeCaires Taylor’s submerged sculptures off the coast of Cancun have become a well-known focus for investigating submarine aesthetics, a field explored by a rapidly growing number of underwater artists, using performance, visual and sonic media (Jue, 2015; DeLoughrey, 2017; “Pursuit of Beauty”, 2019; Cohen, 2017). This aesthetic work encompasses an expanding field of tracing how, by what media and genres, and with what effects, the unseen ocean is mediated to human audiences. Whether speculative fiction, underwater photography, aquariums, rococo decoration, shipwrecks, conceptual poetry or harbour engineering, how do these forms mediate the undersea and how do they deal with representational problems

26 Isabel Hofmeyr

of scale, depth and visibility?2 Together these fields suggest how the elements themselves have come to be understood as media, as “infrastructures of being” and “agencies of order” (Peters, 2015; Cohen and Duckert, 2015). Within black studies, there has been a decisive underwater turn to encompass the afterlives of the Middle Passage below the waterline. The rich range of examples include the artwork of Ellen Gallagher (2019a, 2019b, 2019c, 2019d), the poetry of M. NourbeSe Philip (2008) or Nikky Finney (2013),3 the dance performances of Nia Love (2019),4 the meditations of Christina Sharpe (2–16), the electronic music of Drexciya (2017) and the underwater “aquafuturist” (Chan, 2017: 246) realm it imagines, where the children of drowned captives have adapted to submarine living. Following Sharpe’s influential interventions (2016), one important theme has been a focus on the molecular remains of enslaved bodies, their “residence time” in the ocean and the forms of ongoing suspension, in all senses of the word, that this entails. This focus on the granular and molecular intersects with Stefan Helmreich’s work (2009) on microbial oceanography, a writing or description of the ocean through microbes, a development shaped by changed funding prerogatives which have shifted from cold war-driven physical oceanography to high-tech gene-related bioscience. One might also talk of a microbial aesthetic, a strategy that characterises aspects of Ellen Gallagher’s oeuvre which can be located at the intersection of marine science and black intellectual histories. This aesthetic manifests in her treatment of Drexciya, a realm normally represented as filled with human or human-like bodies underwater. Gallagher by contrast explores Drexciya as something approaching a microbial realm. In her series “Watery Ecstatic”, she embeds minute human faces in marine plant life (Gallagher, 2019a, 2019c). Elsewhere she juxtaposes fragments of Drexciyan figures with osedax, the tiny, barely visible bone-eating worms of the deep ocean, thereby recalibrating the registers in which we must imagine Drexciya. In part Gallagher’s microbial strategies explore problems of representing oceanic scale, while also gesturing to debates on what type of speculative history Drexciya might represent. As Ben Williams observes, the sleeve notes of one Drexciyan album asks: “Have [Drexciyans] been spared by God to teach us or terrorize us?” (cited in Williams, 2001: 168). Drexciyan history is by no means straight forwardly reparative and instead suggests mutant possibilities for which a microbial aesthetic becomes one productive register of investigation.

Hydrocolonialism My particular entrant in this field of critical ocean studies is the term “hydrocolonialism” (Hofmeyr, 2019, and forthcoming; Hofmeyr and Bystrom, 2017). A neologism, “hydrocolonialism” riffs off the term “postcolonialism” and like that concept, has a wide potential remit which could include colonisation by way of water (various forms of maritime imperialism), colonisation of water (occupation of land with water resources, the declaration of territorial waters, the militarisation and geopoliticisation of oceans), a colony on (or in) water (the ship as a miniature

Going Below the Waterline 27

colony or a penal island), colonisation through water (flooding of occupied land) and colonisation of the idea of water (establishing water as a secular resource). Modelling itself on postcolonial theory with its cultural remit, hydrocolonialism links sea and land, empire and environment. It explores the literary implications opened up by overlaying the hydrological cycle onto imperial and post-imperial cartographies. This move requires us to think laterally, vertically and contrapuntally between different water-worlds and hydro-imaginaries while exploring how such circuits have been or may be narrativised. Hydrocolonialism establishes water as a productive method for doing postcolonial literary criticism. Together, these techniques add water, depth and verticality, extending landfocused and horizontal purviews. In a postcolonial context where land has been over-determined and the sea over-erased, such relativising methods become especially pertinent. Land is favoured both as an automatic platform of knowledge and as a locus of the colonial and anti-colonial nation. The ocean by contrast has been forgotten first by the emerging settler colonial nation attempting to erase its origins and then by anti-colonial nationalism turning its back on the ocean as the source of imperialism. In a post-national age, the rich and creolised meanings of the ocean both pre-colonially and colonially are starting to be more systematically explored. In a comparative spirit, hydrocolonialism brings these perspectives to the emerging debates on oceanic, coastal and elemental methods, providing a perspective from southern Africa and the Indian Ocean, to complement the north Atlantic, Caribbean and Pacific perspectives that currently lead the way. What are some of the literary methods that one might derive from hydrocolonialism? The remainder of the article explores this question in two steps: water in books and books in water. The first explores how to read for water in literary texts. The precondition for such an approach would be to recognise the creolised nature of any body of imperial or post-imperial water. The second step explores a method that I call “Books Overboard”, namely tracking those books which get turfed into the ocean and what analytical conclusions one might draw from this data.

Creolised Water Postcolonial theory has always sought to decolonise knowledge by making visible the colonial contours that shape existing curricula and canons. Likewise, hydrocolonialism seeks to critique colonial constructions and representations of water and to undo these. One method for relativising such constructions is to examine older indigenous epistemologies around water and the oceans while paying attention to the ways in which these pre-colonial and colonial hydro-epistemologies interact and creolise. An empire-wide approach requires us to think about all water as creolised. The southern Africa case provides an example where maritime imperialism, “indigenous” hydrocosmologies, slave understandings of water, and settler hydrologies converge to produce inspirited views of water which intersect and creolise each

28 Isabel Hofmeyr

other. For imperial ideologies, the ocean is infused with the spirit of empire apparent in the thrill of the maritime adventure novel, tales of naval heroes and the romance of the sea. For colonial settlers, water resources direct land dispossession, apparent in the “water-related” endings of name that frequently characterise colonial farms in South Africa (-fontein, [fountain], -stroom [stream], -spruit [tributary/ streamlet]) (Guelke and Shell, 1992: 820). Settlers were avid dam builders and as David Hughes (2006) has demonstrated for Zimbabwe, white farmers constructed dams as much for agricultural as aesthetic reasons. In the semi-arid interior, the dam with its reflective surface of water and indented shoreline approximated ideals of British landscape, derived from glacier-sculpted waterscapes and mild year-round rain. As regards vernacular hydrocosmologies, southern African waterworlds (both fresh and saline) bustle with congregations of deities, generally snake- and mermaid-like beings, ancestors and rain creatures who exercise control over rainfall (Bernard, 2010). Under Dutch and British imperialism, enslaved communities were transported from South-East Asia bringing with them Muslim ideas of water djinns (“Die Djin-Vrou”, 1939).5 These various hydrocosmologies interacted with Khoisan (“First Nation”) beliefs about water creatures producing the idea of the watermeisie/watermeid (water girl/maid) as Mapule Mohlatsi’s research has recently demonstrated (De Prada-Semper, 2016;6 Mohulatsi, 2019). This figure is now widely believed to occupy large bodies of water and is a staple of vernacular mythologies found in most South African townships (segregated black residential established under apartheid). Postcolonial literary texts in which water plays a role can be read through this creolised lens, their literary form being an imaginative intervention into the hydrosocial cycle itself. Rather like ritual specialist rainmakers who intercede via the ancestors in the hydrological cycle, literary texts intervene in our understanding of the water cycle and its narrative possibilities, especially in a context where water has proved a tenacious retainer of pre-colonial memory (Lan, 1985). Land has long been an important elemental media in postcolonial writing, with its repossession by “sons of the soil” being a major masculinist trope of anticolonial imagining. Water plays an ambiguous role in these discourses, both as repository of popular memory and vernacular hydrocosmologies while also the home of sirenlike female water spirits who seduce land-bound men (The Herald, 17 January 2017). One writer who deploys this ambiguity is the Zimbabwean, Yvonne Vera, long noted for her critique of masculinist nationalism. The centrality of water to her project has however been little remarked on, yet much of her work can be read as an exploration of immersive techniques that complicate the “dry” technologies of nationalism. One of her novels, Butterfly Burning (2000) imagines a seminal scene of colonial violence from the 1896–7 Ndebele uprising against the British South African Company in what was to become Rhodesia. In a scene that was to be photographed and to become emblematic of settler colonial violence, three Ndebele men were hanged simultaneously from the same tree. By imagining this scene underwater, Butterfly Burning (2000) estranges the brutality of the lynching, making the reader see it anew. The scene also alerts us the watery

Going Below the Waterline 29

elements of the story: as Confidence Joseph’s work (2019) indicates, the protagonist of the novel, Phephelaphi, is associated with the river and at times, takes on the qualities of a water spirit. Thinking hydrocolonially presents an opportunity to re-read old forms in new ways. J.M. Coetzee has famously discussed the South African farm novel or plaasroman, a genre in which the farmer must husband the land and make the right marriage to ensure the continuity of his estate as much as his lineage (Coetzee, 2017: 65–84). The farm functions as the driver of the plot, determining who can marry whom in order that the custodial lineage continue. Taking a hydrological perspective, one might reread these novels, factoring in the farm dam and water resources more generally since these are central to the functioning of the farm. The farm novel hence becomes the dam novel.7

Reading for Water A core method across these themes would be reading-for-water, paying careful attention to what water does in any text. Does it institute the plot (a mermaid emerges from a river), facilitate romance, destroy and erode, surface a dead body, institute family feuds, does it dry up, is it used for torture and as a weapon of political terror (drowning of political prisoners), does it irrigate the suburban garden and uphold class/race/gender hierarchies, does it house the ancestors? Another question would be what kind of water is being depicted. What are its material characteristics and is the narrative potential of these exploited (one obvious example concerns the reflective nature of some types of water)? What part of the hydrological cycle is being represented (clouds, mist, ice etc) and how does this impact on how the cycle is imagined? This attention to the hydrological/social cycle involves reading both vertically and horizontally, of thinking about water as dispersed and ever-present. Engaging with different kinds of water deepens our appreciation of water configurations as literary formations: the Mauritian cyclone (Collen, 2001) or the Atlantic hurricane as narrative form, the flood-plain, whether in Mississippi or Lincolnshire, and the narratives it entails (Posmentier, 2017: 132–57; Jones, 2012: 439–458). In terms of the ocean, there is an increasing intersection between the categories of oceanography and that of literary studies with the different “layers” of the ocean (epipelagic, mesopelagic, abyssopelagic and hadopelagic) being deployed by literary scholars as engagement with the sea becomes more material and concrete. Stacy Alaimo (2013) and Joshua Bennett (2018) have both deployed the idea of violet/ black, the dominant color spectrum of the abyssopelagic zone. Using these categories brings new lenses to Caribbean aesthetics. The imagination in Derek Walcott’s famous “The Sea is History” is largely epipelagic since formations and objects in the poem are visible. Given that his home island St Lucia perches on a volcanic shelf, this is perhaps to be expected. Other strands of Caribbean aesthetics, such as work by M. NourbeSe Philip or Aimé Césaire invoke deeper formations: the volcanic, the tectonic, and the basin and so, direct our attention deeper (Philip, n.d.).

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In the famed poetry collection Zong! (Philip, 2008) one might extend these ideas by superimposing the path of the ship over a bathymetric map to speculate where in the Caribbean Sea the massacre of enslaved people happened. In 1781, owing to poor navigation the ship, Zong sailed in the wrong direction and running short of water (or so it was claimed), the commander ordered that 142 captives be thrown overboard. No logs from the vessel survive and it is hence difficult to know exactly where the tragedy unfolded. However, using a speculative method and drawing on work by historians, one can gain a broad idea of the ship’s trajectory (map in Walvin, 2011). One possibility arising from this data is that captives were thrown overboard above the Cayman Trench, a hadopelagic zone which sits below the normal currents of the Caribbean basin and whose water is hence ancient. Drawing on Christina Sharpe’s work, we might speculate that if some molecular remains collected in this trench, they would lie largely undisturbed. The Trench is also the site of several volcanic vents, these formations generally being accepted as providing the conditions in which life first emerged. NourbeSe Philip mobilises an ancestral aesthetic in Zong! and these literary-oceanographic insights deepen this thematic of the text. An ancestral aesthetic has long formed part of southern African imaginings where the ocean and other waterways constitute the realm of the ancestors. The relationship between this realm and that of the Middle Passage has started to enter the agendas of southern African writing. Koleka Putuma’s recent influential poem “Water” which appeared as a performance piece and in print in her first volume Collective Amnesia enters this terrain (Putuma, 2017; Water, 2019). The poem refracts history through the seashore, contemplating the present-day beach as a zone of whiteness and consumerism and how this is underwritten by earlier histories of imperialism. The beach marks the bridgehead of invasion and slavery. At the same time, the poem invokes the longer maritime durée of ancestral presence, making the beach a site of pilgrimage, worship and baptism. The invocations of slavery in the poem are not place specific and hence draw together southern African hydro-cosmologies with those produced by the drowned bodies of the enslaved in the Middle Passage. Yet, southern African histories of slavery derive not from the Atlantic but from the East African littoral and South and South-East Asia. Hence to raise the relationship of how southern African oceanic ancestral traditions relate to the drowned bodies of the enslaved is to look from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. Once one takes this as a submarine cartography, the dramatis personae expand, taking in the djinns and genies of the Indian Ocean, the ancestors of the African oceans, the drowned of the Middle Passage, and the powerful figure of the circum-Atlantic water deity, Mami Wata. The current catastrophes of refugee drownings in the Mediterranean are increasingly being drawn into these configurations, most notably in conceptual poet Caroline Bergvall’s collection Drift and its invocation of Zong! (Morris, 2017). One powerful image of the Mediterranean seabed comes from Othon Alexandrakis’s work on unaccompanied migrant children. Working with survivors, Alexandrakis observed that they imagined the Mediterranean seabed as a mixture of an underwater cemetery and a toystore since they had witnessed drownings and had

Going Below the Waterline 31

lost the toys they carried with them in the crossing (Alexandrakis, 2019). The seabed is home to many genocidal legacies which persist into the present. Hydrocolonialism offers one route for engaging with this liquid violence, tracing the painful imaginaries that emerge as forms of imperial and neo-imperial power compel bodies onto, into and under water.

Books Overboard Another objective of hydrocolonialism is to take debates on print culture and put them closer to, or into the water. There is of course a rich tradition of scholarship on print culture and maritime circulation. Scholars have followed printed matter to sea, tracing what Atlantic sailors read and wrote, and how their shipboard activities shaped literary representations of the ocean (Blum, 2008; Cohen, 2010). Ships were textual machines (or “floating secretariats”) that transported and produced vast numbers of documents and publications (Killingray, 2004: 5). Books and publications were dotted across the ship: in the hold as cargo, in the captain’s cabin as parcels, with sailors, with passengers, in ship’s libraries (Delmas, 2012; Hyslop, 2009; Liebich, 2012; Maynard, 2005). Passengers themselves produced newspapers on board and scribbled poetry (Rudy, 2017; Sheikh, 2014). This scholarship suggests that this circulation produced a range of literary subject positions whether ship-board identities, diasporic alignments, imperial loyalties or colonial nationalist formations. A further methodological move is to think about books and print culture below the waterline. One route into this topic is by means of tracking books and documents thrown overboard, an occurrence more frequent that one might think. Pertinent is the practice of passengers travelling between British possessions throwing pirated reprints into the ocean as they approached port in order to avoid a fine, or seizure of the book by Customs examiners. As a passenger’s manual from 1849 indicated, these reprints “can endure no longer than the voyage” and had to be turfed (Sayer, 1849: 10–11). Also important is the routine of Customs officials dumping contraband or unclaimed or banned books into the oceans. There are other instances of books going overboard. The crew of storm-wracked sailing ships turfed cargo to lighten the vessel. The heaviest items went first, and consignments of books occasionally found themselves heaved into the ocean. Another less dramatic instance involved lazy sailors who had not kept their logbooks up to date and conveniently let them slip overboard (Schotte, 2019).8 In a more contemporary setting with books being more plentiful, throwing volumes overboard can be a sign of leaving an old life behind, as Langston Hughes did, steaming out of New York harbour in 1923 on his maiden voyage as a sailor. Leaning over the rail of the SS Malone, he hurled the books (mostly acquired during one year of a science degree at Columbia) as far as he could: it was like “throwing a million bricks out of my heart” (Hughes, 2006 31). In Michelle De Kretser’s Questions of Travel, Hesta returns by ship to Sydney after a youthful and extended sojourn in London. Standing at the ships rail in Colombo harbour, she drops eleven volumes of her London diary one by one into the water (2017: 7).

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The sea has long betokened forgetting, something imperial governments wished to do during the time of decolonisation. From the 1950s to 1970s, “sensitive” archival documents were destroyed by British colonial officials by burning or in some cases, by dumping into the sea, especially in the Caribbean. Known as “Operation Legacy”, the program was intended to avoid the press attention that was occasioned by large scale burning of documents as the British left India (Sato, 2017; Operation Legacy, 2019) These various instances of “books overboard” raise new methodological opportunities. Book historians might explore what the drowning of the book means for its afterlives and how it is remembered and recalled (see, for example, Wilson-Lee, 2019). One might also explore how long particular books would last in different marine settings. Paper generally doesn’t survive underwater except in rare instances. One recent case emerged from marine archaeological work on a shipwreck off North Carolina which turned up sixteen tiny fragments of paper found in the sludge of cannon. The vessel in question was the Queen Anne’s Revenge, the flagship of Blackbeard, the famed pirate, which ran aground in 1718. The fragments proved to be legible and turned out to be a page from the 1712 first edition of a book by Captain Edward Cooke, A Voyage to the South Sea, and Round the World, Perform’d in the Years 1708, 1709, 1710 and 1711 (North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, 2019).9 Book historians might also construct maps of sunken books and documents, as in the case of Operation Legacy. Another famous instance would be the loss of B.R. Ambedkar’s library, torpedoed in the Mediterranean (on a different ship from the one in which he was travelling) (Keer, 1971: 32).10 In a different register, one could trace sunken things as a way of reading texts, as Moby Dick (Melville, 1851 [1922]) with its incremental set of objects falling ominously into the ocean, asks us to do, constituting an analytical isobath or intellectual contour.

Conclusion Oceanic studies have long been dominated by surface approaches in which the sea is merely a backdrop for human movement. An exciting and rapidly growing field of critical ocean studies, hydrocritical and elemental media studies approaches along with hydrocolonialism offer us more challenging and exciting options which involve engaging with the materiality and submarine world of the ocean. This article has demonstrated the rich new set of methods and approaches that result from venturing below the waterline.

Notes 1 Thanks to Kate Creasey for drawing my attention to this chapter. 2 On speculative fiction, Chan, 2017; on underwater photography, Cohen, 2019b; on aquariums, Elias, 2019, 125–6; on rococo decoration, Quigley, 2019; on shipwrecks, Cohen, 2019a; two examples of oceanically linked conceptual poetry are Philip, 2008 and Bergvall, 2014; on harbour engineering, Hofmeyr, 2019.

Going Below the Waterline 33

3 4 5 6 7

Thanks to Evie Shockley for drawing Finney’s work to my attention. Thanks to Greg Vargo for this information. My thanks to Saarah Jappie for this reference. Thanks to John Parkington for this reference. Such an approach would work well in relation to South African novels like Van Niekerk (2010) and Botha (2013). 8 Thanks to Margaret E. Schotte for this point drawn from her book, Sailing School: Navigating Science and Skill, 1550–1800 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019). 9 My thanks to Diego Oliveira for this information. 10 My thanks to Sharad Chari for this point.

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Cohen, M. (2019a). ‘The Shipwreck as Undersea Gothic’. In M. Cohen and K. Quigley (eds), The Aesthetics of the Undersea. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 155–165. Cohen, M. (2019b). ‘The Underwater Imagination: From Environment to Film Set, 1954–1956’, English Language Notes, 57(1): 51–71. Collen, L. (2001). Mutiny. London: Bloomsbury. Colonial Secretary’s Office. (1884). ‘Collector of Customs asking that the Controller of Arms May be Allowed to use his Discretion with Regard to the Destruction of Certain Old Guns and Pistols in the Office of the Collector of Customs’, CSO 944, 1884/188. National Archives of South Africa, Pietermaritzburg. De Kretser, M. (2017). Questions of Travel. London: Allen and Unwin. De Prada-Semper, J. (2016). ‘“A Partial Clue”: The Genesis and Context of Qing and Orpen’s Conversation’. In J. De Prada-Semper et al. (eds), On the Trail of Qing and Orpen. Johannesburg: Standard Bank of South Africa, pp. 29–96. Delmas, A. (2012). ‘From Travelling to History: An Outline of the VOC Writing System during the 17th Century’. In A. Delmas and N. Penn (eds), Written Culture in a Colonial Context: Africa and the Americas 1500–1900. Leiden: Brill, pp. 99–126. DeLoughrey, E. (2017). ‘Submarine Futures of the Anthropocene’. Comparative Literature 69(1): 32–44. “Die Djin-Vrou” (The Djinn Woman). (1939). In Uit die Slamse Buurt: Deel 1: Kaapse Sprokies, Fabels en Legendes, retold by I.D. Du Plessis. Cape Town: Nasionale Pers, pp. 75–78. Drexciya. (2017). Wikipedia. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drexciya. Elias, A. (2019). The Coral Empire: Underwater Oceans, Colonial Tropics, Visual Modernity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Finney, N. (2013). ‘The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau’ and ‘Shark Bite’, in The World is Round. Chicago, IL: Northwestern University Press, pp. 31–37 and 56–58. Gallagher, E. (2019a). Retrieved from www.maxhetzler.com/exhibitions/ellen-gallagherdrawings-series-watery-ecstatic-zimmerstrasse-9091-berlin-mitte-june-06-july-26-2003murmur-animation-2003/zoom-w/13. Gallagher, E. (2019b). Accidental Records. Retrieved from www.hauserwirth.com/hauserwirth-exhibitions/6185-ellen-gallagher-accidental-records. Gallagher, E. (2019c). Retrieved from www.maxhetzler.com/exhibitions/ellen-gallagher-dra wings-series-watery-ecstatic-zimmerstrasse-9091-berlin-mitte-june-06-july-26-2003-murm ur-animation-2003/zoom-w/12. Gallagher, E. (2019d). Retrieved from www.hauserwirth.com/artists/2783-ellen-gallagher. Guelke, L. and Shell, R. (1992). ‘Landscape of Conquest: Frontier Water Alienation and Khoikhoi Strategies of Survival, 1652–1780’. Journal of Southern African Studies, 18(4): 803–824. Hayward, E. (2008). ‘More Lessons from a Starfish: Prefixial Flesh and Transspeciated Selves’. Women’s Studies Quarterly, 36(3/4): 64–85. Helmreich, S. (2009). Alien Ocean: Anthropological Voyages in Microbial Seas. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Hofmeyr, I. (2019a). ‘Imperialism Above and Below the Water Line: Making Space Up (and Down) in a Colonial Port City’. Interventions. doi:10.1080/1369801X.2019.1659172. Hofmeyr, I. (2019b). ‘Provisional Notes on Hydrocolonialism’. English Language Notes, 57 (1): 11–20. Hofmeyr, I. (2022).Dockside Reading:Hydrocolonialism and the Custom House. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Hofmeyr, I. and Bystrom, K. (2017). ‘Oceanic Routes: Post-it Notes on Hydrocolonialism’. Comparative Literature, 69(1): 1–6.

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Hughes, D.M. (2006). ‘Whites and Water: How Euro-Africans Made Nature at Kariba Dam’. Journal of Southern African Studies, 32(4): 823–838. Hughes, L. (1940[1993]). The Big Sea: An Autobiography. New York: Hill and Wang. Hyslop, J. (2009). ‘Guns, Drugs and Revolutionary Propaganda: Indian Sailors and Smuggling in the 1920s’. South African Historical Journal, 61(4): 838–846. Jones, D. (2012). ‘“As if the Water had but Newly Retired from the Face of the Earth”: The Flood in Victorian Fiction’. Literature and Theology, 26(4): 439–458. Joseph, C. (2019). ‘Of Snakes and Mermaids: The Representation of Water Spirits in Southern African Literature’, paper presented at the African Literature Seminar, University of the Witwatersrand,18 February 2019. Jue, M. C. (2015). ‘Wild Blue Media: Thinking Through Seawater’. PhD Dissertaion, Duke University. Jue, M. (2018). ‘Submerging Kittler’. Social Science Information 57(3): 476–482. Keer, D. (1971). Dr Ambedkar: Life and Mission. Bombay: Popular Prakashan. Killingray, D. (2004). ‘Introduction: Imperial Seas: Cultural Exchange and Commerce in the British Empire 1780–1900’. In D. Killingray, M. Lincoln and N. Rigby (eds), Maritime Empires: British Imperial Maritime Trade in the Nineteenth Century. Woodbridge: Boydell Press and National Maritime Museum, pp. 1–12. Lan, D. (1985). Guns and Rain: Guerrillas and Spirit Mediums in Zimbabwe. London: James Currey. Liebich, S. (2012). ‘Connected Readers: Reading Practices and Communities across the British Empire, c. 1890–1930’. PhD Dissertation, Victoria University of Wellington. Love, N. (2019). ‘G(1)host: Lost as Sea’. Retrieved from https://gibneydance.org/event/nialove-g1host-lostatsea/2019-11-07. Maynard, J. (2005). ‘“In the Interests of our People”: The Influence of Garveyism on the Rise of Australian Aboriginal Political Activism’. Aboriginal History, 2005(29): 1–22. McPherson, K. (2002). ‘Port Cities as Nodal Points of Change: The Indian Ocean, 1890s– 1920s’. In L. Fawaz and C.A. Bayly (eds), Modernity and Culture: From the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 75–95. Melville, H. (1851[1922]). Moby Dick, or The Whale. London: Constable. Mohulatsi, M. (2019). Black Aesthetics and the Deep Ocean, MA Dissertation, University of the Witwatersrand. Morris, A. (2017). ‘Forensic Listening: NourbeSe Philip’s Zong!, Caroline Bergvall’s Drift, and the Contemporary Long Poem’. Dibur, 2017(4): 77–87. Natal Treasury. (1896). ‘Collector of Customs Certain Firearms not Realising the Reserve Amount of Duty Placed on them were not Sold at the Sale …’, NT 64, T908/1896. National Archives of South Africa, Pietermaritzburg. North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources. (2019, 5 December). ‘Fragments of Pirate Paper Discovered and Conserved from Queen Anne’s Revenge’. Retrieved from www.ncdcr.gov/news/press-releases/2018/01/04%20/fragments-piratepaper-discovered-and-conserved-queen-anne%E2%80%99s-0. Operation Legacy. (2019, 5 December). Wikipedia. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Operation_Legacy. Ottmar, E. (2017). ‘Khal Torabully: “Coolies” and Corals, or Living in Transarchipelagic Worlds’. Journal of the African Literature Association, 111(1): 112–119. Pamuk, O. (2011). The Black Book, translated by Maureen Freely. London: Faber and Faber. Peters, J.D. (2015). The Marvellous Clouds: Towards a Philosophy of Elemental Media. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Philip, M.N. (2008). Zong!Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.

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Philip, M.N. (2019, 5 December). ‘Wor(l)ds Interrupted: The Unhistory of the Kari Basin’. Retrieved from https://jacket2.org/article/worlds-interrupted. Posmentier, S. (2017). Cultivation and Catastrophe: The Lyric Ecology of Modern Black Literature. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Pursuit of Beauty, Art Beneath the Waves. (2019, 5 December). Retrieved from www.bbc. co.uk/programmes/m00013nr. Putuma, K. (2017). Collective Amnesia. Cape Town: uHlanga. Putuma, K. (2019, 9 December). ‘Water’. Retrieved from www.youtube.com/watch?v= UGdqcEKlGhw. Quigley, K. (2019). ‘The Porcellaneous Ocean: Matter and Meaning in the Rococo Undersea’. In M. Cohen and K. Quigley (eds), The Aesthetics of the Undersea. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 28–41. Rudy, J.R. (2017). Imagined Homelands: British Poetry in the Colonies. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Sato, S. (2017). ‘“Operation Legacy”: Britain’s Destruction and Concealment of Colonial Records Worldwide’. Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 45(4): 697–719. Sayer, H. (1849). The Homeward-bound Passenger’s Companion, via the Cape: Compiled for the Use of Residents in India, and the British Possessions Adjacent Thereto; with a Tariff of Customs Duties. London: C. Beckett. Schotte, M.E. (2019). Sailing School: Navigating Science and Skill, 1550–1800. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Schumann, E.H. (1982). ‘Inshore Circulation of the Agulhas Current off Natal’. Journal of Marine Research, 40(1): 43–55. Sharpe, C. (2016). In the Wake: On Blackness and Being. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Sheikh, F. (2014). ‘The Alfred and the Open Sea: Periodical Culture and Nineteenth-Century Settler Emigration at Sea’. English Studies in Africa, 57(1): 21–32. Sinha, V. (2011). Religion and Commodification: ‘Merchandizing’ Diasporic Hinduism. New York: Routledge. Vahed, G.H. (2002). ‘Constructions of Community and Identity among Indians in Colonial Natal, 1860–1910: The Role of the Muharram Festival’. Journal of African History, 43(1): 77–93. Vahed, G.H. (2001). ‘Mosques, Mawlanas and Muharram: Indian Islam in Colonial Natal, 1860–1910’. Journal of Religion in Africa, 31(3): 305–335. Van Niekerk, M. (2010). Agaat: A Novel, translated by Michiel Heyns. Portland, OR: Tinhouse Books. Vera, Y. (2000). Butterfly Burning. Harare: Weaver Press. Williams, B. (2001). ‘Black Secret Technology: Detroit Techno and the Information Age’. In A. Nelson and T.L. Nguyen Tu and A.H. Hines (eds), Technicolor: Race, Technology and Everyday Life. New York: New York University Press, pp. 154–176. Wilson-Lee, E. (2019). The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books: Christopher Columbus, his Son, and the Quest to Build the World’s Greatest Library. New York: Scribner. Walvin, J. (2011). The Zong: A Massacre, the Law and the End of Slavery. New Haven: Yale University Press.

2 FELLOWSHIP AND AVERSION IN THE SOUTH The challenges of South–South collaboration Elleke Boehmer

Introduction This chapter explores the historical and geophysical difficulties of cosmopolitan collaboration and cross-ocean interaction in the southern hemisphere. Postcolonial historians and critics, Global South geographers, oceanic humanists and others have pointed for some time to the strategic value of joining forces across the South, not least for the purposes of resisting the predominance of northern theory – the idea that thinking from the North is the default. Critical theory and arrangements of knowledge in the northern academy consistently overlook, disregard and at best misunderstand the South, as the Global South theorist Boaventura de Sousa Santos, for one, suggests. He writes that after five centuries of colonialism, the North can no longer look at the world in anything but colonial terms, that assume a northern vantage point.1 Yet any theoretical investigation exploring concepts like the cosmopolitan through northern frameworks alone, represents a contradiction in terms. As is clear, that predominance will always present resistances to South–South connection. The critic Meg Samuelson points out that even the narratives taken to define the Anthropocene are generally pitched from a northern perspective that casts ‘more than half of the world into its shadow’ and ‘obscures the very totality that the Anthropocene is expected to represent’.2 Certainly, the metropolis, the model site we tend to take for granted as the context for cosmopolitan interaction, is an entity historically conceived and developed in the Global North. Taking two illustrative scenes of non-fellowship in the nineteenth-century far south from the writers Herman Melville and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, I offer speculations as to why this has been and still might be so—that is, why geopolitical conditions appear averse to southern ‘handholding’ and collaboration. I then consider some of the postcolonial methodologies through which South–South interaction might be ventured and pursued, in contexts where most transnational axes DOI: 10.4324/9781003300939-4

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including the scholarly and academic run north–south, if they include the southern hemisphere at all. I take inspiration in pursuing these connections from the entangled worlds dramatised in Alexis Wright’s novel Carpentaria, my third case study. Throughout, the discussion is guided by the processes of close seeing or reading and imaginative identification, that Ma-ori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith believes helps effect the ‘long-term … bureaucratic, cultural, linguistic and psychological divesting of colonial power’.3 The core idea motivating this methodology is that close reading essentially operates as a decolonial technique. In nineteenth-century literature, across the period of Britain’s second empire, the wild wastes of the Southern Ocean, or the far south, were seen to insist on the need for human fellowship and yet severely to test human capacities for survival. They did so in actual fact, as the journals and ship logs of Captain James Cook, Joseph Hooker and others show. Both of the nineteenth-century literary examples I take as case studies for this paper, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, explore these interrelated conditions, both the need and the testing. In both cases, though fellowship is essential, it is often thwarted and even deliberately denied. Reading these texts, we are struck by how often ships meeting one another on the ‘everlasting terra incognita’ of the Southern Ocean, in Herman Melville’s phrase, take pains to draw close and cross wakes, to exchange letters and greetings. Yet we are equally struck by how many times that fellowship is frustrated and refused.

Hermann Melville, Moby Dick In Hermann Melville’s huge and perennially remarkable novel Moby Dick (1851), the fateful Pequod with Captain Ahab at the helm pursues his nemesis the titular white whale from the Atlantic through the Southern Ocean and the Indonesian archipelago into the South Seas. As the Pequod follows Moby-Dick the whale, its heterogeneous crew crosses paths with a number of other whalers, including the Goney (or the Albatross) and the Rachel. These are lucky crossings in those watery immensities, yet the Pequod meets each whaler with a sense of circumspection. The crews as they pass one another often seek to reach out and exchange news and sightings. But they also have the clear sense that any exchange they do have is so transient and risky as often not to be worth it. Stormy southern spaces often seem to deliberately and sinisterly to obstruct meaningful human contact. A key instance is the Pequod’s meeting with the Goney, recounted in Chapter 52 of the novel.4 (It is worth remembering here that ‘goney’ is the sailor’s word for albatross, as Melville informs us.) The two whalers sight and approach one another south-eastward from the Cape of Good Hope, off the distant Crozett Islands, said to be ‘a good cruising ground for Right Whalemen’. The narrator Ishmael is up at ‘the fore-mast-head’ and has a good view. He notes – these are terms worth bearing in mind again when we come to Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner – that the ship has been bleached a ‘spectral’ white by the elements, and the men are long-bearded and clad in rags, so long have they been at sea. The

Fellowship and aversion in the South 39

implication is that they will be interested in contact, in reaching out. But it is not so; in fact, on the contrary: though, when the ship slowly glided close under our stern, we six men in the air came so nigh to each other that we might almost have leaped from the mastheads of one ship to those of the other; yet, those forlorn-looking fishermen, mildly eyeing us as they passed, said not one word to our own look-outs, while the quarter-deck hail was being heard from below. The crew on the Pequod cry out for news of the white whale, but some force seems to conspire in ways that prevent the Goney from giving answer. There is something that militates against that exchange – that face-to-face identification and interaction that is so fundamental to shipboard (but also cosmopolitan) life: As the strange captain, leaning over the pallid bulwarks, was in the act of putting his trumpet to his mouth, it somehow fell from his hand into the sea; and the wind now rising amain, he in vain strove to make himself heard without it. Meantime his ship was still increasing the distance between. At that point ‘the two wakes’ cross, and the shoals of fish that had been following the Pequod turn and swim away with the Goney. The Pequod is left to continue into solitary and perilous waters unsupported, even by its accompanying fish, lacking all further guidance as to the pathway ahead, driven forwards only by Captain Ahab’s solitary and monomaniacal obsession with the white whale.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Moby-Dick appeared in 1851, some 52 years after the first publication of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798), and the novel is stamped in the poem’s imaginative mould.5 We see this not least in how Coleridge’s ballad represents fellowship in the icy wastes of the Southern Ocean – that is, it casts human (as well as cross-species) exchange and support in these distant waters both as absolutely necessary, and yet as constantly imperilled, and actively avoided. There are few poems in the English language more cited and recited than the ballad-epic, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, increasingly so, in part, perhaps, because of its environmental subtext and confirmation of the extent to which we humans need and depend on one another and on the natural world. The frame narrative with which the poem famously opens sees the Ancient Mariner meeting the Wedding Guest within earshot of the church where the wedding ceremony is about to take place. A wedding is as convivial and, arguably, cosmopolitan meeting as one can imagine. But the older man detains the younger with the tale he cannot quit retelling – about a journey into the threatening ice-fields and enclosing fog beyond Cape Horn where he, the Mariner, shoots and kills an albatross that shows the crew fellowship.

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Interestingly, under the global lockdown in 2020, the Rime’s insistence on the need for us to show fellowship, to respect each other and act in ways to prolong and enhance life and support the commons, rather than the opposite, understandably became pertinent for many people. The poem’s cosmopolitan salience was recognised in a project at the University of Plymouth, in the United Kingdom, the Big Read Ancient Mariner (April 2020). The project involved performers, writers and poets coming together to read the poem and to meditate on the Mariner’s ‘offence against nature’ and the fatal consequences of the disconnect between human and natural worlds that it dramatises.6 For Coleridge, the Southern hemisphere, and especially its cold extremities, was a place of fantasy, in which nature manifested in strange and spectral ways. Coleridge had read Captain James Cook’s journals and had in fact been taught maths at school by one of the scientists who had sailed with Cook on the Resolution. However, as inspired by the vast phantasmagoria of southern ice though the Rime is, Coleridge is especially interested to emphasise the hostility of this environment and the equivalent inhospitality of the Ancient Mariner’s response to nature. In this way, he reinforces by contrast the importance of fellowship, such as the albatross shows. In effect, the poem narrates the disaster that unfolds when we refuse or deny such fellowship. As in the crossing scene in Moby Dick, the possibility of fellowship and exchange is offered to the Mariner, yet, needful though this may be, it is negated. The Mariner is forced to learn from hard experience that community in these forbidding latitudes – or anywhere – is that much more important to express and to cherish. The poem insists on horror of what happens when, as with Melville’s Goney and Pequod, we pass each other on the high seas of the South – we can take this metaphorically – and refuse to reach out, offer hospitality, and establish reciprocity. More than that, when we kill or harm those who do show us fellowship.

The peripheral South Why do I begin with these euro-canonical tales of what are essentially colonial journeys? I do so, first, because as well as being canonically authoritative they are also powerful symbolic expressions of European colonial incursion into the South – expressions that may reveal more than they in fact know, or at first betray. Second, I do so because they give us a clear and indicative sense of how the North sees the South – as distant, peripheral, lesser, minor and exploitable, an area in which, in the 1820s and 1830s, as Melville records, whales and seals could be hunted with impunity because their killing fields were invisible to all but a very few. It is true, of course, that far southern geographies are in some ways inimical to human exchange. To begin with, there is a lot of sea in the southern hemisphere, about 80 percent to the northern hemisphere’s approximately 60 percent. Therefore, we also find proportionately much less land. To emphasise the point with a geographical correlative, it is salient to recall here the peninsular and island forms of the land masses of the southern hemisphere, as it were extending ‘down’ or

Fellowship and aversion in the South 41

southwards from the equator. After a certain point these landmasses attenuate southwards, then drop away into the Southern Ocean. This extent of ocean means that links across the vast stretches of water and some of the most powerful currents in the world, are that much more challenging to establish technologically as well as economically. And this is to say nothing of the infrastructural networks inherited from colonial times that already entrench north-south axes of exchange, even in the Global South. As Tim Marshall writes in Prisoners of Geography, the southern tips of South America and Africa are extremely far away from anywhere. The geography works against most forms of lateral collaboration.7 Yet, as against that vision of huge and haunted seas, and severe isolation, the two case studies also remind us by contrast of the importance of building fellowship and cosmopolitan connection everywhere, certainly, but also across the hostile South. They draw attention to the urgent necessity of resisting disconnection and distrust, which in both cases is introduced from the North. As the texts instruct us, persisting with disconnection and dismissal will have the effect of imperilling us all.

South–South connection Postcolonial critical theory emerged in the Anglo-American academy in the 1980s as a framework through which to critique the inequalities and disparities in power between the North and the South – or, in the terms of the time, the west and the rest – brought first by colonialism and then by neoliberalism. Though it sought and encouraged colonial dissolution and anti-colonial resistance – hence postcolonialism – the field inhabited from the start a contradictory position. To put it schematically, postcolonial criticism analysed and deconstructed European or northern dominance, yet it generally did so from a northern position. More specifically, postcolonialism often advanced cosmopolitan values, yet rarely found cosmopolitanism to be located in the South.8 It tried to acknowledge and build on so-called ‘subaltern’ knowledge – critical perspectives developed by formerly colonised and marginalised cultures and peoples – yet it sometimes did so in ways that were, or might be accused of being, appropriative and hierarchical. However, alongside or even as part of these contradictions, postcolonial analysis has always acknowledged, even if only in part and only for some of the time, the critical and political salience of Global South and South–South affiliations. Postcolonial approaches sought and seek to draw upon and build an understanding of the world not as arranged according to a core-periphery, European-centric model, but as following lateral, networked and periphery-periphery lines of connection. Moreover, the approach drew some of the first models for such affiliation from the period of formal decolonisation, from the international or tricontinental solidarity of that time and from the cross-national transference of anti-colonial methods and ideas it stimulated. In short, it drew inspiration from global ‘nexuses of communication and exchange’, networks that facilitated an at once cosmopolitan and ‘nationalist interconnection’, a southern or South–South ‘resistance in interaction’.9

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Resistance in interaction is powerfully exemplified in the sharing of the techniques, tactics and even the rhetoric and vocabulary of anti-colonial resistance between southern spaces. Here we might think of, say, Gandhi’s mosaic composition of Indian Opinion in Durban in the early twentieth century.10 Or Indian nationalists borrowing techniques of boycott from the Irish. Such dialogues between anti-colonial and anti-imperial activists symbolised even if they did not always actually contribute to a ‘global disavowal of the imperial world order’, and they did so through exchange.11 As in these examples, the strong emphasis is on forging links, dialogues, sharing, exchange – in short, on cosmopolitan connection across the South – even though those spaces may have seemed or been represented as hostile or resistant to such connection. What is at stake in our drawing out and highlighting cosmopolitan exchanges in the South? Most obviously, forging links among and between others is a powerful way of interrogating global cartographic categories. Such investigations defy North–South axes and structures of power including dominant characterisations of the Global South. They also importantly de-privilege the seemingly primary relationship of European self and other, or of coloniser and colonised that organises postcolonial criticism itself. As I have suggested before, in Empire, the National, and the Postcolonial: ‘when we … swivel this conventional axis of interaction laterally’, the ‘contact zone’ of ‘cultural and political exchange conventionally located between the European colonial centre and its periphery will instead be positioned between peripheries’. This allows us to be in ‘intellectual partnership with epistemologies grounded in South–South relations’, sharing conceptual ground whilst also reflecting critically upon it.12 As Frantz Fanon claimed some sixty years ago, anticolonial and nationalist resistance movements are by no means sealed off from one another in hermetically closed national spaces. In the oppressive conditions they share with other colonised peoples, they find ‘informatory’ and ‘operative’ energies emerging from related and interrelated contexts. Stirring images of preparedness and zeal spring out of situations of resistance analogous to their own. These models, Fanon writes, come to life ‘with peculiar intensity’ at that time when a movement finds itself ready to go forward to change the course of colonisation and ‘make history’.13 Indeed, as we see across the twentieth century, though anticolonial and southern resistance movements may be nationally focused in terms of political organisation, they are often also cross- or transnational in their range of reference and reception of influence. Or, as Ania Loomba insightfully summarises: ‘anti-colonial resistances … inspired one another, but also debated with one another about … how best [colonial authority] should be challenged’.14 On this basis, we might then propose that ways of achieving an anti-imperial, decolonial or resistant consciousness, may be developed not only outside the unitary domain of the nation per se, but specifically within other similarly antiimperial contexts. When these contexts link up across the ‘minor’ hemisphere, and across the divergent geopolitical spaces of the Global South, these links will work at least in principle with especially resistant force, in ways to encourage collaborative and cosmopolitan exchange.

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There are provocative, not to say constructive imaginative links to be made between these ideas of South–South connection and the archipelagic readings we find in island and ocean studies. This may not be surprising considering that this is an approach coming out of the South, in this case the Pacific, and in that sense is attuned to its spaces, especially its vast marine spaces. Here, too, cosmopolitan values are to the fore, but they are filtered through these other geographies – nonmetropolitan, dispersed, littoral, scattered, adapted to a different set of networks. As Elaine Stratford has argued, archipelagic understanding ‘radically [re-centres] positive, mobile, nomadic geopolitical and cultural orderings’ between communities. It promotes what Jonathon Pugh further terms ‘assemblages, networks, filaments, connective tissues, mobilities, and multiplicities’.15 It shows us a South that is interconnected across vast distances by adaptative creative imaginations – precisely the kinds of imagination that foster cosmopolitan exchange.16 Holistic archipelagic reading, as the Pacific islands theorist Epeli Hau’ofa observes, respects the character of the South by channelling how its oceanic energies interact with and sweep around its land-masses. It invites us to think ‘pluricentrically’.17 Above all – if we turn back now to Coleridge and Melville – an archipelagic vision makes it possible to see, build and assert connection including even those regions where vast ocean spaces appear to militate against it. Critical accounts of the South created in the South and linked across the South, like archipelagic thinking, and supported by it, can be used to challenge and revise perceptions of these areas as merely marginal and minor, as external and out there, and so, by extension, as non-metropolitan, other, and anti-cosmopolitan. Instead, they encourage us to imagine southern worlds in relation to each other, as speaking from their different positions in distinctive crisscrossed, pluricentric ways. The pluricentric relates to the interlaced worlds of mangrove mudflats, oceanic depths, underground caves, Indigenous community and ancestral memory evoked in Indigenous Australian writer Alexis Wright’s visionary Carpentaria (2006).18 The novel presents at this point as an object lesson that works with complementary yet countervailing force to Melville and Coleridge. A powerful, often disturbing epic set in the Gulf country of north-western Queensland, Carpentaria is sometimes described as magic realist, and it is certainly multi-layered and dense with dreaming. Its perspective is at once northern and southern; the community of Pricklebush that is central to the action is located on the northern rim of the southern continent of Australia. In the novel, Wright maps affinities with place through myth, and with myth through place. Throughout, past and present interweave and intersect. Chronologies collapse, as they do in myth. Echoes and hints from Indigenous storytelling traditions repeatedly recall the reader or listener to the links between people and other living entities, including the land and the sea, and the past, the distant past, and the present. Community leaders ‘grab’ hold of natural forces in their mind and live with them in story form ‘as [their] father’s fathers did before him’. The interconnected awareness that we find in Wright’s work encourages an understanding of the relationality so vital to human existence on this planet (and certainly to the

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cosmopolitan). Or, as Doreen Massey’s work explains, wherever we consider ourselves always already in inter-relationship, this brings a sense of co-presence, a sense very much in the forefront of the Pricklebush community leaders’s minds. We made aware of the ‘radical contemporaneity’ of ‘coeval others’, and the simultaneous existence of various diverging and converging narrative worlds.19 Such awareness, I submit, is essential for cosmopolitan exchange in the South.

Southern biospheres I want to move to a close with another vision of southern exchange – an environmental vision like Wright’s – and one that rises out of the huge and hostile Southern Ocean itself, with which I began. It is a vision of southern interconnection that offers another interesting counterpoint to dominant north-south axes, not least to approaches to the South as other, prey, victim and exploitable resource, as epitomised in the Mariner’s treatment of the albatross and the Captain Ahab’s of the whale (and the treatment of Country by the mining company in Carpentaria). However, even as this vision incorporates ideas of archipelagic reading, it centres upon other-than-human life and so requires an entirely different understanding concept of the cosmopolitan – which, after all, is predicated on human exchange and tends at least conventionally to overlook other life forms. A south-centred vision of the planet immediately swims into focus when we direct our attention to the fantastically interconnected biosphere of the Southern Ocean – that part of the world least observed by humans, yet upon which any lingering stability in world climate depends. Far from being remote and safely excluded from our awareness, these regions are in fact fundamental to our living, cosmopolitan human lives. As Joy McCann writes in Wild Sea, her history of this Ocean, its ‘ceaseless movements’ of wind and water exist in ‘power alliance with Earth’s other natural forces’.20 Within its latitudinal band about 60 degrees south there is probably more circulation and entanglement than within any other like band on earth. Human networks here are relatively insubstantial, certainly since the demise of industrial-scale whaling in the nineteenth-century, but other entanglements are lively. We need think only of the complicated far-ranging migratory pathways of seals, whales, sharks and even penguins. Why is this far south vision so salient in relation to a discussion of the cosmopolitan, even while it may seem so removed from it? In short, because it is important to express fellowship even within the far reaches of the Cold South. The longer answer to these questions lies embedded within the terms of address of the cosmopolitan itself: the idea of being a citizen of the world. And this, I would venture to say, demands our taking more account of our world’s far outer edges. These peripheries are not external to cosmopolitan worlds, but imbricated with them, within complex finely balanced systems, and cosmopolitan life is dependent on their continued existence, and the continuing equilibrium of these systems.21 If, as Bruce Robbins writes in Perpetual War, cosmopolitanism in the traditional sense of a ‘primary loyalty to the good of humanity as a whole’ must be our response to our planet’s state of ‘perpetual war’ (not only between human beings but by humans upon other species), then this demands a

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flexible commitment to ‘varieties of multiple belonging’. It means paying better attention to communities, cultures and species outside of our own, including in the overlooked Global South and Far South.22 Neither region is counter to the cosmopolitan, or its mere external or underside. Rather, these spaces are interactive and symbiotic with it. It is this vision of fellowship even though at great distance that a more global and environmental understanding of the cosmopolitan demands.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have tried to suggest cultural and literary geographical dispositions directed from the South make possible different, and even decolonial, vectors of planetary understanding and of cross-oceanic connection. Indeed, I would go as far as to say that these decolonial vectors are especially pronounced and especially potent when they operate at least initially from the South, through South–South collaboration. I have also suggested that lessons about the importance of paying this kind of interconnection more heed, come to us from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Moby-Dick, and also, in a complementary way, from the land-and-sea-based Carpentaria. These three great texts of the South and the Far South offer object lessons in what happens when we treat these interrelationships and co-dependencies with contempt. My reading depends fundamentally on making a strong claim for literature. It takes as read not only that literary writing provides us with an instrument to reflect at once critically and creatively on the world and to understand how we are disposed spatially and in relation to others. It also suggests that literary writing makes possible an investment in place, a connection to context that establishes and fosters feelings of hereness and so of belonging, as we find demonstrated in Wright’s work. Confronting the dominance of theory from the North, literary reading provides us with procedures and images that animate southern texts and concepts, encouraging us to conceive, imagine and reimagine the world from the South. The Far South of the world – its remoteness, its fine intricate balance of currents and ocean life – compels writers, readers and critics to ask ourselves questions about how we represent responsibly and relationally. It invites us to resist the complicity of northern theory and of metropolitan cultures with the evasions and concealments of the Global North, and instead pay proper heed to planet-wide commonalities and correspondences, and the sense of mutual (I might say cosmopolitan) responsibility that flows from these. True cosmopolitanism is dependent on the need to recognise the interdependence – South–South, North–South, North–North – of all life on earth.

Notes 1 Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Epistemologies of the South (New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 2014), p. 19. 2 Meg Samuelson, ‘Thinking the Anthropocene South’, Contemporary Literature (2020). www.academia.edu/60760978/Thinking_the_Anthropocene_South?email_work_card= view-paper. Accessed 3 November 2021.

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3 Jo-Ann Archibald, Jenny Lee-Morgan, and Jason De Santolo (eds), Decolonizing Research: Indigenous Storywork as Methodology (London: Zed, 2019). See also: Sarah Comyn and Porscha Fermanis, eds, Worlding the South (Manchester: Manchester University Press), 2021. 4 Hermann Melville, Moby Dick (London: Penguin, 1984), pp. 338–40. 5 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1834). www.poetryfounda tion.org/poems/43997/the-rime-of-the-ancient-mariner-text-of-1834. Accessed 4 November 2021. 6 See Philip Hoare, ‘Into the Deep’, The Guardian Review (25 April 2020), pp. 20–21. Hoare talks evocatively about the poem’s ‘narcotic wildness’ fuelling its modern-day sonic and more resonances. That Coleridge was part of Dissenter and Abolitionist circles, and himself gave and inspired memorable (re)readings, meant that early recitations of the poem impacted far and wide, upon Mary Shelley’s creation of Frankenstein’s Creature, Thomas De Quincey’s opium dreams, and on Moby Dick, among others. Hoare’s collaborators in the Plymouth project are Angela Cockayne and Sarah Chapman. 7 Tim Marshall, Prisoners of Geography (London: Elliot and Thompson, 2015), pp. iii, 245. 8 Robert J.C. Young, Postcolonialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 58. 9 See Elleke Boehmer, Empire, the National and the Postcolonial (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); and Empire Writing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). See also: Imaobong Umoren, Race women internationalists: activist-intellectuals and global freedom (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2018). 10 Isabel Hofmeyr, Gandhi’s Printing Press: Experiments in Slow Reading (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013). 11 Elleke Boehmer and Dominic Davies, ‘Postcolonialism and South-South Relations’, Routledge Handbook of South-South Relations, eds, Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Patricia Daley (London: Routledge, 2018); Robert J.C. Young, Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 19. 12 Boehmer, Empire, the National and the Postcolonial, pp. 3–4. 13 Boehmer, Empire, the National and the Postcolonial, pp. 3–4. 14 Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 2–4. 15 Elaine Stratford, ‘The Idea of the Archipelago: Contemplating Island Relations’, Island Studies Journal, 8(1) (2013), 4; Jonathan Pugh, ‘Island Movements: Thinking with the Archipelago’, Island Studies Journal, 8(1) (2013), 12. 16 See Antoinette Burton and Isabel Hofmeyr, ‘Introduction’ in Antoinette Burton and Isabel Hofmeyr (eds), Ten Books That Shaped the British Empire: Creating an Imperial Commons (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014), p. 1. 17 Epeli Hau’ofa, We Are the Ocean: Selected Works (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008), p. 31. 18 Alexis Wright, Carpentaria (Sydney: Giramondo Press, 2006). 19 Doreen Massey, For Space (London: Sage, 2005), pp. 6–9. 20 Joy McCann, Wild Sea: a history of the Southern Ocean (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019), p. 190. 21 See George Monbiot, ‘Capitalism is killing the planet’, The Guardian (30 October 2021). See www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/30/capitalism-is-killing-the-planet-itstime-to-stop-buying-into-our-own-destruction. Accessed 4 November 2021. 22 Bruce Robbins, Perpetual War: Cosmopolitanism from the Viewpoint of Violence (Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2012), pp. 1–3.

3 FOUND IN PRISON The Poetics of Oceanic Histories Geeta Patel

Introductory covenants1 I want to narrate a tale, a sailor’s shanty, about one of the many characters that enliven the stories in my writing on historical pensions, insurance, credit and debt.2 One such character is Captain Francis Lynch, around whom this paper is crafted. Lynch was a free mariner (not attached to a company or the Crown, though he was drafted by both) who cruised between the East African coast and as far as the Philippines. Lynch tacked in and out of the many islands that make up the ‘Spice Islands,’ found himself indebted beyond repair and floated a series of pleas from prison that form the basis of my own meditations on oceanic histories and imaginaries. These are stories from the annals of those such as the mariner Lynch who are without any significance in more conventional histories; those whose protagonists are drawn up through lives knotted into one or another kind of capital. All their stories, as so many of these are, are told, and then found by someone such as I, in piecemeal retrospect – as though their archives were flotsam from a wreck floating up a scrap at a time indexing a smidgen from a life, a jiffy gone by. All of them are about claims that these people with little value are pursuing, turning to their own archives as their evidentiary material, and in the case of mercantile sailors these archives are glued together from captains’ logs, from memories and account books.3 These compose the repertoire of what Fahad Bishara and so many others call microhistories – and in my case, historical jetsam of the nonentity, which nonetheless gives us leverage that the usual historical fare does not. And in Lynch’s case, the vagaries of ocean-fare, sea faring must be convincing to those who are either tied down to terra, are land bound, or pursue the sea along routes that don’t entirely tally up with Lynch’s.4 But the point I make in each instance is that it is through those who do not seem to be of any accord that one can see something profound, even transformatory, about DOI: 10.4324/9781003300939-5

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capital and what shapes its conditions. Beyond this, these people of no account, during times of dire tribulation, often produce the conditions for such transformations; even as those times of crisis provide the vantage points, buoys, through which everyday habits inculcated through, and that underpin political economies drift to the surface into view. These actors who don’t matter much to the historical record, substantially rescript, remap, reorganise or upturn the failsafe narratives that ballast histories of capital. Following upon a now robust, heartily conceived, flourishing literature on oceans I want to ask, as rosters of others have done, once more. Taking Dilip Menon’s punchy phrasing over, (Menon 2020) how does the fluvial liveness of an affective seascape floating in on his pleas, which in Lynch’s case, courses between despair and sympathy into benevolence, suggest a vantage point to look into capital, compensation, trust, and island economies flowing through interstitial oceanic politics?5

Mariner’s straits: The hydrogeographies of political aesthetic “I can solemnly declare on oath to the Governor General in Council and likewise prove … that when I incurred the losses and expenses I was not worth an anna in this world – thus I have from this and other voluntary services rendered to my king and country so completely ruined myself that I am afraid I shall not be able now to extricate myself from my debts all the days of my life, by any employment whatsoever which I may be able to procure in the mercantile line which is evident to all my friends and acquaintances in the town of Calcutta. Labouring under the distressed circumstances above mentioned, I hope that the noble the Governor General in Council will be pleased to take my distressed case into their various consideration and afford me that justice which the British nation is renowned for its benevolence to the poor and deserving, by ordering the total amount of my claim as undermentioned for interest and the losses already stated to be paid me, together with such remuneration as I may be thought deserving of.”6

These are the closing pleas in a concluding memorial by Francis Lynch sent on a merchant vessel by the Governor General in Council in Calcutta to the Court of Directors of the East India Company in London (and which tacked back and forth between the two with years in between) in 1806. Lynch is netted in a financial mess by this time in 1806 and attempting desperately for the eighth time to beg for compensation. Lynch owes money to pay off insurance policies he has been forced to buy to supplement those he already had to take on the boat he was sailing. He had goods in hock to investors with whom he had gone into a scheme to trade as a one-fourth partner, a business proposition that floundered for reasons I will go onto explain – and that are entailed in oceanic political geographies, or oceanic cosmopolitics. As a result, Lynch had to borrow money from unspecified Bengali financiers as well as from his other accountants, a British firm in Madras, Joseph Barretto & Company. And the problem was that no one was willing to roll over his debt, that is lend him money to pay off, yet again, his layers of creditors.

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Lynch’s creditors are landlubbers and his ventures oceanic, and this sets up, coagulates into fiscal incommensurabilities where the creditors have no capacity to tally up the seafaring vagaries that beset Lynch. Lynch is a key player in a roster of interwoven sagas that are chock a block with many more familiar names than his – names that are both well-known as well as more incidental, but few are more insignificant than his. We find him skulking in the archives as he traverses a rather fraught period of what I term European interstitial (between free mariners, companies and countries) oceanic history.7 Lynch comes to archival notice when he lays a series of financial claims before the Governor General in Council in Calcutta; each of his eight valiantly composed attempts meet with either a negative response or one that is so lukewarm, or halfbaked that Lynch is, to use his own language, compelled to ask again. It is only through the constantly refashioned aesthetic composition of claims in the form of what the East India Company sometimes calls petitions (or epistles, pleas, memorials) and in Urdu/Farsi we might term a faryaad, an arzi or an arzdasht, that Lynch narrates that we, as readers, come to understand something of not just the various journeys on which he embarks.8 Through his sojourns, we come to see what surfaces and seems to count simultaneously in shaping and hewing claims and in routing political geographies of oceanic entanglements.9 One of Lynch’s many travails that I will chronicle here is set between the 1790s and 1810s. As the story goes, Lynch, on one of his stopovers in Calcutta in August 1798 met a Royal Navy Captain, La Sybelle’s commander Stephen Cooke who has been stuck on land in the repair yards in Calcutta on ships repairs. Cooke begged Lynch’s aid and promised, according to Lynch, that he would not only be compensated for every incurred expense but also ‘take further notice of his service.’ Apparently, Cooke had been chasing down a French frigate near Prince of Wales Island (now Penang). Somehow a whole cohort of Cooke’s sailors on boats were captured at Pollock harbour, cast adrift and detained by pirates (who in many cases were groups of local sailors struggling to hold routes and wield authority against Dutch incursions).10 Cooke asked Lynch to stop in at Magindano (Manguidanao) if he was going that way, to inquire about the fate of his sailors. Lynch was on his way on the ship Brisk in November 1798 soon after Cooke’s urgent request, and he goes out of his journey to attempt to stop, and driven off the coast by a gale, is forced into a fortnight’s delay. The pacing of the sea’s moods, an unanticipated gathering of wind, its thrum and roar tugging against water logged sails that are being rushed down, sailors’ clothes clinging, bodies angling against waves breaching and breaking over them, struggling to beach: those tempos throw the measure of routed, routine time, and the point on a map where the ship is expected to put into port into utter disarray.11 Place and time have been displaced or misplaced – ‘Lynch is delayed and has to go out of his way.’12 The next year in 1799, again in November which is sailing season for its ‘more favourable winds’, Lynch is off to Amboyna on the ship Bangalore. He is in the employ of Barretto and he himself holds a quarter of the concern. In addition, Lynch has also taken a respondentia, a loan on goods on the collateral of his name

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(at what we would consider an exorbitant rate of 40% interest for 12 months), goods on which the investors who have joined with Lynch hope to make a substantial profit. Lynch docks at the island of Jooloo (Jolo) in the Sulu Sea and is informed by a prince of Maguindanao that the local Sultan has captured nine of Cooke’s twelve seamen and is holding them as slaves.13 The rest are dead. And the local Sultan is willing to release them on ransom.14 Lynch again goes out of his way to attempt to retrieve the sailors. Lynch arrives at the port and parleys for their release from the Sultan; finessing his way through a litany of complex, and as he explains, ‘importunate circumstances’ that place him over and over in the path of danger. To parley with the Sultan, he must try to anchor at a place without any reasonable anchorage, two cable lengths from the beach, so coming ashore is onerous and in case of unexpected squalls there is nowhere that Lynch and his shipmates can easily disembark. The Sulu Sea is where Sama Bajau, or Bajau Laut come and go, and Lynch is profoundly ill at ease because he is outside his usual comfort zone of knowing, away from Tidore and Ternate for example, where he is conversant with communities to whom he is legible and who have a history of parlaying with him.15 Lynch redeems the sailors in one of two ways. He pays the Sultan in the form of Spanish dollars (the only reliable currency accepted for trade in many regions) for which four sailors are let go. The second is through goods, which include Patna chintz, pearls, iron, muslin straw hats, European shoes, knives, scissors, razors, tea, sugar, that Lynch off loads on the Sultan’s word that Lynch will be adequately compensated in wax (used for candles in London). However, these goods (which Lynch lists) are held/detained by the Sultan as additional compensation (for the sailor’s upkeep and for ransom) before he releases the final batch of four. On his way to the next situation, Lynch encounters Orpheus, a Royal Navy frigate, and ferries over the sailors, for whom he receives a receipt from the captain. The chit for bodies stages evidence – of the burden of a transactional economy at sea – one handover among the amassing debris of Lynch’s store, from which he pulls over and over.

Choice pertinent pointers, interstitial economies, flowering the coralline16 In order to understand the conditions that prevail when Lynch is advancing his claims, a few rather schematic particularities that float into the mix, which further or curtail Lynch’s case, are worth noting/logging. The Bank of England is short of specie and is living off paper money (aka a promissory note based on trust in their word); the admiralty needs money to fund England’s war with France; the Dutch and Spanish are entailed in the warmongering negotiations; and in Holland the pro-British and pro-French parties are jockeying for power. (Tarling 1962) Napoleon has taken over Holland. The anti-slavery advocates are gaining ground in London even as the independence of the USA is a sore political point. The East India Company has haemorrhaged money on loans to fund the wars against the

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Marathas and Tipu Sultan (who is considering shipping off a deputation to the French in Mauritius under François Ripaud who has arrived at Indian shores to tender assistance). There is famine in the Madras region and the East India Company at Fort St George is unable, like Lynch, to roll over their own loans (until the Madras factors got a pension fund going (Patel unpub.). So Madras, in a shortfall of trust, is scarce on food and specie and is leaning as well on Bengal to redeem their bonds. Meanwhile the silk, tea, opium nexus is swallowing specie – and the straits of Malacca and other routes that open up shipping lanes to China are under the gavel in the fraught back and forth between France, Britain and Holland. We come to learn, through each financial plea that Lynch puts forward (and the case of the trapped sailors is only one instance in several) something about Lynch himself. Francis Lynch is a ship’s captain, a commander of a series of different sailing vehicles. And his ocean-roving-scape spans the Indian Ocean – from Mauritius to Manila. But the complex ocean topographies that orient his labour and life, or through which Lynch traffics, and from which he draws his descriptions of and analyses of “capital” and what can be seen as proper labour in the neo-Marxist and anachronistic sense entails India, Africa, South-East Asia, London and Europe (and perhaps even the Caribbean). Lynch is trying to get the East India Company officials and the Admiralty – the Governor General in Bengal, Madras factors and the Court in London as well as the Lords Admiral (and through them the Foreign Secretary as well as the Prime Minister in London) to reconceive, or more aptly re-imagine capital: what falls under the purview of objects and routes that matter. Many of these objects and routes manifest what we might otherwise see as inconsequential – as in the case of the ransomed sailors: humanity, trust, time forsaken, off-place, detours, kindness and benevolence and promises. We also ascertain or discover that Captain Lynch trades on his own account, in other words for himself and not for the East India Company, though the labour that funds his traffic sometimes unwittingly pulls him into the East India Company’s ambit as well as into the service of the Admiralty and the British Government in unexpected ways. Lynch finds himself swept up over and over in the riptides of interstitial oceanic political economies (cosmopolitics), and they service the readings of capital that he ventures in his entreaties and claims. He served as a translator on record for James Oliver and Robert Townsend Farquhar and like Farquhar was proficient at many regional languages including Malay, had close connections with regional power brokers for whom he often argued and from whom he was often given notice of Dutch violence against small communities. (Miller 2011, Tarling 1978) Lynch was intimate with all the small islands and archipelagos along many of the sea routes in South-East Asia. His ships carried letters of marque for the East India Company and the Crown or Admiralty and were often detoured from their trading routes for their missions, invasions (Java) and to reconnoitre with ‘pirates’. Many British settlements were finagled through his delicate transactions on behalf of crown and company – Penang, Malacca/Melaka, Balambangan, and perhaps even Singapore. He filched spice trees

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from the Dutch, transported them to Penang and Balambangan to set up plantations, persuaded communities to ship on with him, and helped send seeds and plants onto Calcutta and Kew. He might even have been instrumental in ferrying plants that later formed the nucleus of nutmeg and clove growing in Kerala and Sri Lanka.17 He proffered suggestions and negotiating assessments that could be deployed in Europe with Dutch, French and Spanish administrators during the Anglo-French wars (Sivasundaram 2020, Doyle 2014, Tarling 1962). In each of these many instances, our despondent mariner may or may not have owned his ships, though nothing in the archives points to whether he does – we do know from the letters that shuttle back and forth, often on board ships, between him and various recipients of his memorials that the events in which he is caught entail more than one ship commanded by him and at least one must have been partly funded from a group of investors to whom his goods were in hock. And the timing of his pleas, when they are conveyed, obey the rhythms of the winds across the oceans.

Ebbs and flows As our writer reprises the claims he is making, he becomes more and more adept at hewing them in a particular aesthetic key. What does he want? What Lynch says from the outset is that he would not be asking for anything at all if he had not been driven to such exigencies and that he must ask for justice for himself and his family and request that various officials comprehend the distressed circumstances in which he has been placed. What Lynch is arguing for in 1806 are the following: compensation for his kindnesses and humanity, which are his ‘voluntary’ services, and for the time he has been detoured off route, out of sync with the tempos of marine and trade seasonalities while tendering them; and thus for time lost from an itinerary that abides by those cadences, augmented by the time used up, worn away on the assistance he delivers. All these go towards recouping his interest on the loans he has been forced to take to pay off the various debts that have accrued, like algae, seaweed, molluscs flourishing on coral. Lynch wants the East India Company to see that he has given up everything he had, in the present and in the future – even future mercantile prospects will not get him out of his financial hole. He draws up charts of financial accounting for all these claims (that must deliberately fail the constraints of double entry book-keeping) – his calls, after all are for what cannot be easily given numerical shading. To recap: Lynch’s services are curiously adumbrated: numerical accounts for his losses (including the goods he had to effectively surrender), his humanity (which he never expected to have to explain) in rescuing the sailors, and the time adrift and time splurged for king and country and for the East India Company.18 Lynch is expecting the Admiralty and East India Company to honour the promises made by Captain Cooke, who died before he could make good on them. Cooke was in another naval battle against a French raiding frigate the Forte on the Hooghly River, and though his ship captured the Forte, Cooke lost his life. The

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tidal washes of trust are at stake here. Lynch borrowed on the efficacy and honour of his word and name. And as for Captain Cooke: Lynch explains that he believed Cooke to be trustworthy, which is why he was willing to accept Cooke’s promise to him. Trust he would have forgone had Lynch known, as he does now, that the promise Cooke gave him had no heft or content and would not be honoured by those, such as the Admiralty, for whom Cooke died. The Admiralty’s ventures on the seas are underwritten by paper money, promissory notes that are ballasted by trust in them. And the East India Company for whom Lynch has also tendered his ships’ services, is failing their own promissory notes. Trust ensures the flow of promises, and it seems to be dammed up or choked.19 Lynch is valiantly trying his hand at releasing the stoppages of trust again. In so doing Lynch is reminding the East India Company and Admiralty of the interstitial oceanic span on which the Napoleonic wars were fought – and more particularly the centrality of the Malaccan straits, and free movement through them (pace Hugo Grotius) a key counter in the deal making between European players in various parliamentary positions. The trade that surges between the Cape of Good Cope, China, India and the Caribbean relies on who has the right of passage through this skinny stretch of long water. This is where Cooke lost his sailors. What Lynch is alerting the East India Company and the Admiralty to is the content of kindness and goodwill, alias benevolence, which is what draws sailors into a compact with and that then seduces them to give up everything for someone else’s sovereign jurisdictions (King and country). What must be done materially in the name of benevolence (and a reliance on it), especially when common people give their lives over to war on the seas? Benevolence is something that has emerged as a crucial component in philosophical ruminations on the moral conduct of the state, the armed forces and the East India Company – philosophers from Lord Shaftesbury and David Hume and finally Adam Smith (in the Theory of Moral Sentiments, Vol. 2) retool the composition of and ordering of benevolence. Benevolence as a refurbished philosophical conceit has solid consequences – late eighteenth-century projects that curtail or reorder paupers are orchestrated through benevolence. Benevolence also orients governmentality in the colonies (Lushington 1824). So benevolence floating between insubstantial abstraction and concrete governmental stratagem, which shore up forms of belonging, is what Lynch wishes to draw to the attention of those he is drawing upon as his best-case audience. Certainly, Lynch is calling upon the re-composition of himself as a worthy juridical subject at sea, by hailing those he envisions as beneficiaries, the organs on land who compose sea-going states: “it is a cruel hardship upon me as a single individual, to suffer for an act of humanity shewn to my countrymen, when it concerns the nation at large to see me righted”.20

The musical aesthetics of compensation Over Lynch’s eight tries to recap his misfortunes, he gets more and more adept at an aesthetic which is expected to cull benevolence from his audience’s tight-fisted

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fiscal hearts, a bit like the sluice and surge of tide smoothing a rock’s taut angles down, or a ship tacking in and out of brusque gusts. And the courses of this aesthetic are eerily reminiscent of Adam Smith’s attempts in The Theory of Moral Sentiments to elucidate where and how benevolence finds its home – through sympathy with someone else, a sympathy that is so fleshly that it eludes the oceanic sublime that I allude to earlier.21 A form of sympathy owes its allegiances to something that closer to navigational sensing. And it is through Lynch’s increased dexterity with hewing language as poetics that much of what I spoke of a few minutes ago flows into view.22 I would like to lead us into Smith with a paragraph from the opening pages of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, one which is a familiar sawhorse that many use to broach Smith’s theory on sentiment, and move on from it to sections in chapter 3 that are rarely cited and voyage quickly from them to my final comments on Lynch: By the imagination we place ourselves in his situation, we conceive ourselves enduring all the same torments, we enter as it were into his body, and become in some measure the same person with him, and thence form some idea of his sensations, and even feel something which, though weaker in degree, is not altogether unlike them (Smith 1817). And from chapter 3, Smith’s paean to music, the culmination of the section on ‘unsocial passions’: When music imitates the modulations of grief or joy, it either actually inspires us with those passions, or at least puts us in the mood which disposes us to conceive them. But when it imitates the notes of anger, it inspires us with fear. Joy, grief, love, admiration, devotion, are all of them passions which are naturally musical. Their natural tones are all soft, clear, and melodious; and they naturally express themselves in periods which are distinguished by regular pauses, and which upon that account are easily adapted to the regular returns of the correspondent airs of a tune. Whatever is the passion which arises from any object in the person principally concerned, an analogous emotion springs up, at the thought of his situation, in the breast of every attentive spectator. … Sympathy, though its meaning was, perhaps, originally the same, may now, however, without much impropriety, be made use of to denote our fellowfeeling with any passion whatever. … Sympathy, therefore, does not arise so much from the view of the passion as from that of the situation which excites it. (Smith 1817) Some of what Smith is trying to describe in coming to sympathy through emotions roped together through music seeping into flesh and being comes close to and is akin to South Asian aesthetic theory – that we find both through Sanskrit as well as through Indo-Persian aesthetic – rasa dhvani theory23 (Faruqi 2004, 2009). Smith’s passages on music are some of the most unexpectedly heartfelt and beautiful that he

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composes. We could conjure them up as aesthetic resonances that coast on boats, handed and swung between multi-masted vessels and smaller dinghies, music pouring into sympathy flows with the flooding of waves breaking over rock and reef, ebbing away over sand. Musical sympathy is fluvial.24 But before we encounter Smith’s takes on music, he has already given us another course to sympathy. We imagine ourselves into the scenarios given us by someone else; through our imagination, our fancies, we are nimble enough to fall into the world, living, livelihood, flesh and passions of another – Urdu poets refer to this as hamdardi. So, as in rasa dhvani, for Smith we are inundated by feeling through not just one mode and one passion; we belong to another through images as well as through music tuned into an entire seascape of moods. For our purposes, the stories that Lynch lays out to make his case, through which he wishes his readers to fully occupy his situation, can only occur over many letters. In attempting to draw several audiences into also living what has transpired for him on his nautical travails, Lynch finds himself offering more and more nuanced elaborations of the situations that have ‘excited’ him. In so doing, Lynch is also endeavouring to plead for something beyond what Smith suggests, the efficacy of monetisation, monetary value given to humanity, kindness (benevolence), time lost and sent awry.

Conclusion – Promises at sea Sympathy, then, relies upon stories – these are the yarns and anecdotes that log oceanic travails and tribulations, carefully culled from the hold of captain’s logs, account books and memories. The more adept Lynch gets at embellishment, the more finesse he displays at the poetics that make sympathetic extension possible, the clearer the oceanic becomes, the more it floats into view. Lynch is struggling to solicit, nay, even train land lubber officials in what being benevolent might mean, what sympathy with sailors whose lives are afloat might entail. Schematically stated, for Hume and Smith, sympathy (being as another) which leads to benevolence, is the pathway through which the social contract can come into being. The contract is possible to arrive at if, and only if, everyone can loosen themselves enough to fall, through the aesthetic, into another. And for those of you versed in political theory, this route to collective contracts stands in stark contrast to the one Thomas Hobbes envisions. What is striking about how Lynch rescripts Hume and Smith is that for him, as someone who is struggling to elicit sympathetic listening, benevolence is, and is via promises (rather than contracts) made on the sea, on behalf of sea-going, promises which are constantly withheld, though they ought to be honoured. Benevolence is what sutures people together, benevolence is not just a state through which, or on behalf of which parties act. It is the act itself that is important. And in the act is the promise. I have chosen to flow with the promise, rather than sediment it into the contract because promises linger, they recede and surge, they break on shoals, they are buffeted by the squalls of contingencies met or released. Promises also filter into promissory notes (aka hundi), transactions over time and place, that can be discounted or hold to their value25 (Subramaniam 1996).

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The nation is composed, shaped, given form through this promise in curious ways. That is – Lynch’s benevolence, humanity or kindness in his lexicon, is what he, a sailor, is doing for the nation along routes that are at a far remove from national shores. And in doing for the nation, he is producing the island nation that is surrounded by the seas and finds its life through cosmopolitical marine traffic. Let me explain.26 Without Lynch’s ‘voluntary’ service on the oceans to the nation, of which rescuing the sailors is only one piece, piloted outside the immediate land based geographical ambit of Britain there would be nothing for Britain. Maritime service makes the state, the institution. Without it Britain would have no ability to fight on the sea, no ocean based geography with which to hold the Dutch and French hostage, oceanic materiality, mobility across oceans is the currency of value – it is the coin for a realm that is short of specie. Oceanic matters, interstitial hydro or amphibious cosmopolitics matter deeply to land-bound European sovereignty (as Hugo Grotius makes so clear). But what Lynch is also at pains to show is that when you render the voluntary services that bring Britain into being, you are rendered a pauper. Because, in particular, you have been given a promise (the Smithian contract of and by means of benevolence) that your seafaring service would be compensated in several ways, for itself – the labour – expenditure you put into it and the labour that went into performing it, and the losses you incur, the cost of what you forgo when you accomplish what you agreed to do. This promise is what keeps you bonded to performing the voluntary work that produces the nation itself. Lynch says that had he known that the promise given to him (by Cooke) would not be respected, he would have refused to perform his voluntary services, which is his ambient promise to ensure his nation’s life. The threat of service withdrawal is what invests it with value.27 This threat is more than its supposed jurisdiction – the threat is literal and allegorical. What it also premises is: when voluntary service is withheld or withdrawn, the national compact will come to a halt. This service feeds the nation into presence. On land, paupers are rioting in Britain; the flurries that augur regulations that ‘manage’ sea borne trade bring with them the peril of running amok (corn riots). Meanwhile also from land, Lynch’s claims from prison, on the promises made to him, that require his kindness, benevolence on the sea, are what shape the compact which keeps him sailing on, and in the process composing a British nation-state. These claims are compensatory, though they too are expected to be responsive to fellow-feeling. Lynch’s claims are a collocation, bringing the meticulous particularity of numbers (often posed as abstract) to the flowing music of sympathy. In doing so, they are poised at a curious turn. Compensation here establishes equivalence – at this historical juncture these genres of equivalence are still being tallied up, they are friable constantly moving mercantile parts (remember this is many years before Marx, before more consistent industrialisation enables the solidification of labour power on the ground so to speak). Lynch voyages on the transactions based in mercantile capital – what he is elaborating here is a network of abstract contracts that only make sense through amphibious embodied empiricism –

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leavened by sympathy. And in the ebb and flow of his pleadings, their tidal washes lave the terra-bound scholarly perception of petitions that also argue for recompense. Which is that it is not just labour that must be compensated but also what falls under “voluntary service work” – without this work circulation itself, capitalism, would grind to a noisy stoppage. Service that is volunteered not merely demanded, sympathetic collaboration – is also toil – and its grind, in Lynch’s case, is fleshing out the nation itself on the mercantilist interstitial seas. This is the supplement that will allow Lynch to continue to be a merchant, without it, he can have no adequate prospects in seafaring. Without it, Britain, might even cease to have sustenance. We see all these by harmonising the currents of benevolence on the sea – ferrying hydropoetics and amphibious-cosmopolitics into the mix. Recollect the section of the letter composed by Lynch, “afford me that justice which the British nation is renowned for its benevolence to the poor and deserving, by ordering the total amount of my claim as undermentioned for interest and the losses already stated to be paid me, together with such remuneration as I may be thought deserving of”. What Lynch maps for us in his urgent requests is this: perhaps all the above only come to our notice when we pay heed to the claims and pleas and petitions of the poor, which are not merely made by supplicants on their own behalf but as mutual promissory assertions. Can we say then that nations (whether they are virulently colonial or no) are composed out of their oceanic elsewheres, and that to understand what brings them into being we have to grapple with equivalences that seem not to be shipped in through the expected circuits of capital?

Notes 1 This essay is crafted quite deliberately to flow like a sea shanty or a mariner’s tale or an elder’s wisdom, so that its comings and goings echo the sea. 2 This more encompassing project on South Asia, tentatively titled, ‘Pensionary Promises, Pensionary Failures,’ like many others such as those by Mitchell Dean (who writes the history of pauperism), or the familiar questions raised by E.P. Thompson theorising in a similar vein, conscripts historical finance and labour through the vantage of people who have very little, whose lives have been stretchered into failure. 3 The ample literature on petitions, as well as on memorials and letters of pleading makes it clear that sending the same request again and again in slightly different keys was fairly commonplace—the reasons varied. (Raman (2012) Letters indebtedness to the lyrical: I intend to explore this feature in my monograph where I will have place for a more fulsome elaboration. 4 In this essay I sketch out a distinction between route and course. As in: boats frequently plot a route but take a course. An anticipated journey tracked meticulously on a map is what I call route here – being thrown off that is often what speakers mean when they say: ‘off course.’ Off-course is a sailing commonplace where you are thrown off your anticipated journey. Route and course then are treated as mere synonyms. That is not what I intend here. Rather, I am alluding to ‘course’ in the following fashion, so I can contrast it to route. Sailors have to learn to make various sorts of course corrections – to suss out streams of wind and angle the boat along them. When your instrument is your body, and you are steering by rudder, every pore (softening hair along one’s skin, a sharp

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5

6 7

8

9 10

11

12

13 14 15

scent, ambient textures at the beyond the horizon/boundary/fringes of one’s vision, resonances) feels out where you go, tack or jib – your course comes to you through your senses (you sense it out). You may then be on course even if you are off route. A route is a mechanised fantasy graphed on a chart (such as all models are) that softens into something else, a course, an endlessly shifting future, flowing with the sudden swirls of wind and pooling, the coming and ebbing of everything living in and around. I want to think the archives through this tussle between route and course and consider the contrast between them as a guide to rethinking both archival collection as well as archival sensing as the course through which ‘literacies’ come into being. Ingersoll (2016) for similar insights into navigation. I am playing off Laura Doyle’s 2014 valuable formulation of inter-imperial. Imperialism may be an overarching concept metaphor, but the on-the-sea nuances perhaps push us towards a slightly more delicate conveyance for extant political economies in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. India Office Records and Private Papers, Board’s Collections F/4/211 no 4716 (all Lynch quotes from this file). One rare instance is published in the Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society in 2011, where the author concurs with my assessment of Lynch as a player in the region, as are many other free mariners, but has only a few citations that include Lynch (Miller 2011). Though some of Lynch’s language would fall under what many writers consider petitions, it also absorbs some of the peculiar intonations of the epistle, which has been treated at greater length by scholars working primarily on letters to parishes in the UK. Though many petitions spoke to marine faring, those are not extensively broached in these literatures. See Ashin Das Gupta (2010) and my files. I am deliberately invoking quantum entanglement here. I am indebted to Isabel Hofmeyr’s felicitous coinage (Ho 2018). Mukkuvar communities in Kerala and Orang Seletar and Orang Laut in the Straits of Johor and in and around Malaysia: all these marine nomads had a complicated relationship to European marauders and in often challenging them, slipping in and out of small, concealed harbors, formed the nucleus of regular resistance (Prange 2011, Chou 2010, Elliot 2013, MacDougall 2014). So many Euro-American paintings from the period portray ships caught in the whirl of an oceanic sublime, struggling against stormy odds, as though the muffled faculties of those who sailed them brought them closer to drowning and death, reaching through towards something beyond life itself. See among many others Levine (1985), Casarino (2002). In the Andamans, Onge and Jarawa communities among others, who are indigenous to the islands, and are literate in the flow of land-oceanic lives all survived the tsunami of 2005. Reading the signs, they headed upwards and inwards, whereas many south-east Asian settlers who moved to the islands, after 1,500 were swept away, and towns filled with those from the mainland and the naval ports were devastated. Almost all the stories about the Andamanese at the time, many written by Indian journalists (Bhaumik 2005), ironically recrafted their everyday forms of knowing and living as ‘primitive,’ ‘ancient’ and ‘folkoric’ – the contrast between Andamanese knowing and the routinised ‘knowledge’ held by people who refused to belong to the world they live in shows up starkly in the numbers of deaths among who imagined themselves as the repositories of real facts. www.cortsfoundation.org/images/PDF/2014_HK16_1700_Eng.pdf offers a much more nuanced history and serves as a valuable counterpoint to Lynch. The sultan may have been Kibad Sahriyal or Anwar ud-din. Both negotiated freely with the Spanish but their relationship with British and Dutch seafarers was rather more tentative, as we can see from Lynch’s description (Laarhoven 1986). For the practical politics of the region see Tarling (1962, 1978) and for Lynch’s part in it see also Miller (2011). For ‘sea’ peoples see Andaya (2019) and Chou (2010).

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16 Khal Torabully (2017), the Mauritian poet, also plays with the poetics of coralline life. Though Giles Deleuze’s rhizomes are the familiar go-tos for theorists, Torabully turns his sensibilities to the perhaps more fecund poetic economies of the ocean. (Ette 2017) However, coral as living metaphor has an eccentric European lineage as well (Ette 2017). Charles Darwin, as Justin Prystash (2012) points out, ponders the efficacy of living metaphors: poising the ‘tree of life’ against the ‘coral of life’ – corals carried their own enchantments as substance in the mid-nineteenth century. Alongside these I would also lay the history of crystallography – Australian and perhaps incited by coral life. 17 See the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew 1893 discussion of the clove industry in Zanzibar; plants supposedly hurriedly shipped (aka nicked from under Dutch embargoes) from the Moluccas (sic) by a French trader and then by an Arab merchant to Zanzibar in the late eighteenth century. About the same period that Lynch was also trying his hand at sailing off with plants. 18 See Menon (2020) for a much more nuanced elaboration on temporality and oceanic histories. 19 Hugo Grotius, who crafted the European laws of the seas in Mare Liberum (1609), also drafted what brought men into concert, binding them through ‘natural law’– which was promises made together. Promises are more capacious than contracts that feel more sedentary and are aptly amenable to thinking about how Lynch is making his case. In any case Dutch ‘contracts’ made on the shores of south-eastern India were often treated as promises, which were up for grabs, by local authorities such as the Setupatis of Ramnad (Bes 2001). 20 See Raman (2012) for petitions as the route to land-based governance. Lynch suggests an oceanic component. 21 I don’t have the time to venture into the pitches that distinguish the oceanic sublime from sympathy keyed to the courses I explore in an essay as brief as this one (Levine 1985). 22 Natyashastra’s life in Europe—via William Jones’ translations of lyric and theatre that grow out of rasa/dhvani theory (Patel 2018, Mukherjee 2014, Sitter 2008, de Sola Pinto 1946). 23 The first officially recorded mention of the Natyashastra is in William Jones translation of Kalidasa’s play Abhigyan Shakuntala in 1789 – a play Goethe cites as an inspiration. Jones envisions his seaborne trade in translation as reviving the moribund arts of Europe, aka the spicing up of British and German romanticism. But there are certainly antecedents for the Natyashastra’s life in Europe (Patel 2018, Mukherjee 2014, Sitter 2008, de Sola Pinto 1946). See also S.R. Faruqi’s important interventions through Indo-Persian aesthetic, which predated Jones and would certainly have inundated the languid and terse lyric of Hafiz that Jones also translated and that filtered into European romanticism. Again, Farsi aesthetic has had a more sustained traffic in and through Europe than that suggested through Jones. Jones serves me more as an object lesson in fluvial traffic than historical particularity. Aesthetic transported by boats. 24 For another take on music and oceans see Stefan Helmreich’s piece in Tidalectics (2018). See also Sonia Khurana’s (2014) poignant sea music in her installation Oneiric House. Khurana’s (2014) dream work plays with many takes on watery conduits through sleep and reverie. 25 Promissory notes from the EIC travelled on ships, notes were the heart blood of marineland trade long before European companies came into play (Subramanian 1996, 1998). 26 Sivasundaram’s (2013) work on islanding helped me support and hew this claim. 27 See Raman (2012), Parthasarathi, Das Gupta (2010, 2004), for workers and sailors who held out this threat, and Patel (unpublished).

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Anderson B. and Wylie J. (2009) ‘On geography and materiality’, Environment and Planning A, 41(2): 318–335. Bes, Lennart. 2001. ‘The Setupatis, the Dutch, and other bandits in eighteenth-century Ramnad (South India)’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 44(4): 540–574. Best, Stephen and Sharon Marcus. 2009.‘Surface Reading: An Introduction’, Representations, 108(1): 1–21. Blum Hester. 2010. ‘The Prospect of Oceanic Studies’, Proceedings of the Modern Language Association, 125(3): 670–677. Blum Hester. 2013. ‘Introduction: Oceanic Studies’, Atlantic Studies, 10(2): 151–155. Blumenberg H. 1997 [1979]. Shipwreck with Spectator: Paradigm of a Metaphor for Existence. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Bremner, Lindsay. 2015. ‘Fluid Ontologies in the Search for MH370’, Journal of the Indian Ocean Region, 11(1): 8–29. Bremner, Lindsay. 2019. ‘Monsoon Assemblages Research Project’. Available at: www. westminster.ac.uk/news/2015/monsoon-assemblages-research-project. Accessed 27 November 2021. Brown, M. and Humberstone, B. 2015. ‘Introduction’, In M. Brown and B. Humberstone (eds), Seascapes: Shaped by the Sea. Ashgate: Farnham, pp. 1–11. Casarino. Cesare. 2002. Modernity at Sea: Melville, Marx, Conrad in Crisis. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Chou, Cynthia. 2016. ‘The Water World of the Orang Suku Laut in Southeast Asia’, TRANS: Trans –Regional and –National Studies of Southeast Asia, 4(2 July): 265–282. © Institute for East Asian Studies, Sogang University. doi:10.1017/trn.2016.9. DeLoughrey, Elizabeth. 2010. ‘Heavy Waters: Waste and Atlantic Modernity’, PMLA, 125 (3): 703–712. de Sola Pinto, V. 1946. ‘Sir William Jones and English Literature’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 11(4): 686–694. Doyle, Laura. 2014. ‘Inter-Imperiality: Dialectics in a Postcolonial World History’, Interventions, 16(2): 159–196. Elliot, Derek L.Pirates, ‘Polities and Companies: Global Politics on the Konkan Littoral, c. 1690–1756’. Economic History Working Papers. Elliot, Derek L. 2013. ‘The Politics of Capture in the Eastern Arabian Sea 1700–1750’, International Journal of Maritime History, December. Faruqi, Shamsur Rahman. 2004. ‘A Stranger In The City: The Poetics of Sabk-e Hindi’. Available at: http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1793/18639 (from Annual of Urdu Studies). Accessed 27 November 2021. Faruqi, Shamsur Rahman. 2009. The Need for a New and Comprehensive Persian Literary Theory. Inaugural Address at the Conference on ‘Modern Persian Literature in the 20th Century’. Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, 18 August 2009. Franklin, Michael, J. 2012. Orientalist Jones: Sir William Jones, Poet, Lawyer, and Linguist, 1746–1794. Oxford Scholarship online. Accessed 27 November 2021. Ghosh, Amitav. 2008. Sea of Poppies. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux. Ghosh, Amitav. 2011. River of Smoke. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux. Ghosh, Amitav. 2015. Flood of Fire. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux. Gilroy, Paul.1993. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Goyal, Yogita. 2014. ‘Introduction: Africa and the Black Atlantic’, Research in African Literatures, 45(3): v–xxv. Gupta, Ashin Das. 2010. Indian Merchants and the Decline of Surat. South Asia Books.

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Gupta, Ashin Das. 2004 [1967 and 1979]. India and the Indian Ocean World: Trade and Politics. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Heller, Charles, Lorenzo Pezzani, and Situ Studio. 2016. ‘The Left-to-Die Boat’: Report on the Deadly Drift of a Migrants’ Boat in the Central Mediterranean’. Forensic Architecture Project. Web. 10 August 2016. Accessed 27 November 2021. Helmreich, Stephan. 2009. Alien Ocean: Anthropological Voyages in Microbial Seas. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Hessler, Stefanie and Markus Reymann. 2018. Tidalectics: Imagining an Oceanic Worldview through Art and Science. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Hofmeyr, Isabel. 2010. ‘Universalizing the Indian Ocean’, PMLA, 125(3): 721–729. Hofmeyr, Isabel. 2015. ‘Styling Multilaterism: Indian Ocean Cultural Futures’, Journal of the Indian Ocean Region, 11(1): 98–105. Ho, Engseng. 2006. The Graves of Tarim. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Ho, Ulfrida. 2018. ‘Diving Deeper in a Time of Dryness’, 18 May [online]. Available at: www.wits.ac.za/curiosity/stories/diving-deeper-in-a-time-of-dryness.html (Accessed 27 November 2021) https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1812/feb/06/ select-committee-appointed-on-the-east (Accessed 27 November 2021) https://api. parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1812/mar/23/petition-from-the-merchants-c-of (Accessed 27 November 2021). India Office Records and Private Papers, Board’s Collections F/4/211, no. 4716. Ingersoll, Karin Amimoto. 2016. Waves of Knowing: A Seascape Epistemology. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Inuit Circumpolar Council. 2008. The Sea Ice is Our Highway: An Inuit Perspective on Transportation in the Arctic. Ottawa: ICC-Canada. Jue, Melany Christina. 2015. Wild Blue Media: Thinking Through Seawater. PhD dissertation, Duke University. Jue, Melany Christina. 2018. ‘Submerging Kittler’, Social Science Information, 57(3): 476–482. Khurana, Sonia. 2014. Installation: Oneiric House [round about midnight]. Available at: https:// gujralfoundation.org/show-item/oneiric-house-round-about-midnight. Accessed 27 November 2021. Laarhoven, Ruurdje. 1986. ‘We Are Many Nations: The Emergence of a Multi-Ethnic Maguindanao Sultanate’, Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society, 4(1 March): 32–53. Levine, Steven Z. 1985. ‘Seascapes of the Sublime: Vernet, Monet, and the Oceanic Feeling. The Sublime and the Beautiful: Reconsiderations’, New Literary History, 16(2 Winter): 377–400. Linton, J. 2010. What Is Water? The History of a Modern Abstraction. Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Press. Lushington, Charles. 1824. The History, Design and Present State of the Religious, Benevolent and Charitable Institutions founded by THE BRITISH IN CALCUTTA and its Vicinity. Calcutta: The Hindostanee Press. MacDougall, Philip. 2014. Naval Resistance to Britain’s Growing Power in India, 1660–1800: The Saffron Banner and the Tiger of Mysore. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press. McMenamin, D. and McMenamin, M. 1996. Hypersea: Life on Land. New York: Columbia University Press. Menon, Dilip M. 2020. ‘Walking on Water: Globalization and History’, Global Perspectives [online]. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1525/gp.2020.12176. Accessed 27 November 2021. Miller, W.G. 2011. ‘English Country Traders and Their Relations with Malay Rulers in the Late Eighteenth Century’, Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 84 (1/300 June): 23–45.

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Mukherjee, S. 2014. ‘William Jones and the Debate on Aesthetics’, [online]. Available at: https://openjournals.library.sydney.edu.au/index.php/SSSC/article/download/7498/7866. Accessed 27 November 2021. Ottmar, Ette and Khal Torabully. 2017. ‘“Coolies” and Corals or Living in Transarchipelagic Worlds’, Journal of the African Literature Association, 11(1): 112–119. Patel, Geeta. 2018. ‘Vernacular Missing: Miraji on Sappho, Gender, and Governance’, Comparative Literature, 70(1): 132–144. Prange, Sebastian R. 2011. ‘A Trade of No Dishonor: Piracy, Commerce, and Community in the Western Indian Ocean, Twelfth to Sixteenth Century’, American Historical Review, 116(5, December): 1269–1293. Prystash, Justin. 2012. ‘Zoomorphizing the Human: How to Use Darwin’s Coral and Barnacle’, Rhizomes, 24 [online]. Available at: www.rhizomes.net/issue24/prystash/index. html. Accessed 27 November 2021. Pye, Michael. 2015. The Edge of the World: A Cultural History of the North Sea and the Transformation of Europe. Berkeley, CA: Pegasus Books. Raman, Bhavani. 2012. Document Raj: Writing and Scribes in Early Colonial India. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew. 1893. ‘Cloves Industry of Zanzibar’, Bulletin of Miscellaneous Information (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew), 73: 17–20. Published by Springer on behalf of Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew. Available at: www.jstor.org/stable/4118284. Accessed 27 November 2021. Sitter, Zak. 2008. ‘William Jones, “Eastern” Poetry, and the Problem of Imitation’, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 50(4 Winter): 385–407. Smith, Adam. 1817. The Theory of Moral Sentiments or, An Essay Towards an Analysis of the Principles, by which Men Naturally Judge Concerning the Conduct and Character, First of their Neighbours, and Afterwards of Themselves. Boston, MA: Wells and Lilly. Sivasundaram, Sujit. 2013. Islanded: Britain, Sri Lanka and the Bounds of an Indian Ocean Sivasundaram, Sujit. 2020. Waves Across the South. London: William Collins. Subramanian, Lakshmi. 1996. Indigenous Capital and Imperial Expansion: Bombay, Surat and the West Coast. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Subramanian, Lakshmi. 2005. Medieval Seafarers of India. 1999. New Delhi: Roli. Subramanian, Lakshmi and Rudrangshu Mukherjee (eds). 1998. Politics and Trade in the Indian Ocean World: Essays in Honour of Ashin Dasgupta. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Tarling, Nicholas. 1962. Anglo-Dutch rivalry in the Malay world, 1780–1824. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tarling, Nicholas. 1978. Sulu and Sabah: a study of British policy towards the Philippines and North Borneo from the late eighteenth century. Kuala Lumpur, New York: Oxford University Press. Toussaint, Auguste. 1996. History of the Indian Ocean. Trans. June Guicharnaud. London: Routledge.

4 REMEMBERING THE BENGAL DELTA CA. 1450–1850 Rila Mukherjee

This chapter urges a shift away from the hermetic imaginations of the nation-state towards a rethinking of connected histories. History-writing often foregrounds geomorphological instability as a key factor in the oblivion of shadowscapes at the intersection of sea and land. This chapter examines such received constructs, arguing that a purview of the Bengal delta shows many other reasons for marginalisation, and suggests the ways by which we can recover Bengal’s rich aquatic history. It articulates a new approach of seas and oceans as method by foregrounding the delta in the making of constantly shifting spaces of human interaction and imagination over the longue durée. The spilling over of sea into land, rather than of land ceding to the sea, forces an engagement with these fluid geographies of affinity. It was not only the violent histories of slavery that generated the delta’s global connections, but also the movements of sailors, boatmen, religious teachers, kings, merchants, and adventurers. These mobile geographies are sedimented in historical accounts and maps, and in Bengal’s literary texts, folklore, and music, some of which I evoke here.

I Archipelagic Visions Most classical and medieval writers saw the world as archipelagic, if not aquapelagic. Medieval Christendom’s dreams of Eastern opulence settled on the ‘fortunate isles’ which were supposedly the pride of the Indian Ocean – a sea dotted with many islands. The eighth-century Beatus map showed paradise on an undefined island laying somewhere on India’s borders. ‘In this India sea’, Marco Polo wrote at the end of the thirteenth century, ‘there are twelve thousand seven hundred islands’ (Le Goff 1982: 196, 198). The Bengal delta entered into this imaginary when the Borgia World Map (ca. 1453) marked paradise as an island at the River Ganga’s mouth. DOI: 10.4324/9781003300939-6

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The island theme had multiple dimensions. Between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, works featuring islands such as William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island appeared. Louis-Antoine de Bougainville’s and James Cook’s explorations in Oceania captivated the European public in the 1770s; and islands such as the Comores, Madagascar and Mauritius became relay points in global trade. Other than turning into laboratories for experimentation with flora and fauna, islands became sourcing areas for Europe’s botanical gardens, arboreta and zoos (Grove, 1995). French painter Paul Gauguin celebrated island life in Martinique, Tahiti and the Marquesas in paintings made from 1887 until his death in 1903, giving birth to a twentieth-century art movement called primitivism which was parallel to the ‘naive art’ of painters of lush, tropical jungle scenes like Henri Rousseau in the 1890s. The island/jungle metaphor of a tropical Eden and the ‘noble savage’ of literature and art (Kahn, 2003) inspired anthropologists like Bronislaw Malinowski and Margaret Mead to study islanders as a species apart. At the same time, their location made islands effective surveillance points. When the Andaman Islands were forcibly removed from their South-East Asian networks and made part of British India, they became a constabulary against European, Chinese, Malay, and Nicobarese piracy, and they ‘padlock[ed] the access to the Indian Ocean’. Islands were also ideal incarceration sites. In 1858 Ross Island became a penal colony (Vaidik, 2010; Anderson, Mazumdar and Pandya, 2016). Devil’s Island (French Guiana, opened in 1852) and Changuu island (off Zanzibar, purchased by the British in 1893 and used as quarantine centre) were others.

II Coastal Imaginaries Within this aquapelagic vision, coastal landscapes form an established sub-set of research. As contact zones where terrestrial and maritime networks intersect, coasts show various mobilities. Ocean basins have figured historically as principal avenues of human, cultural, commercial, and biological exchange, but scholarship tends to concentrate on the dry edges, i.e. the land, rather than on the ‘liquid plains of the sea’ (Braudel, 1992: 65). Received constructs make limited provision for the processes of exchange that have profoundly influenced the development of human societies. Granting that constructs such as regions, nations, continents, and civilisations are problematic, alternative constructs around sea and ocean basins, focusing on long-term interactions conducted across bodies of water, can serve as more meaningful categories for understanding global dynamics (Bentley, 1999: 216, 221). Also, seeing the sea as alive and rich in cosmological and religious significance provides a new perspective on how people actively create identities, a sense of place and their histories (Cooney, 2003). However, reconstructing such histories for maritime Asia is difficult. Despite the ‘happy’ or ‘fortunate’ isles in the world’s oceans capturing public imagination, the silt-laden Bengal delta could never be regarded as a self-contained idyll and so it could not arrive on the postcard as a tourist destination (Kahn, 2003). Also,

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although a place’s history is shaped by that place’s interactive connections with other places (Owens, 2007), ‘the Indian Ocean was … an area of environmentally disrupted human settlement, of “lost” rivers, “lost” civilizations, and “lost” cities’ (Wink, 2002: 417). Nowhere is this more true than in the Bengal delta, yet delta imaginaries have provided fertile ground for perspectives where porous frontiers act as filters through which the salt of the sea is gradually replaced by the silt of the land (Vink, 2007: 53).

III A Disaggregated Land in Memory Like islands, deltas are autarchic, but unlike islands they are amorphous with ‘ambiguity, lack of definition and boundaries, a zone where land and sea intertwine and merge, really the fungibility, the interchangeability, of land and sea’ (Pearson, 2006: 355). Because of this ambiguity, and partly because we have turned our face away from its marine features, we tend to emphasise the terrestrial with a concomitant neglect of Bengal’s aquatic aspects (Mukherjee, 2015, 2017a, 2020). The Bengal delta lies on a deadly cyclone-prone coast, and fear of natural hazards is one reason for its neglect (Mukherjee, 2016, 2017b). Cesar Fedrici described a cyclone in 1569: ‘I went a boord of the ship of Bengala, at which time it was the yeere of Touffon … in the East Indies oftentimes, there are not stormes as in other Countries; but every ten or twelve yeeres there are such tempests and stormes, that it is a thing incredible, but to those that have seene it, neither doe they know certainly what yeere they will come. Unfortunate are they that are at Sea in that yeere and time of the Touffon, because few there are that escape that danger.’ (Fedrici, 2004: 152–53) Disasters occurred with frightening regularity not just in the delta but also in the inland alluvial plains. Bengal’s capital city Gaur, on the interfluve between the Kalindri and Bhagirathi rivers, was destroyed after a terrible earthquake in 1505 which changed river courses. The 1505 earthquake also destroyed Kabul, parts of Tibet, and northern India including Agra. It is tempting to see this calamity as part of a sequence of significant earthquakes occurring throughout the sixteenth centuries in the Himalayas: Kashmir in 1501, followed by two events a month apart in Afghanistan and the central Himalayas, and concluding with a large earthquake in Kashmir again, in 1555 (Bilham, 2004). Geomorphological instability thus certainly hinders recovery of the delta’s history. Change is in evidence wherever we go. The land is unstable, continually forming through annual floods that leave deposits of silt and sand. Streams change channels as water cannot flow on raised ground. New channels form until they too fill up. From the fifteenth century settlements disappeared as the Ganga’s main channel started shifting east. Ralph Fitch’s sketch (ca. 1585) shows the Ganga and Meghna joining at Sripur, a port-town polity located south of Sonargaon. Two

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hundred years on, East India Company surveyor Major James Rennell’s maps (made between 1764 and 1772) show this confluence shifting south to Dakhin Shahbazpur (Bhola) Island. The Ganga’s southward stretch from Jafarganj to Dakhin Shahbazpur is known as Kirtinasha (Great Destroyer). Bakla and Sripur were destroyed by a cyclone and storm-wave in 1584. Between 1811 and 1867 Sagor Island at the Hughly’s mouth was swept by six major cyclones; those of 1833 and 1864 took thousands of lives. The Ichamati, down which Jean-Baptiste Tavernier travelled in 1666 from Jafarganj to Dhaka, now contains hardly any water during the dry season. Jacques-Nicholas Bellin’s maps (1747–61, issued in Prevost’s Histoire Generale des Voyages [1770]) alludes to treacherous tides and shifting sandbanks. Its ‘terres hautes’/ high lands meant that ‘Toute cette Cote est peu connue et fort Dangereuse’/‘this coast is little known and very dangerous’. Geomorphological change entails that the Meghna estuary’s ancient settlements of Wari Bateswar and Samandar cannot be located. The Karatoya river, once swollen by Himalayan rivers that now follow variable courses of their own, is now untraceable. Seen in texts as a ‘sea’ flowing directly into the Bay of Bengal, sacred in Buddhism and Hinduism, it was part of the Tista river system which connected the coast to the uplands (Mukherjee, 2008/09: 97–98). Its atrophy commenced when the Brahmaputra changed course in 1787. As the Brahmaputra and Lakhiya received more waters the Karatoya’s banks turned moribund, its flow became a stream, and a flood in 1820 killed it off. In Rennell’s map (1776) it is a major river; in 1810, Francis BuchananHamilton saw it as ‘a very considerable river’ (Buchanan-Hamilton in Martin, 1838). But by the start of the twentieth century the Imperial Gazetteer of India reported the Karatoya was a trickle (Hamilton, 1908). Geomorphological instability affected the landscape. In 1774/75 Scottish colonial official and trader Robert Lindsay (1840: 25–26) went down the [Dhaka] river ‘for twenty miles, we stopped at Feringee-bazar; at this place the Dacca river, which is a branch of the Ganges, joins the great Brahmaputra; when both united, they are known by the name of Meghna, and form one of the largest rivers in the world’. Twelve years later in 1787, when it changed course a hundred miles south, the Brahmaputra crossed Mymensingh and emptied into the Meghna at Bhairab Bazar, from which point a vast freshwater sea covered the land for half the year, all across large inland waterbodies (haors) spanning Netrokona and Sylhet from west to east. This inland sea deterred settlers from the west (Ludden, 2003), although the term ‘bazar’ (market) indicates a thriving local economy. In the first half of the twentieth century the Brahmaputra’s main channel ran due south from below Chilmari, instead of around Mymensingh and Bhairab Bazar as in Rennell’s day. The two courses were nearly seventy miles apart in one place. Unlike Braudel’s Mediterranean therefore, we cannot locate those places that acted as motors of change in the delta’s history.

IV Politics of Seeing, Ways of Writing But geomorphological instability was not the only reason for the delta’s marginalisation in history-writing. There were other reasons. Selective marginalisation of

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rivers in Puranic lore meant that while India’s rivers found a place on the Puranic map, the Brahmaputra was absent. It was not seen as a holy river as its source lies beyond India.1 Similarly, the Ganga’s headwaters from Mansarowar lake (mythical Brahmakund in Kailash) are downplayed. Niccolao Manucci’s annaliste Francois Catrou wrote that Indians since Akbar’s days believed in the eastern source of the Ganga, averring that the river ‘rises much higher in the Country towards the middle of Great Tartary’. Thus, Gaumukh in the northern Himalayas was not the source of the Ganga. The river rose in ‘Great Tibet’, where the Tsang-po or Brahmaputra also originated (Hedin, 1919: 294; Markham, 1875). However, John Hodgson’s explorations of 1815/16 foregrounded Gaumukh and the Bhagirathi. While the Survey of India under Colin Mackenzie’s leadership decided on Gaumukh, other explorers continued to advocate the eastern source into the twentieth century (Hedin, 1909). This deadly politics arises from the delta being a borderland region. Claudius Ptolemy (second century CE) divided South Asia into India intra Gangem (India within the Ganges) and India extra Gangem (India beyond the Ganges, i.e., comprising Bengal and South-East Asia). Sebastian Munster’s Tabula Asiae VII and XI (1542) depicted this latter as neighbouring Sina regio. The delta only finds a place in the secondary or minor Upapuranas. Many of these were composed in eastern India; they provide information on local culture and can be used to trace the emergence of distinct regional cultural configurations and identities (Singh, 2009). Markandeya Purana, compiled between the third and sixth centuries, divided South Asia into Bharatavarsha (on the Brahmaputra’s west coast), and Bhadrasva-varsa (a fuzzy region east of the Brahmaputra, including the delta). Somewhat later Kalika Purana saw the latter as a zone of Tantric worship, animal sacrifices and Shakta practices. The Karatoya was the frontier between the Indic and Sinic cultural zones. In this region, although situated on the Bhutan-Tibet route Mahasthan, or great place, was an island in the sea with citadels, monasteries and temples. Karatoya Mahatmya, an ode to the river composed sometime prior to the second half of the twelfth century, states that Pundravarddhana-pura’s (Mahasthangarh) men were wise and pure, the land was deemed twice-blessed because the Karatoya washed its shores, it was wealthy with tanks and wells, and its banks were fertile, elevated and snake-free (Sen, 1929; Salles, 1995: 542–43). This division between upland and southeast Bengal was the outer political frontier between Arid and Monsoon Asia. Although Bengal’s robust economy lay in the dense forests and marshes (Sundarbans) of Monsoon Asia, political power came from upland Bengal (Arid Asia) (Gommans, 2002). Yet, the delta, easily the world’s largest with 130 million+ inhabitants, was thickly populated and not without history. Currently it has a density of more than 200 people/square km (520 people/square mile), making it one of the world’s most densely populated regions. Upwards of 300 million people are supported by it, and approximately 400 million people live in the Ganga River Basin. But popular imaginary still foregrounds the Gangetic delta. The Ganga is regarded as India’s chief river, and its waters are privileged over those of the Padma, southeast Bengal’s (now Bangladesh) chief river. About 1,200 two major branches

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of the Ganga appeared: the Bhagirathi and the proto-Padma. The Bhagirathi’s significance as a historic route is beyond dispute although characteristics of its meander belt suggest it was never the Ganga’s major distributary. It is associated with many sacred Hindu sites, including the significant Sagor Island where the river ‘melts’ into the sea (ganga-sagar-sangam) and where, every makar sankranti (annual Hindu festival on the day of the winter solstice), hundreds of thousands of pilgrims celebrate the union of river and sea at a festival called Ganga Sagar (lit. river-sea). In contrast, there are no equivalent venerated sites along the Padma (Chapman and Rudra, 2015: 22). The Padma was actually the Ganga’s chief channel: ‘after flowing round the north-east shoulder and spurs of the Indian Plateau and through a 50-mile long meander belt, the Ganga throws off a right bank lateral distributary, the Bhagirathi-Hooghly, due south, while its main stream, the Padma, takes a south-easterly course, with three towns on its banks, Rampur Boalia, Pabna and Faridpur … the Padma is almost a lateral distributary on the left bank, the extreme lateral course having flowed from Rampur Boalia through Dacca … while the greater rainfall on the east of the plain has helped to keep the eastern channels open and has minimized the construction of embanked railways and roads and of bridges, on the drier west embanked routes were multiplied for a century past and channels blocked. Hence passage down the Bhagirathi-Hooghly, difficult for boats in Moghul times, became increasingly difficult, while other western distributaries became known to the peasantry as ‘dead rivers’ … Between the tidal contours lie the chief swamp-lakes of deltaic Bengal (23” n., 90” e.). Seaward lie the tidal forests of the Sundarbans, while in the eastern estuarine gulf the islands are fringed with tall grass.’ (Geddes, 1960: 271, my emphases) We forget that the Ganga delta is only the western quadrant of a region now called Ganga-Brahmaputra-Meghna (GBM) delta. The GBM basin stretches over more than 105,000 square km (41,000 square miles), comprising almost 35 percent of Bangladesh’s total land area and a little over 11 percent of West Bengal’s surface area (comprising over 10,000 square km out of a total area of 88,752 square km or 34,267 square miles). In 2011 about 122 million inhabitants out of Bangladesh’s total population of 160 million lived inside the GBM River Basin; of India’s total population of 1,181 million, 476 million live inside this basin. Its total area covers India (64 percent), China (18 percent), Nepal (9 percent), Bangladesh (7 percent) and Bhutan (2 percent), making this trans-regional basin the third largest freshwater outlet, exceeded only by the Amazon and the Congo river systems.

V Recovering the Delta It is now time to recover the delta. Lying in the wet tropical zone, with tidal creeks, tidal flats, mangrove forests, shoals and sandbanks, this sluggish region is a combination of the Ganga delta, the old Brahmaputra-Meghna delta and the

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Ganga-Jamuna (present Brahmaputra)-Meghna delta. Wide tidal rivers or estuaries intersect it from north to south, and narrow tidal rivers or creeks do the same from west to east. In the summer monsoon season when about 3 million cusecs of water pass through the delta, it becomes a fluvial delta. In winter, when the volume of water passing through the delta drops to 250,000 to 300,000 cubic metres per second (with some 2 billion tons of sediment), it is a tide-dominated delta. During the rainy season the main streams have ‘double currents’ i.e., the surface down to a certain depth flows downward or southward, while below that depth the tide advances upward or northward. This is caused by the freshlets sweeping down from a higher level and overtopping and passing above the flood tide from the sea. Even for skilful swimmers this double current is dangerous (Rainey, 1891: 274–75). Its unusual features make the delta one of the most complex in the world, providing a lens to study global processes: ‘The … lower portion of the Gangetic Delta, which stretches in length about 170 miles, from the brackish waters of the wide estuary of the Hugli on the west, to the sweet waters of the still wider estuary of the Megna on the east, … varies in width from 60 to 80 miles, from the turbid waters of the Bay of Bengal on the south to the limits of the flourishing permanently settled estates on the north. It comprises a superficial area of 7532.5 square miles, which exceeds in size the principality of Wales. This vast and excessively fertile low-lying alluvial plain may be termed the “gift of the Ganges”, similarly as Lower Egypt has been termed the “gift of the Nile”’. (Rainey, 1891, pp. 273) Rennell commented on its tremendous potential for inland navigation: ‘The Ganges and Burrampooter Rivers, together with their numerous branches and adjuncts, intersect the country of Bengal in such a variety of directions, as to form the most compleat and easy inland navigation that can be conceived … It is supposed, that this inland navigation gives constant employment to 30,000 boatmen. Nor will it be wondered at, when, it is known, that all the salt, and a large proportion of the food consumed by ten millions of people are conveyed by water within the kingdom of Bengal and its dependencies. To these must be added the transport of the commercial exports and imports, probably to the amount of two millions sterling per annum; the interchange of manufactures and products throughout the whole country; the fisheries; and the article of traveling.’ (Rennell and Banks, 1781: 87–88) The fringe that separates the coast from the sea accentuates the delta’s distinctiveness. This is bhati or lowlands. Bhati is not the coast but the littoral, the liminal zone where land meets sea. It means ‘downstream direction’ and bhatiali, a genre sung by the delta boatmen, is an unique counterpoint to the bhowai sung in Bengal’s uplands.

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For Abu’l-Fazl ‘Allami, Bhati was opposed to upstream ‘Bangala’: ‘Bhati is a low country and has received this name because Bengal is higher. It is nearly 400 kos in length from east to west and about 300 kos from north to south. East of this country are the ocean and the country of habsha [Abyssinians ruled Bengal from 1487 to 1493] … north is also the ocean (my emphasis) and the terminations of the hill country of Tibet.’ (Beveridge, 2000: 645–47) Mughal Bhati included the entire delta east of the Bhagirathi-Hughly corridor. Since its western boundary extended from Tanda (part of the capital complex of medieval Bengal) down to present southwest Khulna district, the frontier between Mughal bhati and Bangala approximates that between Bangladesh and West Bengal (Eaton, 1996: 146). Seventeenth-century Buddhist monk Taranath referenced King Canaka (unidentified) living in bhati, ‘a small island near the confluence of the Ganga and the sea in the east of Bhamgala’ (Taranath, 1990: 295). Seventeenthcentury texts such as Fathiya-i-Ibriya and Baharistan-i-Ghaybi used the term in the context of southeast Bengal (Sarkar, 1906, 1907; Borah, 1936). Its core, a triangle surrounded by the GBM river system, comprised the low-lying lands around Dhaka, Tripura, Sylhet and Mymensingh. The delta supported a unique marine environment exemplified by the medieval mangalkavya literature which privilege circulations of the sea-faring trader who is master of this intensely marine landscape (Kaviraj, 2003). The Paschimbhag copperplate and the Bhatera plaque of tenth to thirteenth centuries Srihatta (Sylhet) reference large waterbodies and a port or anchorage called Indresvara Naubandha, a mooring point for war boats (nauvatakas). Names of rivers are expressive of their destructive capacity: Matla or ‘drunkard’ is turbulent; Balishwar is the power of God; Kirtinasa means ‘Great Destroyer’; Mathabhanga or ‘broken-head’ means that the one who braves it will come in for a dreadful end. Ichamati is capricious with its mood (‘mati’) depending on ‘ichha’ (desire). Dhaleshwari expresses a sense of over-flowing love or emotion from the Bengali ‘dhal’… ‘dhala-dholi’; Haringhata is the ‘deer-shore river’ on account of the number of (wild) deer found on its banks; Meghna (possibly derived from Magnu or magnus) is the ‘blue river’ signifying ‘cloud’. From the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries west-to-east fluvial shifts introduced six rivers into this marine landscape, inundating areas and decimating settlements, but also generating fertile lands. Between 1595 and 1659 the revenue demand for the northeast portion of the delta increased by 97 percent, while that of the southeast quadrant, ecologically the most active part of Bengal, jumped by 117 percent. However, revenue demand for southwest Bengal, an ecologically older sector, increased by only 54 percent in this period, while that for northwest Bengal, the oldest but most moribund part where British Calcutta would appear in 1690, actually declined by 13 percent (Eaton, 1996). The southeast was thus an active region. Shown on Portuguese maps as ‘Nao Maluko’ (new land/revenue generating territory), sandbanks (char) thrown up by

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currents functioned as transient islands. Ephemeral anchorages marked on maps as bandar (mooring point) evolved into transitory port-towns that came under the control of delta polities (Mukherjee, 2017b) so much so that: ‘Memories still cling thick around these lower reaches of the Lakhiya, close by where the great rivers meet. But just below, the Megna, the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, the Dullasery, and the Ishamutty, all unite, and this meetingplace of the giant watercourses is the most historic spot in all Eastern Bengal. The many tides that have ebbed and flowed this way have seen strange scenes … It has seen great principalities and kingdoms rise and fall, the fleeting glories of a fickle world. On its broad bosom it has borne brave fleets and armies to victory and defeat … Only the great river … flows onwards…’ (Bradley-Birt, 1906: 325) Partition in 1947 divided the delta. Dhaka became the chief port-town of East Pakistan. Until then a secondary port to British Calcutta, it was without an effective hinterland because its political centre lay far away in West Pakistan’s Islamabad (Spate, 1947; 1948). Bangladesh’s formation (1971) with Dhaka as capital made rivers central to the nation’s imaginary but it was too late. Subsidence and climate change have destroyed the delta. Major occupations are still fishing and rice cultivation, but being a storm surge area subject to frequent, devastating cyclones, the delta produces little by way of marketable products. It is now reduced to a subsistence economy.

VI The Medieval Delta Impoverished presently, the delta’s historic moment climaxed from the medieval period. Multiple variants of the Southwest Silk Route connected it to Burma, south Yunnan, Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia. Xin Tang Shu (tenth-century New History of the Tang Dynasty), referenced a mix of land, river and sea routes linking Annam to India through the Tonkin Gulf, Yunnan, and Sriksetra (Burma) (Bin, 2004: 287–88). A tenth-century Khmer mission to the Chandra capital of Vikrampur arrived by this land-river-sea route. The port where the Khmers disembarked was probably Chandradwip, the earlier Bakla. The first and second Chandra Bhatera plaques, dating from the eleventh-twelfth centuries, contain 55 and 32 lines respectively in Sanskrit in a proto-Bengali script, stylistically similar to Cambodia’s Khmer inscriptions (Boisselier, 1971: 92–93). The southeast had vibrant China networks. The apparently synchronised output of silver coins in medieval Bengal and London suggests that Chinese silver lay behind the phenomenon. Political and military developments in Yunnan caused a flow of silver from China overland through Burma from 1339. From 1339 numismatic evidence from the Sylhet hoard confirms a continuous issuance of silver tanka. Those bearing the inscription of Mubarak Shah, the ruler who expanded his territory towards the southeast and the coast, were issued in consecutive years from 1339 to 1349. The

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trajectory of silver collapse in southeast Bengal in 1359/60 coincides with that of western mints. Silver disappeared from Egypt in 1359, Aden’s silver coinage became lighter the very same year, and the London mint’s silver output plummeted in 1363 (Kuroda, 2009: 253–56). This admittedly scattered data supports the premise that the southeast was part of global networks. Laying outside circles of power allowed the delta’s medieval rulers to build networks to stabilise their rule, protect themselves from neighbouring polities, and preserve access to the sea (Mukherjee, 2017b). Upland Bengal’s rule was short-lived. It was brought into the sultanate’s ambit only four times: by Rukn-al-din (1291), Mubarak Shah (1339–49), Sikandar Shah’s conquest of Kamrup (1358) and Jalal-al-Din Muhammad’s reconquest (1420). Although the view from the west depicted it as a blank space, the southeast played an active part in Bay of Bengal history. As a asamudrahimacala (from the mountains to the sea) region, it linked land-locked northern India, the northeast and sub-Himalayan polities (Tripura, Assam, Manipur, and Nepal), to maritime outlets. Until the eighteenth century, Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims from Bengal arrived in South-East Asia’s port-towns as goldsmiths, fishermen, slaves, interpreters, religious teachers, traders, diplomats, warriors and rulers. A Bengali dynasty of four rulers, composed of Turkish adventurers escaping the turmoil of the southeast’s reunification, ruled Samudra Pasai from ca. 1340 to 1390 (Perret, 2011; Guillot and Kalus, 2008). Although Lorenz Fries’ Tabula nova utriusque Indiae/ Tabula Moderna Indiae (various editions, 1522–41) showed devil worshippers occupying a blank space, Atlas Miller (ca. 1519) had depicted fortified cities on either side of two unnamed rivers (clearly the Ganga and Brahmaputra). Independent capitals and mint-towns, as also the inscription sites of the Bengal sultans, dotted this marine landscape. Between 1538 and 1760, the southeast contained fourteen mint-towns and inscription sites as opposed to only seven in the western delta for the same period (Eaton, 1996). Joao de Barros’ Quatra Decada da Asia (1552, 1553 and 1563, edited by Lavanha in 1615), marks political divisions, towns, fortified ports (bandar), bazars and citadels in the deltaic islands: Jugudia, Sundiva, Merculij (Meherkul), Guacala, Bulnei, Bicaram, Angara, Belhaldy, Cuipitavaz (Khalifatabad, or modern Bagerhat on the Bhairab’s bank and Husain Shahi mint-town), Tipuria, and the eponymous Maluco and Naomoluco. Willem Blaeu’s map (1638, clearly derived from the 1615 Barros map), marks Pacuculy, Cuipitavaz, Nao Muluco, Noldy and Maluco with Buram, Tipuria, Dipuria, Bicaram, Guacala, Angara, Balbaldy, Jugudia and Sundiva. Catrabo (Katrabuh, near Dhaka) and Khizrpur, both under a chief called Isa Khan were sixteenth-century port-towns supplementing Isa’s capital and port-city Sonargaon. Khalifatabad and Fathabad (modern Faridpur, situated on the bank of an old channel of the Padma) were respectively capital and mint-town. Bakla was Chandra capital, medieval port-town and, under the British, a grain mart (Backergunge); fortified sixteenth-century Yashohara-Ishwaripur and Dhumghat were respectively capital and shipyard; Sripur and Sonargaon were port-city polities, grain markets and cotton marts; Sandwip was a salt-producing centre and port. They were wealthy towns; A’in-I Akbari mentions delta chiefs promising to supply 23,330 horses

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to the Mughals as well as gunpowder, an expensive and coveted item. Most contained Portuguese settlementsIch furthered Indian Ocean trade. Loricoel on the Meghna (Norcoel or Meherkul), was an outlet which became a fortified bridgehead functioning as a strategic maritime gateway for upstream polities. As defensive outpost, salt-trading centre and site of a Portuguese Augustinian settlement, it was fought over by Tripura, Bengal, Arakan, the Portuguese and Mughals because of its sea access (Mukherjee, 2008, 2014a, 2014b, 2017b).

VII Unmaking the Delta VII.1 The View from Above These wealthy, fortified towns with interlocking commercial circuits lay on a networked coast but could not maintain economic equilibrium. Operating within a commercial boom but confined by a looming political and social crisis, they could not evolve into stable urban centres. Their milieu remained predominantly rural. A reason was the fragile physical environment. Rivers changed course or dried up altogether, floods increased, people migrated, settlements disappeared overnight. Changes in trade flows could bring wealth or stagnation without warning. As in South-East Asia, primary port-towns could become secondary, secondary ports became tertiary. Their uncertain geomorphplogical nature led to a quasi-urban adaptation for survival (Tagliacozzo, 2007). More importantly, the southeast’s integrity was predicated on an autonomous Bengal-Arakan networking which was threatened with Mughal advance into the delta. As Portuguese renegades, Bengali sultans and Arakanese raiders fought for control, and as fluvial shifts exacerbated a political-social crisis, the frontier shattered. Arakan campaigned against Sripur and Bhalwa (1612) and Tripura (1615). Bhalwa, Sripur and Dhaka were sacked between 1624 and 1626, tens of thousands of captives were sold off as slaves. As Portuguese settlers and their Luso-Indian descendants occupied strategic points along the Meghna, transient anchorages received quasi-official sanction. Ca. 1612/13, at the height of the quadrilateral Mughal-Sultanate-Arakanese-Portuguese contest for the delta, Sandwip’s notorious pirate-raider Sebastian Gonzales Tibau held Dakatia Khal’s (literally robbers’ creek) mouth to facilitate Mughal entry. As Arakan contested Tibau’s hold over Sandwip, a squadron arrived from Goa in 1615 for the Arakan campaign. The tide reversed in 1666, when Arakan suffered a defeat to Mughal forces and lost control of Chittagong port, but by then the delta’s ecological devastation was complete. Instead of land ceding to the sea, the sea now encroached onto land. The delta’s drainage system had always been distinctive; brackish water flowed inward rather than outward. Overflowing saltwater from the sea destroyed settlements and promoted forced migration. Escalating global demand for cheap labour exploited this migratory trend and facilitated a slave raiding culture in Arakan whose sourcing area became the delta. The Mughals were unable to defend the eastern frontier; the southeast, with bigger rivers, creeks and inlets going inland, underwent terrible

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raids. Shihabuddin Talish commented that a hundred Mughal boats fled if they sighted even four Arakanese boats. While Arakanese-Portuguese bands organised raids in the southeast, the Portuguese alone seem to have organised the slave trade in the west. Tambolim (Tamluk) and Hughly in West Bengal, and Balasore and Pipli on the Odisha coast, became slave ports and marts. Captives were sold at Tamluk’s Naraghat (landing stage for human captives). A well-orgnanised Naraghat Bazaar (human market) attests to this flourishing trade. Raiders remained on ships anchored mid-stream in the Rupnarayan river because the trade was outlawed. Buyers sent across the purchase money from the shore. Brokers, passing from coast to ship and back, conducted sales (Mukherjee, 2016, 2017b). So insidious is this memory of human transfer that Tamluk town still has a Naraghat bridge. From the middle of the seventeenth century, raids assumed alarming dimensions. Around 1670, Bakla, with pucca houses and cultivated lands, once yielding high revenue from its betel-nut acreage, was left deserted through magh (PortugueseArakanese raiding bands) raids. East India Company official Streynsham Master wrote on 8 September 1676: ‘This day we passed by the River which goes to Chittygom and Dacca, which the English call the River of Rogues, by reason the Arracaners used to come out there to Rob…’ (Temple, 1911: 321). His contemporary Thomas Bowrey noted: ‘Many isles there be in the mouth of the Ganges, not inhabited more than with wild beasts … the natives much dreadinge to dwell there, being timorous of the Arrakcaners with their Gylars who many times have come through the rivers and carried away captive many poor families of the Orixa folks.’ (Temple, 1905: 211–12) Yet another contemporary, Francois Bernier, wrote: ‘It is owing to these repeated depredations that we see so many fine islands at the mouth of the Ganges, formerly thickly peopled, now entirely deserted by human beings, and become the desolate lairs of tigers and other wild beasts.’ (Smith, 1989: 174–75) Rennell’s maps of 1771 and 1778 showed the lower portion of the delta, particularly Dakhin Shahbazpur, forlorn and covered by forest. ‘This part of the Country’, runs an inscription on his 1776 map, ‘has been Deserted on Account of the Ravages of the Muggs’. Warren Hasting’s survey (Hastings Papers, British Library, London Add. Mss. 29210, fl. 51–68) of five villages in the Chittagong region from 1768 to 1772 showed birth rates in drastic decline, indicating the terror caused by magh raids. In June 1777 it was noted: ‘In February last the people of Arracan, commonly called mugs, carried off from the most Southern parts of Bengal, about eighteen hundred men, women and children: they arrived at Aracan…after a voyage of ten days.

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Upon their arrival there, they were conducted to the rajah, or sovereign, who chose from among them, for his slaves, all the handicraftsmen, and most useful persons; amounting to about one fourth of the whole number: the rest he returned to the captors; who conducted them by ropes about their necks, to a market; and there sold them for twenty, to seventy rupee, each; according to their strength abilities & ca.’ (Anon, 2003)

VII.2 The View from Below With encroaching salt water, much of the deltaic land had become unreclaimable. Raiding continued through marshlands and semi-moribund channels. In 1772 Lindsay wrote: ‘This navigation [of the Sunderbans] is part of the Delta of the Ganges, extending more than 200 miles along the coast, through thick forests, inhabited only by tigers, alligators, and wild animals peculiar to a tropical climate; the human population is very scanty, the country being overflowed every springtide by salt water. It is a dreary waste of great extent, but beautiful in the extreme, the lofty trees growing down to the water’s edge with little or no brush or underwood. The innumerable rivers and creeks which intersect this country in every direction form a passage so intricate as to require the assistance of a pilot; its windings are like the mazes of a labyrinth …’ (Lindsay, 1840: 16–17, my emphases) Soon after, Rennell wrote: ‘That part of the Delta bordering on the sea, is composed of a labyrinth of rivers and creeks, all of which are salt, except those that immediately communicate with the principal arm of the Ganges. This trait, known by the name of the Woods, or Sunderbunds, is in extent equal to the principality of Wales; and is so completely enveloped in woods, and infested with Tygers, that if any attempts have ever been made to clear it (as is reported) they have hitherto miscarried. Its numerous canals are so disposed as to form a compleat inland navigation throughout and across the lower part of the Delta, without either the delay of going round the head of it, or the hazard of putting to sea.’ (Rennell and Banks, 1781: 92) Yet, navigation was not easy, creeks dried up and ships ran aground. During 1782/ 83 Lindsay’s 400-ton ship Augusta sailed from Sylhet to Macau via Kolkata ‘through a most intricate and hitherto unexplored navigation, to the vicinity of the sea’. He anchored ‘at a place called Luckypore, near to the confluence of the Ganges and Brahmaputra, two of the largest rivers in the world … and crossed and recrossed this great river, at this place full twenty miles broad’, but then ran

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aground. He searched for ‘a passage to sea through the narrow channels, or creeks, with which this wide delta abounds; and we succeeded in finding deeper water in the river called Harringotta, a smaller branch of the Ganges’ (Lindsay, 1840: 82–84). The tide reversed under late colonialism. By the 1870s much of the forest was cut down, land was reclaimed and Bakla’s south was repopulated. But this was to be temporary. Bakla would again be swallowed up in the 1876 Bengal cyclone when 215,000 people drowned and at least another 100,000 died in the cholera epidemic and famine that followed (Kingsbury, 2018). With its settlements disappearing in the nineteenth century the vast, unclaimed space of the delta became crucial to British Calcutta’s burgeoning land market, albeit in a radically different context and manner. The creation and life cycle of Calcutta was a ‘history of forgetting in the Bengal delta … [this was] central to the creation of property for the extraction of value from the marshes’. Property law and hydraulic technologies reorganised a mobile landscape ‘by soaking ecologies into a propertied geography’ in the search for firm, dry land. As legal and engineering technologies of fixing created a collective amnesia about Calcutta’s distinctively marine landscape, human intervention managed and transformed it into a concrete space by ‘drying the delta’ for making it suitable for reclamation and made it habitable by way of notarising possessions in an intensely marine land market (Bhattacharyya, 2019: 1, 5). The Sundarbans are now seen to be divided into ‘upper’ and ‘lower’ islands, and the former, through proximity, have gradually merged with Kolkata, thereby blurring the social and political boundary between terrestrial and maritime domains (Bhattacharyya, 2017). Because they now comprise a part of Greater Kolkata, property prices have soared, gated communities have appeared, and so now, instead of migrating, its original inhabitants commute to Kolkata to work.

Conclusion This essay eschewed environmental determinism to argue that the politics of seeing and the memories of political and social vulnerability have as much to do with our neglect of the delta as does geomorphological instability. Although physically consolidating from the nineteenth century, the delta was still seen as a non-place – the ‘wild lands’ of the Sundarbans. Its robust mercantile economy, centred on fragile islands and around fast-flowing rivers, fell outside the political spectrum every time it was hitched to the imperatives of territorial states. Mughal unification for example – consisting of a series of ‘nuclear zones of power’ in Arid Asia with the desired combination of agricultural surpluses, extensive grazing lands, and access to major trade routes – exacerbated the divide with Monsoon Asia within which lay the delta. Swamps and forests formed natural frontiers but were marginal to empire; expansion was only possible in those parts of Monsoon India that were accessible by riverboats (Gommans, 1998: 14–15; Streusand, 2011: 204). The delta was neither poor nor passive, but as the land gradually ceded to the sea, the delta receded from memory and once salt water reclaimed the land, its disjuncture with memory was complete. If a place can be defined as relational, historical and

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concerned with identity, then a space which cannot be defined as relational, historical, or concerned with identity will be a non-place (Auge, 1995: 77–78). Thus, once late colonialism started reconstituting this wild frontier, the delta re-entered our imagination as part of Greater Kolkata.

Note 1 The Brahmaputra’s creation myth was first narrated in the Srusti-khanda of the fifth book of the Padmapurana. The Kalikapurana devotes an entire section to its birth. According to it, the river was born in the womb of Amogha, the sage Santanu’s wife, after she had imbibed the semen of Brahma, the Hindu god of Creation. Amogha delivered an aqueous form at a place called Yugandhara, and Santanu placed this form called Brahmakund in the middle of four mountains: Kailash, Gandhamadana, Jarudhi and Sambwartakka. With time it grew into a forty-mile-wide lake. Much later it was Parasurama who cleaved the bank of Brahmakund to make the Brahmaputra flow as a river.

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Eaton, R.M. 1996. The Rise of Islam, and the Bengal Frontier, 1204–1760. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Fedrici, Cesar of Venice. 2004. ‘Account of Pegu from a voyage to the East Indies, and beyond the Indies, &c (tr. from the Italian by Master Thomas Hickock)’, SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research, 2(2): 130–159. Geddes, Arthur. 1960. ‘The Alluvial Morphology of the Indo-Gangetic Plain: Its Mapping and Geographical Significance’, Transactions and Papers (Institute of British Geographers), 28: 253–276. Gommans, Jos. 1998. ‘The Silent Frontier of South Asia, C. A.D. 1100–1800’, Journal of World History, 9(1): 1–23. Gommans, Jos. 2002. ‘Burma at the Frontier of South, East and Southeast Asia: A Geographic Perspective’, in Jos Gommans and Jacques P. Leider (eds), The Maritime Frontier of Burma: Exploring Political, Cultural and Commercial Interaction in the Indian Ocean World, 1200–1800. Amsterdam: KITLV Press, pp. 1–7. Grove, Richard H. 1995. Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism 1600–1860. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Guillot, Claude and Ludvik Kalus. 2008. Les Monuments Funeraires et l’Histoire du Sulatanat de Pasai a Sumatra. Paris: Cahiers d’Archipel, p. 37. Hamilton, Walter. 1908. Imperial Gazetteer, III. The Indian Empire-Economic. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hedin, Sven. 1909. ‘General Narrative’, The Geographical Journal, 33(4): 353–392. Hedin, Sven. 1919. ‘Early European Knowledge of Tibet’, Geografiska Annaler, 1: 290– 339. Kahn, Miriam. 2003. ‘Tahiti: the ripples of a myth on the shores of the imagination’, History and Anthropology, 14(4): 307–326. Kaviraj, Sudipta. 2003. ‘The Two Histories of Literary Culture in Bengal’ in Sheldon Pollock ed. Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia, Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, pp. 503–566. Kingsbury, Benjamin. 2018. An Imperial Disaster: The Bengal Cyclone of 1876. London: Hirst Publishers. Kuroda, Akinobu. 2009. ‘The Eurasian silver century 1276–1359: commensurability and multiplicity’, Journal of Global History, 4(2): 245–269. Le Goff, Jacques. 1982. Time, Work, and Culture in the Middle Ages, Arthur Goldhammer trans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 189–200. Lindsay, H.R. 1840. ‘Anecdotes of An Indian Life’, in Lives Of The Lindsays, IV. Wigan: C. S. Simms. Ludden, David. 2003. ‘The First Boundary of Bangladesh on Sylhet’s Northern Frontiers’, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, 48(1): 1–54. Markham, C. R. 1875. ‘Travels in Great Tibet, and Trade between Tibet and Bengal’, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, 45: 299–315. Martin, Robert Montgomery. 1838. The history, antiquities, topography and statistics of Eastern India. London: William H. Allen & Co. Mukherjee, Radhakamal. 2008/09. The Changing Face of Bengal: A Study in Riverine Economy. Kolkata: Calcutta University Press. Mukherjee, Rila. 2008. ‘The struggle for the Bay. The life and times of Sandwip, an almost unknown Portuguese port in the Bay of Bengal in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, Revista da Faculdade de Letras – História, 3(9): 67–88. Mukherjee, Rila. 2014a. ‘Delta Ports in the First Global Age: Bengal’s Port-based Kingdom of Chandecan’, in Rila Mukherjee (ed.), Vanguards of Globalization: Port-Cities from the Classical to the Modern. Delhi: Primus Books, pp. 97–109.

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Mukherjee, Rila. 2014b. ‘Thinking About Ports’, in Rila Mukherjee (ed.), Vanguards of Globalization: Port-Cities from the Classical to the Modern. Delhi: Primus Books, pp. 25–61. Mukherjee, Rila. 2015. ‘Approaching a History of Water’, Water History Journal, 7(2): 159–177. Mukherjee, Rila. 2016. ‘Portuguese Slave Ports in Bengal 1500–1700’, in Amelia Polonia and Catia Antunes (eds), Seaports in the First Global Age: Portuguese Agents, Networks and Interactions (1500–1800). Porto: Porto University Press, pp. 221–242. Mukherjee, Rila. 2017a. ‘Introduction: Writing a Water History’, in Rila Mukherjee (ed.), Living with Water Peoples, Lives, and Livelihoods in Asia and Beyond. Delhi: Primus Books, pp. 1–13. Mukherjee, Rila. 2017b. ‘Accidental Ports: The Bengal Delta in the Sixteenth-Seventeenth Centuries’, in Kenneth R. Hall, Rila Mukherjee and Suchandra Ghosh (eds), Subversive Sovereigns Across the Seas: Indian Ocean Port-Cities from Early Historic Times to late Colonialism. Kolkata: The Asiatic Society, pp. 146–175. Mukherjee, Rila. 2020. ‘The Making of a Maritime Economy in Bengal, 1600–1800’ in Sabyasachi Bhattacharya ed. A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal: 1700–1950, Vol. I. Delhi: Primus Books, pp. 164–211. Owens, J. B. 2007. ‘Toward a Geographically-Integrated, Connected World History: Employing Geographic Information Systems (GIS)’, History Compass 5(6): 2014–2040. Pearson, Michael N. 2006. ‘Littoral Society: The Concept and the Problems’, Journal of World History, 17(4): 353–373. Perret, Daniel. 2011. ‘From Slave to King: The Role of South Asians in Maritime Southeast Asia (from the late 13th to the late 17th century)’, Archipel, 82: 159–199. Rainey, John Rudd. 1891. ‘The Sundarban: Its Physical Features and Ruins’, Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society and Monthly Record of Geography, 13(5): 273–287. Rennell, James and J. Banks. 1781. ‘An account of the Ganges and Burrampooter Rivers. By James Rennell, Esq. F. R. S.; communicated by Joseph Banks, Esq. P. R. S.’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 71: 87–114. Salles, Jean-Francois. 1995. ‘Les fouilles de Mahasthangarh (Bangladesh)’, Academies des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, 139(2): 531–556. Sarkar, Jadunath, trans. 1906. Fathiya-i-Ibriya by Shihab al-din Talish, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, n.s., 2(6): 257–267. Sarkar, Jadunath, trans. 1907. Fathiya-i-Ibriya by Shihab al-din Talish, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 3: 405–417. Sen, Prabhas Chandra. 1929. Mahasthan and Its Environs, Varendra Research Society, 2. Rajshahi, Bengal. Singh, Upinder. 2009. A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India: From the Stone Age to the 12th Century. Delhi: Pearson Education. Smith, Vincent A. 1989 (revised). Francois Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire. Delhi: Low Price Publications. Spate, O.H.K. 1947. ‘The Partition of the Punjab and of Bengal’, The Geographical Journal, 110(4/6): 201–218. Spate, O.H.K. 1948. ‘The Partition of India and the Prospects of Pakistan’, Geographical Review, 38(1): 5–29. Streusand, Douglas E. 2011. Islamic Gunpowder Empires: Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Tagliacozzo, Eric. 2007. ‘An Urban Ocean: Notes on the Historical Evolution of Coastal Cities in Greater Southeast Asia’, Journal of Urban History, 33: 911–932. Taranath’s History of Buddhism in India in Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya (ed.), Chimpa Lama and Alaka Chattopadhyaya, trans. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, reprinted 1990. Temple, R.C. (ed.) 1905. Thomas Bowrey, A Geographical Account of the Countries Around The Bay of Bengal 1669–1679. Cambridge: Hakluyt Society.

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Temple, R.C. (ed.) 1911. The Diaries of Streynsham Master 1675–1680 And Other Contemporary Papers Relating Thereto, 1. London: Indian Records Series. Vaidik, Aparna. 2010. Imperial Andamans: Colonial Encounter and Island History, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Vink, Markus P.M. 2007. ‘Indian Ocean Studies and the “new thalassology”’, Journal of Global History, 2: 41–62. Wink, Andre. 2002. ‘From the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean: Medieval History in Geographic Perspective’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 44(3): 416–445.

5 “THE WIND SKETCHES LANDSCAPES OF WORDS” Reading the wind in the Horn of Africa Kelsey McFaul

Cloves and spices, carved doors and dhows – these materials are as much a part of an Indian Ocean aesthetic as the monsoon winds which facilitate their travel. A character in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s novel By the Sea recalls that the fragrance he associates most with the ocean, ud-al-qamari, is a corruption both of language (qamari from “qimari, Khmer, Cambodia”) and of material: “ud was the resin which only an aloe tree infected by fungus produced” (Gurnah, 2001: 14). So too, Edward Alpers notes, is the characteristic smell of the sea, which is produced not by ozone but by “a gas released from bacteria” (Alpers, 2019: 13). Alpers makes the comment in the context of Michael Pearson’s commitment to infusing the history of the Indian Ocean with “a whiff of ozone,” and it is especially fitting since the ocean’s unseen element, the wind, has come to occupy a formative place the descriptive vocabulary of the Indian Ocean and of its aesthetics.1 Indian Ocean studies scholarship often invokes the ocean’s winds as an animating force facilitating the movement of people and goods within an ancient and cosmopolitan space. The same character in By the Sea explains that: the winds of the monsoon [have trafficked] traders from Arabia, the Gulf, India, Sind, and the Horn of Africa…every year for at least a thousand years. In the last months of the year, the winds blow steadily across the Indian Ocean towards the coast of Africa, where the currents obliging provide a channel to harbour. Then in the early months of the new year, the winds turn around and blow in the opposite direction, ready to speed the traders home. (Gurnah, 2001, p. 14) While the wind is often caught up in or indeed speeds along the economy of the commodity artifacts that have constituted Indian Ocean aesthetics, what Julia Verne and Markus Verne term its “historical and spatial imaginations,” it can also DOI: 10.4324/9781003300939-7

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undercut the commodity and the human as categories for and sites of knowledge (Verne and Verne, 2017: 316). How often has wind caused ships and sailors to be adrift in the doldrums, wrecked, or swept off-course? The wind wanders tempestuously and unpredictably across oceanic space in ways that confound, complicate, reroute, or depart from human ways of knowing altogether. In this chapter, I take up the meteorological and climatological abstractions of the Indian Ocean wind and give them theoretical and analytical weight, teasing out their materialities and textualities, their histories and politics. Following the wind, I suggest, invites us to flex the geographies we consider as part of the Indian Ocean world and provides us with different aesthetic palettes of language – linguistic and literary traditions – to approach regional iterations of race, empire, cosmopolitan diaspora, and environment. This wind blows in and among and through categories, neither disentangling nor ordering. Its disorder and its method of collection, assemblage, and suture relate thoughts and ideas like junk caught in the tail of a kite. Reading in this way sets sail against the wind of prevailing comparative configurations and embraces meandering and long-winded digressions from the categories that have structured knowledge in Indian Ocean studies thus far. For example, the wind blows without distinction over both land and sea, a distinction that Indian Ocean studies both complicates and reproduces. Following the wind invites us to read land and sea in concert and in dynamic relation; as the wind encounters geographic particularities that cause it to change its course – shoals of islands, mountains, cusps of continents – we are invited to slow, to look more closely at the idiosyncrasies of where and how land and sea interact.2 We can, for example, pick up the monsoon winds as they gust west to the African coastline, up what Gurnah calls “the cusp of our coast, [and to] the Horn of Africa,” that great wedge of land that protrudes into the western Indian Ocean like the cusp of a black rhinoceros’s horn (Gurnah, 2001: 37). The winds cross the Horn’s arid coastal lowlands and hit the craggy interior, the Ethiopian and Eritrean highlands, where together with easterly winds from the Atlantic and across the Sahara (the intertropical convergence zone), they create one of the most unique and varied climates in the world. The highlands, watered by the rain from these winds, have been the center of regional power in the Horn of Africa since as early as the second century CE. The Horn, in its present-day configuration of the nation-states of Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia,3 is perhaps an errant and unconventional port of call for Indian Ocean studies. But its Horn’s millennia-long histories of Christianity and Islam, oceanic trade and literary traditions in Arabic, Swahili, Ge’ez, Amharic and Somali mean it is a landscape long-swept by real and metaphorical winds of migration, language, and trade. Ethiopia’s status as an uncolonised African nation and regional power make the Horn a little-referenced but important place to unspool Indian Ocean studies’ animating questions about what exists before, outside, and in spite of European hegemony, and to tease out questions of what it means to think Blackness in an oceanic frame that is not, as least primarily, Atlantic. As aspects of an aesthetic palette, the wind and the weather it brings are rarely, even outside the Indian Ocean, empty linguistic or literary devices. Perhaps their

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most common usage is conversational: to mention the weather is an almost universal way of changing the subject, of diverting from an uncomfortable topic to a safer, less contested one. In the nineteenth-century British Romantic tradition, the ability to perceive the weather and the sublimity of natural landscapes was integral to the creation of the individual rational human subject.4 The weather could also signify the unstated emotions of human subjects, as in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847). In Brontë’s novel, Jane’s emotions are contained and concealed, only able to be sensed metaphorically by the reader through moments of rain, sun, or lightening. As Dionne Brand points out, Jane Eyre is also a novel of British imperialism in which “the colonial event…plantation, slavery, in Jamaica, [using enslaved labour from Africa is] all hidden” (Brand, 2020: 30, 34). Not incidentally, colonial and African landscapes feature prominently in European imperial configurations of the human insofar as perceived exotic primitivism was linked to inhabitants lacking reason. As Achille Mbembe notes, African landscapes and subjects represent “the notion of ‘absolute otherness’…through which the West represents the origin of its own norms [and] develops a self-image” that denies any self but its own (2001: 2). Locating the perception and ability to “know” weather within the (white male) human subject was, for all its praise of untamable sublimity, a form of imperial domestication.5 In The Satanic Verses Salman Rushie quips that “the trouble with the English was…in a word…their weather,” where “weather” signifies an entire imperial apparatus of spatial, temporal, and racial categories (Rushdie, 1988: 354). Brand expresses her interest in surfacing the violent unseen narrative of race and colony underneath the “glassy surface” of British literary classics: what sits in narrative as a result of the genesis, the action and long duration, of…certain relations of power, so as to make invisible or ordinary, or a given, those power relations…I want to look at the language—what it transmits, the state of being it describes, the mind, the philosophical orientation of the speaker. I want to look at the language, in this case, English, as vehicular—as transporting ideas of the normal at the level of syntax and feeling; as marking the relation of objects. (Brand, 2020, pp. 19–20) Brand’s figure for the way language ferries the unseen is mechanical; Christina Sharpe’s is climatological. Sharpe employs the language of “weather” to denote the ships that sailed—“from Saint Louis, Bristol, Rhode Island, New York, from Senegambia and offshore Atlantic, from West Central Africa and St. Helena, from Southeast Africa and Indian Ocean islands”—to enact mass abduction, death, and enslavement in the Black Atlantic (Sharpe, 2016: 102). For Sharpe, weather is “the totality of our [meaning Black] environments; the weather is the total climate; and that climate is antiblack” (Sharpe, 2016: 104). Sharpe is thinking with the closing lines of Toni Morrison’s Beloved – “By and by all trace is gone, and what is forgotten is not only the footprints but the water too and what is down there. The rest is weather…Just weather” (Morrison, 1987: 275). These lines recognise the

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prevailing wind of forgetting within the climate of anti-Blackness. What is forgotten and lost in the depths of the Atlantic – the physical, relational, and spiritual losses of the Middle Passage – comes to be signified as “just weather,” an elision that also opens up a way of reading what sits in the narrative and under the water. In this chapter, I am attempting to sense a way of reading, a climatological method, that attends to the particular history and loss of Brand, Sharpe, and Morrison’s oceanic context, and that can feel its way toward a similar register of weather in the novels of the Horn of Africa, with their own freighted histories, linguistic strategies, and oceanic currents. I am curious whether a way of reading so deeply engaged with thinking Blackness and anti-Blackness in an oceanic frame might inform a way of reading racialisation and empire in another oceanic frame, and whether, from this practice, we might be able to think Blackness and race in transoceanic frames without collapsing particular histories and languages. So I am thinking with Brand, Sharpe, and Morrison to ask, What is it that sits in the narrative and is transmitted unspoken through the language of Horn of Africa novels? What is it, in a different but interconnected oceanic context, that causes this shift to the weather? Said differently, what is the invocation of the weather alerting us has been transported, blown in, at the level of syntax and feeling? What is moving sight unseen, but sensed and felt? Perhaps the first question is the role of the novel, that most European and colonial of forms, in the Horn of Africa, a region rich in oral and poetic forms in African languages. Is the novel anything but a form blown in on the winds of empire? Elizabeth Lambourn, writing of the discovery of 12th-century documents pertaining to the Indian Ocean world in the genizah, or ritual depository of a Cairo synagogue, quotes a packing list for a journey at sea: “for the travel provisions: four small gunnies and two baskets of rice and two baskets of hard wheat and one basket of coconuts and one basket of flour and - [one of] copper and iron, and [one of] 3 fa-tiya chests…one fa-tiya chest of da-dhı, fishermen’s gear.” (Lambourn, 2018: 1) The objects in the luggage conjure a familiar Indian Ocean aesthetic, but it is “the terms themselves” and their containers, the fa-tiya chests, that “belong to a maritime patois distinctive of the western Indian Ocean and [a particular location] somewhere on the coast of modern-day Kerala and Karnataka” (Lambourn, 2018: 2). Perhaps approaching the Horn of Africa novel6 within the frame of the Indian Ocean helps us see it as a vessel, what Vilashini Cooppan calls “the portmanteau of genres,” through which a wide range of modes, forms, and languages move and flow (2018: 23). The novel, like the fa-tiya chest, is a form that gives shape and contour to the modes, forms, and languages that blow through and are contained by it. Conversely, like the wood of the ud, it can be corrupted, made different and new and strange by its passage on the wind. Such is the case, at least, in Igiaba Scego’s novel Adua (2017). Written in Italian, the novel is threaded with the

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languages of the Horn – “Arabic, Somali, Swahili, Amharic, Tigrinya” – all the languages one of the protagonists Zoppe, a translator, speaks (Scego, 2017: 12). The novel brings together two narrative voices, Zoppe and his daughter Adua, and three historical times: Zoppe’s 1930s adulthood, Adua’s 1960s childhood, and her twenty-first-century adulthood. Zoppe simultaneously embodies and complicates the trope of native informant or “translator as traitor” and has his fingers, or perhaps his lips, on the many linguistic threads that run throughout the novel like vectors of wind. Zoppe initially takes pride in his mastery of the Italian language (he’s “virtually a magician”) and distinguishes his form of colonial collaboration from that of conscripted soldiers: “He would never take arms against a neighbor, a man with the same color skin…He was a linguistic ambassador, a mediator, he didn’t hurt anyone” (Scego, 2017: 11, 13). Only later, once his translations make him complicit in the Italian invasion and occupation of Ethiopia, does he feel his tongue has become infected, “swollen, sore, [with] strange yellow spots,” “stiff [and] lifeless” (Scego, 2017: 90, 104). Attending to the geographic and meteorological registers of the novel surfaces Zoppe’s pride in his distinct facial features, including his aquiline nose which inhabitants of the Horn would immediately associate with Somali-ness, and his carefully maintained urban identity that knits him into the Indian Ocean world. Zoppe’s cosmopolitanism is signified by his linguistic ability and his affinity for coastal communities like Mogadishu and Magalo. The urbanity of such cities stands in distinction to the rural pasture lands where his daughter Adua is raised after the death of her mother: Magalo was a port city…and had schools, offices, a nice big city hall, several mosques, a Catholic church, a library, a branch of the central university, a bookstore, a pasta factory, two markets…[and] a sea that took your breath away. Only there did the Indian Ocean roar with pleasure. (Scego, 2017, pp. 52–53) Somali writer Nuruddin Farah echoes this cosmopolitan ideal in his description of Tamarind Market in Mogadishu. Tamarind market took its name from the Arabic words “timir and Hind, meaning ‘dates’ and India’” and was run, in large part, by people “from elsewhere: Iran, Indian and Arabia” (Farah, 2007: 35). For Farah, the market sparkles with Indian Ocean cosmopolitanism and connects the Horn of Africa to an idyllically peaceful Indian Ocean world; it was a place where “anyone could come, provided he or she lived in and at peace” (Farah, 2007: 36). In contrast, the pastoral hinterlands away from the coast were “made up entirely of Somalis…peripheral to the city’s residents and their cosmopolitan way of life” (Farah, 2007: 35). In Farah’s schema, landscape mapped racial and class distinctions. In Scego’s novel, Adua’s transition from one environment to another is marked by a “big storm” (2015: 36). Her father arrives in a downpour to take her from the hinterland to Magalo. While Adua is terrified to leave the interior, “my goats…my camels…that golden land that had become part of my bones,” he presents it as an

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unquestioned privilege (Scego, 2017: 39). Over time, she adapts to the city, makes friends with an Indian girl, goes to the movies. Everywhere she notices the figure of the city’s munar, or lighthouse, constructed by “our forefather Torobow” and later defaced by “the blade of an axe…[and] a bundle of rods symbolizing fascist power” (Scego, 2017: 65–66). The “Moorish tower,” that guiding beacon for sailors, is a figure for the ways Italian tools of race and place making, blown on the winds of imperialism, have come to interweave with regional methods of using Indian Ocean geography for race formation (Scego, 2017: 66). Zoppe, Adua’s father, knows the freighted weight of overlapping imperial histories and Italian racial taxonomy. Early in the novel he arrives in Addis Ababa, the site of the treaty that ended the first Ethio-Italian War, in the service of his Italian employer Count Anselmi.7 Zoppe has visited the city many times before, but on this visit it has “just rained;” the weather precedes them and ushers in their arrival (Scego, 2017: 87). The count trades racialised jokes with a French colleague – “Africa is so slow,” the Arabs are “cheap” and “efficient” while the Abyssinians are “lazy” – until the talk turns to the divvying up of African landscapes (Scego, 2017: 86–87). Anselmi and the Frenchman voice the European colonial discourse that “reduced [African] environments either to a wild, uncorrupted virgin landscape devoid of people or to a space peopled with human creatures still in their natural state” and animated the Scramble for Africa (Iheka, 2017: 10). He misses Zoppe’s urban coastal identity, his nativist assumptions lumping the translator into a kind of universal African subject based on skin color. To the Italian everything about Zoppe is “outlandish,” from the turban to his unsettling translator minstrelsy and perceived nativist relation to land. Somalia is just “twigs and hot sand…the lunar solitude of the African periphery” and Zoppe wears this landscape like a skin, “a thick layer of pink dust” (Scego, 2017: 95, 123). The two Europeans discuss African geographies as they do its inhabitants, objects within an economic transaction. Despite this façade, Anselmi, an emissary of Mussolini’s Fascist Italy, has come to plan a war. Italy’s first effort to establish a colony in the Horn of Africa had failed, the First Ethio-Italian War (1895–96) ending in an Abyssinian victory in the mountainous town of Adua where a coalition of fighters led by Menelik (and armed by French guns) pushed the Italians back to a narrow strip on the Red Sea. The defeat festered like an “unhealed lesion” on Italian imperial ambitions and motivated a second aggressive territorial expansion, the “reclamation” that would make Fascist Italy the successor to the Roman Empire and “restore” the Fourth Shore of northern African colonies (Finaldi, 2009: 15; Smythe, 2018: 286). Integral to the second wave of Italian imperialism in the Horn was the idea of the racial body produced by Italian scientific positivism. Angelica Pesarini describes how “Italian colonialism and Fascism materialised the body of the racialised ‘Other’ through discourse practice able to produce hierarchical classifications of inequality” (Pesarini, 2017: 6–7). Colonial administrators in Italian East Africa considered miscegenation a serious threat to Italian blood and racial purity and developed apartheid-like prohibitions against racial mixing. Children of miscegenation were subjected to racial and cultural testing, including “the morphological analysis of the

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skull and the measurement of cranial capacity” and “the cultural ascertainment of ‘Italian-ness,’ demonstrated by…level of education, lack of criminal records, monogamy, and religion” (Pesarini, 2017: 11). By vocalising this racial gridding in Anselmi and the Frenchman’s discourse, the novel dispels the notion of a unitary concept of Blackness or a black/white racial binary and surfaces an ideology of racial categorisation keyed to place and developmental time (recalling Fanon’s notion of the native outside time). With this in mind, we can return to the forecasted dispersal of African lands and people. Says the Frenchman, “We have Tunisia and [you’ll] get Ethiopia…a fair deal” (Scego, 2017: 87). Anselmi is insulted and refuses to reply; he shifts the conversation back “to meteorological matters,” complaining, “‘Oh, Addis Ababa is so cold in the morning” (Scego, 2017: 87). The Count’s comment appears as an innocuous conversational diversion. But reading the comment through an attention to what sits in the weather in another oceanic context helps surface the philosophical orientation behind Anselmi’s conversational detour. The Frenchman references a complex racial taxonomy that assigns African subjects and landscapes gradations of economic and moral value. In Anselmi’s view, Ethiopia in its conflation with Blackness8 is anything but a fair deal and simultaneously rubs salt in the “unhealed lesion” of past colonial history. His meteorological diversion to the weather, especially its chill, effaces the insult and obliquely hints at his privileged knowledge of the coming storm of Italian military intervention. Maaza Mengiste’s novel The Shadow King (2020) picks up where Adua’s sections on Zoppe and Anselmi leave off. The female-centred epic tells the story of Mussolini’s 1935 invasion of Ethiopia, excavating the female soldiers erased from the historical record to tell a story of fragile, vanishing bravery at the height of an imperial golden age. In mountainous terrain lush from recent rainfall, an Italian army of conscripted Ethiopian and Eritrean ascari sweeps down on guerrilla warriors hidden in the folds and cracks of the landscape. The conscripted army are led by Ibrahim, an Abyssinian whose complicated position of voluntary and coerced colonial service mirrors Zoppe’s.9 The novel compares the movement of Ibrahim’s ascari to the wind. The fighters move: soaring over stone and thatch, nimble as a gazelle, racing through a valley still refusing to reveal the unearthly source of those war cries and bullets…propelled by those who run beside [them], who look at their leader’s proud face and bend into the wind to gain momentum. (Mengiste, 2019: 152) Several winds are at work in this clash between invading imperialists and guerilla defenders in the Ethiopian highlands. First, there is the wind of Italian imperial expansion, the wind of the prevailing historical record that states “after forty years of humiliation, Adua was finally, proudly, taken by the Italians on 5 October 1935” and that the town “welcomed the invaders with bowed heads and ululations” (Mengiste, 2019: 86–87). This imperial wind blusters and “vibrate[s] with

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spear and flung stone and hoarse shouts” (Mengiste, 2019: 153). It links up, “bend [s] into,” and is strengthened by the wind of a conscripted army spurred on by their native commander; as the ascari surge forward, “the air thickens with dust and voice and horn” (Mengiste, 2019: 153). Third there is a quiet, stilled wind in which the resistance army lurks as “no more than an expectation, a weighted thought without substance and form, no more than air” (Mengiste, 2019: 155). This is the wind of counterhistory, the resistance that exists outside the official record. It unfurls itself from bushes and trees and rocks and “a bloom of white dress, skirts rippling in the wind,” which appear as a mirage and carry the voice of women “raining from the sky” (Mengiste, 2019: 157). This wind carries the “ghostly spirits descended from the brave sons of Adua” into another battle to defend the sovereignty of their land, fighters who again “[use] the terrain to the best of their advantage” to push back their attackers (Mengiste, 2019: 156). The battle, and the war, turn on a fourth thing carried on the wind: Italian planes releasing clouds of mustard gas.10 What militarised imperialism brings on the wind means “there is no air anymore, only a hot spray that splatters then chokes” (Mengiste, 2019: 162). The ephemerality of this wind-blown form of attack leaves little evidence and the Italian imperial record denies its use. The only evidence is on the landscape and on the skin, “fighters and rivers and land” scorched by chemical fire (Mengiste, 2019: 163). All these winds – the blustering wind of empire, the wind that bends where it is conscripted, the wind heavy with native resistance and the wind of chemical warfare – co-exist and swirl together within the “churning valley” and eventually make their way to Haile Selassie (Ras Teferi), the Ethiopian emperor who sits in his palace in Addis Ababa listening to “the wind slapping against the palm trees” (Mengiste, 2019: 156, 172).11 His head swirls with a cloud of languages – Italian, French, English and Amharic – and the names of cities, “Adua. Axum. Mekelle. Gondar. Harar. Dessie. Addis Ababa” (Mengiste, 2019: 156, 172). We will return to Haile Selassie shortly, but for the moment let us pause in Addis Ababa, the capital of the modern Ethiopian state. In the 1930s of Adua and The Shadow King, Addis is a young capital, less than 50 years old. It was founded by Menelik of Shewa’s wife Taytu who travelled from the kingdom’s highland centre to Oromia, drawn by the hot springs. They city’s status as the capital solidified in the wake of Menelik’s military campaign to incorporate peripheral lands and expel foreign invaders that culminated at Adua. This highly contested history of territorial expansion marked a new era in the imposition of highland culture on conquered lowland territories including the Oromo land on which Addis Ababa was founded.12 When Zoppe comments that Addis looks “more modern” and “angrier” on this visit, he gestures at both the Amhara project to position Ethiopia as a modern state and its forceful methods of doing so (Scego, 2017: 87). Zoppe references this history when he calls Addis Ababa “a proud Oromo standing tall” and continually emphasises the city as a sign of Ethiopian empire through details about its unpleasant, even aggressive weather (Scego, 2017: 86). “Nature was not kind in Addis Ababa and even the air was hostile,” he says. “The cold breath of the highlands hit

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him square in the face” (Scego, 2017: 88). Zoppe’s emphasis on meteorological matters comments obliquely on the “destructive fury” of a highland state and its naturalised system of ethnic hierarchy, as well as the mocking irony that a landscape chosen for its warm springs could be so plagued by cold weather (Scego, 2017: 88). Despite this, Zoppe persists in viewing Addis as a cosmopolitan city characterised by ambiguity, “a puzzle of worlds in a yard of cloth” (Scego, 2017: 86). Mengiste echoes this idea of a cosmopolitan Addis, writing in her introduction to Addis Ababa Noir: Those who reside within its borders…are multiethnic and speak over eighty languages and more than two hundred dialects. And now imagine that these varied, proud, and robust cultures have wound their way into Addis and made it home. There is a cosmopolitanism that is distinctly national as much as international. (Mengiste, 2020, p. 13) In markets like Sidist Kilo in Addis, Zoppe’s father believed, “all divisions were cancelled out” (Scego, 2017: 105). Farah observes that cosmopolitan urbanity is not without tension and notes that Mogadishu’s Tamarind Market was twice sacked by pastoralists, once between 1530 and 1580 and once in 1991 (Farah, 2007: 37, 35). Zoppe has a nightmare of a similar fire razing the Sidist Kilo market, a fear that suggests the ways his identity is tied to cosmopolitan cities throughout the Indian Ocean world. That Addis Ababa, a city far from the coast, is fashioned with many of the qualities of a cosmopolitan port city is cause to revisit and revise our theories and assumptions of Indian Ocean cosmopolitanism. Generated from the market which is their centre, discussions of cosmopolitanism and diaspora often highlight the Indian Ocean’s ability to destabilise rigid binaries, borders, and structures of power like linear time and the nation-state in favour of networks, hybridity, liminality, and the centring of marginal or buried histories. The glorification of destabilising networks is part and parcel of the nostalgic image of a peaceful and prosperous Indian Ocean world before European hegemony. The latter has been challenged by scholars who emphasise “the fragments of cultures in transition, of peoples adrift…[in] the ebb and flow of global social change” and the ways networks prey on the weakest and most vulnerable, often women and children (Joseph, 2007: 64).13 Kathryne Mitchell argues for a similar revision of diaspora’s spatial metaphors of liminality and fluidity: while the discourse of networks emphasises economics and the movement of commodity archives, abstract descriptors like fluidity and hybridity may romanticise the “various kinds of diasporic, deterritorialised, and hybrid subject positions that can be and have been used strategically for economic gain” (Mitchell, 1997: 533). Thinking Addis Ababa as an Indian Ocean cosmopolitan city draws Ethiopia, the only land-locked country in the Horn of Africa, into the Indian Ocean world in a variety of ways. Most innocently, it highlights the diverse histories of Ethiopia’s

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Indian Ocean diaspora, including free and forced labour and religious migrants stretching from Israel and Saudi Arabia to Gujarat and Kerala.14 Conversely, it plays on Indian Ocean racial geographies, promoting the idea that Ethiopia is not quite African but rather urbanely cosmopolitan, “an Oriental kingdom accidentally located on the African continent” (Ibreck and de Waal, 2021: 6). Such a move appears to reject global constructions of Blackness while embracing regional and global discourses of colourism. Geopolitically, by fashioning itself a besieged island in a tempestuous and hostile sea, Ethiopia cultivates a state of exception that downplays its status as a regional power with a long history of territorial expansion.15 Presenting itself as part of the Indian Ocean world quietly dissolves the Ethiopian-Eritrean border and asserts Ethiopia’s right to access the sea. Attending to the wind and climate in Horn of African literature like Adua and The Shadow King helps surface the configuration of a regional empire and its forms of linguistic and ethnic hierarchy often glossed over in service of Ethiopia’s reputation as the single uncolonised nation-state in Africa. Both Scego and Mengiste’s novels demonstrate how the raw material of historical events like Adua are blown on the wind and taken up to different narrative and political ends. For the nascent state which had just moved into capital to Addis Ababa, the victory at Adua unified “so-called peripheral leaders” under a single leader and cause and consolidated what would become its modern borders (Zeleke, 2020a: 44). For the outside world, the victory became a symbol of anticolonial resistance. With the founding of Addis Ababa and its confirmation at Adua, Elleni Centime Zeleke suggests, Amharas became Ethiopians and Ethiopians become “African” – the Africans who defeated Europe (2020b). They also become also Black, figures of anticolonial freedom who blew on the wind and infused the radical politics of thinkers like W. E.B. Du Bois, Aimé Césaire and Marcus Garvey.16 Garvey, the Jamaican Black nationalist, selected “Ethiopia, Thou Land of our Fathers” as the “anthem of the Negro race” in the Declaration of the Rights of the Negro People of the World (Garvey, 1920).17 Its lyrics position Ethiopia as the origin of a regal African race and as a geography of return for the diaspora created by the Middle Passage. This Pan-African vision of Ethiopia does not reference the Atlantic slave trade except to acknowledge the force by which New World Africans were abducted and dispersed. It relates to Africa, or the idea of Africa it has constructed, outside the long oceanic history of the African body as commodity. This is not to elide Ethiopia’s own history of slavery, both internally and eastward to the Arabian Peninsula and Indian subcontinent,18 but rather to suggest that the wind’s spatial and temporal errantry might give us new ways of putting Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa in conversation with the Caribbean and Black Atlantic and of thinking comparative oceans and histories of enslavement.19 Ethiopia and its last emperor Haile Selassie are figures of Black nationalism that blow on the wind in what Sharad Chari calls “intellectual maroonage” (Chari, 2019: 192). They move across, within, and through geographic spaces and human temporalities and break with the fatal repetition of “plantation futures” and “cosmopolitan hybridity” that Atlantic and Indian Oceans collectively share (Chari, 2019: 192).

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Indeed, when Haile Selassie visits Jamaica in 1966 he travels not on a vessel that echoes the slave ship but on a plane, not across the ocean but on a vector of wind. It is a rainy day when the Ethiopian emperor arrives on the island nation distinguished by its history of anticolonial maroon resistance and its belief in the emperor, Ras Teferi’s, divinity. As his plane lands, the rain stops, and crowds decked in red, green, and gold rush the tarmac. The weather that in the Horn of Africa has come to signify the arrival of (various forms of) empire in Jamaica is a sign of blessing. Jamaican Rastafarians recognise Haile Selassie not only as the Black leader of a free, never-colonised African nation but also as the returned Christ, Jah. He is both a figure of global Blackness and liberatory Christianity, of freedom in a climate of anti-Blackness. This figure returns to Ethiopia on the winds of language, now carrying the weather of another oceanic history. In contemporary Amharic used in Addis Ababa, when a person’s arrival is accompanied by rain, they might say “Gedegna” or “Jah negn,” meaning “I am Jah.”20 What it means to arrive with the rain has been translated, trafficked and transmuted across oceans, languages and histories. Gedegna domesticates a figure of global Blackness within the language of regional state, cultural, and religious power, and what Ethiopia and Haile Selassie signify in Jamaica comes to sit alongside Horn of Africa and colonial European relationships to Blackness in the discourse of the weather. Rather than collapsing these tensions, the wind with its many vectors, eddies, and streams, gives us a climatological method to navigate and indeed inhabit the air in and between them all. Just weather: how varied the states of being, the human and nonhuman relationships, the freighted histories transported and naturalised by this discourse. To surface their unspoken and unseen ways necessitates a method able to negotiate the descriptive vocabulary and aesthetics of oceanic analysis – a method of reading the wind. Learning from other oceanic spaces, the wind helps us configure a relationship between the Indian Ocean and the Horn of Africa that surfaces regional and European practices of race and place making. It teases out how the Horn of Africa complicates oceanic racialisations in the Indian Ocean and elsewhere and approaches transoceanic connections and formations of Blackness outside a determining history of the body as commodity. Reading the wind also reframes the history of the novel in the Horn of Africa, inviting us to see the novel as a form both carried on and corrupted by the wind, flooded through with the streams and flows of languages and literary traditions. What the wind offers us, in short, is an errant practice of oceanic reading that lingers in the diversions and disorder of the weather, where to be slowed, swamped, or swept off-course is the point of setting out.

Notes 1 In this essay I want to maintain a distinction between descriptive vocabulary and aesthetics. As in, descriptive vocabulary is a kind of disciplinary shorthand of stock phrases about political and economic configurations, religious beliefs, diasporic dispersal, and

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2

3 4

5

6

7

8

climate. Aesthetics refers to what Julia Verne and Marcus Verne refer to as “historical and spatial imaginations…Triggered substantially by sounds and images, stories and narrative, feelings, tastes or smells, these imaginations are often elusive and less well defined, fluid, situative, and uncritical in nature. Yet they shape the Indian Ocean at least as much as our scholarly constructions do” (Verne and Verne, 2017, p. 316). I’m thankful to Tiffany Lethabo King’s idea of the shoal as a “geological formation and nautical disturbance” of shallow water that impedes and slows the normative movement and momentum within academic studies of Blackness by non-Black scholars (King, 2019, p. 40). In King’s thinking, the shoal necessitates a process and practice of navigation: changing speeds and momentum, adjusting velocity and course. This slowing, which invites attention to the “what else” that surrounds, exceeds, and moves through the categories by which we have been taught to organise knowledge, is a key aspect of what I mean by reading the wind. The wind has its moments of bluster and its moments of lethargy, but to sense them requires a still attentiveness. The Republic of Somaliland considers itself a sovereign state in the Horn of Africa but is regarded internationally as a part of Somalia. There are exceptions, namely Heidegger’s view that weather was an unorganised and non-subjective realm of undifferentiated experience that belonged to no one, and that this impersonality necessarily preceded and determined any subjectivity which emerged from within it. In Igiaba Scego’s novel Adua, which I discuss below, Zoppe notes that the Italian Count Anselmi is obsessed with the British Empire: it’s “all Count Celestine Anselmi talked about…his great obsession” (2015, p. 77). Not insignificantly, Britain symbolises both the “greatest empire on earth” and memories of Anselmi’s mother who was brought up in a British colony - in India (Scego, 2015, p. 77). The rise of the novel in the Horn of Africa, the subject of my dissertation work, is beyond the scope of this short paper. However it’s worth noting that while there are many potential starting points, Afework Gebreyesus’ ልብ ወለድ ሪክ [ጦበያ] [Story born of the heart (Tobiya)] published in 1907 (1900 in the Ethiopian calendar) is commonly cited as the first Amharic language novel. The novel is a retelling of the mythic “founding of an empire,” the creation of “a chosen community and its subsequent legitimation as ‘the chosen of God’” (Admassu, 1995, 93, 94). The battle that ended the first Italo-Abyssinian War was a result of (intentional) discrepancies in translation. Following the death of Ethiopian Emperor Yohannes IV in 1889, Italy occupied the highlands along the coast between Massawa and Asssab, proclaiming them a new colony named Eritrea (the Italian form of the Greek word Ἐρυθραίᾱ, meaning “red land”). Menelik II, recognising an opportunity to consolidate power, signed the Treaty of Wuchale recognising the Italian occupation of Eritrea in exchange for guarantees of financial assistance, arms, and ammunition. But there were two versions of the treaty: in the Italian translation, Ethiopia was prohibited from foreign negotiations with anyone but Italy, effectively making Menelik’s kingdom an Italian protectorate. The Amharic translation had no such prohibition, only the option that Ethiopia might use Italy to communicate with foreign governments. The Ethiopian victory at Adwa halted Italian imperial ambitions in the Horn of Africa, and Wuchale was repealed by the Treaty of Addis Ababa, which recognised Ethiopia as an independent nation and left Italy with little more than a few strips of land along the Red Sea and Indian Ocean coast. Asked to send something that might represent them to the International Paris Exhibition of 1900, writer Ferdinando Martini wrote in his Eritrean Diary that there was nothing in the Italian colonies but “the bones of the dead, some military plans gone awry, and a list of sums of money thrown to the wind” (quoted Finaldi, 2009, p. 13). The historical debate about the Arabic origins of Abyssinian culture and Semitic languages is beyond the scope of this paper but an important factor in modern Ethiopia’s cosmopolitan self-imaging discussed below. See Tamrat, T. (2009) for more on Arab migration to the Horn of Africa.

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9 Ibrahim’s personal history tracks the larger history of two generations of Ethiopians conscripted by the Italians as native informants, translators, and soldiers. His relationship with the Italian commander Carlo Fucelli begins in the first era (1910–30) when Ethiopians and Eritreans were sent to fight in Libya and Somalia (“Ibrahim’s quick thinking saved him [Fucelli]” in Benghazi, p. 203). The first era is the subject of Gebreyesus Hailu’s novel The Conscript [ሓደ ዛን ]. One of the earliest novels in an African language, it was written in Tigrinya in 1927 and published in 1950. In the second era, that of Mengiste’s The Shadow King, Ibrahim trains a new generation of recruits and leads them in the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935. 10 The use of “poison or poisoned weapons” like mustard gas in warfare is considered a war crime according to the 1899 Hague Declaration Concerning Asphyxiating Gases and the 1907 Hague Convention on Land Warfare. 11 The way messages arrive on the wind recalls Ka-lida-sa’s Meghadu-ta, the Sanskrit lyric poem. In the poem, a yaks.a or nature spirit convinces a cloud to carry a message to his wife by describing the many beautiful sites the cloud will see on its journey from central India to the Himalayas. I’m thankful to respondents at the Cosmopolitan Cultures and Ocean Thought Conference at Jamia Millia Islamia New Delhi in November 2020 for pointing out this connection. 12 Wallelign Mekonnen, in his famous 1969 article “On the Question of Nationalities in Ethiopia,” gestures to the ways Amharaness were elevated to a national identity: “To be a ‘genuine Ethiopian’ one has to speak Amharic, to listen to Amharic music, to accept the Amhara-Tigre religion…In short to be an Ethiopian, you will have to wear an Amhara mask” (Mekonnen, 1969). 13 See also Hofmeyr (2010) and Prange (2008). Adbulrazak Gurnah’s body of literary work consistently meditates on these themes. 14 See Neelima Jeychandran’s work on African Sufi saints and spirits in India, many of whom were perceived to come from Al-Habash, a term that can refer both to Yemen and the Horn of Africa, or to the theory that Ethiopian and Eritrean peoples migrated from Arabia. Today, Habesha can be used as supra-national ethnic signifier of all Semitic-speaking (and usually Christian) Ethiopians and Eritreans. 15 Understanding the modern Ethiopian state as a regional empire also complicates our understanding of comparative empires in Indian Ocean space. It is not only European forms of empire which continue to recombinate and reappear in new forms outside the temporal periods to which we assign them. It is informative, I argue, to analyse European forms of empire alongside their regional counterparts (Amhara, but also forms of Islamic migration and colonisation in this space) and contemporary Cold War and neoliberal manifestations like Russia and the United States’ relationships with Somalia and Ethiopia and the AFRICOM military base in Djibouti. 16 Even earlier, the Haitian revolution is the symbol of Black revolt and revolution in the Americas. In his book The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution, Julius S. Scott uses the notion of “the common wind” to characterise the network of slaves, maroons, freemen, sailors, and merchants who trafficked intelligence and freedom in the 18th-century Caribbean. The intelligence networks were a “tempest” sweeping across “linguistic, geographic, and imperial boundaries” that relied on the distinctive landscapes of the Caribbean islands – mountain strongholds, accessible beaches, narrow waterways – as well as the ocean itself (Scott, 2018, p. xvii). Scott’s use of “tempest” recalls Shakespeare’s Caliban and through it the larger project with which Europeans invaded the New World on the wind, a collection of imperial storms brought by wind-blown ships (Scott, 2018, xvii). Césaire’s Cahier d’un retour au pays natal too employs the figure of the wind in the poem’s closing lines to trace the contours, peaks, and valleys of a revolutionary landscape. The wind is not merely a poetic device or even a metaphor but for Césaire the actual spirit and ethos of revolutionary change, “the elements of a new [order]… crucial to the poem’s revolutionary power” (Kalikoff, 1995, p. 504). 17 Ford and Burrell’s hymn opens, “Ethiopia, thou land of our fathers, / Thou land where the gods loved to be, / …thy children are lustily calling / From over the distant seas. /

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Jehovah, the Great One has heard us… / With his spirit of Love, he has stirred us / To be One through the coming years” (Ford and Burrell, 1919). 18 See, for example, the histories of Ethiopian communities in India, including Gujarat and Kerala. 19 The choice to begin this essay in Ethiopia rather than in the Black Atlantic and Caribbean is intentional and based on my observation that comparative oceanic work, especially in the American academy, often privileges the Americas and the Atlantic’s black/white binary when theorising forms of oceanic racialisation. In addition, I have substituted the more wayward phrase “ports of call” for “points of origin.” 20 I am grateful to friends and conversations in Addis Ababa for this detail.

Bibliography Admassu, Y. 1995. ‘The First-Born of Amharic Fiction: A Revalution of Afework Gebraysus’ T’obbiya’, in T. Adera and A.J. Ahmed (eds), Silence is not Golden: a critical anthology of Ethiopian literature. Lawrenceville, NJ: Red Sea Press, pp. 93–112. Afework, Gabre Yesus. 1907. [1900 EC]. ልብ ወለድ ሪክ [ጦበያ] [Story born of the heart (Tobiya)]. Rome. Reprinted 1971 [1964 EC], Addis Ababa: Commercial Printing Press. Alpers, E.A. 2019. ‘From Littoral to Ozone: On Mike Pearson’s Contributions to Indian Ocean History’, The Journal of Indian Ocean World Studies, 2(1): 12–24. doi:10.26443/ jiows.v2i1.42. Brand, D. 2020. An Autobiography of the Autobiography of Reading. Edmonton, AL: University of Alberta Press (CLC Kreisel Lecture Series). Chari, S. 2019. ‘Subaltern Sea? Indian Ocean Errantry against Subalternization’, in T. Jazeel and S. Legg (eds), Subaltern Geographies. University of Georgia Press, pp. 191–209. doi:10.2307/j.ctv5nphtr Cooppan, V. 2018. ‘The Novel as Genre’, in Bulson, E. (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to the Novel, 1st Edition. Cambridge University Press, pp. 23–42. doi:10.1017/9781316659694.003. Farah, N. 2007. ‘Of tamarind and cosmopolitanism’, Halabuur: Journal of Somali Literature and Culture, 2(1–2): 34–37. Finaldi, G. 2009. Italian National Identity in the Scramble for Africa: Italy’s African Wars in the Era of Nation-building, 1870–1900. Bern: Peter Lang. Ford, A.J. and Burrell, B.B. 1919. ‘The Universal Ethiopian Anthem’. Available at: www. unia-acl.org/archive/anthem.html. Accessed 19 December 2020. Garvey, M. 1920. ‘Declaration of the Rights of the Negro People of the World: The Principles of the Universal Negro Improvement Association’, UNIA Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World. New York, 13 August. Gurnah, A. 2001. By the Sea. London: Bloomsbury. Hailu, G. 2013. The Conscript [ሓደ ዛን , 1927]. Translated by G. Negash. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. Hofmeyr, I. 2007. ‘The Black Atlantic Meets the Indian Ocean: Forging New Paradigms of Transnationalism for the Global South – Literary and Cultural Perspectives’, Social Dynamics, 33(2): 3–32. doi:10.1080/02533950708628759. Hofmeyr, I. 2010. ‘Universalizing the Indian Ocean’, PMLA, 125(3): 721–729. Hofmeyr, I. 2012. ‘The Complicating Sea: The Indian Ocean as Method’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 32(3): 584–590. doi:10.1215/1089201X-1891579. Hofmeyr, I. 2015. ‘Styling multilateralism: Indian Ocean cultural futures’, Journal of the Indian Ocean Region, 11(1): 98–109. doi:10.1080/19480881.2014.993565. Ibreck, R. and de Waal, A. 2021. ‘Introduction: Situating Ethiopia in Genocide Debates’, Journal of Genocide Research: 1–14. doi:10.1080/14623528.2021.1992920.

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Iheka, C. 2017. Naturalizing Africa: Ecological Violence, Agency, and Postcolonial Resistance in African Literature, 1st Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781108183123. Jeychandran, N. 2019. ‘Navigating African Sacred Geography: Shrines for African Sufi Saints and Spirits in India’, Journal of Africana Religions, 7(1): 17. doi:10.5325/jafrireli.7.1.0017. Joseph, M. 2007. ‘Old Routes, Mnemonic Traces’, in D. Ghosh and S. Muecke (eds), Cultures of Trade: Indian Ocean Exchanges. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 62–75. Ka-lida-sa. 2008. The Cloud Messenger [Meghadu-ta]. Translated by C.J. Holcombe. Santiago: Ocaso Press. Kalikoff, H. 1995. ‘Gender, Genre and Geography in Aime Cesaire’s Cahier d’un Retour au Pays Natal’, Callaloo, 18(2): 492–505. doi:10.1353/cal.1995.0060. King, T.L. 2019. ‘Off Littorality (Shoal 1.0): Black Study Off the Shores of “the Black Body”’, Propter Nos, 3: 12. Lambourn, E.A. 2018. Abraham’s Luggage: A Social Life of Things in the Medieval Indian Ocean World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mbembe, A. 2001. On the Postcolony. Berkeley, CA, Los Angeles, CA and London: University of California Press. Mekonnen, W. 1969. ‘On the Question of Nationalities in Ethiopia’, Struggle, 2(2). Available at: www.ethiox.com/forum/index.php?topic=253.0. Accessed 10 November 2021. Mengiste, M. 2019. The Shadow King. New York: W.W. Norton and Company. Mengiste, M. (ed.) 2020. Addis Ababa Noir. Brooklyn, NY: Akashic Books. Mitchell, K. 1997. ‘Different diasporas and the hype of hybridity’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 15(5): 533–553. doi:10.1068/d150533. Morrison, T. 1987. Beloved. New York: Plume Contemporary Fiction. Pesarini, A. 2017. ‘“Blood is Thicker than Water”: The Materialization of the Racial Body in Fascist East Africa’, Zapruder World. Available at: http://zapruderworld.org/journal/ archive/volume-4/blood-is-thicker-than-water-the-materialization-of-the-racial-bodyin-fascist-east-africa. Prange, S.R. 2008. ‘Scholars and the Sea: A Historiography of the Indian Ocean’, History Compass, 6(5): 1382–1393. doi:10.1111/j.1478-0542.2008.00538.x. Rushdie, S. 1988. The Satanic Verses. London: Vintage. Scego, I. 2017. Adua. Translated by J. Richards. New York: New Vessel Press. Scott, J.S. 2018. The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution. New York: Verso. Sharpe, C. 2016. In the Wake: On Blackness and Being. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Smythe, S. 2018. ‘The Black Mediterranean and the Politics of Imagination’, Middle East Report: 3–9. Tamrat, T. 2009. Church and State in Ethiopia 1270–1527. Los Angeles, CA: Tsehai Publishers. Verne, J. and Verne, M. 2017. ‘Introduction: The Indian Ocean as Aesthetic Space’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 37(2): 314–320. doi:10.1215/ 1089201x-4132929. Zeleke, E.C. 2020a. Ethiopia in Theory: Revolution and Knowledge Production, 1964–2016. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books. Zeleke, E.C. 2020b. New Books in African Studies: Elleni Centime Zeleke, ‘Ethiopia in Theory: Revolution and Knowledge Production, 1964–2016’. Haymarket Books, on Apple Podcasts, Apple Podcasts. Available at: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/elleni-centime-zeleke-ethiopiain-theory-revolution/id425416616?i=1000494434846. Accessed 20 December 2020.

PART II

Oceanic Narratives

6 PADMABATI OF THE OCEANS Unfreedom and belonging in Syed Alaol’s Padmabati Swati Moitra1

In an episode titled ‘Pirates, or the Harmads’ in Nurunneha and the Tale of the Grave (henceforth, Nurunneha), a ballad from eastern Bengal, pirates terrorise the humble villagers of Rangdia in the Noakhali-Chittagong coast of present-day Bangladesh. The so-called ballads of eastern Bengal were likely composed in the seventeentheighteenth centuries. They were compiled by folklorists such as Dineshchandra Sen in the late nineteenth–early twentieth centuries as the purbabanga geetikas (ballads of eastern Bengal). These ballads often “followed the lives of a varied collection of anti-heroes and anti-heroines such as sailors, soldiers, tribal headmen, merchants, landlords, gypsies, mendicants, fishermen, robbers and women” and engaged with the “economic life” of the people (Roy, 2011: 122). In Nurunneha, the fearsome pirates indulge in unscrupulous looting and marauding while the terrified boatmen tremble: At Ujantek’s turn, o, at Ujantek’s turn, Dread pirates lie in wait for the sailors’ return. As merchants come home from foreign shores, The merchant flags on their masts do soar. Then Harmads pounce, from their spot nearby, Their fast-moving ships like birds do fly! (Sen, 1932: 114)2 Not only do the pirates drown the boats and abduct the sailors, but they also raid Rangdia, loot the villagers, and abduct the eponymous Nurunneha herself. ‘Harmad’, a term used to refer to Portuguese sailors, is used interchangeably with ‘pirates’ (jaladashyu) in the ballad. In another ballad titled Nasar Malum, Magh or Arakanese pirates visit the humble home of the peasant Gafur, to look for riches left behind while fleeing the Mughals (see Sen, 1930: 32). Nasar, the protagonist, is DOI: 10.4324/9781003300939-9

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later captured by pirates who claim his cargo of fermented Bombay duck (loitta or lote fish) and sell him as a slave in Arakan (Rakhine in present-day Myanmar): At the end of the sea, a strange land to the west, There they sell people, as Nasar could attest! The bonds of slavery thus did befall On all the boatmen in the pirates’ thrall. (Sen, 1930: 38) The eastern Bengal ballads, as Tirthankar Roy (2011, p. 122) has pointed out, “were composed in three distinct regions: Mymensingh, a large district to the east of the river Brahmaputra; Rangpur to the west of the river; and the Noakhali–Chittagong coast.” The two ballads quoted above are both ballads from the Noakhali-Chittagong coast, evident in the scents of the sea – salt, and the ubiquitous dried fish popular in the region – that permeate the texts. The ballads, from their vantage point in the Noakhali-Chittagong coast, point to a long history of ties with the neighbouring kingdom of Arakan, which controlled the Chittagong port from 1538 to 1666. Ngapi, a form of fermented fish popular in Arakan, is spoken of with derision in Nasar Malum and The Lament of Shuja’s Daughter on account of its smell. Nasar gets involved in business with an Arakanese businessman in Angi and goes to obtain the famed Bombay duck of Paridiya, where the pari (fairies) used to roam. Nasar is also infatuated with the businessman’s daughter, pointing to the existence of sexual-marital ties between the Bengali and Arakanese communities. In Nurunneha, the poet praises the ‘Rosanga’ peasants (Arakanese converts to Islam) who till the fertile lands. As Thibaut d’Hubert points out: The frontier region between today’s Bangladesh and Myanmar is the meeting point of what post-WWII scholarship defined as South, Southeast, and East Asia. It was, and remains today, a region of intense circulation of people, goods, and ideas. Historians recently highlighted the political unity of this frontier area from the fifteenth up to the eighteenth century CE with the formation of the kingdom of Arakan. These approximately four centuries are designated by historians as the Mrauk U period (1430–1784), using the name of the capital city of the kingdom founded in 1430. (d’Hubert, 2018: 1) This “circulation of people” (d’Hubert, 2018: 1) was not necessarily free and voluntary movement, as the excerpts from the eastern Bengal ballads show us. The ballads bear testimony to the long history of Luso-Arakanese piracy and slave trade in the region. This history has left its imprint in the Bengali language, with the phrase ‘Magher muluk’ (literally, the land of the Maghs) coming to mean ‘a land defined by anarchy and lawlessness’ and ‘harmad’ becoming synonymous with ‘pirate’. The voices of Nasar and Nurunneha in the ballads represent the voices of the unnamed victims of the slave trade in Bengal and adjacent regions, a practice

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that continued well into the nineteenth century in different forms (see Chatterjee, 2005; Chakraborty, 2019). Syed Alaol, the best-known Bengali poet of the Mrauk U period in Arakan, had a fateful encounter with the harmads in a manner not unlike Nasar and his companions on the boat. Alaol, who was the son of a dignitary at the court of Majlis Qutb, the Afghan leader of Fatehabad in present-day Bangladesh, did not migrate to Mrauk U by choice. He writes of the same in the Padmabati (ca. 1651): O, as the forces of destiny would conspire, On our path a Harmad ship would appear! Swords and bloodshed, my father martyred. The vagaries of battle! To Rosanga I was dragged. (Bandopadhyay, 2002: 20)3 As d’Hubert observes: “[Alaol’s] knowledge of the ways of the royal court [ra-ja-n-ıti] saved him from a miserable condition as a slave working in the fields of Arakan, Tripura, or Java, and allowed him to join the royal service as a horseman.” (d’Hubert 2018: 66) Unlike the Nasar or Nurunneha of fiction – both of whom managed to escape the clutches of their captors – or the unnamed captives of the Luso-Arakanese slave raids who did go on to serve in the fields of Arakan, Tripura, Java, or the Cape Colony (see Vink 2003), Alaol became a royal slave or a man-kywan. After his learning and artistic abilities came to the attention of his first patron, the powerful lashkar wazir Magan Thakur – also a Bengali Muslim, and the author of an unfinished poem – Alaol would experience a rise in fortune and recognition as a poet. This chapter will read the Padmabati of Alaol as a narrative of these troubled waters, where the sea – as the poet of Nurunneha tells us – is wide and dangerous, and marauders can be found waiting for unsuspecting travellers at every bend. The tale of Queen Padmini, imagined in the harsh tones of the desert and the flames of funeral pyres, is seldom envisioned in the contemporary imagination as a narrative of high seas and turbulent waters. A prominent ship-wreck episode in Malik Muhammad Jayasi’s Padmavat (1540) has done little to transform such readings of the tale. Indeed, the most recent cinematic adaptation of the Padmavat – Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmaavat (2018) – does away with the events of the shipwreck altogether, signalling the queen’s foreignness and her eventual assimilation in Chitor’s Rajput society in other ways (see Punyashloka, 2019). Like the humble eastern Bengal ballads, suffused with the scent of the salt and the sea, Alaol’s Padmabati – as this essay will argue – offers insights into a period of intense and unfree circulation of people in the Bay of Bengal region. Despite the significance that the Bengali language and literature had gained in Arakan in the Mrauk U period (see Charney, 1999; d’Hubert, 2014), the “fate of

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the Bengali literature of Arakan is but one of the many symptoms of the estrangement from the cultural past of the frontier area between modern Bangladesh and Myanmar” (d’Hubert, 2018: 2). This, as Thibaut d’Hubert has argued in his recent magisterial volume on Alaol’s poetics, In the Shade of the Golden Palace: Alaol and Middle Bengali Poetics in Arakan (2018), has led to a failure to read the multilingual, polyvocal registers of Alaol’s poetry. d’Hubert writes: “Although it is presented in textbooks as a major moment in the early history of Bengali Muslim literature, it originates from the limits of the cultural area of South Asia, which also coincides with one of the frontiers of the Muslim World.” (d’Hubert 2018: 3) d’Hubert takes an issue with scholars who have read Alaol and his predecessor, Daulat Kaji, as Bengali émigrés, arguing that “their works do not constitute the literary production of an émigré community that was preserving and reproducing a tradition as a way of maintaining their cultural identity in a situation of exile” (d’Hubert, 2018: 65). This chapter will briefly venture into this debate. Arguably, while Alaol’s poetics cannot be extricated from the Mrauk U world and placed in a generic early modern ‘Bengali Muslim’ context, glossing over the circumstances of unfreedom that marked Alaol’s arrival at Arakan serves to undermine the impact of the LusoArakan slave raids on the Bengal-Arakan frontier. This chapter is divided into three sections, the first of which will plunge headfirst into the question of slave raids and the Indian Ocean slave trade that made possible Alaol’s poetic career in the Arakan court. The second section will engage with Alaol’s Padmabati. It will argue in favour of reading it as a text marked by the perilous seas and the uncertainties of existence in golden Mrauk U as a royal slave-turned-poet. The final section of the essay will read the unusual conclusion of Padmabati in the light of Arakan’s frontier location in the Muslim world and Alaol’s poetic ambitions.

Unfree circulations The Bengal-Arakan continuum pre-dates the Mrauk U period in Arakan’s history. The beginnings of Bengal’s trade with Arakan have been traced back to the fifth century (see Mukherjee, 2006). The ancient Chandra kings of Samatata, known for their naval relations with present-day Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka, claimed their lineage from the Chandras of Arakan. There can be little dispute with Thibaut d’Hubert’s assertion that the cultural context in which Alaol flourished in Mrauk U must be recognised in scholarship. The location of Alaol and his predecessor, Daulat Kaji, as Bengali poets in seventeenth century Mrauk U, demands an understanding of the world of Mrauk U, its courtly politics, and the place of Bengali Muslims in the same. The so-called golden age of Arakan or the Mrauk U period saw an assertive Arakan in control of the Chittagong port. The high-ranked Bengali Muslims who

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patronised Daulat Kaji and Alaol were “the main intermediaries between the local authorities and merchants from abroad” (d’Hubert 2018: 57). Even those who held other non-trading positions nonetheless were involved in this world of long-distance trade over the Bay of Bengal. Dutch records show that Ashraf Khan, the lashkar wazir of Mrauk U at the time when Daulat Kaji was writing, had obtained a monopoly on the lucrative rice trade (see d’Hubert 2018). The emergence of Bengali literature in Mrauk U was directly tied to the prosperity of this community. Even as the Arakanese kings reclaimed their Buddhist identity (Charney, 1999; d’Hubert, 2014), the prosperous Bengali Muslims patronised literary production in Bengali. “The Bengali literature composed during this period”, therefore: “can be seen as testimony to the cultural awareness of a community which had reached the highest point of its economic prosperity, and whose role in the administration of the kingdom as an intermediary between the local power and the outside world had been clearly established.” (d’Hubert 2014: 56) There were, of course, other Bengali Muslims in Arakan, less fortunate than Alaol’s patrons. Sanjay Subrahmanyam (1997) has investigated the expansion of slave trade in Arakan in the seventeenth century, noting that the Ain-i-Akbari does not associate the Portuguese or the Arakanese with slave trade in Bengal. However, by the time of Shahjahan’s reign, the Mughals expelled the Portuguese from the thriving port of Hugli in 1632. Subrahmanyam (1997) notes that Abdul Hamid Lahori’s Padshahnama from that period cited the Portuguese slave trade as an important reason for the sacking of Hugli. Mirza Nathan’s Baharistan-i-Ghayabi (see Borah, 1936) documents Arakanese raids as well, which involved plunder of villages and taking captives. Subrahmanyam has argued that Arakan’s involvement in slave trade in the seventeenth century was propelled by the lack of skilled domestic labour and the need for “a second export commodity besides rice” (Subrahmanyam, 1997: 216). His work draws upon Dutch sources to point out that King Narapati-kri (1638–45) had forbidden the Dutch Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) from buying slaves who “knew a trade” (Subrahmanyam, 1997: 225). Narapati-kri, furthermore, sought to depopulate Chittagong and repopulate the region with Arakanese people, which he feared had emerged as a power centre to rival Mrauk U. This led to mass deportations, especially of skilled artisans, from Chittagong, documented by Dutchmen such as Arent Van der Helm. Stephan van Galen has further pointed out that a part of Narapati-kri’s resettlement policy involved bringing people to Arakan “as slaves”, and “[resettling them] in Arakan as royal service groups, or man-kywan” (van Galen, 2008: 189). Michael Charney, in his work, has attempted to make an estimation of the number of Bengali captives brought to Arakan in the seventeenth century, arguing that this period marked “the Banglacization of Danra-waddy [Dhannavati]” (Charney, 1999: 160).

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Alaol was a poet of this period of “Banglacization” (Charney, 1999: 160). The man-kywan or royal subjects were “bound to the king and had to accomplish chores . and services or pay a set amount of money [Ben. ra-ja-da-ya] to free themselves temporarily from those duties” (d’Hubert, 2018: 54). Alaol writes of paying the royal obligation in the Sikandarnama (1673), his final poem, suggesting that he remained a man-kywan till the end of his life. The phrase “bound to the king” demands consideration, suggesting a degree of unfreedom that Alaol continued to experience till the fag end of his literary career4. Indeed, as van Galen has pointed out, the word ‘slave’ is apt with respect to those who became involuntarily bound to the king5. Keeping in mind the conditions of unfreedom that defined Alaol’s arrival in Mrauk U as well as most of his life and literary career, I would like to argue that the debate on the ‘émigré’ nature of Alaol and Daulat Kaji’s poetry, referred to earlier in this essay, requires further nuance. In the Shade of the Golden Palace marks an important intervention in the study of Alaol’s work and of middle Bengali poetics at large, expanding the scope of analysis to Bengali Muslim literary cultures in Chittagong, Bhulua, and the Dhannavati area. The book’s deep and erudite study of the multilingual registers of Alaol’s poetry and the poet’s ambitious aesthetic vision for Bengali poetry notwithstanding, the poet’s tragic encounter with the harmads offers the scope for further engagement keeping in mind the conditions of unfreedom that were a necessary precondition for Alaol’s arrival at Arakan and his eventual proximity to Magan Thakur. Alaol, in his own writing, does not fail to mention the same time and again in his introductions to his life. In Sikandarnama (1673), the tale of the fateful encounter with the harmads is reiterated, with the added adjective, ‘wicked’. Alaol writes: The wicked harmads on our way we did meet, For what man could ignore destiny’s writ? My father martyred in a long battle, My wounded, sinful self to Rosanga like cattle! (Sharif 1967: 28)6 The violence and trauma of these circumstances were significant to Alaol’s telling of his own story. The presence of prosperous Bengali Muslims in Mrauk U, as Alaol himself confirms in the Sikandarnama, ensured that his learning – a product of his privileged upbringing – was recognised and appreciated. It is unclear how long Alaol served as a royal horseman before his bhagyodaya (rise in fortune), where he taught literature and music to children of noblemen and found patrons who appreciated his artistic abilities. However, as the Sikandarnama introduction makes clear, this rise in fortune was nonetheless contingent on the relationship of the Bengali Muslim nobility of Arakan with their Buddhist king. When this relationship came under increasing strain after the arrival of the Mughal prince and the former subahdar of Bengal, Shah Shuja in 1660, and the crisis that followed in its aftermath (see van Galen, 2008; Choudhury, 2015), Alaol’s fortunes saw a reversal. The conflict between

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Shuja and King Candasudhammaraja led to considerable surveillance and restrictions on the activities of Bengali Muslims, including restrictions on sea trade. Stephan van Galen has pointed out that “Shah Shuja had been willing to spend his money to buy the loyalty of Arakan’s Bengali population” (van Galen, 2008: 190). van Galen further speaks of conflict and riots between the Arakanese and the Bengalis in 1663, centred around Shuja’s three surviving sons. In this period of tumult, Alaol was accused of collusion with Shuja in an alleged coup, which led to his imprisonment. In Sayfulmuluk Badiuzzamal (1659–69), Alaol blames one ‘Mirza’ for his predicament, who offered false testimony against him (see Karim and Haque, 2017). He was later granted a royal pardon by Candasudhammaraja. As his finances and family suffered., I it was again the Bengali Muslim dignitaries who made it possible for him to pay his royal obligations to the king. The fact that Alaol chooses to recount this dark episode in Sikandarnama, composed a decade after the tumult of Shah Shuja’s days in Arakan, suggests an acute awareness of the fickle nature of his fortunes in Mrauk U. It is important, then, to consider this uncertainty and the unfreedom that marked his entire literary career. A recognition of this need not contradict d’Hubert’s claim that “[Alaol’s] works do not constitute the literary production of an émigré community that was preserving and reproducing a tradition as a way of maintaining their cultural identity in a situation of exile” (d’Hubert 2018: 65). It might be pertinent here to draw upon the work of Indrani Chatterjee, who has – in the context of the English East India Company’s functioning in India – spoken of the erasure and denial of various forms of slavery and unfree labour by officials of the English East India Company. Chatterjee points out that the “idea of complete and extreme domination as the essential prerequisite of slavery was deployed strategically by colonial administrators” (2005: 138). While any definition of slavery brought about comparisons with the trans-Atlantic slave trade and plantation labour, the absence of a whip was seen as a mark of kindness, which fact was used by administrators like Warren Hastings “to urge that the Indian forms [of slavery] were ‘benign’.” (Chatterjee, 2005: 138) It is not my intention to argue that there has been a scholarly erasure of the conditions of unfreedom that marked Alaol’s literary career. Rather, I make a case for a greater recognition of this fact in the study of his works, keeping in mind the long history erasure of forms of unfreedom that do not conform to notions of “complete and extreme domination” (Chatterjee, 2005: 138). Elsewhere, Chatterjee has pointed to the “variety of positions and offices in which all slaves [in South Asia] were put to work in preindustrialized rural, urban, and courtly contexts”. (Chatterjee, 2006: 19) Alaol’s recognition as a poet of some repute in Arakan need not have required him to be ‘free’, in the conventional sense of the term. Even if Alaol’s literary-cultural milieu and training in Fatehabad ensured that he remained culturally at home in Mrauk U, his unfree and uncertain existence places him as a figure who straddled both worlds. One of these worlds belonged to his patrons, with the grandeur of the secondary courts as well as the tension that marked the relationship of the wealthy Bengali Muslims with their Buddhist ruler. The other world belonged to the Bengalis captured in the Luso-Arakanese raids or forcibly

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deported from Chittagong as per the king’s orders; to those who were declared dead on arrival or soon after, courtesy disease and malnutrition; to those sold to the Dutch VOC and transported to Batavia and beyond; to those who escaped, like Nasar and Nurunneha of the ballads; to those bound to the king as man-kywans, obligated to perform tasks or pay a royal duty. What do such considerations of unfreedom mean for the study of Alaol’s poetry? What reading strategies can we adopt for his body of work, keeping in mind his straddling of both worlds of the Bengali Muslims in Arakan?

Padmabati of the Oceans I will take my cue, again, from Thibaut d’Hubert’s (2018) reading of the Padmabati, which is sensitive towards the circulation of people and goods along the Indian Ocean, along with the circulation of ideas and narratives. Such a reading allows for the recognition of the significance of Alaol’s mercantile milieu in Mrauk U, and of the world of Bengali Muslim dignitaries who became his patrons. d’Hubert argues that in the Padmabati, the parrot (suk pakhi), Hiramani: “represents the Brahman pandit who plays the role of an intermediary because of his eloquence; wisdom allows him to become Ratnasen’s guru…. With the - -mani, Padma-vat-ı provides us with a model of panditic eloquence character of Hıra . with which the author himself identified.” (d’Hubert, 2018: 85–86) Like in Jayasi’s poem, the parrot’s voice becomes the voice of the author. The parrot, after its capture, tells other birds, that “the writ of destiny we must all bear” (Bandopadhayay, 2002: 52). Even the wisest of pandits cannot foresee what destiny proposes. Destiny crushes human pride and arrogant belief in one’s own wisdom. The bird shares its epiphany with the other birds, pointing out that its arrogance about its erudition and learning came to naught when destiny struck. It was left helpless before the hunter’s trap. It has further wisdom to offer when it says, wisdom lies not in arrogance but in bearing with the slings and arrows of fortune, because “whatever He writes, must come to pass” (Bandopadhyay, 2002: 52). The song that follows this speech takes on a similar note when the parrot laments that none of its “ears, eyes, mind, intellect, or learning came to use” (Bandopadhyay, 2002: 53), when it was facing capture by the hunter. No ties of kinship or friendship could prevent a capture mandated by destiny, either. In the lines that follow, Alaol takes over the narration as he writes, “Have patience, says humble Alaol/ God’s will connects us all.” (Bandopadhyay, 2002: 53) As d’Hubert points out, “The sudden awareness of the impermanence of this world is an invitation to renunciation” (d’Hubert 2018: 108). It is important to take into consideration the tale of capture that is common to the stories of the learned poet and the erudite parrot while reading this moment of the poet’s identification with the parrot. d’Hubert (2018) has demonstrated the

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expert use of the language of bhakti and the Islamic concept of tawwakul or submission to divine will in these lines. Hearing slave articulations of Sufi Islam, as Chatterjee (2006: 30) points out, is particularly significant in terms of “[unlocking] slaves’ own discourses on manumission and slavery.” Like the parrot that cites the stroke of destiny (bidhi) to come to terms with its capture, Alaol mentions destiny as the agent of his capture by the harmads time and again in his telling of his own story, as quoted earlier in this essay. The parrot’s words of wisdom, wiping its own tears, mirrors that of the poet, for whom patience and submission to divine will alone can lessen the suffering mandated by destiny. The parrot’s trajectory, as it goes on to become Ratansen’s guru, is also the trajectory of the poet who manages to gain entry into the inner circles of Mrauk U’s Bengali Muslim nobility, courtesy the generosity of Magan Thakur. This entry, however, is not without uncertainty, as the parrot cautions – suffering follows joy, fate is fickle, and great prosperity can be followed by great danger. It is only steadfastness towards God, who sees all, and towards the patron, that can offer a semblance of security to the man-kywan. It is not simply the tale of the parrot that speaks of the uncertainties of the mankywan. For all that he is at home culturally among the Bengali Muslims of Mrauk U, Alaol locates himself as an accidental resident of Mrauk U at the very onset. Elsewhere in his description of Mrauk U, the naval might of the Arakan king gets special mention as something that has “no comparison anywhere else in the world” (Bandopadhyay, 2002: 12). The catalogue of the ships links Arakan’s might with its naval might, and in the process, reminds us of the other side to the story – of the utter defencelessness of the populations of lower Bengal in the face of the slave raids of such a great naval power. In other episodes, the perils of migration, especially by sea, takes on a place of significance even within the framework of Jayasi’s poem that Alaol mostly replicates. Jayasi’s Ratansen crosses the mythical seven seas on his way to Sinhala, his journey as much a spiritual journey as it is a material one. In Jayasi’s poem, as Aditya Behl has pointed out: Singhala is not to be confused with the actual island of Sri Lanka, but is rather an imaginary landscape on which the seeker’s inner journey is played out. This landscape conceals many levels of signification, and Jayasi uses symbols and coded vocabulary to suggest that the hero Ratansen’s progress is also the interior progress of a Sufi along the ascetic path. (Behl, 2009: 64) Alaol’s Ratansen makes the same journey, their mythical names already described to him in two linguistic traditions by King Gajapati. The voyage, however, is far more mundane, merely comprising of large fish and birds of prey. Ratansen, unused to the sea, converses with the boatmen, who tell him about the fish that inhabit these waters and the birds that hunt them. It is curious that a poet as wellversed in Sufi doctrine as Alaol refrains from following Jayasi’s footsteps, describing the metaphysical significance of each sea and marking Ratansen’s internal progress as he crosses them. It is almost as though Alaol can imagine no sea voyage but a

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prosaic one, one that foregrounds the voices of ordinary boatmen alongside that of the king. On Ratansen and Padmini’s journey back to Chitor, Alaol stays faithful to Jayasi’s structure yet again. The shipwreck takes place in both narratives. Although Alaol renames the Sea’s daughter to Padma, the circumstances of her rescue of the drowning Queen Padmini remains the same. The storm and the shipwreck are described in graphic terms, the poet comparing the storm to a pralay (destruction or dissolution in Hindu theology). Debnath Bandopadhyay, in his commentary on his edition of the Padmabati, has noted that the shipwreck in Alaol’s text has “more spectacular circumstances” (Bandopadhyay, 2002: 238) than that of Jayasi. The separation of Ratansen and Padmini, Bandopadhyay (2002: 238) notes, does not delve into the “theological discussions of the separation and union of the body with the soul” and remains confined to the mundane descriptions of the event. In this, Alaol’s descriptions of the storm are closer to that of the ballads of eastern Bengal. For instance, Nasar—the protagonist of Nasar Malum – meets a sea storm that is described in similarly vivid terms, where the black storm clouds “move like demons in the sky” (Sen, 1932: 26). The seas here are reminiscent of the turbulent waters of the Bay of Bengal, known for its rough sailing and tempestuous waves. Alaol’s audience, comprising of Bengali Muslims involved in the long-distance sea trade, would be all too familiar with such images. The seas that carried Ratansen to Sinhala to his beloved also has the power to separate them. The seas that bring prosperity to the merchants of Arakan, Alaol seems to be suggesting, can also take it away in one moment of uncertainty. The same seas that make Mrauk U the golden cosmopolis also bear the Magh and harmad ships to the shores of Bengal, leading to the death of loved ones (such as Alaol’s father) and to the destruction and enslavement of littoral communities. The seas can bear the enslaved to Mrauk U, or beyond—to Batavia, to Colombo, to the Cape Colony7. The episode marking Ratansen and Padmini’s farewell to Sinhala in Alaol’s poem is similar to Jayasi’s in structure as well. Padmini’s farewell to her companions and parents in this episode has been commented upon frequently by Bengali scholars for its realist representation of a Bengali household. For instance, in the words of Mahua Ghosh: Padmavati’s laments on her way to her husband’s home and the consolation offered by her equally sad mother paints the picture of a familiar Bengali household. Padmavati’s laments speak of the tremulous heart of a woman about to leave her childhood home and embark on a journey to a new world. (Ghosh, 2016: 41) Alaol does indeed draw upon familiar tropes in Bengali narratives to paint a portrait of a woman leaving home to travel to her husband’s household after marriage. Padmini blames destiny for her departure from Sinhala to a faraway foreign land, while Padmini’s mother refers to the same writ of destiny to console her grieving daughter. Destiny, after all, determines a woman’s marital ties and places her

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alongside her husband, even if that is on faraway shores, away from her natal home. Her father, as he asks Ratansen to take care of his beloved daughter, speaks of her traveling friendless and alone to a foreign land. The metaphor of exile plays out throughout this episode, in a manner not unlike the bijaya songs lamenting Uma’s departure from her parental home (see Banerjee, 1997). The capricious destiny that led to the parrot Hiramani’s capture and to Alaol’s fateful encounter with the harmads also leads to Padmini’s departure from her parental home. Padmini is allowed an extended farewell, departing with the knowledge that her parents and her companions are safe at home, in Sinhala. For captives of the slave raids, such farewells could only be a figment of one’s imagination, the safety of their loved ones – as Alaol would know from his father’s murder in the hands of the harmad – often wishful thinking.

Belonging Apart from d’Hubert’s full-length study of Alaol’s poetics, Ramya Sreenivasan’s The Many Lives of a Rajput Queen: Heroic Pasts in India c. 1500–1900 (2007) is among recent works in English that engages with Alaol’s Padmabati. Sreenivasan’s valuable research pays considerable attention to the multilingual worlds inhabited by authors of the Padmini narratives and the many journeys of Queen Padmini’s tale. Sreenivasan’s reading of Alaol engages briefly with the circumstances that took him to Arakan. “Portuguese pirates killed Alaol’s father in a skirmish,” Sreenivasan writes, “captured the son, and sold him in Arakan. Alaol ultimately found himself in the Arakan court, where he won respect…” (Sreenivasan, 2007: 119). In this summation of Alaol’s journey, a slave raid becomes a ‘skirmish’. Sreenivasan reads Alaol’s Padmabati as an anti-Mughal text from the margins, especially in its divergence from Jayasi’s Padmavat. This divergence, Sreenivasan argues: …suggests that the figure of Alauddin Khalji signified different things in seventeenth-century Arakan as opposed to North India. It is reasonable to speculate that Alaol’s family history and his location in Arakan, itself battling Mughal control over Bengal, would have made the Padmavat’s narrative of Khalji imperialism particularly topical. However, Alaol’s modifications indicate altered perceptions of the Khalji sultan in the courtly-memory of seventeethcentury Arakan, at a moment when the latter was appealing to the chiefs of Bengal as potential allies against Mughal expansion. As much as Jayasi, then, the Sufi courtier in Arakan could equally assert the triumph of the normative politico-moral order in his narrative. (Sreenivasan, 2007: 133) While Alaol’s displeasure with the Mughal prince Shah Shuja is evident in the Sikandarnama, if only because Shuja’s actions landed him in prison, such a reading of the Padmabati’s so-called anti-Mughal politics attributes a certain degree of proto-nationalist consciousness to the poet. It places Alaol firmly in the domain of

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an ‘Arakanese poet’ offering a critique of “Mughal expansion” (Sreenivasan, 2007: 133) and imperialism. This essay however argues that the pursuit of the circulation of the tale of Queen Padmini from the heart of Mughal India to distant Arakan might offer significant insights if read alongside the circulation of people that accompanied the same. If uncertainty and the perils of migration mark the text of the Padmabati, then so does the question of belonging. Alaol’s muluk (country), as he tells us, was Fatehabad. Curiously, the elaborate descriptions of Mrauk U and the praises of the king in the Padmabati do not merit the use of the word muluk or desh with reference to Arakan. On the contrary, Alaol speaks of belonging with reference to the vast Muslim population of Mrauk U that welcomes him and appreciates his learning. Unlike Daulat Kaji, Alaol makes no mention of Hindus in these gatherings. While the Golden City and its king garners effusive praise, it is Magan Thakur who offers Alaol shelter and patronage. This, the poet states, is something Magan Thakur does frequently, to Muslims of different ethnic origins (Alaol uses the word pardesi or foreigners). Magan offers shelter even to those who offend the king, suggesting a parallel authority. The Sikandarnama, written some twenty-five years later, describes the gathering at the secondary court of his then-patron, the majlis Nabaraja. Alaol sings paeans to the free-flowing cultural landscape of the court, and the many artists patronised by Nabaraja. Nabaraja’s gatherings, readers are told, are marked by the spirit of mehmani or hospitality. Belonging in Arakan, for the man-kywan from Fatehabad, is marked by unfreedom. The patrons’ gatherings, on the other hand, make it possible to forge bonds of kinship that exist outside of familial-ethnic ties. Sanjay Subrahmanyam has written in depth about the Persianisation of Arakan under Sirisudhammaraja, pointing out that the “influence of the Indo-Persian courts” (Subrahmanyam, 2005: 72) was far and wide in Arakan at the time. The cultural home that Alaol found in these gatherings, as we have discussed earlier in this essay, was made possible by Alaol’s training in the dominant linguistic and literary traditions of the time and the Persianate milieu of the Bengali Muslim-sphere in Arakan. However, the bonds of kinship that were forged in these gatherings have to be understood as bonds that were actively made through a combination of their shared adab and the experience of eating together, of appreciating the heterogenous scents of the gathering in the company of others. It was made possible through a shared aesthetic experience. Padmabati, Alaol’s first presentation at the court of Magan Thakur, therefore has to be understood in this context, as a statement of intent and a work of immense literary ambition. The conclusion of Padmabati, with its divergence from the Jayasi poem, might thus be understood an expression of belonging. In Alaol’s Padmabati, a dying Ratansen requests that his sons be taken to the Sultan of Delhi. A repentant Khalji weeps for Ratansen, avenges him by killing Devpal, and becomes a guardian figure to his sons. Khalji visits Chitor and walks freely in the streets, awed by its sights. This vision of reconciliation offered by Alaol’s Padmabati is a form of reconciliation made possible under the grand umbrella of Islam, where the aggressor can come to lament his actions and experience a moment of mutual respect for his vanquished

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opponent, a non-believer. This utopic vision of reconciliation is, furthermore, Alaol laying claim to his Persianate self (see Kia, 2020) from the fringes of the Muslim world. Arakan, after all, was a frontier that was perceived in deeply racist terms, described as the land of “a bunch of animals that look like human beings” who “eat every part of every kind of sea and land animal and in their religion nothing is forbidden” (Mukherjee, 2006: 72) by none other than the Emperor Jahangir. There is no evidence that Alaol had similarly racialised perceptions of the Arakanese people, or that he wrote from the perspective of an émigré seeking to memorialise a lost homeland in his work. However, the mutual respect imagined between the victor and the vanquished in Padmabati is one that is impossible in Arakan, between the King and the man-kywan turned poet. The vision of Padmabati’s conclusion, therefore, is less a statement of affirmation for Arakan or its territorial sovereignty against the mighty Mughals, and more an affirmation of the ties forged through shared culture and the shared experience of art. It is an ambitious affirmation of belonging in the wider Persianate world, of claiming that world from the margins and rendering it anew as a wider, more just world.

Conclusion “The case of Bengali literature in Arakan,” as Thibaut d’Hubert (2014: 71) observes, “is a fascinating example of complex cultural exchanges on the margins of South Asia. Above all, it shows the necessity of thinking in terms of regional cultural history in connection with supra-regional processes.” In this essay, I have tried to argue in favour of recognising Alaol’s literary career as a Bengali poet in Arakan as one that must be addressed in terms of the turbulent history of the BengalArakan frontier in the early modern period. This region, the so-called “Far East of Bengal” (Mukherjee, 2006: 86), remains understudied in comparison to western Bengal, or the western Indian Ocean region. Alaol’s voice, from the secondary courts of Arakan’s Bengali Muslim dignitaries, offers an important vantage point in this regard. I have further argued against the trend in the study of Alaol’s work, both in Bengali and in English, to undermine Alaol’s experience of captivity and unfreedom as a man-kywan in Mrauk U – a bond that remained a part of his life all throughout his literary career in Arakan. Luso-Arakanese piracy and slave raids, and the Dutch-Arakan slave trade, were important aspects of the history of the region in the early modern period. “Historical and literary accounts of ‘magh depradations’ in seventeenth century Bengal,” as Rila Mukherjee (2006: 71) has observed, “and folk tales of Portuguese ‘harmads’ along the creeks, rivers and islands of deltaic Bengal underscore the destructive effects of piracy in Lower Bengal.” Alaol’s voice offers an important bridge between the two worlds of Bengali migrants (especially Bengali Muslims) in Arakan: the merchants and the fortune-seekers, and the captives and the slaves. It is telling that even the most recent adaptation of the Padmavat – the Bollywood blockbuster by the same name – recognises the migrant story that is at the

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heart of Queen Padmini’s tale. The filmmaker, not known for subtlety in his aesthetics, places Queen Padmini in contrast with Sultan Alauddin Khilji, one a migrant from the exotic land of Sinhala, depicted in shades of bright green, and the other a savage Turk from the badlands of Central Asia, painted in shades of grey and black. In a recent piece in Bangla, Rahee Punyashloka (2019) points out the ‘good migrant’–‘bad migrant’ binary that plays out in such an interpretation of the story, where the queen’s immersion into her husband’s Rajput culture transforms her speech and appearance, even as the ‘bad’ Sultan stands out as the defiant, unassimilated Other. Her physical annihilation through the act of jauhar marks her spiritual triumph, even as the Sultan is unable to enter beyond the doorsteps. There is no such binary in Alaol’s narrative of Queen Padmini. On the contrary, Alaol’s seventeenth-century interpretation of the Padmavat speaks of the agony of captivity and the uncertainties of a bound existence. It imagines the possibility of forgiveness and reconciliation, of a world generous enough for the vanquisher to weep for the vanquished, and a world-wide enough to accommodate the vanquished king’s sons with their dignity and honour intact.

Notes 1 An early draft of this paper was presented at the IACLALS Annual Conference 2020, cohosted by the Department English, Jadavpur University, 5–7 February, 2020. In that paper, I had used Syed Alaol’s Padmabati to comment on multilingual methods and directions in English studies in India. Struck as I was by the significance of Alaol’s journey to Arakan under duress to his literary career, I found the opportunity to elaborate on the same at the three-day international conference on Cosmopolitan Cultures and Oceanic Thought: Thinking through History Across the Waters, organised by the Department of English, Jamia Milia Islamia, in collaboration with the Centre for Indian Studies in Africa, University of Witwatersrand, 23–25 November 2020. I am deeply grateful to the organisers of both conferences for giving me the opportunity to think through the same. I am deeply grateful to the generous interlocutors who engaged with me on this topic on Twitter, offering readings and suggestions. My gratitude as well to Priyanka Basu and Rukmini Chakraborty for their support and encouragement through the process of writing. 2 Quotations from Dineshchandra Sen’s Purbabanga Geetika, Vols III and IV (1930–32) used throughout this essay are translated by this author from the Bengali source material. 3 Of the multiple editions of Alaol’s Padmabati available, I have chosen to use Debnath Bandopadhyay’s (2002) volume for quotations in this essay. The translation is my own from the Bengali source material. No copyright infringement is intended. I have also consulted Mahua Ghosh’s (2016) more recent edition. 4 Karim and Haque (2017) speculate that Alaol may have been freed of his royal obligations late in life and spent his final years in Chittagong. 5 It is worth quoting van Galen’s observations in their entirety here: “In Arakan different forms of slavery or bondage were in existence throughout our period. M. Aung Thwin has described the nature of slavery in Burma. Jacques Leider has suggested that the analyses of Aung Thwin would also be valid for Arakan. The main question when studying the institution of Kywanship - or bondage - is to whom was the kywan bonded and for what purpose. In theory everyone in Arakan was a subject or kywan of the king, but in practice there was a wide variety of forms of bondage. Kywan could be bonded to the king, to a monastic institution, or to individuals. Leider has suggested that we should reserve the term slave for those who find themselves kywan involuntary” (van Galen 2008, 232).

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6 Translation from the Bengali source by this author. 7 See Chakravarti (2019) for the discussion of the uncertainties of enslaved existence in a different South Asian context through her tracing of the journeys of Gabriel.

Bibliography Bandopadhyay, D. 2002. Padmabati: Alaol, Vol. 2. Kolkata: West Bengal State Book Board. Banerjee, S. 1997. ‘Marginalisation of Women’s Popular Culture in Nineteenth-Century Bengal’, in Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid (eds), Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History. Delhi: Kali for Women. Behl, A. 2009. ‘The Soul’s Quest in Malik Muhammad Jayasi’s Hindavi Romance’, in B.D. Metcalfe (ed.), Islam in South Asia in Practice, Princeton Readings in Religions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 63–76. Borah, M.I. 1936. Baharistan-i-Ghayabi: A Tale of the Mughal Wars in Assam, Cooch Behar, Bengal, Bihar and Orissa during the reigns of Jahangir and Shahjahan, by Mirza Nathan, Vol. I, the Government of Assam in Department of Historical and Antiquarian Studies, Narayani Handiqui Historical Institute, Gauhati, Assam. Carter, M. 2006. ‘Slavery and Unfree Labour in the Indian Ocean’, History Compass, 4(5): 800– 813. Accessed on 26 September 2020. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1478-0542. 2006.00346.x. Chakraborty, T. 2019. ‘Slave Trading and Slave Resistance in the Indian Ocean World: The Case of Early Eighteenth-Century Bengal’, Slavery and Abolition, 40(4): 706–726. Accessed on 26 September 2020. doi:10.1080/0144039X.2019.1606525. Chakravarty, A. 2019. ‘Mapping ‘Gabriel’: Space, Identity and Slavery in the Late SixteenthCentury Indian Ocean’, Past & Present, 243(1): 5–34. Accessed on 26 September 2020. doi:10.1093/pastj/gty049. Charney, M.W. 1999. ‘Where Jambudipa and Islamdom Converged: Religious Change and the Emergence of Buddhist Communalism in Early Modern Arakan, 15th-19th Centuries’, PhD Thesis, University of Michigan, Michigan, viewed 26 September 2020. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt: kev:mtx:dissertation&res_dat=xri:pqm&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:9929795. Chatterjee, I. 2005. ‘Abolition by Denial: The South Asian Example’, in G. Campbell (ed.), Abolition and Its Aftermath in Indian Ocean Asia and Africa. London: Routledge. Chatterjee, I 2006. ‘Renewed and Connected Histories: Slavery and Historiography of South Asia’, in I. Chatterjee and R.M. Eaton (eds), Slavery & South Asian History. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Choudhury, R 2015. ‘An eventful politics of difference and its afterlife: Chittagong frontier, Bengal, c. 1657–1757’, The Indian Economic & Social History Review, 52(3): 271–296. Accessed on 26 September 2020. doi:10.1177/0019464615588424. Flores, J. M. 2018. Unwanted neighbours: the Mughals, the Portuguese, and their frontier zones. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Forster, R. 2011. ‘Magh Marauders, Portuguese Pirates, White Elephants and Persian Poets’, Explorations: A graduate student journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 11(1): 63–80. Accessed on 26 September 2020. https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/10125/20311. Ghosh, M. 2016. Syed Alaol o Padmavati. Kolkata: Bangiya Sahitya Sansad. d’Hubert, T. 2014. ‘Pirates, Poets, and Merchants: Bengali Language and Literature in Seventeenth-Century Mrauk-U.’, in T de Bruijn and A Busch (eds), Culture and Circulation: Literature in Motion in Early Modern India edited by Thomas de Bruijn and Allison Busch, Leiden: Brill. - d’Hubert, T. 2018. In the shade of the Golden Palace: Alaol and Middle Bengali poetics in Arakan. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Karim, A. and Haque, M.A. 2017. Arakan Rajsabhay Bangala Sahitya, reprint, Dr Pranab Kumar Saha and Dr Syed Mohammad Shahed. Kolkata: Sopan. Kia, M. 2020. Persianate Selves: Memories of Place and Origin before Nationalism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Mukherjee, R. 2006. Strange Riches: Bengal in the Mercantile Map of South Asia. New Delhi: Foundation Books. Orsini, F. 2012. ‘How to Do Multilingual Literary History? Lessons from Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century North India’ , The Indian Economic & Social History Review, 49(2): 225–246. Accessed on 20 September 2020 doi:10.1177/001946461204900203. Punyashloka, R. 2019. ‘Padmavati o Cinemar Parday Itihash Prashner Teen Punorabritti’, Pratirodher Cinema, 7(1). Kolkata: People’s Film Collective. Roy, T. 2011. ‘Where is Bengal? Situating an Indian Region in the Early Modern World Economy’, Past & Present, 213(1): 115–146. Accessed on 28 September 2020. https://doi. org/10.1093/pastj/gtr009. Sharif, A. 1967. Sikandarnama by Alaol. Dhaka: Bangla Academy. Sen, D. 1930. Purbabanga Gitika, Vol. III. Calcutta: Calcutta University. Sen, D. 1932. Purbabanga Gitika, Vol. IV. Calcutta: Calcutta University. Sreenivasan, R. 2007. The Many Lives of a Rajput Queen: Heroic Pasts in India c. 1500–1900. Ranikhet: Permanent Black, Kindle edition. Subrahmanyam, S. 1997. ‘Slaves and Tyrants: Dutch Tribulations in Seventeenth-Century Mrauk-U’, Journal of Early Modern History, 1(3): 201–253. Accessed on 26 September 2020. https://doi.org/10.1163/157006597X00028. Subrahmanyam, S. 2005. From the Tagus to the Ganges. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. van Galen, S.E.A. and Letteren, F. der. 2008. ‘Arakan and Bengal: the rise and decline of the Mrauk U kingdom (Burma) from the fifteenth to the seventeeth century AD’, PhD Thesis, Research School CNWS, Faculty of Arts, Leiden University. Accessed on 28 September 2020. https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/handle/1887/12637. Vink, M. 2003. ‘“The World’s Oldest Trade”: Dutch Slavery and Slave Trade in the Indian Ocean in the Seventeenth Century’, Journal of World History, 14(2): 131–177.

7 PAT.APPAT.T.US IN THE INDIAN OCEAN Connected Literary Sensibilities and the Circulation of Texts and Sounds across Arabic, Persian, and Sanskrit Cosmopolises Ihsan Ul Ihthisam

Introduction The pat.appa-t.t.u (war song) in Arabi-Malayalam is a performative-textual genre originating in the nineteenth century and continuing among the Muslim community of Malabar to the present day. It is enlivened through collective and individual recitations in both sacred – such as pa-t.ipparayal (singing and narration) and sı- -s, or biographies of the prophet Muhammad) – as well ra-pa-ra-yan.am (recital of sıra as secular performance contexts. It is considered an independent category in the pa-t.t.u tradition of premodern Malayalam literature and has thematic and ideological connections with the pat.aipo-r tradition in Arabu-Tamil or Arwi literature.1 The earliest studies of Arabi-Malayalam pat.appa-t.t.u can be traced to two volumes of the journal Indian Antiquary published in 1899 and 1901. More recently, pat.appa-t.t.u has invited several scholarly works from native Malabari scholars, but most of these remain available only in the Malayalam language.2 These recent studies in pat.appa-t.t.us have mainly discussed the linguistic or literary features of the genre from an insular understanding of Arabi-Malayalam literature and its sociological impact upon the Muslim community during its centuries-long anticolonial resistance. Building upon established explications of Arabi-Malayalam literature, this study will focus on the historical genesis of Arabi-Malayalam pat.appa-t.t.us and their performance in Malabar. From the sixteenth century onwards, Malabar witnessed an array of unprecedented historical changes, ruptures, and discontinuities (Kooria and Pearson, 2018).3 Underutilised premodern vernacular textual sources like the corpora of pat.appa-t.t.us are crucial to reconstructing the early modern history of Malabari Muslims, which has otherwise mostly been written based on European travel accounts and Arabic treatises. This study employs new methodological paradigms for understanding the trans-local connections of Malabari Muslims, recognising the DOI: 10.4324/9781003300939-10

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connected aesthetic sensibilities that they produced and practiced in early modern performative-textual traditions like pat.appa-t.t.us. Furthermore, these traditions are .- concomitant with the circulation of Arabic historiographical sıra-maga zı texts, Persian (semi-)fictional narratives in qis.s.ah and da-sta-n literature, and the Sanskritinfluenced pa-t.t.u tradition in the early modern South Asia. In what follows, I discuss what I mean by the term ‘connected literary sensibilities’ against the backdrop of a brief historiographical survey of the circulation of texts and sounds in the Indian Ocean from a Malabari perspective.4 The remainder of the article examines the entanglements of pat.appa-t.t.us with the Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit cosmopolises with an extended study of Badar . - and other pat.appa-t.t.u eulogies composed by pat.appa-.t.tu, or Gazwat badr al-kubra, the great Mappila poet Moyinkut.t.y Vaidyar (d. 1891) in the nineteenth century. I also discuss pa-t.ipparayal (singing and narration) and sı-ra-pa-ra-yan.am (sı-ra recital) performance tradition among the Malabari Muslims that played a crucial role in interpreting and transducing the ‘texts and sounds’ articulated in the pat.appa-t.t.u texts.

Connected Literary Sensibilities and the Indian Ocean For a long time, historiographies in the Indian Ocean have focused on studies of economic circulation and pilgrimages. More recently, a handful of cultural and social historians have initiated a socio-cultural shift in the historiography of the Indian Ocean, especially in the growing field of early-modern Indian Ocean studies. At this historiographical juncture, it makes sense to go beyond trade and pilgrimage paradigms towards the study of networks of texts and manuscripts. In this respect, recent path-breaking scholarship on literary sensibilities and sonic circulations is particularly useful, with Ronit Ricci’s idea of the ‘Arabic cosmopolis,’ Torsten Tschacher’s ‘circulatory regimes’ of transnational Tamil Islamic texts, and Mahmood Kooria’s ‘textual longue durée’ of Islamic law books offering new perspectives on the interconnectedness of the Indian Ocean world via networks of circulated books, manuscripts, and other intellectual links (Ricci, 2011; Tschacher, 2009; Kooria, 2016). Taking on a more nuanced approach to the intellectual history of the circulation of texts in the early modern Indian Ocean, as well as building upon the history of the senses, this study proposes an analytical framework of ‘connected literary sensibilities,’ which scrutinises the production and consumption of certain sensibilities through performance. It looks at affect enabled by the transmission of traveling literary oeuvres and their translation into vernacular performative-textual traditions, engendered by the historical moment, throughout the circulatory regimes of the connected Indian Ocean world.5 I call this a ‘sensuous’ shift in the connected histories of the Indian Ocean world scholarship. Here, the term translation refers to re-creation or transcreation of a text from one language to another – or from one genre to another – while maintaining its (semantic) intention, (sonic) tone, and (pragmatic) context using genre-specific techniques. In her path-breaking work on Indian Ocean literary networks, Ronit Ricci (2011: 32–33)

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defines translation as ‘a history of textual affinities or a culture-specific practice of conveying a text of one language in another and striving for equivalence of meaning.’ Clarrisa Vierke (2017: 321–322), in her studies on Swahili tendi poems, argues against perusing translation as mere cultural appropriation in which ‘the text once translated is primarily made to feed local discourses of identity or belonging.’6 She puts forward two reasons to for her argument: firstly, the aforementioned scrutiny does not represent the author’s attempt to imitate or produce a mimesis of the source text and, secondly, it does not permit an emphasis on the genre-specific methods of engaging with the source text (Vierke, 2017: 322). Similarly, Ricci (2020) reminds us that the fields of translation and philology have not yet received the interest from sound studies it deserves, stressing that sound is a key aspect in considering the history of translation in its diverse forms. As such what I mean by sound and its circulation is the circulation of sonic literary devices across languages and the various sonic performative techniques used by pa-t.ipparayal and sı-ra-pa-ra-yan.am artists during their performance to sensually transduce the ideas immanent in the pat.appa-t.t.u texts. Inspired by Richard M. Eaton’s recent discussion on the various forms of negotiations between the Persian and Sanskrit cosmopolis and his findings regarding the penetration of aesthetic and literary sensibilities from one cosmopolis to another, this study looks into the conjunction of Arabic, Persian, and Sanskrit cosmopolises across the Indian Ocean as they converge in early modern Malabar (Pollock, 2006; Ricci, 2011; Eaton, 2018). Looking at the socio-political developments in the Indian Ocean from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries that occurred against the backdrop of complex relations between various colonial powers and the maritime-oriented Islamic communities, one can recognise the kindling of certain sensibilities, as well as their manifestations and consumption through extensive literary production and reception among the indigenous communities. These literary sensibilities in circulation were engendered by the socially situated intentions and historically motivated cultural necessity of the literati and their audience. These sensibilities were connected via their socio-political proximity to cis-oceanic developments in the seaboards of the Indian Ocean, and the trans-local circulation of textual corpuses rich with expressions, aesthetics, and ideologies related to warfare from across the Arabic, Persian, and Sanskrit cosmopoleis.7 The vernacular literati independently translated such embodied sensibilities ‘in circulation’ according to their own imaginative reading of such texts, using textual and sonic devices to keep ‘poetic’ and ‘meta-poetic’ identifications with the original texts. The production and reception of war songs in the Indian Ocean – in such regionally-specific genres as the pat.appa-t.t.us in Malabar, the pat.aipo-rs in Ma‘bar on the Coromandel Coast, the Tendis of Swahili-speaking East Africa, and the Hika-yat prangs/perangs of Aceh in maritime South-East Asia – could be understood in this complex historical process of connected literary sensibilities.8 The present limitations of my own knowledge against the vast geographic and linguistic scope of this research restricts my focus here to the pat.appa-t.t.us of the Malabari Muslims.

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.- The Arabic Cosmopolis: S-ıra-magaz ı Literature and the Patappattus . .. The transformation of the Arabic language from lingua franca to lingua sacra could be considered a turning point in the history of translation among Indian Ocean Islamic communities. Yasser Arafath (2020) identifies the dominant presence of Arabic within the ‘polyglot soundscape’ of early modern Malabar, and its influence on the native Malayalam language and associated literary conventions. The credit for such exchanges goes to traders, scholars, Sufis, pilgrims, and other travelers (Kooria, 2016; Prange, 2018). The circulation of the Arabic language and sacred Islamic texts among the Malabari Muslims equipped the native Muslim scribes with linguistic and scriptorial creativity, which later culminated in the invention of the Arabi-Malayalam script.9 Arafat (2018, 2020) argues that the Arabi-Malayalam script emerged at the end of the fasad age (ca. 1600 CE) and evolved and matured over the time of transition (ca. 1600 and 1750).10 During this age of transition, Malabar witnessed the first attested production of a literary text in the ArabiMalayalam script, namely the Muh.yidı-n ma- la written in 1607) by Qa-d-ı̣ Muhammad . Ka-liku-t-ı (d. circa 1616).11 These translations into Arabi-Malayalam became popular among the Malabari Muslim laity owing to their liturgical usage and other therapeutical properties of those texts. It also liberated them from a mere syntactic reading of the Arabic texts (without knowing meaning but recognising letters) into a semantic reading (through writing Kerala bha-sa . using Arabic script). The graphophonic reading of such translations into Arabi-Malayalam using the sounds and symbols of Arabic letters also enabled a free flow of sonic and textual characters from the Arabic language.12 By the first half of the nineteenth century, the ArabiMalayalam literary world witnessed pioneering productions in the pat.appa-t.t.u genre. Following in the long tradition of translations from Arabic into Arabi-Malayalam, the earliest known work in the pat.appa-t.t.u dates to the second half of the seventeenth century and is written in premodern Malayalam and Arabu-Tamil.13 The Saqu-n pat.aipo-r (1686), written in Arabu-Tamil in the Arwi script, and Kan..tiyu-r marram. pat.appa-.t.tu composed by Cempuka-t.t. Nı-lakan.t.han in Malayalam in the last quarter of sixteenth century, are the earliest known works in the pat.appa-t.t.u tradition.14 The majority of pat.appa-t.t.us written in Arabi-Malayalam commemorate battles that took place in Islamic history, ranging from those fought in Arabia during the Prophet’s lifetime to anti-colonial or feudal confrontations fought by local Muslims on the Malabar Coast. The pat.appa-t.t.u poets relied heavily on Arabic historiographical s-ı ra-mag. -az-ı texts while composing their works; moreover, they translated the Arabic texts using their own genre-specific means, understanding, and imagination of a world beyond the ocean. I adopt the term s-ı ra-mag. a-z-ı to represent both the s-ı ra and mag. -az-ı texts syno. nymously, as used by the renowned Canadian maga-z-ı scholar Rizwi S. Faizer .- (1996, p.463). The sı ra and magazı texts primarily deal with the life story of the . -z-ı generally refers to ‘raiding expeditions,’ Prophet Muh.ammad. The word maga and from a literary perspective it is specifically used to connote the accounts of

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early Muslim military confrontations in which the Prophet Muh.ammed actively . partook (Jones, 1983). According to the maga-zı- scholar J.M.B. Jones (1983: 344), .- during the early Islamic period, magazı literature was produced individually as a distinct genre, as well as identified as a sub-category within sı-ra literature, which was . typically a mélange of prose and verse. He convincingly suggests that maga-z-ı s emerged as a form of oral literature soon after the death of the Prophet Muh.ammed, or perhaps even during his lifetime. Within the context of the Indian Ocean World, the renowned German scholar . of Arabic language and literature Rudi Paret pioneered studies in the maga-z-ı traditions as part of his efforts in the early 1930s to trace the manuscripts of Swahililanguage tendi poems, a literary counterpart to the pat.appa-t.t.u from the Swahili Coast of Eastern Africa (Vierke, 2011: 420–423). Paret published a volume incor. -zı- manuscripts that he retrieved from German archives under porating four maga . the title Die Legendare Maghazi Literatur (The Legendary Maga-zı- Literature [1930]), with extensive annotations and comments (Vierke, 2016: 229). He found that the mag. -az-ı texts shared a number of thematic, stylistic and structural characteristics with the Swahili tendi poems, and that they were not just literal translations of the former but a skilful poetic adaptation of the stories in those texts using the generic techniques that prevailed in tendi poetry). According to his observation, the . origin of maga-z-ı texts appear to date back to around the fourteenth century, and he explains their circulation throughout areas of Arab influence, including Turkey, Al-Andalus, Indonesia and parts of Eastern and Western Africa (Vierke, 2017: 324). Much later and along similar lines, the famous Sufi scholar and academic Tayka . Shuʿayb (1993: 733) provided a short survey of maga-z-ı s in his doctoral dissertation, and their translation into different genres written in both the Arwi and Tamil scripts, with an emphasis on pat.aipo-rs. . In Malabar, the textual affinity between pat.appa-t.t.us and s-ı ra-mag-az-ı brings in isolated references in the works of Malabari scholars on Mappilạ songs.15 Umar Taramel and Ba-lakriṣ .n.an Vallikkunnu (2018: 59–66) argue that the Saqu-m pat.ap̣̣ pa-.t.tu authored by Ma-ppilạ Alim Umar Labbai in 1836 is a translation into ArabiMalayalam of the Saqu-n pat.aipo-r (1686), originally composed by Varis.ai Muhiyudd-ı n Pulavar in Arabu-Tamil. Substantiating the argument, they confirm Saqu-m pat.appa-.t.tu’s textual genealogy with the Saqu-n pat.aipo-r and its correspondence with . . the famous s-ı ra-mag-az-ı text Kita-b al-ta-rı-ḫ wa al-maga-zı- of Abu- ‘Abdulla-h Muh.ammad b. ‘Umar al-Waqidı (d. 823), a text that was popular and well-circulated among Tamil Muslims since the seventeenth century.16 Al-Wa-qidı-’s other works – such as Kita-b futu-h. al-Ša-m, which narrates the Islamic state’s raids on Byzantine Syria – were also translated as pat.appa-t.t.us and pat.aipo-rs. Malabari scholars are - pat.appa-ttu is the first extant pat.appa-t.t.u in unanimous in their conviction that Saqum .. Arabi-Malayalam, and that later pat.appa-t.t.us have been greatly influenced by the former’s textual-aesthetic and sonic-melodic conventions; as such, it is renowned as Tanta saqu-m, or “Father saqu-m.” Besides Saqu-m pat.appa-.t.tu, a large number of pat.appa-t.t.us translated from the corpora of Arabic s-ı ra-mag. -az-ı literature still survive in present-day Malabar, most of which still require closer reading. Examples

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- ttu, the Uhud patappa-ttu, the Hunain - ttu, the Tabu-k include the Badar patappa patappa ̣ . .. . .. . .. pat.appa.t.tu, the Handaq pat.appa.t.tu, the Haibar pat.appa.t.tu, the Futuh. al-bah.nas pat.appa-.t.tu, ̮ ̮ Futu-h. kisra wa qaisar pat.appa-.t.tu, Futu-h. al-furu-s pat.appa-.t.tu, and Futu-h. al-Ša-m pat.appa-.t.tu. One of the earliest pat.appa-t.t.us, the Futu-h. kisra wa qaisar pat.appa-.t.tu (ca. AH 1262/ 1845) of Qa-diya ̣ -rakattu Kuñña-va Sa-h.ib (d. 1885), is a four-volume text spanning over one thousand pages that celebrates the expansion of the Islamic state during the rule of the first four Caliphs immediately following the death of the Prophet. . It contains extensive textual references to Arabic sı-ra-mag-azı- sources like S-ırat alnabawiyyah, Al-mawahib al-ladunniyyah, Sırat ibn hišam, S-ırat al-halabiyyah, Ta-r-ıḫ al-Hamıs, ̮ - Kita-b futu-h. al-Ša-m and such forty more historiographical texts employed for verification of events: Viruttuva-n s-ırattunnabawiyya bahuma-nava-hibulladunniyah. veliṿ futu-h.a-ttul isla-miyya atiyinnum h.alabiyya’mari-v-ıritama-kina- atil ninnum s-ırafutu-h.uššam niravat.isıratt ibnuhis´-amum n-ırttuva-n dimya-ttum surqa-ni ñerimikav ibnusayyidnna-sin ´s-amiyattinnum ikttifa-o-t. šifa--ninapoliva-kine ša-fi‘-ı ima-mut.e musnadil ninnum parayuva-n ta-r-ıkhulkhulafa-um pakarttidai -ısi ippo-l ta-r-ıhulkham ̮ palatume tarjamacheit g-ıta-yi ko-tt-ıt.um na-ne-

To narrate from S-ırat al-nabawiyyah and respected al-Mawa-hib al-ladunniyyah, the revelations in Futuha-t al-isla-miyyah, looking at al-h.alabiyyah and from valiant S-ırat futu-h. al-Ša-m, from rich S-ırat ibn hišam, as well as Dimyat and Surqa-ni, from the most beautiful work of Ibn Sayyidnna-sin Š-ami and equally commendable Musnad of Imam Š-afi‘ı, to say, copied from Tarıḫ al-Hulafa ’ ̮ - alike, and from Ta-r-ıḫ al-Hamıs ̮ I translate them to read as song. - . Kisra wa Qaisar Pat.appa-.. (Futuh ttu)17

. Badar Patappattu . . . or Gazwat Badr al-Kubra and the Performance - - Tradition of Patipparayal or S-ıraparayanam . . . - composed by the great Ma-ppilạ poet The Badar pat.appa-.. ttu or Gazwat badr al-kubra, Mo-yinkut.t.y Vaidyar (b. 1848/1852?) in 1876, occupies an extraordinary place among the Malabari Muslims for its ceremonial, ritual, and sensorial importance in their everyday life.18 The poem describes the battle of Badr fought in 624 AD between Muslims of Medina and their religious opponents in Mecca, which details over 106 is´als the incidents that led to the battle, the combat itself, and the battle’s aftermath.19 Like other pat.appa-t.t.us of the time, Badar pat.appa-.t.tu was not a mere imitation or literal translation of its Arabic source,; rather it enabled a creative, . sensuous translation of the Arabic texts into Arabi-Malayalam. The title Gazwat .- badr al-kubra- itself is a mimesis of a chapter of the same title in the sıra-mag azı text. . -azı- texts Badar pat.appa-.t.tu has intertextual references to the Arabic sıra-mag employed as sources, such as S-ırat rasu-l alla-h of Ibn Ish.-aq (d. 768) and Ibn Hiša-m (d. 833), Al-Mawa-hib al-ladunniyyah of Al-Qast.alla-n-ı (d. 1517) and S-ırat al-h.alabiyyah of

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Al-Halab ̣ -ı (d. 1549). If we look at Badar together with the corresponding Arabic texts, we find that, notwithstanding the local aesthetic adaptations, Pat.appa-t.t.u obviously followed the original Arabic text intimately in terms of plot structure and episodic patterns, adopted into is´als over the course of the poem. Similarly, Badar is replete with Arabisms, Arabic loan words, Arabic meters, and even excerpts of Arabic poems from . the s-ı ra-maga-zı- texts. What makes the pat.appa-.t.tu fundamentally different from its Arabic counterpart is that the Arabic text is a prose work interspersed with occasional verses or poems, while the pat.appa-t.t.us (excepting the occasional incidence of prose, called bamp) are completely versified, using various prosodic or metrical models that pastiche Arabic verse conventions. The Pat.appa-t.t.u texts were not meant for silent reading, but rather for public recitation, individually or collectively, in pa-t.ipparayal and s-ı ra-pa-ra-yan.am sessions, which were very frequent among the Malabari Muslims. These performance traditions were necessary to convince and convey to the audience what emotions, senses, and messages the authors of pat.appa-t.t.us wanted to communicate or transduce to their audience. Pa-t.ipparayal or s-ı ra-pa-ra-yan.am sessions were common among Muslim neighborhoods in the context of religious festivals like the celebration of the birth anniversary of the Prophet or other venerated religious figures, as well as other auspicious occasions like Eid and Ramadan. Before the widespread usage of technologies of sound amplification, those sessions were generally organised inside mosques, madrasas, and other private spaces. They were typically extended sessions lasting two to three weeks, with people generally gathering in the night time after their everyday chores were done. These sessions were attended mainly by laypeople and were one of the most prominent mediums for the oral transmission of religious knowledge and history among them. Generally, pa-t.ipparayal or s-ı ra-pa-ra-yan.am is performed by one main storyteller and one or two chorus singers as they oscillate between speech and songs at regular intervals, with the songs mainly taken from the Pat.appa-t.t.u texts, performed in between the ‘speech’ that follows a very independent oral repertoire based on the style and mode of the storyteller. Since the 1950s, one can see the appearance of several katha-prasangam (storytelling) performance manuals in the print market providing pre-arranged pa-t.ipparayal or p-ı ra-pa-ra-yan.am repertoires (both songs and speeches) ready to perform. Music historian Richard Williams (2020) recognises that ‘the early modern poets conventionally began their compositions by praising and invoking the blessings of higher authorities, be it their gods, gurus, or courtly patrons, and that this reflected their intellectual attachment to the religious households that navigated the political and social challenges of the period.’ In the first is´al of Badar, Vaidyar praises and asks help from God, the Prophet, and other religious authorities to finish the treatise without any faults. He also instructs the reader how to perform it without any mistake, and ensures the fulfilment of needs, wishes, and salvation from difficulties for those who recite the texts with extreme care and reverence. The pa-t.ipparayal or s-ı ra-pa-ra-yan.am performance usually begins with the invocations from the Qur‘an and Hadith, citing the importance of shah-ıds or shuhadas (martyrs) who

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sacrificed their lives for the religion. This is generally followed by words on the importance of remembering and praising their life and good deeds, and the healing powers of such performances. . -az-ı texts, one While comparing Vaidyar’s Badar with the corresponding sıra-mag finds that it is not a word-for-word translation of the Arabic source texts; rather, the poet recreates the scenes according to his own vernacular imagination (Valliḳ̣ kunnu, 2017: 198). According to Clarissa Vierke (2017: 329), this mode of translation could be best described as a form of expansion that ‘amplifies the scene of the original in an effort to make it fit into the framework of the syllable measure of the stanza and to render it more palpable’, thereby recreating the text, primarily giving a sensual experience of the event through an unhur. ried exposition of the narrative. For instance, the sı-ra-maga-zı- texts describe the entrance of Muslim troops and opponent quraiš group one the battlefield in a short paragraph, whereas Vaidyar expands the account to several is´als, each having more than ten stanzas. The poet imagines the entrance of the opposing quraiš troop onto the battlefield as happening in a far-off Arabian landscape, with an exalted military band playing a variety of instruments. He sensually reproduces them in a manner that resonates with the Malabari soundscape through references to a variety of musical instruments in Malabar and their non-referential sounds. He also extensively uses onomatopoeic, non-referential sounds to convey sensibilities in the is´als. The pa-t.ipparayal or sı-ra-pa-ra-yan.am artists also use vocal techniques to sonically transmit the sense of the texts they performed. The use of vocal rhythms reminiscent of beatboxing as the background to the songs is very common, and they vocally produce onomatopoeic sounds according to the scene and plot. Tut.are maddalavum muras´ot. ̣ maruva orrakalum ̣ bajayot. dut.ikal ̣ daffukalum ̣ kas´iman.i dunikal ̣ ta-´sikala-̣ l. kot.uma fullukal ̣ fu-lạ cu-lakal ̣ ̣ . kombu cankukala-̣ l takrtikal ̣ ̥ ko-ltạ -lame o-t.ica-t.iyum s.aff niffukala-̣ l. ̣ (…) celurirriri tatti rirriri ririri bilị kus´ala-l ferubilị cen.t.a t.an.t.at.a orra t.un.t.ut.u t.un.t.u mut.t.ukala-̣ l. it.ayil kaiman.i kin.ilu kin.il kin.il tot.ara kin.n.-aram celakka cela cela dut.ikal ̣ bempalu bempal bempalu daff dandali dal dal dil dilu

Playing maddalam, ̣ muras´, orra, ba-ja, tut.i, daff, hand bell and other instruments continuously in rhythm, along with wind instruments like flutes, horns, oboes, and conch shells, playing in harmony (…) The horns make the reedy Sound of tatti rirriri ririri, And the drums sound .tun..tut.u . the hand bells sound kin.il kin.il and the jingles cela cela, the tut.i beats bempal bempal and the daff sounds dal dal.

(Badar pat.appa-.t.tu, Is´al-38, mattirakkanni it.acca-.t.tu, 1–4, 26–29)

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Vaidyar was well trained in reading Arabic by well-known contemporary religious scholars, or ulemas. He resided with them at nearby mosques during the composition of this piece. Often they translated the respective chapters from the s-ı ra-mag. a-z-ı texts for him. In the last is´al of Badar, being respectful to the original Arabic source texts and the pat.appa-t.t.u literati tradition, the poet expresses his intellectual inferiority for the task of finishing the work successfully. He accepts his limitations in comparison with the preceding works, and he openly invites scholars to correct his mistakes.

Bemma- kanakkpo-l kavi ce-rttuva-n birudam ‘aql ‘ilmum qal-ı la-yo-n ña-n umma- bis´e-lattil fas.lo-rttella-m ̣ - colla-n ´ ‘ulamor idil pisavaruppın

I, a novice, lacking mastery in poetics and laws, Given the greatness of the subject, I amdealing with, scholars may rectify my flaws. . (Badar pat.appa-.t.tu, is´al 106, tonkal 15–16)

Vaidyar uses unique scribal techniques inherited from his predecessors among the Arabi-Malayalam literati, characterised by assigning Malayalam propositions to Arabic words and giving Arabic phonemes and morphemes to Malayalam words, - ̣ prosophonologically and morphologically adjusting them into the Arabic al-‘arud dic/metric system. Arabic meters like al-ramal, al-ragˇaz, al-ka-mil, al-hazagˇ, and almutada-rak were commonly used in Arabi-Malayalam poetry, including the pat.appa-t.t.us (Vallikkunnu, 2014). For example, the fortieth is´al in Badar pat.appa-.t.tu, ̣̣ namely ran..tam tudi, adopts the al-hazagˇ meter in Arabic prosody. Besides prosody, there are several Arabic loanwords in Badar, which are assimilated into the existing structure either by modifying their phonological compositions or by keeping their original morphemes and phonemes. Both cases enable an active adoption of the sounds across languages. As the phoneme /p/ is absent in the Arabic phonemic system, early Arabi-Malayalam poetry always represented this phoneme with the phonemically close Arabic /f/ or /b/, until the Persian character /p/ was incorporated into the Arabi-Malayalam script by twentieth-century Arabi-Malayalam language reformers.20

- - and the Patappattus Persian Cosmopolis: Qissah, Dastan .. . .. Even scholars like Stephen Frederic Dale (2019) who spent a long time in Malabar assert that neither Persian nor Urdu were used in southwestern India, where the local Muslims were connected to the larger Islamic world through Arabic or ArabiMalayalam. However, contrary to the argument, one can find evidence for the penetration of Persianate literary texts, idioms, styles, and sensibilities into vernacular Arabi-Malayalam literature. According to Malabari historian Husain Ran.t.atta-n.i (2014, 2020), the earliest flows of Persian lifestyle, culture and literature came

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along with the movements of Pulavars, Sufis, Maraikka-rs and Mahdu ̮ - mı- scholars from Ma‘bar (Coromandel Coast) to Malabar by the fifteenth century.21 The influences of Persian literature on Arabi-Malayalam literary traditions were even more evident by the arrival of Khwa-ja Sheikh Muhammed Sha-h (d. 1767) of Kallya-n at Kon.t.o-t.t.i. An ardent follower of Persianate Islam, Muhammed Sha-h was born in Bombay to a sayyid family with genealogical connections to Chishti Sufis and ancestry from Bas.rah in Iraq (Ran.t.atta-n.i, 2007). He led a peripatetic Sufi scholarly life until finally settling in Kon.t.o-t.t.i in accordance with the directions revealed to him by prophet Muhammad in his dream while he was in Mecca for the Hajj with his disciples (Madhuva-y, 2018: 19). Sha-h is also known for his relationship with the Mysore ruler Tippu Sulta-n, having been a distinguished scholar in the sultan’s fort at Feru-kka-ba-d. His court at Kon.t.o-t.t.i was populated with Persian literati and had a library with a huge collection of Persian texts. Muhammed Sha-h and his descendants earned many followers among the Malabari Muslims, while their art, literature, and ritual practices sparked a centuries-long debates with the majority faction of Sufi scholars who were backed by the long-consolidated Hadrami Sayyids [commonly known as the Kon..to-.t.ti-Ponna-ni Kai conflict] (Moulavi ̣ ̣ and Kareem, 1978: 318–323; Ran.t.atta-n.i, 2007: 47–60; Edoli, 2017). Kon.t.o-t.t.i Sha-hs patronised the circulation and reproduction of Persian literary works in Arabi-Malayalam. The literary works like Qis.s.a-e-chaha-r darve-sh of Am-ı r Khusrau Dehlav-ı and Badr - husn al-jama-l of an anonymous author was translated into Arabi-Malayalam al-munır . in 1870s.22 While some Persian historiographical treatises on pan-Islamic battles were translated into the pat.appa-t.t.u genre (e.g., the Palaya yaz-ıd pat.appa-.t.tu), most of the pat.appa-t.t.us translated from Persian texts were fictional or semi-fictional in character. Some examples of the latter include the Ceriya jinpat.appa-.t.tu (1865), Valiya jinpat.appa-.t.tu (1862), Sala-s-ıl pat.appa-.t.tu and Sal-ıqat pat.appa-.t.tu (both 1868). Mo-yinkut.t.y Vaidyar, the most celebrated poet of Arabi-Malayalam and the author of Badar pat.appa-.t.tu, maintained a warm relationship with Kon.t.o-t.t.i Sha-h and his court, and, notably, with his contemporaries Ishtiya-q Sha-h I and Ishtiya-q Sha-h II. Vaidyar composed Sala-s-ıl pat.appa-.t.tu, Sal-ıqat pat.appa-.t.tu and Badr al-mun-ır h.usn aljama-l based on stories narrated to him by Puttan Ma-liye ̣ -kkal Niza-mudd-ı n Mia-n S.ah.ib, who was one of the most prominent Persian literati figures in Kon.t.o-t.t.i Sha-h’s court (Fawcett, 1899; Kareem, 2006). The structural and generic analysis of Sala-s-ıl pat.appa-.t.tu and Badr al-mun-ır h.usn al-jama- l identifies both with the ‘verbal artistic’ genres of qis.s.ah or da-sta-n, which originated in Persian, were nurtured in Urdu, and then diffused via continuous translations into vernacular languages throughout the Persianate world.23 The song of Badr al-mun-ır h.usn al-jama-l written by Vaidyar in Arabi-Malayalam shows great similarity with the story of Sayf al-mulu-k and bad-ı‘aljama-l. Though unambiguously a story of Persian origin, it earned a wide circulation across South Asia in it various forms and manifestations.24. In his manual for storytellers, Fakhr al-Zama-n-ı (d. after 1631–2) suggests that qis.s.ah-khwa-ns or da-sta-ngos (storytellers) would base the course of their performances on four repertoires or registers: razm (warfare episodes), bazm (courtly festivities),

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husn o ‘ishq (stories of love and beauty) and ‘ayya-rı- (trickery).25 Like his other . works, Vaidyar’s Sala-s-ıl pat.appa-.t.tu, written when he was only fifteen or sixteen years old, strictly follows these registers, with a heightened emphasis on the register of razm or warfare. The work is believed to be an adaptation of the text Mafa-tih al- Mia-n S-ahib as mentioned in akhba-r, narrated or translated for him by Niza-muddın . . the fourth is´al of the pat.appat.t.u. The story opens with the young protagonist Sala-sıl at his home. One day, having been given money by his mother, Masa-m, with instructions to conduct a business deal, he accidentally buys a parrot, a cat, a dog, and a snake (much to his mother’s displeasure). Eventually, however, he come to learn that the snake he purchased was a peri (genie) in disguise. The peri takes him to a fantasy world where Sala-s-ıl meets the peri’s father, Abu Su‘ba-n ibn Ma-lik, who is a king of that city and presents him a magic ring that has the power to actualise anything he desired. Back in his world, Sala-s-ıl builds a wondrous palace with the - that he marries the princess help of the peri that so astounds the local King Maha-tıs Ganımat to Salasıl, bringing the latter to the throne. (These narrative elements illustrate the bazm and h.usn o ‘ishq registers.) However, the king of Khura-sa-n, Ibn Ba-yil, catches wind of Sala-s-ıl’s story tricks him to gain possession of the magic ring for himself (representing the ‘ayya-r-ı register). Consequently, Sala-sı-l, along with his parrot, dog, and cat, wages war against Ibn Ba-yil. The Sala-s-ıl pat.appa-.t.tu then features a long narration of an imaginary battle fought between rats and cats and dogs, later leading to their unified opposition against Ibn Ba-yil to regain the magic ring (representing the razm register). The victory in the war brings back all the festivities to Sala-s-ıl’s court. Sala-s-ıl and Gan-ımat live the rest of their lives peacefully and lovingly. This pat.appa-t.t.u also tells a story of the second encounter between Sala-s-ıl (accompanied by his sons) and Ibn Ba-yil; with the help of peri troops on both sides, the battle ends with a complete victory the protagonist and his troops.26 The importance given by Vaidyar to the razm or warfare register of the qis.s.ah, points towards the receptiveness to warlike literary sensibilities, reflecting the sociopolitical atmosphere and anti-colonial aspirations which prevailed in Malabar. This is evident in the appended introductory note to the manuscript (written by either the author or the publisher), which says: ‘this is a qis.s.ah, namely Sala-s-ıl, [which] recounts a wondrous, prompting and entertaining story that narrates a fierce war - Mia-n fought between Ibn ba-yil and other troops.’27 It also reveals Niza-muddın S.ah.ib’s mastery as a storyteller in translating or narrating the qis.s.ah for Vaidyar, and the latter’s sensual recreation of the qis.s.ah in his imagination before trans-creating it into the pat.appa-t.t.u genre, giving a thematic significance to the warfare (razm) senses.

Sanskrit Cosmopolis: The Pattus . . and the Patappattus . .. Scholars have recently moved towards the possibility of understanding ArabiMalayalam as a synthesis of the vernacular Kerala bha-s.a (early form of Malayalam) with languages like Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit.28 Looking into the entanglements of the Sanskrit cosmopolis and its expansion into Southern India, the premodern

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Malabari literary traditions exemplify the tendency of Sanskrit to penetrate into vernacular languages and give form to local genres. This is most evident in the formation of premodern literary genres like pa-t.t.u and the man.iprava ̣ - lam ̣ literature.29 The pa-t.t.u genre as generally written in Tamil or Kerala Bha-s.a features substantial assimilations from Sanskrit literary conventions in terms of its ideology, text, sound, and syntax. After the age of Ra-macaritam, one of the earliest available works in the pa-t.t.u genre, the influence of Sanskrit intensified in the pa-t.t.u genre, and is evident in most of the literary works of the early modern time. Historicising the social and pragmatic contexts in which pre-modern Malayalam literature evolved and circulated, Rich Freeman identifies the presence of the pa-t.t.u genre or movement (prasta ̣ - nam) in early twelfth- and thirteenth-century Malabar. We see appropriations from Sanskrit, both phonologically and morphologically, as well as thematic influences from the Sanskrit epics and pura-n.a-s. Freeman (2003) mentions Tirunilalma-la and Ra-macaritam as the two earliest known works in the premodern pa-t.t.u genre, and he discusses the genre’s later transformations with respect to the changing socio-political context in Malabar. It is evident that the pa-t.t.u genre further took from this tradition discursive and textual conventions found in the fourteenthcentury treatise on poetics, the L-ıla-tilakam. Furthermore, we see many subsequent lyrical forms in Malayalam literature influenced by the pa-t.t.u genre featuring the pa-t.t.u suffix in their titles, and likewise freely borrowing Sanskrit phonological, lexical, and grammatical characters.30 The later production of Malayalam pat.appa-t.t.us can be traced back to this same premodern pa-t.t.u literary genealogy. The pat.appa-t.t.us in Arabi-Malayalam date back to the first half of the nineteenth century and display a linguistic and ideological character independent from the rest of pa-t.t.u literary works. As discussed above, the Arabi-Malayalam pat.appa-t.t.u also claims its genealogy from the Arabu-Tamil pat.aipo-rs, which have obvious connections to the Tamil pa-t.t.u tradition.31 However, Arabi-Malayalam embodies a shared history of the cultural and linguistic formations of the Sanskrit cosmopolis and its expansion into South Indian vernaculars. Ophira Gamliel (2018) recognises Ra-macaritam as the end of a literary era, since following that Sanskritic influences intensified and changed the literary and linguistic landscape of early modern Kerala. She further discusses the nuances of Arabi-Malayalam and its entanglement with - ma- la under scrutiny. the Sanskrit cosmopolis, bringing Muh.yidın . Apart from Kan..tiyur marram pat.appa.t.tu, one of the earliest known pat.appa-t.t.u in Malayalam, written by an anonymous author in the second half of the seventeenthcentury, titled Pat.appa-.t.tu, deals with the 1660 Dutch conquest of Cochin, and narrates the related external and internal political disturbances and rivalries that occurred between the native kingdoms in Malabar.32 Malayalam literary historian M.R. Ra-ghavava-riyar (2016) posits the probable existence of other Pat.appa-t.t.us contemporary to the Pat.appa-.t.tu which are no longer accessible, and reminds us of the historiographical importance of such works in reconstructing the early modern history of Malabar. The Pat.appa-.t.tu manuscript refers to one Muprayil Kat.t.akkakattu Ceriya-n, who owns the publishing right, and one Avuraha-m (Abraham), the scribe or recorder of the manuscript. Although these names identify both of them as

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Christians, considering the textual references to the Hindu cosmic figures and other generic features, the poet-historian Ullụ -̣ r S. Parame-´swara Iyer assigns its authorship to a Hindu. The author narrates Pat.appa-.t.tu in a unique way, in the manner of a conversation between himself and a parrot (Kilippa ̣ -.t.tu style) and tells the parrot not to be bothered by public criticism, as he wants the parrot to recount a war song, rather than a puranic or religious story, using the pa-t.t.u genre (Pat.apa-.t.tu, 2016: 36). This indicates the ideological transformations happening in the pa-t.t.u genre concomitant to the changing socio-political milieu of the early modern Malabar. Coming to the Pat.appa-t.t.us written in Arabi-Malayalam, these employed Sanskrit phonemes and morphemes along with the Arabic and Persian and followed an unconventional blending of bhakti (devotion) and vıram (martial) aesthetic sensibilities pioneered by Ramacaritam, which is considered a poetic expansion of the Yuddhaka-n.dam ̣ (chapter of war) in the Ra-ma-yana. Taking Mo-yinkut.t.y Vaidyar’s literary oeuvre into concern, one can easily trace his deep-rooted association with Sanskrit literary traditions. F. Fawcett (1899, p. 64) in his article “A Popular Mopla Song” establishes Vaidyar’s birth in a Vaidyar family that traditionally practiced Ayurveda medicine as a profession. Ba-lakriṣ .n.an Vallikkunnu (2017: 11–12) also ̣̣ talks about Vaidyar’s profound acquaintance with Sanskrit medical treatises and the reflection of this knowledge in the language used in his literary writings. Valliḳ̣ kunnu also analyses Vaidyar’s apparent influences from the Ra-macaritam, adopting metric styles, syntactic features, and generic conventions from the former in his literary endeavours. For instance, analyzing the is´al metric and melodic convention in the Arabi-Malayalam songs, one can see in the is´al -arambha (seventh Is´al) of - husn al-jama-l and in the is´al kañcala viruttam of Saqu-m patapVaidyar’s Badr al-munır . . pa.t.tu strong influences or resemblance to the ran..ta-m pat.alam (second chapter) of the Ra-macaritam (Vallikkunnu, 2017: 254). ̣̣ In the second is´al of the Malappuram pat.appa-.t.tu, while paying his dues to the Prophet and his blessed family, Vaidyar ostentatiously displays his command over the Sanskrit language.33 Jagadara ghan.n.ana-m pura-b-ı jam . jan-ı nanyatara-na-m srs.̣ t.t.-ı na-m janaka krtastanu rant-ı ruta- -prathamati saciva ̣ jagun. a manaskara nassiya ve-da- . ma-skuhate-naakaril ´subhana-m sthitiyum yuk mastanu ´sca-riyatatre ahisus´ire drtikut ̣ .arasuphada- - indapajanakrim ̣ arapisuna pran.amiya maha-me-ta(Malappuram Pat.appa-.t.tu, Is´al-2, tat.akiman.atte) [I supplicate, the Prophet who is the cause behind the creation of universe; then great Abu-bakar, then brave Umar, then pious ‘Utma-n who married the Prophet’s two daughters, and mighty ‘Ali who married the Prophet’s dearest daughter Fa-tima]34

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Conclusion The genesis of pat.appa-t.t.us in Malabar, pat.aipo-rs in Ma‘bar (Coromandel), tendis in the Swahili region, hika-yat prangs/perangs in Aceh, which were all translations from Arabic or Persian literary works, contextualises their production in a historical moment of political crisis, transition, and transformation in the early modern Indian Ocean. The political crisis resulting from colonial interventions in the Indian Ocean littorals from the 16th century CE set off an unprecedented circulation of Arabic and Persian warfare literature and its subsequent translations into vernacular genres. Without a doubt, what connected them was the unifying ideology of Islam and the unifying geography of the Indian Ocean. These connected literary activities and sensibilities, animating historiographical accounts, embodying fictions and semi-fictions, engendering valour and emotions, unfolded different senses of temporality and gestures towards creations of new forms of literary subjectivity and positionality, in the early modern Indian Ocean. The reception of Arabic historiographical texts, paralleled by the Persian quasihistoriographical texts, in early modern South Asian, South-East Asian and East African regions of the Indian Ocean must be read together to understand their collective significance—that is to say, to retrieve their connected historical consciousness and their transoceanic trajectories.35 However, the pat.appa-t.t.us are not mere translations of historical events; rather, they aesthetically and linguistically recreate the historical event according to their own genre-specific means and social setting. By focusing on the aesthetic adoption of texts and sounds across the language cosmopolises discussed here, and their direct adaptation into the vernacular, this study has revealed aspects of cis-oceanic and trans-local production, the consumption and movement of sensibilities, and their imagination and reception across the ocean. By drawing stories and histories from their respective lifescapes and landscapes for reproduction in the vernacular peripheries of Islam, these corpora of translations also form an imaginary link across the Indian Ocean (mainly to early Islamic centres of Arabia and Persia), as a strategy towards claiming a common cosmography, literary tradition, and heritage.36 To conclude, texts and sounds were complementary in translating literary sensibilities from one genre to another. The usage of unique Arabi-Malayalam morphemes and phonemes, which could be used to evoke in turn the Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit cosmopolises, helped pat.appa-t.t.us translate or trans-create the sensibilities and emotions of the original texts. The inclusion of Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit words in such translations make the authenticity and authority visible and palpable as part of the original texts. Where the exact literatim translation was impossible or not preferred by the literati, untranslatable or unfamiliar words, terms and moments were explained with vernacular sonic techniques in specific to the pat.appa-t.t.u genre. Where the texts failed to communicate sensibilities of the translated, pat.appa-t.t.u poets employed sounds (both referential and non-referential) to signify the needed sense and emotions. That was the same case with pa-t.ipparayal or - -pa-ra-yanam artists and their performance style and repertoire. sıra .

Patap . pattus .. in the Indian Ocean 129

Finally, Malabari Muslims at this time sought urgent solutions to their social and political grievances, taking lessons from their collective historical past, textual experience and memory and finding empowerment in a pan-Islamic social and political consciousness and attitude. As such, the production of pat.appa-.t.tus about famous battles in Islamic history – such as Badar, Uhud, Hunain, Tabu-k, Handaq, Haibar, etc. – in the social and ̮ ̮ ̣ political environment of seventeenth- to nineteenth-century Malabar discloses much about the intellectual history and anti-colonial ideology of local resistance in the Indian Ocean world. This study is an initial exploration of the Pat.appa-t.t.u archives and - -pa-ra-yanam performance traditions – one that will the still-extant Pa-.tipparayal and Sıra . hopefully invite deeper scholarly attention in the future.

Acknowledgements I am grateful to Dilip Menon, Simi K. Salim, Johann Peiris, Thufail M. and Rohini Menon for their advice and feedback on earlier versions of this manuscript. I also thank organisers and participants of the conference “Cosmopolitan Cultures and Oceanic Thought: Thinking through History across the Waters” at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, for their valuable comments and suggestions, to improve the final version of the manuscript.

ORCID Ihsan Ul Ihthisam https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2293-8510

Notes 1 Pataipo . - r tradition in Arabu-Tamil or Arwi is considered as the precedent form of patap. pa-.t.tu in Arabi-Malayalam. Arabu-Tamil or Arwi is counterpart of Arabi-Malayalam popular among Muslims of coromandel coast rich with literary productions. See Shu‘ayb, 1993; Schomburg, 2003; Tschacher, 2001. 2 See F. Fawcett’s study of patappa ttus in The Indian Antiquary Journal published in 1901 . -.. titled War Songs of the Ma-ppilaṣ of Malabar, after his three-and-a-half-year ethnographic fieldwork in Malabar as a local correspondent of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. See Fawcett, 1901; Moulavi and Kareem, 1978; Vaidyar, 2011; Vallikkunnu, 2016; Taramel and Vallikkunnu, 2018 Sathar, 2014; Haseeb, 2018. ̣̣ ̣̣ 3 European colonial interventions in the Indian Ocean have greatly affected the socioeconomic and political life of Muslim populations across the littorals. They mainly depended upon seafaring and other activities related to long-distance oceanic trade and commerce. 4 Hereafter, the term ‘text’ indicates the conveyance of sensibilities using verbal means, and the term ‘sound’ refers to the production of sensibilities employing non-verbal means. 5 For the understanding of new developments in sensory history see Mark M. Smith, “Producing sense, consuming sense, making sense: perils and prospects for sensory history.” Journal of Social History (2007):841–858; For an idea on circulatory regimes and connected histories, see Claude Markovits, Jacques Pouchepadass, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, eds, Society and circulation: mobile people and itinerant cultures in South Asia, 1750–1950 (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003); Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Explorations in

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6

7 8 9 10 11

12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

25 26 27

Connected History: From the Tagus to the Ganges (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005). Utendi/tendi (pl.) are a written genre of epic songs in the Swahili language that flourished at the Swahili Coast of East Africa, which were considered as the translations or adaptations of the Arabic Mag. a-zı- texts from the period of eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. See Clarissa Vierke, 2017, pp. 321–322. Cis-oceanic history studies a particular region as a unique location within the Oceanic world and seeks to define the uniqueness as the result of the interaction between local particularity and a wider web of connections. See Armitage, 2002, pp. 11–27. For further readings in Hika-yat Prangs/Perangs in Aceh, see Ahmed, 2018; Dale, 1988. For Arabi-Malaya-lam, See Aboobaker, 2018; Arabi-Malaya-lam, ̣ ̣ 1985. The Malabar Ulema called the 16th century as the age of fasad, owing to Portuguese colonial interference and local resistance to it, See Arafath, 2018. Muh.yid-ın Ma-la literalised the 12th-century Baghdadi Sufi scholar Šaiḫ Muh.yuddın ˇ -ıla-ni’s saintly life as a translation or trans-creation of the Arabic ‘Abd al-Qa-dir al-G . texts – Futuh. al-Gaib and Bah.gˇat al-Asra-r wa Ma’din al-Anwa-r – into the ma-la- literary genre in the newly invented scriptorial complex of Arabi-malaya-lam. ̣ For detailed studies in Muh.yid-ın Ma-la, see Gamliel, 2018; Arafath, 2020. It is the combined usage of orthographic and phonological techniques to read an unknown word. That is when the reader identifies unknown words by relating symbols of letters to the sounds of speech. For a survey of translated works done from Arabic to Arabi-Malaya-lam, see Valippa-ra, ̣ 2020. See Aiyyer, 1953, p. 12. The everyday musical enunciations of Ma-ppilạ Muslims of Malabar are known as Ma-ppilappa ̣ -ttu (Songs of Ma-ppilas), ̣ it addresses each moment in the secular and religious life of Ma-ppilaṣ from birth to death. See Moulavi and Kareem,1978, p. 59–66. - 1966; See the Arabic manuscript publication of the book with annotations, al-Wa-qidı, - 2011. and its later English translation, al-Wa-qidı, See Futu-h. Kisra wa Qaisar Pat.appa-.t.tu in Moulavi and Kareem, 1978, p. 297. For a detailed introduction to literary life of Mo-yinkut.t.y Vaidyar, see Hameed, 2019. Is´al is the melodic and metric convention seen in Arabi-Malaya-lam ̣ poems and songs. It can also refer to a divisional or classificatory category, like a canto. See Net.iyana-t., 2017, pp. 30–33. For phonological and morphological discussions of Arabi- Malaya-lam, see Azeez,2003, ̣ pp. 75–111; Cheerangote, 2013, 2017a, 2018. For a detailed survey of the Persianate sphere of literay influences, See Hodgson, 1974, pp. 293–94; Amanat and Ashraf, 2018. For a prefatory idea of the Persianate literary influences in Malabar, see Ran.t.atta-n.i, 2014, 2020; Sood, 2018. For a discussion with manuscript publication and Malayalam transliteration of Qissa-eChaha-r Darve-sh and its Arabi-Malaya-lam ̣ translations, see introduction of, Cheerangote, 2017b. The ‘verbal artistic’ genres of qis.s.ah or da-sta-n and its diffusion, see Khan, 2019. For further reading on Sayf al-Mulu-k and Badı-‘al-Jama-l and its reception across South Asia, See Shackle,2007; d’Hubert, 2018. Contrastingly, F. Fawcett, in his short ethnographic research essay on Vaidyar’s Badr al-Munı-r Husn al-Jama-l, observes its adaptation ̣ from Nasr-e--be- -Naz-ır – an eastern fairy tale. See Fawcett, 1899, p. 65; Ottathingal, 2020. See Khan, The Broken Spell, 111; d’Hubert, “Living in Marvelous Lands”, 87. See K.K. Muhammad Abdul Kareem and K.K. Aboobacker, Maha-kavi Mo-yinkut..ty Vaidyarut.e Sampoorn.̣ a Kritikal ̣ ̣ (Kon.t.o-t.t.i: Maha-kavi Mo-yinkut.t.y Vaidyar Ma-ppilạ KalaAcademy, 2015). Translated by present author, See Hasan Net.iyana-t., Ma-ppilappa ̣ -.t.tinre Ve-rukal ̣ Te-.ti (Kozhikode: Vachanam Books, 2017); Kareem and Aboobacker, Maha-kavi Mo-yinkut..ty Vaidyarut.e Sampoorn.̣ a Kritikal. ̣ ̣

- ttus in the Indian Ocean 131 Patappa . ..

28 See Gamliel, 2018, p. 4. 29 Sheldon Pollock marks the socio-cultural and political formations and expansions of the Sanskrit cosmopolis in the ages between 900 BC and 1300 AD, which hybridised Sanskrit with vernacular languages as a pan South Asian phenomenon. See Pollock, 1996, 1998. Man.iprava ̣ -lam ̣ is a hybrid language formed out of vernacular languages like Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Kannada through their active interaction with Sanskrit. The term is also used to represent a genre or style in the premodern vernaculars written in the language evolved through the aforesaid process. See Freeman, 1998; Anandakichenin, 2018, pp. 163–162. 30 The fourteenth-century poetics’ treatise L-ıla-tilakam suggests the employment of Sanskrit words in pa-.t.tus only possible after manipulating it by Talbhava or Talsama linguistic techniques. Talsama occupies the direct adoption of Sanskrit words into the Dravidian script without any manipulation while Talbhava implies adaptation of Sanskrit words into the Dravidian scripts applying phonological and morphological adjustments. - -n, 2017, p. 67; Taramel and Vallikkunnu, 31 See Mıra 2018; Ran.t.atta-n.i, n.d. ̣̣ - ttu, ed. with an introduction by Ulloor S. Parameshwara 32 See Iyer, 1953, p. 13; Patapa . .. Iyer, 2016; Kooria, 2018. 33 The Malappuram Pat.apa-.t.tu (1883) narrates the Ma-ppilạ Muslim encounter with the British-feudal power-nexus in defence of the Malappuram Mosque in the year 1763. See Vallikkunnu, 2016. ̣̣ 34 See Is´al-2, tat.akiman.atte, in Vaidyar, 1889; Vallikkunnu, 2016. ̣̣ 35 My conception of imaginary links across the Indian Ocean is indebted to Vierke’s, “Poetic Links across the Ocean”. For an interesting probe into the blurred nature of the centre-periphery of the Islamic world and re-imagination of Islamic cosmography through literary productions, see d’Hubert, 2018. 36 For a recent path-breaking account on trans-oceanic Arabic historiography and its parallels in the Persian cosmopolis, see Bahl, 2020.

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Armitage. D. 2002. Three Concepts of Atlantic History. In D. Armitage and M.J. Braddick (eds), The British Atlantic World, 1500–1800. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 11–27. Azeez, K.A. 2003. Arabic Loan Words in Malayalam: A Study. PhD Thesis, University of Kerala Bahl, C.D. 2020. Transoceanic Arabic historiography: sharing the past of the sixteenth-century western Indian Ocean. Journal of Global History, 15(2): 203–223. Campbell, M. and Vidal, R. 2019. Entangled Journeys—An Introduction. In M. Campbell and R. Vidal (eds), Translating across sensory and linguistic borders: intersemiotic journeys between media. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. xxv–xliv. Cheerangote, S. 2013. A Sociolinguistic Evaluation of Arabi Malayalam. PhD Thesis, University of Mysore, Karnataka. Cheerangote, S. 2017a. Phonological Features of Arabi- Malayalam. Language in India, 17(12): 299–309. Cheerangote, S. 2017b. Cha-r Darve-sh. Tirur: Malayalam University. Cheerangote, S. 2018. Contact-Induced Elements in Arabi-Malayalam. Language in India, 18(5): 333–341. d’Hubert, T. 2018. Living in Marvelous Lands: Persianate Vernacular Literatures and Cosmographical Imaginaires around the Bay of Bengal. In A. Amanat and A. Ashraf (eds), The Persianate world: rethinking a shared sphere. Leiden: Brill, pp. 84–104. Dale, S.F. 1988. Religious suicide in Islamic Asia: anticolonial terrorism in India, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 32(1): 37–59. Eaton, R.M. 2018. The Persian Cosmopolis (900–1900) and the Sanskrit Cosmopolis (400–1400). In A. Amanat and A. Ashraf (eds), The Persianate world: rethinking a shared sphere. Leiden: Brill, pp. 63–83. Edoli, A. 2017. De-Persianization of Islam: The Cultural Shifts after Hadhrami Migration in Malabar. Imperial Journal of Interdisciplinary Research, 3(9): 693–697. Faizer, R. 1996. Muhammad and the Medinan Jews: A Comparison of the Texts of Ibn Ishaq’s Kita-b s-ı rat rasu-l Alla-h with al-Waqidi’s Kita-b al-magha-z-ı . International Journal of Middle East Studies, 28(4): 463–489. Fawcett, F. 1899. A popular Mopla song. Indian Antiquary, 28: 64–71. Fawcett, F. 1901. War songs of the Mappilas of Malabar. The Indian Antiquary, 30: 499–508. Freeman, R. 1998. Rubies and Coral: The Lapidary Crafting of Language in Kerala. The Journal of Asian Studies, 57(1): 38–65. doi:10.2307/2659023. Freeman, R. 2003. Genre and Society: The Literary Culture of Premodern Kerala. In S. Pollock (ed.), Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia. London: University of California Press, pp. 437–500. Gamliel, O. 2018. On the Warp and Woof of Language: Arabic, Malayalam and the Muh.yidı-n Ma-la. Is´al Paitrkam. ̣ Hameed, A.A. 2019. Mappila literature as a paradigm for countercultures: Reading Moinkutty Vaidyar in context. Performing Islam, 8(1–2): 11–39. Haseeb, M. 2018. War-Songs (Padapattu) and Anti-Colonial Struggles in Malabar. International Journal of Research and Analytical Reviews, 5(3): 526–529. Jones, J. 1983. The Magha-z-ı Literature. In A. Beeston, T. Johnstone, R. Serjeant and G. Smith (eds), Arabic Literature to the end of the Umayyad Period. s.l.: Cambridge University Press, pp. 344–352. Kareem, K.M.A. 2006. Mo-yinkut.t.y Vaidyarut.e Adyaka-la Racanakal.̣ In K. Ahamed (ed.), . . Mahakavi Moyinkut..ty Vaidyar Pat.anannal. ̣ Kon.t.ot.t.i: Maha-kavi Mo-yinkut.t.y Vaidyar Ma-ppilạ Kala- Academy, pp. 56–78. Kareem, K.M.A. and Aboobacker, K. 2015. Maha-kavi Mo-yinkut..ty Vaidyarut.e Sampoorn.̣ a Kritikal. ̣ ̣ Kon.t.o-t.t.i: Maha-kavi Mo-yinkut.t.y Vaidyar Ma-ppilạ Kala- Academy.

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Khan, P.M. 2019. The Broken Spell: Indian Storytelling and the Romance Genre in Persian and Urdu. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. Kooria, M. 2016. Cosmopolis of law: Islamic Legal Ideas and Texts Across the Indian Ocean and Eastern Mediterranean Worlds. PhD Thesis, University of Leiden. Kooria, M. 2018. Pat.apa-t.t.u, A Malayalam War-Song on the Portuguese-Dutch Battle in Cochin. In Malabar in the Indian Ocean: Cosmopolitanism in a Maritime Historical Region. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 141–171. Kooria, M. and Pearson, M.N. (eds) 2018. Malabar in the Indian Ocean: Cosmopolitanism in a Maritime Historical Region. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Kut.t.y, V. 2014. Maha-kavi Mo-yinkut..ty Vaidyarute Ka-vya Prapañcam. Kozhikode: Lipi Publications. ̣ . . al: Hwa-gˇa Šaih Muhammed Ša-h (Kha.Si) Tann . . aluteyum Madhuva-y, U. 2018. Konto tti Tann ̮ ̣ ̮ ̣. .-.. Pingamikaluṭ .eyum Jıvacaritram. Kont.ot.t.i: Kont.ot.t.i Qubba Takkiya Charitable Trust. Markovits, C., Pouchepadass, J. and Subrahmanyam, S. (eds) 2003. Society and circulation: mobile people and itinerant cultures in South Asia, 1750–1950. New Delhi: Permanent Black. . . al. Calicut: Vachanam Mı-ra-n, T.M. 2017. Arabittamil. In Arabi Malaya-la Sa-hitya Pat.hanann ̣ Books, pp. 58–70. Moulavi, C.N.A. and Kareem, K.K.A. 1978. Mahatta-ya Ma-ppilạ Sa-hiyya pa-ramparyam.̣ Kozhikode: Published by the authors. Net.iyana-t., H. 2017. Ma-ppilappa ttinre Ve-rukal ̣ Te-.ti. Kozhikode: Vachanam Books. ̣ -.. 2016. Patapa ttu. Kot.t.ayam: Sahitya Pravartaka Co-operative Society Ltd. . .. Ottathingal, A.R. 2020. Circulation of the Fantastic: Literary Networks, Persianate Sphere and Moyinkutty Vaidyar in Colonial Malabar, Is´al Paitrkam, 22: 47–69. ̣ Pollock, S. 1996. The Sanskrit cosmopolis, 300–1300: Transculturation, vernacularization, and the question of ideology. In J.E. Houben (ed.), Ideology and status of Sanskrit: Contributions to the history of the Sanskrit language. Leiden: Brill, pp. 197–247. Pollock, S. 1998. The cosmopolitan vernacular. The Journal of Asian Studies, 57(1): 6–37. Pollock, S. 2006. The language of the gods in the world of men: Sanskrit, culture, and power in premodern India. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Prange, P.R. 2018. Monsoon Islam: Trade and Faith on the Medieval Malabar Coast, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ra-ghavava-riyar, M. 2016. Malaya-lị Caritrabo-dham Ko-laniva ̣ -lcakkumunp. In U.S.P. Aiyyer (ed.), Pat.apa.t.tu. Kot.t.ayam: Sahitya Pravartaka Co-operative Society Ltd, pp. 9–35. Ran.t.atta-n.i, H. 2007. Mappila Muslims: A Study on society and anti colonial struggles. Calicut: Other Books. Ran.t.atta-n.i, H. 2014. Avata-rika. In: Maha-kavi Mo-yinkut..ty Vaidyarute Ka-vya Prapañcam. Koẓ hikode: Lipi Publications, pp. 7–15. Ran.t.atta-n.i, H. n.d. Cultural Synthesis on the Western Coast of India; The Persian Traits of Mappila Muslim Culture. [Online] Available at: www.academia.edu/10079249/Persian_ elements_in_South_Indian_Culture_A_study_on_Mappila_Culture#:~:text=The%20Arabs% 20who%20migrated%20to,area%20were%20Soth%20Arabian%20Muslims. Accessed on 3 September 2020. Ran.t.atta-n.i, H. n.d. Tamil Traditions of Mappila Songs: Synthetic Elements in South Indian Literature. [Online] Available at: http://hussainrandathani.in/assets/admin/ word/851c4d094e61b18fbcf8b394768b5356.htm. Ricci, R. 2011. Islam translated: Literature, conversion, and the Arabic cosmopolis of South and Southeast Asia. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Ricci, R. 2020. Sound across Languages. Philological Encounters, 5(2): 1–15. Schomburg S.E. 2003. Reviving Religion: The Qa-dir-ı Sufi Order, Popular Devotion to Sufi Saint Muh.yı-uddin ʻAbdul Qa-dir Al-G-ı la-n-ı , and Processes of Islamization in Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka. PhD dissertation, Harvard University.

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Shackle, C. 2007. The Story of Sayf al-Mulu-k in South Asia. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 17(2): 115–129. Shuʿayb, T. 1993. Arabic, Arwi and Persian in Sarandib and Tamil Nadu: A study of the Contributions of Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu to Arabic, Arwi, Persian and Urdu Languages, Literature and Education. Madras: Imamul ‘Arus Trust. Smith, M.M. 2007. Producing sense, consuming sense, making sense: perils and prospects for sensory history. Journal of Social History, 40, 4, 841–858. Sood, G.D. 2018. Through a Persian looking glass: Malabar’s world in the middle of the eighteenth century, in M.Kooria and M.N. Pearson (ed.), Malabar in the Indian Ocean: Cosmopolitanism in a Maritime Historical Region. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 201–231. Subrahmanyam, S. 2005. Explorations in Connected History: From the Tagus to the Ganges. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Taramel, U. and Vallikkunnu, B. 2018. Ma-ppilapa ̣̣ ̣ -tt Pa-.thavum ̣ Pat.hanavum.̣ Calicut: Other Books. Tschacher, T. 2009. Circulating Islam: Understanding Convergence and Divergence in the Islamic Traditions of Ma’bar and Nusantara. In: Islamic Connections: Muslim Societies in South and Southeast Asia. s.l.:s.n., pp. 48–67. Vaidyar, M. 1889. Malappuram Madinidhi Ma-la. Kon.t.o-t.t.i: Mada-rul Ulu-m Press. Vaidyar, M. 2003. Badar Yuddappa-ttu. Thirurangadi: C.H. Muhammad and Sons. - Kon.t.o-t.t.i: SCARF. Vaidyar, M. 2011. Badr al-Kubra. . . alute sa-mu-hika-sa-nska-rika vyavaha-ram. Is´al Valippara, S. 2020. Arabi malaya-lạ vivarttanann ̣. Paitrkam, 21: 84–93. ̣ .. Vallikkunnu, B. 2014. Ma-ppilapa ̣̣ ̣ - ttu Valakkannal ̣ Caritra Sa-mu-hika Pas´ca-talattil. Kon.t.o-t.t.i: MIRD. Vallikkunnu, B. 2016. Malappuram Pat.apa-.t.tu: Pa-.thavum Pat.hanavum. Kon.t.o-t.t.i: Maha-kavi ̣̣ Mo-yinkut.t.y Vaidyar Mappila Kala Academy. Vallikkunnu, B. 2017. Maha-kavi Mo-yinkut..ty Vaidyarut.e Ka-vyalo-kam. Kozhikode: Vachanam ̣̣ Books. Vierke, C. 2011. On the Poetics of the Utendi: A Critical Edition of the Nineteenth-century Swahili Poem “Utendi Wa Haudaji” Together with a Stylistic Analysis. Münster: LIT Verlag. Vierke, C. 2016. From across the ocean: considering travelling literary figurations as part of Swahili intellectual history. Journal of African Cultural Studies, 28(2): 225–240. Vierke, C. 2017. Poetic Links across the Ocean: On Poetic Translation as Mimetic Practice at the Swahili Coast. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 37: 321–335. Williams, R.D. 2020. Dreams, songs and letters: Sectarian networks and musical archives in eighteenth-century North India. The Indian Economic & Social History Review, 57(4): 1–21.

PART III

Constructing Space

8 OF THOSE ON SHORE The Dhow Trade and Mobility in the Indian Ocean Nidhi Mahajan

“Shabana does no work – she lets her daughters and sister-in-law do all the cooking and cleaning, and she herself, just roams around. Going to this house and that or telling this one to come over. She can really talk, non-stop bak-bak. That’s all she does,” Jalal, a dhow sailor said to me when I told him I was going to visit his cousin Shabana at her house in Jam Salaya, a seafaring town on the Gulf of Kachchh. Jalal was teasing his married older sister in the way that brothers often do, “Go to her house and see – I bet you won’t see her lift a finger. She’s just like Amina over here!” Amina, his younger sister looked up from her phone, and smiled cheekily, saying nothing to counter her brother but rather agreeing with him, “This is true. I do nothing. I don’t even know how to cook. I just play with my daughter and go visit my relatives all day long.” Although Jalal meant to light-heartedly tease both his sisters, Amina acknowledged what he said to be true, hinting that her actions were perhaps beyond her brother’s comprehension. “Come, let me take you to Shabana’s house,” Amina said, getting up to wear her niqaab. As we made our way to Shabana’s house, Amina began to point at houses along the way, “Here is where Sugra Mami lives, and over there, behind that is Husain’s house. And see that pink one over there? That’s where my Masi lives. Jalal got his job through her.” We then arrived at a yellow, iron gate, with a dhow and ship’s wheel etched onto it. As I looked around, I noticed that the doors and gates of many houses around us had a similar, maritime motif. A dhow and ship’s wheel etched here, or fish carved onto a wooden door painted blue there. The entrance of these homes marked a relationship to places outside of them that sustained the households within – ships, fish and the sea. After all, Jam Salaya is town of seafarers. As we entered Shabana’s home, she greeted me with a hug, and we settled into the courtyard. Unlike the last time I had visited, a year ago in 2016, the courtyard and much of the interior of the house had been tiled. Sacks of cement and unused tiles lay in one corner of the courtyard. “I’ve been getting so much work done! DOI: 10.4324/9781003300939-12

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Look, the house is nearly complete!” While her husband Samir was away, working on a dhow cruise in Dubai, Shabana had been busy supervising renovations to their home. “Go bring us some chai,” Shabana told her daughter as she offered Amina and me phakki, chewing tobacco, the mark of hospitality in every home in Jam Salaya. “Nothing here works without chai and phakki,” Amina said, laughing. “Why just the other day, Jalal was complaining that phakki prices have gone so high he doesn’t know how he will manage his stock before he leaves for the season.” Shabana nodded, excitedly. “Yes, Samir just left a few days ago and we had to buy such expensive phakki for him to carry!” Shabana lived with her mother-in-law, divorced sister-in-law and her two daughters and young sons. Samir her husband, was a sailor and was away for much of the year. “This is a household without men. The only men who live here are jinns! They watch over us.” Shabana told me, pointing at a corner of the house, where she had set some incense, and fruit, offerings to the invisible presence of male jinns. These jinns marked the absence of human men. After all, every year Jam Salaya’s seafarers would leave home in August, as the monsoon rains abated. Households would be emptied of able men for much of the year, the women who stayed behind taking care of the elderly, the young, and anyone else who could not go out to sea. With the end of the sailing season in June, many of these seafarers would return home after nine or ten months at sea, this seasonal pattern of migration shaping the lives of men who laboured at sea and the women who stayed on the shore. Maritime labour is inherently masculine. It is still uncommon to see women labouring on container ships, and dhows are exclusively run by men (see Dua, 2019; Khalili, 2020). In the Indian Ocean, while women have been mobile as enslaved labour, or as wives, it is most often men – as sailors or merchants – who have moved and travelled, their relationships with women tying them to specific places, allowing them to become “natives everywhere” (Ho, 2006). Yet, in cases where itinerant men did not marry in other places, there is a need to examine the role of women left behind in what Claude Markovits has called the “network centre,” a locale or a cluster of localities where merchant capitalists might raise capital and have their main residence (Markovits, 2000). While scholars like Markovits (2000) have examined questions of gender grounded in matters of law, women’s property rights, and inheritance in creole Indian Ocean societies (see, for example, Bonate, 2017; Rahiman, 2017; Sebastian, 2016; Seng, 2018; Yahaya, 2015) there is a need to examine the relationship between the labour of women at home, and maritime labour at sea (see also Mahajan, 2020).1 Drawing on the work of feminists who have argued against the distinction between domestic and other forms of labour, this paper explores an overlooked form of labour, typically undertaken by women in mobile societies – the labour of being in relation – that makes the seasonal movement of men possible. In this paper, I argue that while seasonal dhow labour functions through systems of patronage, women are key economic actors in these patronage systems as they are ones who undertake the labour of being in relation, this labour maintaining existing patronage systems and creating new ones. This labour of being in relation

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ultimately allows men to move across the Indian ocean while still being moored to the home, the movement of women between households, and their labour of being in relation setting the stage for longer itineraries at sea.

Monsoon Mobilities: Those Who Stay and Those Who Leave The monsoon winds have enabled mobility across the Indian Ocean. Seafarers have long harnessed predictable monsoon winds to move between East Africa, the Middle East, and South and South-East Asia. From November to January, as winds blow from the northeast, dhows would depart from South Asia and the Arabian Peninsula toward the Horn of Africa and the Swahili coast. And from April to August, as the winds change, sailing vessels moved from East Africa toward the east – to the Arabian Gulf and India, attempting to reach their ports of call before the winds caused heavy rainfall and turbulent waters in South Asia (typically by mid-June). This regular, predictable pattern of winds has been central to drawing the Indian Ocean littoral into a transregional arena over the longue dureé (Alpers, 2013; Amrith, 2016; Amrith, 2018; Chaudhuri, 1985; Roy, 2012; Sheriff, 2010). The rhythms of life for seafaring communities in western India have moved with the monsoon winds, the social and economic lives of seafarers and their families based on a monsoonal temporality and relationality (Mahajan, 2020). After all, the merchants and mariners of Kachchh divided the year based on the shifting monsoon winds, their accounting practices being based on a seasonal sailing calendar. The period of the northeast monsoon was known as mausam, and the southwest monsoon was known as aakhar (see also Goswami, 2016). The monsoon was not only embedded in indigenous commercial practices, but movement with the monsoon was also instituted by state powers – from the Portuguese, British, and even the post-colonial Indian state, which restricted dhow traffic between June-September (see Machado, 2014). For Kachchhi seafarers then, aakhar was a period during which most seafarers would return home, while mausam referred to the nine months that they were at sea. Contemporary Kachchhi dhows or va-han are no longer dependent on their sails for movement, and run instead, on diesel engines. In official terms, these va-han are known as “mechanized sailing vessels” in India. They are primarily built in Gujarat, the port towns of Mandvi and Jam Salaya being especially prominent centres for the va-han trade. This trade functions as an economy of arbitrage (Dua, 2016, 2019) as dhows go to minor ports, especially in times of conflict (Mahajan, 2020). They carry goods such as rice, livestock, foodstuffs, electronics, medicines, food aid, tyres and even cars across ports in India to the Persian Gulf, Yemen, Somalia and Kenya. Despite being able to travel in the face of the monsoon winds, most vessels continue to run with the monsoon, the ports of Dubai and Sharjah, being important transhipment hubs. Rather than moving by dhow with the monsoon, sailors now fly back and forth from the UAE to India. However, the old seasonal maritime calendar that divided the year into aakhar and mausam, still mattered, often in subtle but important ways, seasonality shaping quotidian life of seafarers and their kin.

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Most sailors still fly back home to India during the June-September period, or aakhar, and resume work on board vessels with the end of the southwest monsoon, or during mausam. Contracts for maritime labour on board dhows are dated according to this seasonal calendar, and salaries are paid only during aakhar. Aakhar thus continues to be a period in which accounts of the season are closed, and contracts are renewed. This seasonal sailing calendar is part of an historical experience that continues to shape prevailing relations of production (Tadiar 2009), even as Kachchhi seafaring communities quickly adapt to changing conditions – of climate change, weather, labour, capital, markets, governments and even family obligations. Life in the seafaring town of Jam Salaya still moved with the monsoon.

Jam Salaya, A Network Centre on the Gulf of Kachchh The town of Jam Salaya lies on the Gulf of Kachchh, its fortunes linked to its connections to other port cities across the Indian Ocean. The town has a long tradition of seafaring, with shipyards in which vahan are built and run primarily by sailors from the Muslim Bhadala and Wagher communities, alongside some Hindu Kharvas (Varadarajan, 1980). Jam Salaya was originally settled by Muslim Bhadalas and Hindu Bhatias from Kachchh, and in the nineteenth century it came to be a stop on the railway that extended through Kathiawar. While it was once primarily a fishing village, it is now famously, where vahan are built, the village economy based on seafaring and fishing. Jam Salaya is thus a “network centre” (Markovits, 2000) connected to elsewhere, as for much of the year, it is emptied of its seafarers who labour on dhows scattered across the Indian Ocean. The men who remained home were either ailing or worked in local stores. Female kin at home would spend much of the year taking care of children, the elderly and household affairs, the household depending on remittances. Meanwhile, the lives of men at sea were dictated by labour on board the dhow, until they returned home in aakhar. During aakhar, seafarers would spend time in the family home, making repairs to both home and vessel, attending weddings, drawing up contracts for the next season of work and settling old debts. Although sailors can now travel across the Indian Ocean by airplane, these old seasonal patterns continue to shape social interactions cycles of debt, and the organisation of labour on board a vahan. To understand these patterns of labour organisation, however, one must examine both, the labour of men onboard va-han, as well as the labour of those they leave behind.

Seasons of Labour, Patronage and Cycles of Debt Onboard a Vahan The organisation of labour on board a va-han, like any other ship, reflects a strict hierarchy (see also Simpson, 2006). All crew members receive a monthly salary (paghar), and also depend on payments they receive on each trip, voyage, or gos they undertake. Yet, compensation differs based on one’s position in the crew. The nakhwa or the captain is at the top of the hierarchy, and is responsible for crew and

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cargo management, finances, itineraries, and communication. He usually receives a monthly salary that is about four times the amount that the lowest paid crew member receives. In addition, he is given fifty percent of the customary baksheesh, or tip paid by merchants for every voyage that is undertaken, the remaining fifty percent split equally among the rest of the crew. The second-highest paid crewmembers are usually either the maalim or navigator, or the “driver” or ship’s engineer who maintains the diesel engine. They are followed by the rasoiya/ bhandari or cook and the serang or foreman, and then the sukhani (or the one who steers the vessel’s wheel), oilman, and several “helpers” such as the gherporiya or watchman. There is usually onboard also a young unpaid apprentice, or petoriya who does all the odd jobs. All the crew members (except the apprentice) receive a monthly salary, ranging from INR 20,000 (US$300) for the nakhwa to INR 3,000 (US$40) for a helper.2 In addition, they receive a much higher hamali, majdoori or labour paid by the shipping agent or the merchant for each trip made. This entire amount is split equally between the crew members or khalaasi (excluding the nakhwa) and in 2017 could amount to INR 18,000–20,000 (US$250–300) Indian rupees for each voyage or gos they made. Since the hamali and baksheesh are paid per trip, the financial success the sailor would depend on the number of trips they made each year. Households too, depended on the hamali and baksheesh, as these would be remitted home. Salaries were not always paid every month and would often only be given as a lump sum at the end of the sailing season, in aakhar. This complex system of compensation emerged out of an older system that similarly used a combination of monthly salaries and compensation per trip. Records from 1880 indicate that when sailors from Kachchh sailed to India’s eastern coast, they received a monthly salary. However, for other voyages, sailors would be compensated a lump sum for every voyage they undertook. This lump sum was known as the khalas, from which is derived the term khalaasi, which refers to all crew members except the nakhwa, even today. In that system, the captain was paid twice as much as a khalaasi, and also received a customary fee known as the káyado.3 Serangs would receive 1.25 the share of the khalaasi. (See also Goswami, 2016: 53). In addition, every sailor would receive an allowance of the cheapest grain – rice, wheat, or bajra – called a bhatta. Some sailors recall that this bhatta, although in the form of cash, existed up to the 1980s, and suggest that the salary and hamali system only emerged when va-han began servicing ports in Iraq during the Gulf Wars. While sources on the transformation of this system are scarce, it is clear that the current system came out of an older system of monthly bhatta and lump sums or khalas paid at the end of the seasonal sailing calendar year. The form of maritime labour organisation resembles forms of organisation in agriculture in Gujarat, especially the hali system of labour bondage. In this system, the hali or landless agricultural labourer would be pressed into the service of a landowner, the landless labourer accepting bondage after taking a loan, usually for marriage expenses (see Breman, 1974). The hali would undertake work as a farm servant until the payment of his debt, the low levels of compensation preventing him from ever clearing the debt. Nevertheless, this system functioned as a system of

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patronage, whereby the landowner was expected to provide for bonded labourers who would be allotted land for a house, clothing, and was entitled to some meals, medical care, alcohol, clothes, and ornaments at the expense of the landowner. Until the late nineteenth century, the hali was rarely compensated in cash – and was only given cash as a favour to cover expenses that may not otherwise have been covered. For every day that he worked on the landowners’ farm, he was compensated in grain, also known as a bhatta, in a fashion similar to khalaasi at sea who would receive a monthly bhatta but also a lump sum for every trip undertaken. The hali system has been understood to be rooted in the older jajmani system, both of which have been interpreted as forms of patronage. As Jan Breman has shown, this system of patronage would have required the patron to provide “total care” for the labourer, and often was preferred to being a wage labourer as it provided for the labourer and their family through the year, even in seasons when work was scarce (Breman, 1974). While the jajmani and hali system gradually shifted, elements of this patronage and debt bondage system remain in maritime labour. Dhow nakhwas and khalaasis were often indebted to dhow owners – typically to pay for weddings, their own, or those of their sisters and daughters that took place only during aakhar. Moreover, given that salaries were often only paid as a lump sum at the end of the year, crew would often take a loan from the dhow owner even before going out to sea. While the lump sum often ensured some savings for the crew member and his family through the year, typically, the crew member would end up indebted to the owner and would continue to work for him for the next season, unless another dhow owner was willing to pay off the original debt and contract the sailor (who would be indebted to the new owner). As Hashim, a retired nakhwa in his 60s once told me, “Sometimes, we like that salaries are paid at the end of the year – it ensures some savings through the year and this is especially helpful of there is a wedding to plan, or house to build. But then you also realise that you invariably end up taking loans from the vessel owner. You always end up indebted to the owner.” Shabana, his daughter, put it even more succinctly, “Think of it in this way – they become bonded labourers.” Salaries, paid at the end of the season (during aakhar) were therefore intricately tied up with cycles of debt and labour recruitment. Cash-strapped khalaasis and their families invariably looked to dhow owners or seths for loans, who in turn, expected sailors to continue to work for them, whether or not the debt was repaid. Debt bondage and indebtedness play an important role not only in this system but even in the share system used by dhow labour in parts of the Arabian Peninsula and East Africa. In these spaces, labour on board a dhow functions on what Kachchhis call the patti system. Not unlike the share systems used by pirates (see Rediker, 2001) in the Atlantic and often viewed as more egalitarian than waged labour, in this system, nakhwa received two shares and serang received 1.5 shares whereas khalaasis received equal shares of profits. Many seafarers from Salaya and Mandvi would hope to find employment on dhows owned by Emiratis in the

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UAE who worked in this system, hoping that it would assuage indebtedness. But many even in the patti system often ended up in debt in the long term. Indeed, colonial ethnographers too, believed that debt bondage plagued the dhow trade. Writing about the organisation of mtepe trade (a type of dhow used on the East African coast), the Assistant District Commissioner of Lamu, in Kenya described how debts and profit sharing functioned onboard a dhow in 1924. Every season, sailors would contract to work for an mtepe owner, from whom he typically also took a loan to secure the contract for work. The nakhoda and the crew would then work the dhow through the season, with the owner taking one-third of the net profits, and the rest of the crew sharing the remainder, with two shares going to the nakhoda and the others dividing the remainder. As the District Commissioner states, at the end of the season the debt was likely to remain unpaid, remarking, “it is only fair to say that some debts get paid but other are undoubtedly carried on from year to year and increased till the man sinks into a state of semi slavery to the mtepe owner” (KNA D.C./LAM/3/2/1924: 23). The district commissioner imagined that dhow owners know fully well that getting loans repaid was unlikely and that they only do the work “to induce the sailor to sign a contract for service”4 (KNA/D.C./LAM/3/2/1924: 25). Labour on board a dhow has thus long been tied to a form of debt bondage – in both, the share system and the seasonal wage system. These cycles of debt have consistently been viewed as exploitative by government officials ranging from a DC in Lamu in the 1920s, to contemporary officials in India. In 2017 a government official at the Directorate General of Shipping, a wing of the Indian Ministry of Shipping expressed to me a similar feeling – that the dhow owners exploited their crew. Sitting in his office in Bombay, with photographs of Ambedkar and Gandhi on the wall, he said to me, “the real problem with these seths is how they treat the crew – they really try and squeeze all they can from them! Not only do they [the sailors] go out and labour in such dangerous conditions but they get paid very little. The khalaasis are always in debt.” Despite the urge to begin a conversation about how government policies had put dhow sailors out of work, I found myself in the unusual position of agreeing with a government bureaucrat – that cycles of debt led to the bondage of labouring dhow crews at the hands of dhow owners. This is of course, a familiar theme in studies of credit and debt. Anthropologists of debt, as have long studied the effects of how credit is somewhat beneficial for creditors while being burdensome for debtors, creditors and debtors being locked in a hierarchical relationship (Peebles, 2010). For example, Michael Taussig (1987) has argued that debt-peonage served to coerce labour, and trade, relations of credit and debt becoming vines that bound the Amazon basin into a single unit. In the case of dhow labour, dhow crews and dhow owners were bound together through debt, this relationship being not just one of creditor/capitalist or debtor/labour but also one of patronage. In this case, when sailors/khalaasis become indebted to dhow owners, they become not just labourers or debtors, but also clients, dhow owners becoming not only creditors/capitalists, but also patrons, with a whole

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other set of duties and obligations. It is through patronage, and not just through debt that sailors were bound to dhow owners. While debt relations have long been thought to connect distant parts of the Indian Ocean, drawing it into a networked space (see Bishara, 2017; McDow, 2018), patronage has been a key element in making some actors mobile to begin with. It this then, not only the debt relationship but the larger patronage system of which debt bondage is a part, that needs elucidation. Scholars of South Asia have long argued that studies of debt bondage have overemphasised the debt element of the relationship. Anthropologist Jan Breman has argued that the relationship between patron and client exceeded the debt relationship. He defines patronage as: “a pattern of relationships in which members of hierarchically arranged groups possess mutually recognized, not exactly stipulated rights and obligations involving mutual aid and preferential treatment. The bond between patron and client is personal and is contracted and continued by mutual agreement for an indeterminate time.” (Breman 1974: 18) In this understanding of patronage, labourers and landlords were pressed into a master-servant relationship whereby the servant as a client had certain rights and obligations: his master as patron was expected to be affectionate, generous and promote the interests of his client. The servant then, was expected to be loyal and respectful, providing not only labour but also serving the interests of his patron. In this conception, while patronage was initiated through debt, the debt was never one that was expected to be paid off. Rather, it was this mutual relation of dependence that was key, coercion coming into pay when the “total care” of patronage fell away. Patronage, similarly, constitutes the seafaring community, where both capital and labour are defined not just as capital and labour in their relationship, but also as patron and client. Class thus emerges through this relationship of patronage, instantiated in the form of debt. This debt, however, presses certain obligations not only upon the debtor, but also upon the creditor, who as a patron, is expected to provide continued lines of credit, and protection and support. This was often viewed as burdensome, not only for the debtor, but also for the creditor. Dhow owners would often complain to me they were beset by requests for advances that made it difficult for them to run their own, now cash-strapped businesses. Take for example, Talib, a dhow owner from Jam Salaya who once said to me, “These people (dhow crews) and their families keep asking for more advances. Not only during aakhar, but sometimes, even during mausam, when the sailor is away, a sailor’s wife may come to me to ask for money. And I often don’t have any money to give, and probably will never be paid back. Yes, he may work it off, but that doesn’t solve my cash problems given that this business is not always profitable at all.” I was initially inclined to dismiss Talib’s remarks - because he was

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complaining about “the help” in a way that elites in South Asia often do. But perhaps by taking him more seriously, one can think more clearly about this patron-client relationship instituted by debt. Just as labourers were bonded to work for dhow owners based on the promise of salary at the end of a season that could help repay an old debt, so too were dhow owners bound to provide work, and cash for sailors and their families upon request. The obligation to work, follow instructions, and be loyal on the part of debtorlabourer, and the obligation to provide work, social security, and credit bound both patron/capital as well as client/ labour. While contracts between sailors and dhow owners typically lasted for one year, if both owner/patron and labour/client were sufficiently satisfied with the arrangement, it would continue year after year. However, if an owner was seen as stingy, and unable to provide ample rations and credit, sailors would look for new employment. Thus, patronage here did not have to imply a long-term bond – one could get out of it – but the obligations of patronage such as credit giving, and “total care” remained. While debt created an economic bond between patron and client, their obligations to one another often exceeded economic transactions and exchange, as is typical in relationships of patronage5. Patronage was a key element in constituting and cultivating the self in Jam Salaya and Mandvi. Recent work on patronage has suggested that although patronage produces hierarchical relationships where clients are aware of their lower status being produced through the act of receiving, they continue to engage in this practice as patronage becomes a key way of self-definition even for these lower status groups, who are fashioned not only by their occupation, but by their patrons (Piliavsky, 2015). Both patrons and clients are thus defined through these obligations – caste identity being constituted through these exchanges (Raheja, 1988). For sailors who often work with dhow owners of the same caste, class and gender identity is fashioned through their role as clients to dhow owners and patrons to fellow sailors and their kin. Patronage is the central axis through which the self is fashioned. This system of patronage extended through all levels of the community – from dhow owners who as patrons would compete with each other, to khalaasis who also sought prestige and hoped to become “big men” within their class even if they were clients of dhow owners. Within this patronage system that shaped masculine maritime labour across the Indian Ocean, the labour of women who do not move across the sea with them is largely invisible. This gendered form of labour involved manoeuvring these systems of patronage in ways that would benefit their households and kin. It was often women who found new patrons/dhow owners for their male kin to work with, it was women who went to dhow owners, asking for credit during the year, and it was often women who ensured that khalaasis were paid the salaries owed to them at the end of the sailing season. Although women did not move with men their labour of being in relation which included their movement between homes, carework, and maintenance of social networks, made the movement of men across the ocean possible. Women thus acted not only as care givers in the absence of male

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kin, but also harnessed their networks that extended from one household to another to shape family fortunes.

The Labour of Being in Relation “The life of the man who goes out to sea rests in the hands of his woman on shore.” Chakki, a fisherwoman, in the classic Malayalam novel Chemmeen (Pillai 2018: 8)

For sailors spending long months, and even years at sea, having a wife at home is an economic must. Women after all, enable men to move. Not only do they do the work of social reproduction and care for those at home, but they also manage finances and are key actors in determining the status of men. Va-han may be offered to women by their families as part of their dowry, these va-han then run by their husbands, change the fortunes of the families these women have married into. Women also handled all family finances – remittances, savings, and salaries. Indeed, it is often solely the women who even have bank accounts – the men rarely having a bank account in their name. This key economic role played by women is not unusual for seafaring communities. In other times, and other places, such as seventeenth century England, it was often not sailors, but sailors’ wives who managed salaries, debts, and legal contracts. For example, historian Margaret R. Hunt (2013) has argued that in seventeenthcentury England, sailors often used legal instruments to provide wives and other trusted kin what is now akin to “power of attorney” to receive payments onshore and act independently in all financial and legal matters. Sailors thus found it crucial to maintain close emotional and financial ties to women on shore. This was especially important as sailors were typically only paid once their ships returned to their home port. But often, sailors did not return for many years, or payments would be delayed. In this situation, to avoid long delays in payments: “it was women who typically retained the tickets and the Powers, kept track of when the payouts would occur, and stood in line at the pay tables. It was women who negotiated with the landlady, or for food to feed the family, and generally nurtured the increasingly desperate credit arrangements that barely kept these communities afloat.” (Hunt 2013: 155) In Jam Salaya, it is women who did not only the work of social reproduction and care work, but also received monthly payments and managed family finances. They would often supplement family income by undertaking their own small businesses: trading in fabric, artificial jewellery, taking in sewing, setting up food stalls, and in general, finding ways to stretch household finances. Women were thus key economic actors. They did so not only by managing income, but also by maintaining social relations with patrons and creating a network that would allow men to move. It is perhaps for this reason that when I began research in Jam Salaya in

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2016, I found that it was often women, and not men, who were most adept at manoeuvring patronage systems to their advantage. Shabana, the object of Jalal’s endless teasing was adept at understanding how patronage and maritime labour could easily slip into coercion. “I’ve seen my father work endlessly on a vessel he will never own, and I don’t want my husband to have to do the same,” Shabana told me one day in 2017 in her home. So, she used her familial connections and through her maternal cousins, managed to get her husband a job as a captain on a dhow cruise vessel in Dubai. This, she believed, would ensure a regular, monthly salary for the household, debt no longer haunting them so long as her husband received his wages. Her husband, Samir recognised that the only reason he had this job was due to his wife’s network. Unlike many others who worked on cargo dhows, waiting for their monthly salaries to be paid at the end of aakhar, Samir considered himself lucky to no longer have to brave the dangers of open waters as a nakhwa on a cargo va-han, and be comfortably paid every month as he cruised along the Dubai creek – the vessel full of tourists, and entertainers. Unlike many others, he had moved from debt bondage and patronage to wage labour. While Samir was well-respected within the town, Shabana was often made fun of by her younger brothers, like Jalal. Shabana’s “work” was not legible, until a moment of crisis. In 2020, just as COVID-19 lockdowns were beginning across the world, Samir decided to leave Dubai to return home. He was afraid of falling ill, away from home, as a migrant in the UAE. He took unpaid leave from work and flew home. Yet, one month stretched into two and then three, and then four. International flights from India to the UAE had been suspended – as had his wages. As the months stretched on, unexpected expenses began to crop up. His sister became very ill. They had already been through their savings through months of unpaid leave. Now whom could they turn to for a loan? They couldn’t ask friends or family since everyone was struggling in the midst of the lockdown. Many had already taken loans from their seths or dhow owners. As a wage labourer now afraid of losing his job, Samir could not turn to the owner of the cruise. They simply did not have that kind of patron-client relationship at would have obligated the vessel owner to provide for “total care” in a time of need. Instead, Shabana realised that she could now leverage her relationship with an anthropologist she had known for many years. So, she turned to me, asking me for a loan for their medical expenses. Although I assured here that the amount was not large, and I did not expect to paid back, she kept insisting that it was a loan. And she even said to me, “if you don’t let us pay you back at some point, then how can we ask you to help us if we need it again later? You have to let us pay you back.” The many hours she had spent “talking” to her friend, the anthropologist, now slipped into patronage, in a moment of crisis. Together, we debated the merits of wage labour and patronage systems. “How much can one person do? One needs many, many connections. The government does nothing, of course.” Shabana told me on the phone during the lockdowns. As soon as Samir was able to return to the UAE to resume work, Shabana put to work some of the loan she had received

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from the anthropologist to open a small shop selling phakki or chewing tobacco and other sundries from a window in their home in Jam Salaya. “This corona has taught us that we cannot depend on one person’s job for a living,” she told me resolutely. Shabana, with her large network, could mediate between systems of wage labour, and patronage, ensuring her family’s well-being even in times of global crisis, the future always on the horizon. This gendered labour of being in relation turned women at home into mediators – between homes, between dhow owners and labourers, between interlocutors and anthropologists. While anthropologists such as Julia Elyachar have argued that women’s “phatic labour” is essential labour that “produces communicative channels that can potentially transmit not only language but also all kinds of semiotic meaning and economic value” (Elyachar, 2010: 453) and is central to creating forms of relation that are often glossed as patronage or corruption, the emphasis has often been on verbal forms of communication and informational infrastructures rather than the slow moving nature of the building of such relations. This relationship-building involved not just talking or “bak bak” as Jalal would put it, but also long-term care, communication, emotional work, and even critical understandings of one’s family position. This labour of being in relation thus contributed to “mobility capital” or assets and competencies (Chatterji, 2017) that both, anchored men to the home, a “network centre”, and also allowed them to move across the Indian Ocean. The labour of being in relation undertaken by women is essential economically to cultivate, nurture and tend to the relations of patronage that link men to women, sailors to dhow owners. Yet this labour of being in relation is not just one that reproduces this system, but also allows women to critique the forms of labour to which their families are subjected to, and it is often women, and not men, who are able to manoeuvre this system to their families’ advantage even in adverse situations.

From Shore to Sea Feminists have long argued against divisions between reproductive and productive labour, attending to the public implications of work done in the seemingly separate, private domestic sphere (See Rofel, 2015). In addition, they have also argued that “immaterial” or affective labour cannot be separated from other forms of labour traditionally seen as productive (Bear et al., 2015). Within studies of the Indian Ocean as well, while gender and the role of women has been key to enabling itinerant men to become “locals,” the kinds of labour undertaken by women who do not move across the ocean has been understudied. In a masculine world of maritime labour, of mobile seafarers who move across the Indian Ocean, the home, and the labour of women provides a mooring and enables men to move. Women, who move between homes in the “network centre” not only do reproductive and care work, but also undertake the labour of being in relation through their networks. This labour of being in relation is highly economically generative – it is through women’s networks that men often find employment, and

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it is women who deal with remittances, salaries, credit, debt, and strategically manoeuvre patronage and wage systems to their families’ advantage. Maritime labour across the Indian Ocean is thus dependent on this other form of labour, mobility and circulation in the Indian Ocean made possible not only through the labour of men, but also the women they leave behind.

Notes 1 Scholars such as Mahmood Kooria have been working on “Matriarchal Islam” across the Indian Ocean rim to further broaden understandings of gender in Indian Ocean societies. See www.matrichalislam.com. 2 These figures are based on reported figures by sailors in 2017. 3 Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency. v.5. Published 1880. Pg 116. 4 Despite critiquing this system of debt, the DC then went on to state, “there is one debt however which I feel strongly should be collected namely the amount of Government Tax which is advanced to each man at the beginning of the season” (KNA/D.C./LAM/ 3/2/1924: 25). 5 In South Asia, patronage has been studied with reference primarily to political power and kingship (see Dirks 1979; 1987; Stein, 1980; Peabody, 1991, 2003; Piliavsky, 2015). In this literature, kings and political authorities were defined by their ability to provide for and protect their subjects, flamboyant acts of giving and receiving defining the relationship between patrons and clients. This structure of favours went down from every level – “from grand maharajas to “little kings, vassals and vassals of vassals, all the way down to village landlords,” (Piliavsky, 2014: 10) becoming sources of kingly authority. Yet, these were not simply economic transactions, but had moral implications as well (see Bayly, 1983; Piliavsky, 2014; Piliavsky, 2015), with even merchants having to engage in this system. In the context of rural India, this was made visible through the jajmani system.

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9 TOWARDS AN ARCHITECTURE OF THE INDIAN OCEAN Mapping the Syncretic Grammar of Coastal Cities and Architecture through Ibn Battuta’s Water Journeys (1342–47) Iqtedar Alam

Overview Cities and architecture have shown a great propensity to being influenced and inspired through cultural interactions with other regions within or outside their political boundaries. Historically trade exchanges have engendered multidirectional flows of bodies, capital, power, culture and aesthetics. Many traders across the Indian Ocean often settled in the lands they traded with, and, over a period of time were deeply enmeshed in the local politics, culture and geographies. Among other things these immigrant settlers became involved with new planning and architectural developments, translating their native grammar onto the local architecture resulting in a new syncretic style. Settlements along the coastal belt of India are witness to such exchanges of design aesthetic, on account of their maritime networks with cities in the Arab world as well as those in South-East Asia. This paper will explore the effect of these collateral exchanges on the spatial grammar, structures of space, the sense of place, morphologies of concepts, inspirations, influences and the tradition of form, function and orientation in the planning and architecture of the cities that are described in the writing of Ibn Battuta (1304–69). Ibn Battuta was appointed by Muhammad bin Tughlaq (1290– 1351), the second ruler of the Tughlaq dynasty, as the kingdom’s ambassador to China. In his travelogue he describes water journeys across the Indian Ocean and the cosmopolitan natures of the cities he embarks at, and the fluid grammar of their architecture, in addition to their climatic, religio-cultural and economic condition. Through Ibn Battuta’s writing, this paper will illustrate the nature of cultural syncretism in these historic cities and the idiom of amalgamation in their architecture. The translated works of Ibn Battuta’s travelogues by H.A.R. Gibb and C.F. Beckingham CITATION Gib10 \l 1033 is a key resource towards the formulation DOI: 10.4324/9781003300939-13

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of this paper. Battuta’s Rihla [travelogue] included the details of the buildings, the city morphology, the trading commodities, the local flora and fauna, the naval architecture and the various people [local and global] he met during his journey across the Indian Ocean as an ambassador to China. Most of these syncretic styles exist to this day and are now embedded in the building tradition of these places. The paper will try to build on the continuity of such historicity and its contemporarisation through examples from towns and cities like Cambay, Calicut, Kollam, Madurai, etc.

Introduction The coastline of India has several micro and macro-economic centres. These economic centres emerged as key trade nodes during the medieval era and were connected to European and South-East Asian countries through the waterways [also known as Spice Route]. Unlike the Mediterranean Sea, the Indian coastline was not a closed basin, which allowed for maximum expanse of movement and trading in the southern part of the country CITATION KAN39 \p 01 \l 1033. As a result, many principal port towns were established along the coast, with feeder ports [of small towns and villages]. These collectively formed a network that allowed for movement of goods, people and wealth from the lower hierarchical settlement order to the higher settlement order. Most of these principal port towns were cosmopolitan in nature because of their trade exchange with major porttowns across the globe. Sastri (1939: 1) mentions that the strategic location of the country between Africa and China allowed for trade relations with the African Coast, Central Asia, Middle East, Arabia, Persian Gulf, Ceylon, Maldives, Indonesia, Korea, Japan, China, etc. Traders from the above-mentioned countries settled in the port towns and eventually ended up influencing the city fabric and architecture of the place. Some notable port towns along the western coast were Cambay, Goa, Mangalore, Calicut and Kollam, etc. The administrative system was worked out in such a manner that the wealth from the pivotal port-town wasn’t accessible to the lower order settlements of feeder-ports. They remained economically subjugated (Malekandathil, 2013: xiii), which is reflected in the architectural development and town-planning processes of these towns. Meanwhile, the principal ports developed as ‘political’, as well as ‘economic’ centres as is evident in the narration of the Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta’s journey in the Indian Ocean. The port-towns and cities dotted along the coastline of India were thriving with profitable trading and commercial activity before European invaders gained command of the coastal region restricting commercial practices. The port towns were cosmopolitan, religiously tolerant, and lightly governed, with low taxes and flexible trading policies CITATION Wor14 \p 8 \l 1033. Trade relations with countries such as Spain, Iran, Iraq, Arabia, China and Turkey etc. contributed immensely towards the cosmopolitan nature of the settlements, for they also became part of the demographic composition of the place. The demographic profile of almost all

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the port-towns included traders, preachers, jurists, governors, slaves, saints, etc. from different countries of the world, as discussed in this paper based on Battuta’s narration of his travels, encounters, and adventures in the Indian Ocean. In 1342 Muhammad Bin Tughlaq appointed Ibn Battuta as an ambassador to China. Battuta along with a large retinue of horsemen and gifts left for China on the 17th of Safar [the second month of the Islamic Calendar], 743 AH a journey that was also emblematic of travel of concepts, ideas, techniques, objects, and built grammar along the coast resulting into syncretic grammar in architecture, art, philosophy and city morphologies. A major part of the journey was supposed to be on waters following the trade routes in the Indian Ocean. Battuta embarked on his journey over water from Kinbaya [Cambay] in present-day Gujarat. On the land journey from Delhi to Kinbaya, Battuta came across many settlements some of which had governors, soldiers, saints, and traders from foreign nations contributing to the growth and development of these settlements. Battuta’s land journey traced the path of the Gangetic Basin, the Malwa region and the Deccan Plateau before arriving at the port-town in Gujarat (see Figure 9.1). The settlements on route to Cambay included Tilbat [Tilpat], Bayana, Kuwil [Kuil, Aligarh] where the governor’s army consisted of Arab soldiers from Egypt, Burj Bura [Burjpur, Mainpuri], where lived a famous Sufi saint from Cairo called Muhammad. He thereafter crossed the Ab-i-Siyah [Kalindi River] and then proceeded to Qinnauj [Kanauj. The governor of the town was a person from Badakhshan [present-day Afghanistan and Tajikistan]. Mawri [Umri] was the next stoppage where Battuta met a revered saint from Farghana [Uzbekistan] called Qutb al-Din, before proceeding to Marh [Mauh]. He proceeded further towards Alabur [Alapur], the governor of which was an Abyssinian Badr [from Ethiopia]. Galyur [Gwalior] was the next halting point and thereafter Parvan [Narwar] where the governor of the town was a person of Turkish origin named Muhammad ibn Bairam. The next two stops were small village settlements called Amwari and Kajarra [Khajuraho or Kadwaha CITATION Tam15 \p 44 \l 1033] before proceeding towards Chandiri [Chanderi], a town rich in trading of silk fabric. Zihar [Dhar] was the next station, where the governor of Dhar was Shaikh Ibrahim from Maldives. Battuts then moved to Ujain [Ujjain] where Battuta met a physician from Gharnata [Granada, Spain]. Thereafter he travelled to Dawlat Abad [Daulatabad], Duwaygir [Devagiri] and Nadharbar [Nandurbar] before reaching Saghar [Songarh], a large town on the banks of the River Tapti CITATION Ros13 \p 313 \l 1033. This was one of the last destinations on land before Battuta reached Kinbaya. A syncretic impression in the city planning and architecture techniques in the settlements, on the route to Cambay is evident because of these being governed or served by people of foreign origins. Some notable examples here are the city planning of Daulatabad and the remodeled town of Devagiri, which had Ghazanavid town planning influences. In Bidar and Gulbarga architecture and city layouts were based on Islamic town planning principles CITATION Meh91 \p 40 \l 1033 pointing towards the syncretic grammar of these towns. The

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architecture of Bayana Fort, Mainpuri Fort, the 52-Pillar Mosque of Kannauj, the Gwalior Fort, the Narwar Fort, the Jami Masjid of Chanderi, the Old City Palace in Dhar, and the Dawlatabad Fort etc. are some of the salient examples of expressions of syncretic grammar incorporated in the built vocabulary wherein an amalgamation of the indigenous trabeated techniques (structures built on columnbeam framework) of construction marries the arcuated techniques (structures which follow the arch-vault spanning methods) imported from the Central Asian countries.

FIGURE 9.1 Settlements on the route of Ibn Battuta's Land Journey from Delhi to Cambay Source: Author

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Battuta’s Travels in the Indian Ocean For the purpose of this paper, the travels of Ibn Battuta in the Indian Ocean (along the Indian coastline, see Figure 9.2) has been categorised into four major segments namely Upper Western Coast, Central Western Coast, Lower Western Coast and Eastern Coast. Major port towns from each of these segments have been identified for the purpose of detailed case study calling out on the syncretic nature of the settlements.

Upper Western Coast Cambay [also known as Khambat], located in Gujarat on the coast of the Arabian Sea, was the first major port town from where Battuta embarked on his journey in the Indian Ocean. Battuta describes Cambay as a city with magnificent architecture manifest in mosques, mansions and other buildings. He mentions that most of the inhabitants of the city were foreign merchants, living in huge mansions, the impression of the regional influence of their native places were evident in the morphological elements and architecture of the city. Battuta describes the Jama Masjid of Cambay (1325 AD), as a ‘large mosque’, with an amalgamation of various architectural styles. The architecture of the city acted as a style interface between the Sultanate dynasty of India and the countries in the western Indian Ocean. The Jama Masjid or the Friday Mosque follows an Arab layout scheme with architectural details reflecting the elements of local Jain and Hindu architecture CITATION Eli01 \p 118 \l 1033. Such style syncretism is strongly evident in many architectural practices along the coast of India because of their trade connections with Arabia and South-East Asia. Lambourn (2001) argues that the Jama Masjid is one of the finest examples of Islamic structure of the world because of its scale, details and decorative nature. The mosque was built by Umar bin Ahmad al-Kazaruni, from Kazrun, near Shiraz in Iran CITATION Abb20 \p 01 \l 1033. His tomb, located next to the mosque is an exemplary work of intricate decorative patterns, which went on to inspire future architecture works in the Gujarat region. These decorative styles travelled all the way to Sumatra [Samudera Pasai Sultanate], Java [Malik Ibrahim’s shrine complex], Lar [Iran], Dhofar [Oman], Aden & Juban [Yemen] and Mogadishu [Somalia] on account of thriving trade links with the port town (Lambourn, 2003: 240). Battuta also undertook the route to the far east (see Figure 9.2), when escaping from Bengal. Besides the mention of al-Kazaruni’s mansion, next to the Friday Mosque, Battuta also elaborates on the presence of house of Shams ud Din Kulah Duz, a Persian cap-maker, who dug a trench around the city, as the city had no walls, as a defensive technique against the Afghan attacks on the city. He was however unsuccessful in defending the city or himself. Battuta describes Sharif Al-Samarri’s house, in Cambay, as one of the great mansions of the port town, a mansion with ‘heavier baulks of wood’ and an enormous gateway like that of a city. The architecture of Samarra, in Iraq, has features wherein the use of wood as a roofing material is evident. The Great Mosque of Samarra incorporated

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wooden beams and timber framework to support the roof structure. There are also incidences of use of wooden roofs supported by pillars at other large span structures in Samarra. The palatial houses were also characterised by the presence of gateways (Al-Taie et al., 2012: 85). The chief merchant of Cambay was an Iranian named Najma al-Din of Jilan [a small village in Iran], a wealthy man with a huge mansion, who also built a mosque in the city. All the important merchants of the city from the Middle East and Arabia contributed to the city fabric in the form of mosques and mansions, that carried a strong stylistic impression of their native regions. Also, the deputy of the governor of Cambay was from Isfahan. One of the cathedral mosques of Cambay had a devotee from Diyar Bakr [a Turkish province], who stayed in the pavilions of the mosque. From the city of Cambay, Battuta journeyed further south to the settlement of Kawi [Kava] a small town in the bay area, and thereafter proceeded towards Qandahar [Gandhar], a fishing village predominately inhabited by the Bohra community. The retinue then travelled across the bay area to the island of Bairam (Perim Island) and the inland town Quqa [Ghogha]. The mode of transportation used for travelling across the bay area by Battuta and his entourage were three huge vessels namely alUkairi, al-Jagir [with 50 Abyssinian men on board] and Manurt, which had a capacity of 70 horses, 60 oars and 50 rowers, respectively, and also had a roof to shield from the arrows and stones, in case of an attack CITATION Pai00 \p 06 \l 1033. These exemplary works of naval architecture find a strong mention in Battuta’s travels in the Indian Ocean. Battuta mentions the presence of a water tank on Piram Island, surrounded by a fortified wall. The fort on the island was used for defence and hiding purposes by pirates, after their attacks on vessels. Archaeological explorations in the area have revealed the presence of a fort, with several gates, and remains of built structures on the many cliffs around the island (Gaur and Bhatt, 2008: 113). Ghogha (or Gogha), the next port-town, had bazaars and a mosque dedicated to al-Khizr [an Arab saint, also known as ‘Guardian of the Sea’]. The town also had people belonging to the Turkish Haidari order. Arab Muslims are believed to have constructed the Juni Mosque or Barwada Mosque in Ghogha CITATION Vir17 \l 1033. The architecture of the mosque is an amalgamation of the arcuated style of the Arabs and the trabeated indigenous style of building construction. The mosque, made of the local laterite stone blocks, also shows a syncretism in the manner of the construction of the dome wherein on the trabeated base an attempt of creating squinches (a Central Asian technique involved in the construction of a dome) can be witnessed. Also, a rudimentary approach of vault construction (an Arab architectural feature) can be noticed in the mihrab wall of the mosque.

Central Western Coast Battuta resumed his journey from Ghogha towards the central part of the western coast of India. The first set of settlements that he came across was in the Sandabur

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Islands [present-day Goa], which had thirty-six villages and two cities. One of the cities had a great cathedral mosque, which, as per Battuta, resembled a mosque from Baghdad. The islands of Sandabur had frequent visitors from Spain, Yemen, Persian Gulf, Arabia etc. trading in horses and spices CITATION App36 \l 1033. The strategic location of Sandabur between Cambay and Malabar region proved advantageous for the port-town as it functioned as a midway stopover for vessels moving towards the Indian coastline (if approaching from the Arabian Peninsula) or between these two major commercial centres of the medieval period CITATION PKh08 \p 151 \l 1033. Thereafter he proceeded towards Anjidiv (Anjediva Island, also known as Anjadip), where he came across a temple complex, a large orchard and a water-tank, next to which lived a hermit, who carried a chaplet from Zaila [port city in Somalia), which he gifted to Battuta. They moved further to Hinawr [Honnavar, Karnataka], which was a major porttown in central-western coast. A notable mention was the presence of 13 schools for girls and 23 schools for boys. Everyone in the town was involved in maritime commerce. The town functioned as an important pepper trade centre of the medieval period CITATION PKh08 \p 151 \l 1033. The next destination was the pepper region, Mulaibar [Malabar], which took them two months to reach. One of the significant visible features of the region was Mount Eli, an identity marker, with a light house, on the western coast for sailors approaching the coast (Khadeeja, 2008: 152). The first stoppage in the Malabar region was Abu Sarur [Barcelore, present-day Basroor], where coconut palms were in abundance. Next, they moved to Fakanur [Bacanor, present-day Barkur], a large port-town abundant in sugarcane production. Here the chief also had built a Friday Mosque. The next stop was one of the largest port-town of the Malabar region called Manjarur [Mangalore], on the inlet Khaur al-Dunb. This town had major trade relations with Fars [Iran] CITATION Ali18 \p 433 \l 1033 and al-Yaman [Yemen]. It was also an important trade centre for Christian traders from Sassanid Persia (Malekandathil, 2013: 4). Pepper and ginger were found in abundance here. One of the oldest mosques in the region, namely Masjid Zeenat Baksh, was established in 644 AD by holy men from Arabia (Shet, 2014). An institution called Hanjamana consisting of Persian Muslims existed in the city, whose suggestions were incorporated in every decision made by the city council for the development of the city, trade and commerce CITATION Moh \p 37 \l 1033. The next port-town, at a distance of two days, was Hili [Nileshwar, presently a small village], which received large vessels from China. The town had a cathedral mosque where Battuta met a jurist named Sai’d from Maqdashaw [Mogadishu, Somalia]. Wang Dayuan, a contemporary Chinese traveler to Ibn Battuta, describes the planning of the town as - houses laid out in a compact manner, with their backyards facing each other, a feature similar to the European typology of row houses. There was enough land for each dwelling in the town for their private and trade purposes. The pepper of the town was of the highest quality CITATION KAN39 \p 294 \l 1033. Jurfattan [Kannur] was the next stoppage of Battuta’s journey in the Indian Ocean, where he met a jurist from Baghdad named al-Sarasi.

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The port-town had trade relations with Oman, Iran, Yemen and China. As per Wang Dayuan, the traders of Jurfattan were fond of their Chinese counterparts and often sold them the pearls at an insignificant price often underselling them (Sastri, 1939, p. 295). Dahfattan [Palayad], a large town with coconut palm orchards, was the next destination. The town had abundant production of pepper, betel and colocasia, which were also the major trade exports. One of the most salient architectural features of the town was a large tank referred to as ba’in by Battuta. The edges of the 150,000 square paces of water tank had 28 squared red-stone pavilions with four seats (Sastri, 1939: 240). Laterite being the principal building material in the region, the use of red sandstone was probably new to the place. It might have been an import from Iran, because of the rich trade relations with Central Asia, where the material is found in abundance in the Fergana Basin CITATION Lin19 \p 01 \l 1033. Next to the tank is the cathedral mosque of the town, from where stone steps led to tank for ablution and bathing. The retinue thereafter proceeded to the town of Budfattan [Badagara, present-day Vatakara], a town abundant in areca nuts, with strong trade relations with China. The most important port-town in the Central Western Coast is Qalicut [Calicut, present-day Kozhikode]. On the way to Qalicut is another important port town named Fandarayana [Panderani). Battuta describes the town as one with orchards and bazaars. The sea-facing cathedral mosque of the town consisted of gazebos and loggias. The chief Imam of the mosque was from Oman. As per Battuta’s description, Calicut was visited by travellers from nine different nations namely China, Iran, Yemen, Jawa, Ceylon [Sri Lanka], Bahrain, Syria, Oman and the Maldives. Merchants from all these nations had mansions in the town. The Calicut harbour was described by Battuta as one of the largest harbours of the world. As the foreign Muslims were treated with great respect and affection in the town CITATION Sha42 \l 1033, a large number of Arabs settled in Calicut (Narayanan, 2006). The Arabs traded in horses and spices CITATION KAN39 \p 295 \l 1033A. The head of the merchant clan was from Bahrain and the chief jurist was from Kazarun [Iran]. Another notable mention would be the naval architecture feature on the harbour. There were 13 large vessels which, as per Battuta, can be categorised into three kinds: namely junks, zaws and kakams, depending on the scale of the vessels, from large to small, and on the number of sails starting from 12, down to three. These vessels had the capacity of one thousand people and were commanded by Syrian men. The ships were built in China [Canton, present-day Guangzhou]. People also cultivated vegetables such ginger and other greens on the ships.

Lower Western Coast Moving further south, Battuta and his entourage reached the town of Kunji-Kari [present-day Chendamangalam], after travelling for five days on water. This town was predominantly inhabited by the Jews and was probably one of the oldest Jewish settlements in the region. On the tenth day of the journey the entire

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retinue reached Kawlam [Kollam], the largest port-town in the lower western coast of India. The town was dominated by bazaars and Suli merchants [a term used in Ceylon, for Muslims]. It had been founded by Mar Sapor Iso, a Syrian Christian, in 825 AD. Iso also introduced elements of Sassanid urban culture to the town, and in the process introduced a new vocabulary of architecture in the region (Malekandathil, 2013: 43). The chief of the merchants was from Awa [Iraq] and was known as Ala al-Din al-Awaji. There were also Iraqi archers in the town. The chief jurist of the town was from Qazwin [Iran]. Because of its proximity to China, many Chinese merchants were also found in the town, some of whom had settled here too. The Chinese were better ship builders and with their advanced knowledge of naval architecture contributed immensely to the vessel building construction used for navigation in the Indian Ocean. Sulayman and Ibn Khurdadbeh, both Arab travellers from the 10th century also attest to the presence of Chinese traders in the town. Marco Polo also mentioned the presence of Chinese settlements in the town (K, 2014: 96). A salient architectural feature of the town was the cathedral mosque. Kerala had trade relations with countries in the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf from ancient times CITATION Kum17 \p 185 \l 1033. Kollam had the strongest trading relation with the regions of Arabia and West Asia, from where the commodities travelled to Venice and other cities around the Mediterranean Sea (K, 2014: 99). The cathedral mosque, which was demolished and rebuilt in 1980s, was built by Khwaja Muhazzab CITATION KAN39 \p 245 \l 1033, and was in Jonakapuram Valiyapalli. There are also mentions of European travellers like John of Florence, who contributed church buildings to the cityscape CITATION Kum17 \p 186–187 \l 1033. A major section of the Persian Christians had migrated to the port-town from West Asia establishing trading colonies, which encouraged more migration to the town. The location of the town allowed for easy movement of people and commodities between West Asia and China. With the rise in the Christian population the vocabulary of city morphology and architecture of the town also witnessed a change. The new style was an amalgamation of the native vernacular and the borrowed West Asian [the trade relationship with the Mediterranean belt also brought with itself the architecture and city planning vocabularies which was then introduced to Kollam]. A syncretic architectural language that emphasised on verticality coupled with the indigenous materials and construction techniques was evident in the new vocabulary of development in the region. The town layout with borrowed vistas, avenues and boulevards further added to the syncretic grammar of the town’s morphology. As the kakam vessel carrying Battuta and his entourage got damaged in a storm, Battuta stayed at Kawlam for some time before deciding to return to Hinawr until the vessel was repaired and ready for further journey. While there he along with the governor of Hinawr went on to attack Sandabur as the commander of one of the army retinues. After his success he was gifted an Egyptian robe by the governor called farajiya. When the vessel was ready, he proceeded towards Maldives [Dhibat al-Mahal] and then to Ceylon.

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Eastern Coast After a journey across Maldives and Ceylon, Ibn Battuta returned to the Indian coast before proceeding towards Sumatra and Java. His vessel wrecked as he was approaching Malabar on the Eastern Coast of India, and he arrived at Harkatu [Arcot, Tamil Nadu] where he met the Sultan of Malabar called Ghiyath al-Din, who was originally from Damaghan [Iran]. The Sultan asked him to move to Fattan [present-day Nagapattinam], and thereafter to Mutra [present-day Madurai]. He proceeded towards the Fattan harbour, a large port-town on the eastern coast, where he came across a huge wooden deck, which could be reached, by a wooden causeway, used by the archers at the time of attack. Fattan had a fine mosque built of stone and huge plantation of grapes and pomegranates. Battuta met a fakir from Naisabur [Iran] in the town. After a fortnight he proceeded towards the temple town of Madurai. The Sultan of Malabar, who tried imitating the Ghazanavid architecture of Delhi, shaped the architecture of some of settlements in the Madurai region. The chief

Ibn Battuta's Journey in the Indian Ocean (List of Port Towns, Feeder Port Towns and Villages along Western Coast of India, Eastern Coast of India, Ceylon, Maldives, Sumatra and Java) Source: Author

FIGURE 9.2

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jurist of the city was from Zaman [Iran]. Battuta, thereafter, proceeded towards Maldives, and then to Bengal. The port-town of Sudkawan [Satgaon] was the first settlement he entered in Bengal. He thereafter proceeded to Kamaru [Kamrup, Assam] where he met a saint from Tabriz [Iran] named Shaikh Jalal al-Din. He then moved to Habanq (near Sylhet) before proceeding to Sunarkawan from where he boarded a vessel to al-Jawa (Sumatra).

Findings Town Planning The town planning technique of the Sassanid Empire as well as towns in the Persian Gulf had a very strong influence on the city layouts of the port-towns as is evident in Battuta’s description of these settlements. The layout of the four major port towns namely Cambay, Calicut, Kollam and Madurai strongly reflect Sassanid town layouts. The layout of the Sassanid cities had four important morphological elements namely the arg [fort], the bazaar [market], the masjid [mosque], and the mohallas [residential quarters]. All the cultivable land was predominantly located outside the city’s residential quarters. The manner of layout of the four elements in the urban space is such that the arg lies at one end of the town, mostly at the edge of the navigable waters, and on an elevated terrain. All the major city roads and regional roads converge at the bazaar, which becomes the nodal point of the trade or mercantile settlements. There is a cathedral mosque in close proximity to the marketplace. The placement of the mosque and its architectural elements, such as dome and minarets, is such that it is visible from a distance. The mosque also functions as an identity marker for the market and for the town, for the trading ships on water. The mohallas or residential quarters of the nobles and the commons are in the remaining part of the city, mostly opposite the fort-area also known as shahristan or the town. The cities of Bam, Kerman, Shiraz, Tabriz, Tehran, Zaranj, etc. are excellent examples of such layouts. All these four urban elements also find a strong presence in the layout of the four pivotal port-towns in the Indian coast. The fort of Cambay [Upper Coastal Region], the Kazaruni Mosque, the vibrant bazaars and the shahristan define the city layout of Cambay. The four morphological elements of Calicut [Central Coastal Region] namely the Fort of Calicut, the Jama Palli Mosque, the Valiyangai Market, and the town were the salient features of the settlement. Kollam [Lower Coastal Region] was defined by presence of Thomas Fort, the Kolloorvila Juma Mosque, the Chinnakada market and the residential quarters with different sub-mohallas based on commercial produce such as Patnuls [Lace cloths], Caliyans [Weavers], Tharisapally [Copper Plates], etc. (K, 2014: 62). Madurai on the east was inspired by the urban morphology of the capital of India, Tughlaqabad. The plan of Tughlaqabad was inspired by Bust [Afghanistan] and Nishapur [Iran], two important Ghazanavid settlements, wherein the highest elevations of the site was dedicated

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to the construction of the citadel. Further the residential quarters of the city were divided into upper and lower towns. The city had wide and straight roads originating at the gate and terminating at the city square. The Muslim settlement in Madurai, Battuta mentions, lies at around six kilometres from the temple and the river. The settlement also had a mosque called the Jamal al-Din Mosque, and other smaller mosques with wide streets, and the residential quarters (Shokoohy, 1991: 37).

Architecture The syncretism in the architectural vocabularies has already been pointed out in the previous sections. The regional architecture was influenced by the presence of traders from different countries to a great extent. The new cosmopolitan architecture had a syncretic form, function, material, technique, concept and culture of construction. Even the naval architecture, although predominantly a Chinese expertise, had borrowed elements of other cities and culture. The built influences on the regional architecture of the western coast have already been discussed in detail, however one important feature to note across the western and eastern coast is the design typology of temples and mosques. The presence of water tanks in historic temples across coastal cities is a very common feature. This feature was also incorporated in mosque typologies where the water tank was used for ablution purposes. Another noteworthy feature was the overall built grammar of the mosques. Arab features, such as the domes and the arcuated techniques were incorporated in the mosque design vocabulary. Also, the introduction of an antechamber before the main hall of the mosque was a borrowed feature from towns on the opposite side of the Arabian Sea, particularly Yemen CITATION Meh91 \p 92 \l 1033. This new architectural vocabulary was an amalgamation of local knowledge and influences from the near west. The tiered roofing techniques, the skirting verandahs coupled with the semi-circular arches, domes, and recessed mihrabs were the new syncretic grammar of the mosques during the medieval period (CITATION Meh91 \p 92 \l 1033. The intricate decorative patterns were also quite similar because of the same pool of artisans who were working on both the religious structures. The mosques had botanical elements. The temples incorporated anthropomorphic elements too (Kunhali, 1975: 332).

Demographic Composition The list of settlements visited by Ibn Battuta, as an ambassador of the Sultan of India to China, with details of foreign footprints is mentioned in Table 9.1. Battuta came across people from 17 other nationalities who either immigrated or were foreign traders contributing to the economical, cultural and political growth of the port-towns of India.

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List of Settlements visited by Ibn Battuta during his journey in the Indian Ocean (within India), with details of foreign footprints Source: Author

FIGURE 9.3

Almost all the settlements had foreign traders, many of whom had built their mansions. There were foreign jurists, governors, soldiers, preachers, saints, etc. from countries with strong trade relations. Many settled here and were married to locals.

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The Cosmopolitan Map: Settlements with Foreign Footprints (as per Ibn Battuta's description based on his travels in the Indian Ocean, within India) Source: Author

FIGURE 9.4

Conclusion The cosmopolitan nature of the settlements dotted along the coastal belt of India is evident in the manner of town planning, architecture, trade, commerce and demographic composition. The exchange centres or the lower settlement orders and the mercantile settlements or the higher settlement orders, both exhibit a wide range of multi-national interactions that were emblematic of constructive growth of the trading nations. The multiple building styles and vocabularies practiced along the coast together form the architecture of the Indian Ocean – an architecture of flow and adaptation responsive to the interaction of diverse cultural, geographical and economic landscapes. Battuta’s description mostly remained centric to public architecture such as religious buildings, squares and water infrastructure. However, through an analysis of his discussions, it can be concluded that the architecture of the Indian Ocean can be studied under three aspects, namely a) cultures of construction; b) concept of ‘identities’ in form-grammar; and c) morphological determinants of urban form.

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Cultures of Construction: The architectural practice in the region of Indian Ocean mostly remained centric to the binaries of local and global (intra-ness and inter-ness), land and ocean (static and flow), and endogenous and exogenous (with-in and without). The use of materials and techniques when weaved with the three binaries gives rise to a unique culture of construction. The adaptation of the arcuated technique within the trabeated building landscape (of sandstone with laterite) of short widths with large spans (of even skylines with hierarchical built forms) of traditional knowledge systems with emerging technologies present an interesting tapestry of construction history. Concept of ‘Identities’ in Form-Grammar: Architecture has always been a reflection of the people involved in building it, from patrons to craftsmen. The analysis of the identities involved can lead to conclusions on the multiple impressions incorporated in the building process. It has its reflection on the choice of materials, the techniques involved and the form-grammar of the built. The coastal belt of India provides a platform for the study of diverse interactions and involvement in the architectural practices during the medieval era from the making of mosques and churches to forts to large-scale water infrastructure. Morphological Determinants of Urban Form: The coastal settlements, large or small, within urban settings constitute unique identity markers that govern the overall morphology of the city. These markers dominate the urban form and the growth of the city thereby calling for a study on its placement and built composition. They act as elements of visual hierarchies in the urban skyline and have found references in the description of many travellers approaching the settlement from the sea including Battuta. They also provide insight into the settlements shape and structure, occupation-based neighbourhoods, class and caste-based divisions in the city, the common grounds of interaction and the exclusive quarters of the settlement. Seven centuries later the settlements still carry a very strong impression of the syncretic grammar of coastal settlements as a result of the continuous exchange of ideas, styles and philosophies through and across the Indian Ocean. The architectural practices and the shaping of city’s morphological elements as a response to the climatic, religio-cultural, and economic condition offer a combination of Indian traditional knowledge systems and international collaborations as illustrated in earlier sections of this paper however the magnitude of scale of interaction and footprint of involvement across the coastal belt require further study.

Bibliography Abbas, Saiyed Anwar. (2020). Kazaruni’s Mausoleum in Khambat (Cambay). Gujarat. Ahmadalizadeh, Ali and Nader Karimian Sardashti. (2018). ‘Pars Sea: Maritime Connection between Iran and Indian Subcontinent’. International Journal of Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Science, 7(4): 426–436. Al-Taie, Entidhar, Al-Ansari, Nadhir and Sven Knutsson. (2012). “Materials and the Style of Buildings used in Iraq during the Islamic period.” Journal of Earth Sciences and Geotechnical Engineering 2(2): 69–97. Appadurai, A. (1936). Economic Conditions of South India (1000 AD 1500 AD). Vol. 1&2. Madras: Madras University Historical Series.

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Gaur, A.S. and B.K. Bhatt. (2008). ‘Piram Island: Pirates Fort in the Gulf of Khambat’. Journal of Indian Ocean Archaeology, 5: 111–114. Gibb, H.A.R. and C.F. Beckingham. (2010). The Travels of Ibn Battuta, AD 1325–1354, Vols III and IV. Surrey: Ashgate Publishing. K, Liji. (2014). Society and Economy of South Kerala with Special Reference to Kollam. PhD Thesis, History, Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit, Kalady. Karmwar, Manish. (2013). ‘African Diaspora in India’. Diaspora Studies, 3: 69–91. Khadeeja, P. (2008). Arabs in east west trade a study in political, economic and social interactions 9th to 15th century. PhD Thesis, History, University of Calicut, Calicut: University of Calicut. Kumar, Ajit and B. Vinuraj. (2017). ‘The Contribution of the West Asian in the Growth of Kollam as an International Maritime Trade Centre: a Review of Citation and Artefacts’. Journal of the Indian Archaeological Society (Indian Archaeological Society): 179–189. Kunhali, V. (1975). ‘Advent of Islam in Kerala: Special Features’. Proceedings of the Indian History Congress (Indian History Congress), 36: 326–337. Lambourn, Elizabeth. (2001). ‘Architectural Influences in the Friday mosque and Kazaruni tomb complex at Cambay in Gujarat’. Journal of the Society for South Asian Studies: 117–149. Lambourn, Elizabeth. (2003). ‘From Cambay to Samudera-Pasai and Gresik – The export of Gujarati grave memorials to Sumatra and Java in the fifteenth century C.E’. In Indonesia and the Malay World: 221–289. Lin, Y. et al. (2019). ‘A Research of High-Quality Sandstone Reservoirs in Deep Formation in the Central Depression of the Fergana Basin, Central Asia’. Society of Petroleum Engineers, October: 1–16. Malekandathil, Pius. (2013). Maritime India: Trade Religion & Polity in the Indian Ocean. Delhi: Primus Books. Mishra, Jitu. (2017). The Port of Ghogha – Where India met Arabs. https://blogvirasatehind. wordpress.com/2017/04/13/the-port-of-ghogha -where-india-met-arabs. Accessed 14 October 2020. Narayanan, M.G.S. (2006). Calicut; The City of Truth, Revisited. Calicut: University of Calicut. Paine, Lincoln P. (2000). Ships of Discovery and Exploration, A Mariner Original. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. Rai, K. Mohankrishna. (2003). Urbanization of Mangalore: A Colonial Experience (1799 -1947). PhD Thesis, History, Mangalore University. Ross, E. Denison and Eileen Power. (2013). Ibn Battuta: Travels in Asia and Africa. New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd. Sastri, K.A.N. (1939). Foreign Notices of South India: From Megasthenesto Ma Huan. Madras: University of Madras. Sears, Tamara I. (2015). ‘Following River Routes and Artistic Transmissions in Medieval Central India’. Ars Orientalis (Smithsonian Institution): 43–77. Shet, I.J. Saldanha. (2014). 'Historic Masjids of Mangalore’. Mangalore Today News Network. 30 May 2014. www.mangaloretoday.com/opinion/Historic- Masjids-of-Mangalore.html. Accessed 15 October 2020. Shokoohy, Mehrdad. (1991). ‘Architecture of the Sultanate of Ma’bar in Madura, and Other Muslim Monuments in South India’. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1(1): 31–92. World Economic Forum. (2014). The Competitiveness of Cities: Report on the Global Agenda Council on Competitiveness. Geneva. Zainuddin, Shaykh. (1942). Tuhfat ul Mujahidin, translated by S.M.H. Nainar. Madras: University of Madras.

10 THROUGH THE EYES OF THE BOAT PEOPLE Redefining Oceans in the twenty-first century Chrisalice Ela Joseph and Vinod Balakrishnan

Introduction The term Boat People was first used in the 1970s to refer to the Vietnamese refugees who fled Indochina after the Vietnamese War.1 It was later applied to those refugees who fled their countries via sea, irrespective of nationality (Glynn, 2016: 20). Though the term was initially used to describe the mode of arrival, it acquired pejorative meanings and associated the boat people with terrorists, smugglers and illegal maritime arrivals who sought to exploit the generosity of the host state and posed a threat to national security and sovereignty of the host state. The term was also used to distinguish between boat refugees who were considered Irregular Maritime Arrivals and offshore refugees who were deemed genuine refugees in need of asylum. (Rowe and O’Brien, 2014: 181) Though migration by sea is not a recent phenomenon, the 2015 Mediterranean crisis that saw about 21,000 deaths by drowning2and, more recently, the Rohingya Crisis have put the boat people at the centre of discussion as they highlight the magnitude and scale of the refugee crisis and the failure of nation states and international treaties to safeguard the rights of humans (Arendt, 1958: 290). The plight of the boat people and the attitude of immigration officials towards them highlight the inadequacies in the existing refugee policies. The exclusion of the boat people from the purview of the refugee law has exacerbated the frictions between border security, national sovereignty and refugee rights. The plight of the boat people highlights the problem of statelessness that has been foregrounded by the refugee crisis of the 21st century and the callous attitude of the nation states which, under the façade of state sovereignty and national security perpetrate human rights violations (Ratcovich, 2018: 66). Boat people are conceived as the “other”- a threat to security and values of the host country which allows states to exercise the necropolitical power in the interests of sovereignty, DOI: 10.4324/9781003300939-14

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national security and cultural identity (Wallace, 2018: 11). It illustrates the double standards of nations that create stateless people and then strip them of their rights after they have lost the backing of their governments (Arendt, 1958: 299). Mbembe formulates the concept of necropolitics in the context of colonisation, slavery, apartheid and suicide bombing. It draws on Agamben’s and Foucault’s concept of biopower to explain how nation states exercise power to exterminate those who are considered a threat to the sovereignty of the state. He defines necropolitics as ‘social conditions where vast populations are subjected to the conditions of life, conferring upon them the status of the living dead’ (Mbembe, 2003: 40; Wallace, 2018: 12). While bio power is concerned with the power of “making die and letting live”, necropolitics concerns itself with the power of “making live and letting die” (Wallace, 2018: 11). He identifies four techniques through which necropolitics operates- namely territorial demarcation, categorisation and classification, resource extraction well as the production of cultural imaginaries (Mbembe, 2003: 11). The selected refugee narratives appear to bear out the positions of Arendt and Mbembe. We explore how the classification of boat people as a threat to national sovereignty and cultural values makes it possible for states to exercise their necropolitical power through push backs that precipitate mass drowning. It highlights how boat people are rendered subaltern and their experiences appropriated to suit the interests of those in power which have serious implications on refugee rights. This chapter makes the case for more inclusive policies.

Boat people as the “other” The Boat People by Sharon Bala is a fictional account of the experiences of the Tamil refugees who fled Sri Lanka to arrive in Canada in the aftermath of the Civil War3via the MV Ocean Lady4. Narrated from the alternating perspectives of Mahindan, a Tamil refugee, Gigovaz and Priya, the defence lawyers, and the immigration officials, it throws light on the events that unfold from the interception of the boat to the detention and asylum hearings. It describes their hopes, fears and aspirations as they make claims for asylum and escape deportation. It highlights the factors that triggered the exodus by sea and throws light on the imaging and discussions that surround the boat people in public discourse and mainstream media. The Tamil refugees are perceived as illegal, illegitimate, queue jumpers, terrorists and non-genuine asylum seekers who exploit the generosity of the Canadians and carry out terrorist activities from Canadian soil. (Bala, 2018; Krishnamurthy, 2013). The novel highlights the lack of a knowledge-based approach towards the boat refugees. It describes the historical and political circumstances that triggered the flight and highlights the discrimination and prejudice faced by the boat people in their places of asylum. The minister Fred Blair refers to them as illegal migrants and opportunists who were wealthy enough to buy their way through illegal means and emphasises the need to protect the territorial sovereignty, national identity and

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border from illegal immigrants who are ‘potential terrorists and pose a threat to the national security and the territorial integrity of the state’ (Bala, 2018: 74). It exposes the hypocrisy of the Canadian Immigration System Act (Canada’s domestic immigration policy) which authorises the Immigration Minister to detain, deny and limit refugee claimants on grounds of smuggling and terrorism. As Gigovaz, the defence lawyer explains: ‘two decades overseeing toll booths and now he fancied himself the authority on public safety’ (Bala, 2018: 49). The attitude of the Canadians towards the boat people as reflected in poll surveys reveals a deep-seated hatred and public perception of boat refugees as foreigners and non- genuine refugees. They are described as queue jumpers who are not fleeing from any real persecution, rather are jumping ahead of the ‘legitimate claimants’ imagined as languishing in refugee camps overseas (Bala 2018: 76–77; Krishnamurthy, 2013: 140; Doherty and Lecouteur, 2007). The discourse of the refugee as “queue jumper” not only points to lack of knowledge about the historical and political factors that triggered the flight (Cheran, 2007, cited in Krishnamurthy, 2013: 147) but is ‘also metaphoric as it plays at the Canadian’s valued graces of patience and waiting in queue’ (Krishnamurthy, 2013: 146). The Canadian immigration minister’s repeated reference to boat people as a burden on the resources of the country as well as a test of the generosity of the Canadians is symptomatic of the absence of a collective responsibility sharing mechanism. It also points to the need for sensitising people to the conditions and background of the boat refugees. The conversations among the refugees in the camp at Sri Lanka throw light on the conditions and circumstances that triggered their flight by boat, which find no mention in either the press briefings by the immigration minister or the border security agents. Mahindan’s conversations with his wife and with other refugees at the camp reveal the desperation, frustration, exclusion and non-availability of safe legal channels that force them to sell all they had to procure what they considered a safe passage to Canada. The Tamil refugees who were caught between the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE, were compelled to risk their lives at sea, to prevent forced recruitment into the LTTE, as well as to escape the travails at the government refugee camp. As Mahindan says: ‘Here is not safe… The boat might be a little dangerous, but at least it is a chance’ (Bala, 2018: 304–310). Hema’s testimony at the detention hearing reveals the pitiable conditions at the government run refugee camp in Sri Lanka that looked splendid on paper but ‘where in reality people went missing’ (132) and ‘girls were abused by the guards’ (133). She relives the trauma of having to watch her daughter being raped and describes how she had to flee fearing for the safety of her daughters (134). Juxtaposing Priya’s experiences as a second-generation Sri Lankan immigrant against those of the boat people dramatises the long-standing debate between legitimate and illegitimate refugees and highlights the iniquitous discrimination often made between offshore refugees and boat refugees of the same ethnicity. It foregrounds the double standards of governments who accept refugees with sponsors who could contribute to the cultural capital (Poon, 2018), while those in dire

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need of asylum were pushed back. Priya herself is a second-generation Sri Lankan immigrant whose family immigrated to Canada in the aftermath of the civil war but had the means to travel by plane and are lucky enough to get through as they have relatives in Toronto willing to sponsor them. This difference in treatment between the migrants who arrived by plane and boat migrants of the same ethnicity highlights the unavailability of channels for safer and accessible legal asylum. It also exposes the hypocrisy of the Refugee Status Determination (RSD) that ‘evaluates offshore refugees on their individual merit, while boat refugees are bundled into a generic mass with accusations of terrorism and criminality levelled against them’ (Bala, 2018: 174). The detention hearings of the boat people reveal how their experiences are appropriated to suit the interests of those in power which in turn denies them agency and renders them abject. The boat refugees are perceived as sympathisers of the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam - a terrorist outfit based in Sri Lanka) who have fled to Canada to regroup and carry out proscribed activities from there (40). Mahindan is accused of aiding a suicide bombing by repairing the vehicle involved (168) while Hema’s ‘thalli’ (pendant that married women in India and Sri Lanka wear around their neck) is treated as evidence of her being a female guerrilla (88). This reflects the lack of awareness regarding the culture and background of the refugees and the rigged nature of the RSD process that operates on the presumptions of terrorism and criminality (111). The conversation between Victor’s ghost and his sister in the story “One Eyed Woman” (Nyugen, 2017: 4–6) throws light on the miserable condition of the refugees on dinghies and recounts episodes of their being attacked, assaulted, kidnapped, and left to die on the open sea. The ghost narrates how he tied up his sister’s breasts and dressed her up as a boy to prevent her being captured by pirates, before he himself was killed. The fact that boat people are easy prey for smugglers and traffickers adds to the distrust and suspicion which make it harder for them to plead their case in the countries of asylum. The plight of the boat people, besides sensitising one to the conflict between state sovereignty and refugee rights, also foregrounds the issue of statelessness where citizens tend to lose their rights as soon as they have lost the backing of their respective governments (Arendt, 1958: 299). The texts highlight how the stereotyping of the boat refugees as illegal arrivals and undeserving of asylum allows for the denial of rights that are guaranteed by the 1951 Refugee Convention.5 It also points to the vagueness in, and the obsolescence of, the provisions of the 1951 Refugee Convention which make possible the discrimination between terrestrial and boat refugees. Although Article 3 of the Convention does provide protection from all kinds of discrimination on the basis of race, sex or religion, it makes no reference to the mode of arrival which has inevitably led to discrimination of the boat people as they are perceived as illegitimate arrivals who buy their way through clandestine means. (Bala, 2018: 56). Categorising the boat people as illegitimate arrivals concentrates on the end of a journey and separates the intention of a journey from the historical and political factors that triggered it (O’Doherty and

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Lecouteur, 2007: 3). This removes most of them from the ambit of the Refugee Convention thus making it easy for states to prosecute them on grounds of terrorism and smuggling (Bala, 2018: 74; Krishnamurthy, 2013). The refugees’ obsession with papers and documents (Bala, 2018: 303) is an ironical predicament created by the hypocritical and fallacious insistence by states on identification documents and valid visas. The situation verges on the absurd as the asylum seekers are people who flee war and persecution and who have lost houses, identity cards and documents in the war. It also highlights the lack of awareness about legal proceedings which often leads to the adoption of “illegitimate” modes of escape like dinghy boats and cargo ships to flee. Though Article 31 of the 1951 Refugee Convention states that refugees cannot be arrested or detained arbitrarily, most states have framed domestic legislations that enact a policy of mandatory detention of people who arrive without a visa on the grounds of portending security threats. The lack of clarity regarding the asylum determination process and the insistence on documents is what compels Mahindan to scour dead bodies for documents and papers; anything that would provide him and his son “a one-way ticket out of hell” (307). Prasad’s choice of travelling by boat despite possessing a visa points to the lack of safe and legal offshore channels. As he puts it: ‘I was being watched… . They would have killed me if I [had] tried to board a plane’ (Bala, 2018: 228). The distinction made between Prasad and the other boat refugees points to the obsolete nature of the 1951 Convention that demands ‘proof of individual persecution for admittance of refugee claims (Benhabib, 2020: 84). Prasad is dubbed the ‘model migrant’ and is admitted into the Canadian system as he had visible scars of persecution while the trauma and horrors of the other refugees go unseen as they carried no visible proof. Though the 1951 Convention has laid down criteria for the determination of refugee status, it provides no explicit directions as to the disembarkation of refugees or their place of asylum. Thus, the onus on the states to comply in the spirit of human rights is unenforceable which leaves them unaccountable and free to enact domestic legislations which are draconian. Although Article 33 of the 1951 Refugee Convention provides for non-refoulement of refugees i.e. non-return of refugees to places where their lives are at risk, it is ambiguous in its inclusion of and application to boat refugees which gives legal leeway to coastal states for deliberate pushbacks and prevention of disembarkation (Barnes, 2014: 52). Despite the UNHCR guidelines that provide for asylum systems premised on fair and efficient determination of claims for protection, domestic legislations that determine refugee claims in the countries of asylum are often rigged and based on coincidental evidence and presumptions of smuggling, terrorism and criminality, as is illustrated by Ranga’s suicide (Bala, 2018: 224). The identity card along with some money that Mahindan had found in the pocket of a man with a limp who died at a hospital in Sri Lanka was used to label Ranga as a ‘long time weapon smuggler’ and ‘a high-level officer of the Sea Tigers’ (237) on the sole presumption that he had a limp similar to that of the card’s owner. The threat of deportation

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also points to the noncompliance of the states with the non- refoulement policy of the refugee law which is promised by Article 33 of the Refugee Convention and the lack of accountability which leave the boat refugees at the mercy of the countries of asylum. The attitude of the states towards the boat refugees and the magnitude of the boat refugee crisis highlight the lacunae in the existing refugee policies and make it imperative that these are suitably amended. Though boat refugees have been, from time to time declared as refugees of direct concern to the UNHCR (Pugh 2004: 51), they are still considered illegal arrivals as opposed to offshore refugees. The challenge is to bring them under the ambit of the 1951 Refugee Convention and enact legislation that would treat them on par with offshore refugees and recognise their claims for asylum. The tendency to categorise boat migrants as irregular arrivals and non-genuine asylum seekers is not specific to the Tamil migrants alone.6 In fact, it has become a common phenomenon all over the world which has resulted in the dehumanisation of Boat People in almost all parts of the world. Moreover, the insistence in labelling the boat people as terror and security threats allows states to prosecute them on grounds of trespassing and threat to sovereignty. It points to the need to decriminalise the issue of boat people and update the Refugee Convention and the International Maritime Law to include migration by sea in clear and precise terms that would provide a comprehensive framework to address the current boat migration crisis and reduce the number of deaths by drowning.

Oceans as Sites of Necropolitics Boat refugees reflect the changing nature and dynamics of the oceans and highlight the conflict between territorial sovereignty, border security and refugee rights. Refugee migration by sea constructs the oceans as a border where one witnesses the encounter between the human and the less than humans. It also highlights the oceans as sites of ‘necropolitics’ (Mbembe, 2003), where states exercise their sovereign rights through ‘refoulements, interceptions, pushback, and deliberate drowning’ (Boon, 2019). The increased frequency of deaths by drowning and the scale of the boat refugee crisis highlight the fact that mass migration through sea is not an isolated incident anymore and requires a global understanding of the issue that demand the framing of comprehensive and inclusive refugee policies. Migration by sea is governed primarily by the Refugee Law comprising the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol Relating to Status of Refugees, and the International Law of the Sea comprising the United Nations Conventions on Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS), the International Covenant on Search and Rescue at Sea (SAR), the International Human Rights Law (Barnes, 2014; Ratcovich, 2018; Morena Lax and Papastavridis, 2016; Pugh, 2004).Though the International Law of the Sea, comprising the UNCLOS, SOLAS and SAR, has laid down several obligations on states with respect to the search and rescue of refugees at sea (Barnes, 2014: 48–49;

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Klug, 2016: 442; Ratcovich, 2018), the lack of clarity and accountability has provided loopholes to legitimise pushbacks and refoulement. Refusal by coastal states to allow disembarkation has resulted in oceans becoming sites of death. The necropolitical power exercised by nation states amounts to the legitimisation of what Mbembe calls ‘biophysical elimination’ (2003: 16). As per the provisions of the UNCLOS, oceans have been divided into maritime zones such as coastal zones, internal waters, territorial sea and the high seas, which are regulated by the International Law of the Sea (Ratcovich 2018: 34–35). This territorial demarcation along with the international maritime law that prioritises prevention of trafficking and smuggling allows states to criminalise illegal entry of boat refugees and ensures that they are left to the mercy of the open sea. Furthermore, the mass drowning of refugee boats during the Mediterranean crisis of 2015 and the Rohingya crisis illustrate how states exercise the right of ‘letting die’ through negligence and apathy as well as through deliberate pushbacks, interceptions and refoulements thus turning the oceans into ‘zones of death and terror’ (Boon, 2019). The perspectives of the Tamil migrants reveal how the denial of rights as well as state-sponsored violence against the refugees in their countries, including government-run refugee camps, force them to undertake the journey by boat to escape persecution (Bala, 2018: 303). Holding countries of origin to account for state sponsored violence, human rights abuses and persecutions of minority communities that occur within their territory due to the complicity of the government would help in reducing the intensity of migration and allow for the reframing of an international agreement that could resolve the friction between domestic policies and refugee law. It is certain to help to minimise the frequency of deaths by drowning. The accounts and testimonies of the boat people reveal how they are forced into boats by traffickers and smugglers and abandoned along coastlines only to find that they are unwelcome in the places of asylum and also vulnerable to predators and pirates. Rather than targeting the Boat People who are suspected of smuggling and trafficking, the law of transnational crime should be directed against the traffickers and smugglers who force them into dinghies with the collusion and complicity of government officials. The challenge, then, is to de-securitise the issue of boat refugees (Pugh, 2004: 50) and facilitate their rescue and protection besides helping them arrive at safer places. The increasing incidents of wilful sinking have resulted in oceans becoming watery graves (Perera, 2013). The growing trend of constructing sea barriers in the oceans (Block, 2020) to keep refugees from entering illustrates how oceans act as sites of necropolitics through territorial demarcation thus becoming ‘key sites of (neo) colonial racial and legal struggle’ (Mawani, 2018: 8). Furthermore, the absence of a comprehensive international agreement with respect to the rescue and repatriation of refugees rescued at sea has aggravated the miseries of the boat people and left them dangling between land and sea (Barnes, 2014: 61). The Comprehensive Plan of Action (CPA)7 was the first instance of an international agreement to tackle the boat refugee crisis. Though in the original form, it

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is inadequate to counter the current refugee crisis, given the difference in the nature and scale of boat migration (Ratcovich, 2018), it nevertheless contains a number of provisions that can act as guidelines to frame a comprehensive international agreement. These include compulsory disembarkation and offering of temporary refugee status to persons rescued at sea irrespective of legal status (Barnes, 2014: 72; Klug, 2016: 402). Roping in developed countries to assist in the repatriation and rehabilitation of boat refugees that would be an incentive to the flag states to engage in rescue and search and coastal states to allow disembarkation. As the onus and extent of search depends on the flag and coastal states (Barnes, 2014: 54), there is a need for better monitoring by the UNHCR and an insistence on accountability by setting up of a fair and legal RSD system under the direct supervision of the UNHCR that is not based on circumstantial evidence but which takes into account the cultural, historical and political factors that triggered migration by the open sea. The collective burden sharing mechanism proposed by the CPA is worth emulating as it reduces the liability on countries with less resources and also provides incentives to flag states for carrying out search and rescue programmes as well as to coastal states for providing temporary refuge (Ineli-Ciger, 2016: 410). The texts illustrate how through constructing the boat refugees as a threat to national security and public order, refoulement, deportation and prevention of disembarkation are legitimised. The violation of human rights which has been foregrounded by the refugee crisis of the 21st century is exemplified in the case of the boat people who are mistreated in the refugee camps in countries of origin, forced into boats by the complicity of the governments and are unwanted in the places of asylum. They highlight as Arendt puts it ‘the terrible things that governments are capable of doing to their people’ and the ‘failure of the international treaties to safeguard the rights of the displaced’ (1958: 285–297). The responses of nation states towards the boat people point to the prioritising of criminalising trafficking and smuggling over humanitarian concerns (Pugh, 2004: 57). It also exposes the flaws in the refugee-economy that is driven by profit motives. It shows the growth of xenophobia and a non-equitable dispensation and the lack of accountability and commitment to human rights. These alarming developments highlight the need for revamping the existing policies that govern boat refugees. This situation demands the need for better cooperation at the international level. It also points to the need to think beyond borders and embrace humane regimes that prioritise human rights over sectarian borders.

Conclusion The surge in the frequency and scale of boat refugees draws the oceans into a single analytic framework of mass migration and illustrates the concept of oceans as ‘porous borders’ (Gatrell, 2007: 184) and reflects the shift in focus from continental divides and traditional borders to ones being drawn in the sea (Kothari, 2020: 143). The increasing instances of push-backs and refoulements and sinking of refugee

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boats point to the need for better inclusive policies that recognise boat refugees at par with offshore refugees and prioritise humanitarian aid over notions of border security and territorial integrity. It also points to the need for a comprehensive management system that takes into account the nuances and subtleties of migration by oceans and prevents deaths by drowning. The phenomenon of boat migration highlights the conflict between safeguarding territorial sovereignty, border security and providing humanitarian assistance and asylum to the refugees (Pugh, 2004: 43). It also points to the gaps in the laws related to search and rescue at sea and “seem to suggest how the key obligations are poorly defined and inadequately implemented” (Barnes, 2014: 47). The increasing frequency of push-backs and mass drowning reflects the need for a better understanding of the factors that trigger boat migration, for forging safer and affordable legal asylum channels, to have greater knowledge of the conditions in the country of origin, and to create faster asylum processing channels The challenge is to de-dramatise and decriminalise the issue of boat migration (Pugh, 2004: 50) and adopt an empathetic approach that recognise boat refugees on par with offshore refugees. The texts highlight the flawed nature of the asylum determination process that discriminates between boat refugees and offshore refugees. It highlights how boat refugees are dehumanised and presented as a threat and burden on the social security system and the values of the host country. It also reflects the apathy of governments towards the plight of the boat refugees who are caught between persecution and abuse in their home state and death on the sea. It also points out the glaring gaps in the existing policies regulating sea migration and the need to recognise boat refugees as a legitimate form of refugees at par with offshore refugees. This essay highlights the need for a better conceptual understanding of the differences between migration by sea and terrestrial migration and argues for the urgent need for policies that will take into account the circumstances that trigger boat migration and a rights-based humanitarian regime at sea which prioritises the human rights of the boat people over concerns of border security and territorial integrity (Pugh, 2004: 51). The issue of boat people foregrounds the need for a rights-based approach and a revamping of the treaties that govern refugee rights. Desecuritising the issue of boat migration by reshaping the debate from a humanitarian angle with the focus on their rights, and circumstances which force them to flee their homelands (Pugh, 2004: 66) would alter public perception and make them more welcome in their places of asylum. The need of the hour is to ‘stop the boats’ (Rowe and O’Brien, 2014: 177) not by deliberate push backs or refoulements but through a knowledge-based approach that identifies the root causes of boat migration and eliminates the factors that engender it.

Notes 1 Other instances of forced migration through oceans include the Cubans and Haitians who fled through the Caribbean in the 1980s, Albanians crossing the Adriatic Sea in the 1990s, refugees fleeing South Africa through the Red Sea, The Tamil refugees fleeing Sri Lanka

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2 3

4 5

6

7

through the Indian Ocean and more recently the Rohingyas fleeing Myanmar via the Bay of Bengal. www.statista.com/statistics/108277/deaths-of-migrants-in-the-mediterrannean-sea. The Sri Lankan Civil War was a twenty-six-year-long war fought between the Government and the separatist group LTTE. It witnessed numerous human rights violations against the Tamil minority. The brutality of the government and the LTTE, saw the large-scale exodus of the Tamils to other countries including Canada, Australia, Indonesia and India. Majority of the Tamils escaped via boats, as escape through other means could be detrimental. See Bala (2018) and Krishnamurthy (2013) for the history of the MV Ocean Lady and MV Sun Star incidents. The Refugee Convention of 1951 defines a refugee as those who have fled the country of nationality due to fear of persecution due to race, religion, nationality or membership … and is unable to return. (Article 1 of the Convention) categorising boat migrants as irregular arrivals removes their flight from the causes that triggered them and judged them on the mode of travel alone, thus denying them the rights granted by the convention (See O’Doherty and Lecouteur, 2007). See Rowe and O’Brien (2014) for an analysis of the categorisation of boat refugees in the context of the Malaysia deal. Krishnamurthy (2013) studies the imaging and discourse surrounding the Tamil migrants in Canadian public discourse and media representation. America’s wet foot dry foot policy reflects the implications of discrimination between boat refugees and offshore refugees on refugee policy (see Perera, 2013). The Comprehensive Plan of Action was the first International response to the boat refugees. It was designed in the wake of the second wave of Vietnamese refugees and the inability of the First Countries of Asylum to handle their repatriation and rehabilitation (Barnes, 2014; Ineli-Ciger, 2016; Pugh, 2004). The key provisions included voluntary disembarkation at the First Countries of Asylum was followed by repatriation by other countries including the USA. The plan met with success owing to the nature of migration, the degree of cooperation between the country of origin (Vietnam), the First Counties of Asylum including Malaysia and Thailand and the repatriating states including USA (Barnes, 2014; Ineli-Ciger, 2016; Pugh, 2004; Ratcovich, 2018).

Bibliography Arendt. H. (1958). The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2nd Edition. Cleveland: Meridian Books. Bala, S. (2018). The Boat People, 1st Edition. New York: Doubleday. Barnes, R. (2004). ‘Refugee Law at Sea’. International and Comparative Law Quarterly, 53(1): 47–77. Benhabib, S. (2020). ‘The End of the 1951 Refugee Convention? Dilemmas of Sovereignty, Territoriality, and Human Rights’. Jus Cogens (2): 75–100. Block, I. (2020). ‘Greece plans floating sea barrier to keep out refugees. Dezeen. 10 February. Available at www.dezeen.com/2020/02/10/greece-floating-sea-border-wall-news. Accessed on 4 October 2020. Boon, S. (2019). ‘Thinking with Oceans’. sshoresite. Available at: https://sshoresite.wordpress. com/2019/05/29/thinking-with-oceans/amp. Accessed on 1 October 2020. Gatrell, P. (2017). ‘Refugees – ‘What’s Wrong with History’. Journal of Refugee Studies, 30(2): 170–189. Glynn, I. (2016). Asylum Policy, Boat People and Political Discourse: Boats, Votes and Asylum in Australia and Italy. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Ineli- Ciger, M. (2016). ‘An Examination of the Comprehensive Plan of Action as a Response to Mass Influx of Boat People: Lessons Learnt for a Comprehensive Approach to Migration by Sea’. In V.M. Lax and E. Papastavridis (eds), Boat refugees and Migrants at

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Sea: A Comprehensive approach: Integrating Maritime Security with Human Rights. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, pp. 408–437. Klug, A. (2016). ‘The present and future of ‘boat refugees and Migrants at sea’. In V.M. Lax and E. Papastavridis (eds), Boat refugees and Migrants at Sea: A Comprehensive approach: Integrating Maritime Security with Human Rights. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, pp. 438–447. Kothari, U. (2020). ‘Between the land and the sea: Refugee experiences of lighthouse as a real and symbolic border’. Borderlands, 19(1): 163–181. Krishnamurthy, S. (2013). ‘Queue jumpers, terrorists, breeders: representations of Tamil migrants in Canadian popular media’. South Asian Diaspora, 5(1): 139–157. Mawani, R. (2018). Across Oceans of Law. The Komagata Maru and Jurisdiction in the Time of the Empire, 1st Edition. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press. Mbembe, A. (2003). ‘Necropolitics’, Public Culture, 15(1): 11–40. Morena Lax, Violeta and Efthymios Papastavridis. (2016). ‘Introduction to Boat refugees and Migrants at Sea: A Comprehensive Approach: Integrating Maritime Security with Human Rights’. In Violeta Morena Lax and Efthymios Papastavridis (eds), Boat refugees and Migrants at Sea: A Comprehensive approach: Integrating Maritime Security with Human Rights. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, pp. 1–16. Nyugen, V.T. (2017). The Refugees, 1st Edition. New York: Grove Press. O’ Doherty, K and Lecouteur, A. (2007). ‘“Asylum seekers”, “boat people” and “illegal immigrants”: Social Categorisation in the media’. Australian Journal of Psychology, 59(1): 1–12. Perera, S. (2013). ‘Oceanic Corpo-graphies, Refugee Bodies and the Making and Unmaking of Waters’. Feminist Review (103): 58–79. Available at: www.jstor.org/stable/41819669. Accessed on 4 October 2020. Poon, J. (2018). ‘How the Body becomes a Boat: The Asylum Seeker in Law and Images’. Law and Literature, 30(1): 105–121. Pugh, M. (2004). ‘Drowning not Waving: Boat people and Humanitarianism at Sea’. Journal of Refugee Studies, 17(1): 50–69. Ratcovich, M. (2018). International Law and the Rescue of Refugees at Sea. PhD dissertation, Stockholm University. Rowe, E and O’Brien, E. (2014). ‘“Genuine” Refugees or Illegitimate “Boat People”: Political Construction of Asylum Seekers and Refugees in the Malaysia Deal Debate’. The Australian Journal of Social Issues, 49(2): 171–193. Wallace, B. (2018). ‘Necropolitics in Refugee Governance’. Granite Journal: a Postgraduate Interdisciplinary Journal (2): 9–17.

PART IV

Religion, Knowledge and Law Across the Oceans

11 LITERATE ILLITERATES Arabi-Malayalam and Parallel Process of Knowledge Production among Muslims in Kerala1 M.H. Ilias and Shamshad Hussain

Introduction It was in the beginning of the 1990s that the Government of Kerala embarked on a mission of making the state a hundred percent literate. Subsequently, the Total Literacy Campaign was launched with the objective of eradicating illiteracy for the whole of the state and Kerala was finally declared a ‘cent percent literate state’ on 8 April 1991. Not surprisingly, the initiative received a quick and warm response. Youth across the left-right political spectrum enthusiastically volunteered in offering evening remedial classes for illiterates, who were almost twenty percent of the total population then. Identification of ‘illiterates’ was the major task; a dedicated state agency called Kerala Saksharata Mission (Kerala Literacy Mission) was constituted and assigned the job of preparing a comprehensive list of those who were not able to read, write and count in any language. The Saksharata Mission volunteers as a part of their assignment identified many Muslim women in Malabar who were actually literate in Arabi-Malayalam, a locally devised linguistic fusion of Malayalam, Arabic and other languages. In field research conducted in connection with the language documentation project on Arabi-Malayalam,4 the authors were able meet hundreds of women who were classified as illiterate when people turned to modern education in Malayalam and English. Some of them shared their painful experience, struggling to learn and write corresponding Malayalam letters for the Arabi-Malayalam alphabets which they were sentimentally attached to. Women in the literacy classes, mainly because of their nonstandard, colloquial Northern Kerala slang of Malayalam experienced a degree of humiliation. Intended to teach them ‘standard Malayalam’, the literacy programme stressed the value of ‘stylistically finished’ language and shamed those who did not use it. The texts in such literacy classes taught reading and writing through lessons ridiculing Arabi-Malayalam and promoting standard Malayalam in DOI: 10.4324/9781003300939-16

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its place. Teachers trained their students not to use the vocabulary common to Malayalam and Arabi-Malayalam but rather to use ‘proper’ Malayalam words instead. It hardly matters whether you have money and gold, or learnt by heart the Mohiyudd-ın Ma-la5. The chance of getting a good bridegroom is slight, if you do not know the Akshara Ma-la.6 This slogan which was in wide circulation in the Muslim-dominated neighbourhoods in Malappuram District during the Campaign aptly sums up the sense of the ‘public’ that emerged, for whom the popularity of the Arabi-Malayalam language was a sign of social and educational backwardness. Ironically, the recitation of the Mohiyuddd-ın Ma-la, a popular devotional classic depicting the history of the - Abdul Kader of al-Jilani of Baghdad, the famous Sufi saint Sheikh Mohiyuddın founder of Qa-diri order which was once considered to be an obligatory asset for girls of marriage age and an indicator of literacy in Arabi-Malayalam7 became the major target of the campaign for ‘eradication’ of illiteracy. Muslim women whose education was confined to Arabi-Malayalam were the major victims of this campaign; they were portrayed as ‘marginalised’ in most of the narratives depicting them as illiterate and uneducated. Endorsing public opinion, Muslim women also aspired to the social capital that they thought modern education would provide. The women had been taught in the literacy classes that “to be respected, one must be educated.” The poignant stories that some of them as shared with the authors could perhaps be the best starting point for reflecting on the changing status of Arabi-Malayalam in the community. Their narratives demonstrate how painful was the transition from Arabi-Malayalam to Malayalam for many who were literate in the former. Most ironically, the person who formally declared Kerala a hundred percent literate state on 8 April 1991, Chelakkadan Aysumma, was of a similar background; literate in Arabi-Malayalam, able to read and write letters and poems in this language but considered ‘uneducated’ by ‘modern’ standards and required therefore to attend literacy classes. Beyond their pedagogical mission, the literacy campaign, in fact, sought to shape the imagination of people who were the intended objects of it. Arabi-Malayalam is an immensely rich language with a number of scientific, philosophical and literary works to its credit. The Mappilas have lived in an environment where Arabi-Malayalam texts were read and learnt by-heart and histories were related publicly through the genres of songs, ballads and other modes of narration. The public recital of texts or poems meant that its message reached many listeners simultaneously. The realm of literacy in the context of Muslims of Kerala is a vast domain, encompassing many linguistic forms, various genres and literary fusions in Arabi-Malayalam (Ilias and Shamshad, 2017: 42–46). Arabi-Malayalam is neither Arabic nor Malayalam as many words and usages, which are alien to both, can be seen while reading the literary texts in this language. The vocabulary of this language is rich with words from Indian languages like Malayalam, Tamil, and Kannada and West Asian languages such as Arabic, Hebrew and Farsi.

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Written using Arabic script with suitable changes made in order to accommodate Malayalam sounds, Arabi-Malayalam is infused with Malayalam grammar, Arabic lexemes and possibly other Arabic language peculiarities (phonemes, morphemes, syntactic constructions etc.). Though shaped by the local community’s close interaction with Arabs over the past millennium, Arabi-Malayalam flourished primarily because of its use for religious purposes as the chief medium of instruction in madrassas. The literature in Arabi-Malayalam can, broadly, be bifurcated into verse and prose; the former is known popularly as Mappila songs. The verse tradition comprises mainly of stories related to seminal historical events experienced by global and local Muslim communities. The major compositions are narrative poems about Muslim scholars, martyrs, saints, and Sufi mystics. This genre also includes renditions of the life histories of Arab and Persian sages, legends, hymns that eulogise holy figures and mythical saints, martial songs, moral teachings, historical records of holy events, epistolary verses and love lyrics, etc. (Karaserry, 1995: 169–170). Prose texts in Arabi-Malayalam language ranges from the simple rendering of the stories of the Arabian Nights to works on indigenous medicinal systems, Ayurveda, astronomy, logic, kissah (genre of short stories and novels) and the like (Karaserry, 1995: 169). The prose tradition also includes translations and interpretations of the Quran, interpretations of the Prophet’s teaching, Islamic philosophy, works of Islamic jurisprudence and ethics, texts of Islamic and local history, short stories and novels, texts on science and measuring techniques, literary criticism and dictionaries. The history of fiction writing in Arabi-Malayalam traces its history to the publication of Akharul Muniss-Char Darve-.sh based on a Farsi novel with the title Char Darve-s.h (four saints). This work published in 1883 predates Indule-kha, a novel which is considered to be the pioneer in Malayalam language conforming to the standard of modern novel, by six years. There are a number of rituals and life-cycle events, and language and literary genres accrue structurally around the songs composed and sung on such occasions. These are drawn out of a huge corpus that reflects the linguistic and cultural fusion of the local culture with the culture of Arabia. There are also certain performative occasions such as Daph-mut..tu and Arabana-mut..tu which normally accompany rituals and collective prayers such as rat-ıb and dikkr expressing the Arab influence on Mappila culture. The songs, their contents and their linguistic registers are specially designed to create a devotional ambience for such functions. Many early works in Arabi-Malayalam literature had been profoundly influenced by the influx of Arabic poetry that originated in southern Arabia and South-East Asia. The translation and publication of texts popular in Arabic and Persian to ArabiMalayalam greatly influenced the speed and range of their dissemination and contributed to creating a cosmopolitan consciousness across the region. Mohiyuddin Ma-la, the first known work in Arabi-Malayalam, for instance, owed its inspiration to two Arabic texts, namely Bahja and Takmila, which were in wider circulation across the Indian Ocean region. The scope of such interconnectedness can also be extended to the literary networks connecting Muslim communities across borders in what Ricci has called the Arab cosmopolis (Ricci, 2011: 1). This was a common

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phenomenon across Islamic contexts in the Indian Ocean region, where such networks helped introduce, popularise, and sustain certain texts which originated in one region and were accepted in others (Ricci, 2011: 1–2). In the context of Malabar, literary networks comprised mainly poets from the coastal towns of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, Sufi sages from the northern states of India, and scholars from west Asia and various parts of South-East Asia (Ilias, 2007: 434–56). The activities of such networks included the sharing of texts (stories, poems, treatises on a broad range of topics, travel writings etc.), through translation and transmitting them to other places. It was Sheikh Nizamuddin, a Farsi scholar from the Kalyan region of Maharashtra who served at the court of Kondotty Thangal who - that became the popularised the plot of the Persian epic Hussanul Jama-l-Badrul Munır major inspiration for Mappila poet Moinkutty Vaidyar to compose a poem based on the same theme. A study of Arabi-Malayalam also opens up the possibility of examining the complicated relationship between the ‘national’ and the ‘cosmopolitan’. This tension is one of the fields of enquiry that this paper engages in. It is also to be noted that writing by women in Arabi-Malayalam predates those in the Malayalam language by decades. Magazines such as Niza--ul-Islam were published exclusively for women. Although published under the editorship of men, Muslim women, in large numbers, contributed to them by writing articles and letters of a critical nature to the editors. Similarly, there was an immensely rich Arabi-Malayalam song tradition in which women participated as composers and singers. Mappila women disseminated and popularised most of the classics through in-house informal social gatherings called sıraparayaņa sadassu (poetry reading session). These ‘ladies only’ gatherings functioned as public spaces where the works of major Arabi-Malayalam poets of that time were recited, interpreted, analysed, and criticised. Collective recitation of popular songs followed by their interpretation was a major pastime in most of the Muslim households in Malabar (Ilias and Shamshad, 2017: 47–49). With a wide array of creative and scientific works, Arabi-Malayalam set an alternate paradigm for constructing knowledge and provided a parallel window to understand reality for the Muslim community in Kerala. It is widely recognised to have promoted an alternative pedagogy and provided substitutes for major narratives in Islamic history. Some Mappila writers had written parodies of works that were highly popular in the Islamic world using imaginations and artistic resources specific to Kerala. Kurathipattu, a song composed by Naduthoppil Kunhabdulla, for example, presents the story of the death of Fatima, the Prophet’s daughter in the cultural milieu of Kerala with imaginary scenes and characters taken from local mythology. For its unconventional imagination, Arabi-Malayalam literature had come under stringent attack from the puritans within the community. The major part of their worry revolves around fantasy being applied to narrating events in Islamic history. History in such narrations, according to the religious scholars affiliated to the Salafi movement, was not about truths and fact, but a distorted ‘subjective’ rendering of the past built on myths and wild imagination (Moulawi, 2009: 75–6).

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As mentioned earlier, the history of the evolution of Arabi-Malayalam language and literature represents a cosmopolitan imagination which has not been written about adequately in existing scholarship. Any discussion on it, first and foremost, should involve a reconceptualisation of the history of literature in Kerala, which is presently understood as a practice or a set of practices of past pertaining only to given set of actors within the specific territorial unit of the state. This is basically a problem involved in the understanding and writing of Kerala history-presenting the past of the communities as something confined to the history of nation and region within land-based societies. Menon critiques existing scholarship on Kerala as paying little attention to the history of maritime traders and trade and faith-based networks; social science categories of analysis attempt to understand history without perspectives from the sea (Menon, 1999: 1995–2003). No study of history of Arabi-Malayalam language would be complete without a consideration of the movements of peoples, cultures and goods across the Indian Ocean region. This was the site where many cultures flourished and were sustained; cultures that often seem so widely divergent were in fact in constant contact and exchange with each other in the synthesis of this language. A new thinking about Arabi-Malayalam language and literature from various submerged strands of history and different vantage points is, therefore, essential (Ilias, 2013: 44–47). There is the need for a larger rethinking and a new historical approach in which the unit of study should be the Indian Ocean region in its entirety (Prange, 2018). Retelling the history of Muslims of Kerala with perspectives from the sea, of course, has its own significance as the community held a pivotal position in medieval and early modern history of the Indian Ocean region (Prange, 2018). The orientation of literary works in Kerala Muslims’ literature was, quite naturally, outward, more specifically toward the Indian Ocean. An attempt to reposition the history of this language in the framework of cosmopolitanism, therefore, speaks of broader inter-regional interconnectedness in which people, goods and ideas were in constant motion without a hegemonic cultural or political centre.

Literacy: negating ‘Cosmopolitan’ identities Looking at the maritime travels and interconnectedness of the communities living on the southwestern coast, their narratives and their collective sense of history and memory, many travel writers have described the Muslims of India in the medieval and early modern periods as a community on the move (Wink, 1995). The realm of Muslims’ maritime world was so vast as to encompass diverse sections such as traders, seafarers, migrant labourers, musicians, Sufis, scholars, saints etc. (Ricci, 2011: 1). The influence of travel in the life of Muslims of Kerala reached its zenith in the early modern era with constant exchange of people, goods and ideas across a wide region (Ilias and Shamshad, 2017: 46–49). The element of globality that travel brought in also affected their culture and religious beliefs to the extent that, cultures that often seem so widely divergent were, in fact, in constant contact with

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each other shaping art forms, rituals, lifecycle events and religious practices of the community (Ilias and Shamshad 2017: 26–41). The world of maritime trade connections tied the Malabar region to the farflung port towns of Arabia, central and South-East Asia and East Africa (Arasaratnam, 2004: 39; Chaudhuri, 1985: 21). From the sixteenth century onwards, if not earlier, the Malabar coast was a major departure point for pilgrims and scholars bound for southern Arabia; and throughout the nineteenth and early half of the twentieth century, it was the port of embarkation for long-distance travellers destined for Gujarat, Bombay, the Swahili coast, Eden and Muscat (Ilias, 2007: 434–56). Travel- and trade/faith-based networks connected Muslim seafarers from Malabar across boundaries of space and culture. Different kinds of networks traversed the region making connections between and among individuals and communities (Ilias, 2018: 69–73). The influence of such networks was so prominent that Arakkal, the only Muslim princely dynasty in Kerala, maintained close political and strategic ties with far-flung Turkey and Oman on par with other princely states of India (Ilias, 2020: 6). Such travel continued to provide the coastal villages of Malabar with an element of cosmopolitanism. These villages were heavily laden with stories, myths and songs derived from lives spent on the ocean. The narratives of travel and stories of miracles that occurred at sea also formed a significant part of religious folktales in the region. Long before print and mass-communication became widespread, these narratives played a key role in spreading ideas and beliefs within the maritime universe of the Muslims of Malabar. These maritime movements continued up to the mid-1970s, by then the borders of the nation-states (especially in the Arabian Peninsula) became non-porous making ‘illegal’ entries next to impossible (Ilias, 2018: 74–76). The tradition of seafaring has long been a means of linguistic bartering between Malayalam and a wide array of trade languages. Malayalam was enriched with a vast vocabulary loaned from major languages of the sea: Arabic, Hebrew, Farsi, Swahili etc. This linguistic-cultural blend has also been the hallmark of art and literature in Kerala. And it is in the context of the great traffic of goods, scholars and ideas between Malabar and the Arab world that one can find the origin of ArabiMalayalam. The most prominent theory attributes it to the Arabs who reached the Malabar coast with the purpose of trade and the promotion of Islam (Mansurali, 2014: 16). Those engaged in trade and preaching Islam had maintained the habit of recording their instructions in the vernacular tongue using Arab script (Shamsudheen, 1978: 12). On account of regular interaction between them and the local merchants, Arabi-Malayalam was elevated to the status of the major lingua franca of the Malabar Coast. Later, with the wider dispersion of diasporic Arab communities to the hinterland, Arabi-Malayalam spread beyond the Muslim merchants, who lived principally in the coastal belt, to the Mappilas in the interior. K.O. Shamsudheen, a scholar of Arabi-Malayalam puts forward a different theory, tracing the origin of Arab-Malayalam language to the religious context that necessitated the service of a new language facilitating an easy way of imparting

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religious lessons among the locals (Shamsudheen, 1978: 12). Early generations of Muslims of Malabar, as observed by him, learnt Arabic not just as a language of liturgy but as the medium of instruction in madrasa. The ideas which could not be expressed using Arabic were interpreted in Malayalam using the same script (Shamsudheen, 1978: 12–13). Though Arabic was initially retained for the purpose of writing, the script was modified by giving additional lithographic signs to certain letters in order to accommodate Malayalam letters, which have no corresponding ones in Arabic (Shamsudheen, 1978: 12). Arabic-Malayalam began to move along a different trajectory and found fame chiefly among the ordinary Muslims, when they started expressing their thoughts, imagination and feelings in this linguistic fusion. The increasing Sanskritisation of the Malayalam language could have created an alienation from it among the Muslims (Ilias, 2007: 450). Under colonial rule, the practice of sending children from the Muslim families in Malabar to the ‘secular’ schools, established mainly by the colonial administration and Christian missionaries, was restricted because of strong anti-colonial feelings. Education was imparted either through the traditional madrassa system or pedagogy of a collective sort carried out through v’alu or midnight preaching. “Popular fatwas were issued by the ulema to discourage ‘secular’ education among the Mappilas”, writes Ummar Moulawi, a renowned scholar of Islamic theology and the leader of Salafi movement in Kerala, in his autobiography, Ormakaļude T-ırattu. I had not been sent to the school despite the fact that my parents were literate in Malayalam language…that practice (sending children to the ‘secular’ school) was quite alien to the Mappila community of that time. Ulemas in the locality were against it and they inculcated the worthlessness of ‘modern’ education in midnight preaching. A recurring prayer on such occasions was: “the Lord, king of khojas save us from the damages that those who speak refined Malayalam inflict…and from those who use English, the language of infidels, and the language of hell. (Moulawi, 2009: 24) Though Malayalam remained as the mother tongue of many in the community, the first language they learnt in a systematic way in life was Arabi-Malayalam. Later, people switched over to other languages including Malayalam as the situation demanded. Moulawi, narrates his experience of learning Malayalam as follows: Because of abstaining from ‘modern’ knowledge imparted in Malayalam and English, there was a tendency to portray the members of the Mappila community as illiterates…I learned to write and read Malayalam with the help of a teacher who volunteered to teach me the language while reading the Quran at a dars…Arabi-Malayalam letters were to be written first, corresponding alphabets in Malayalam would be written below. Malayalam letters were mastered one by one and eventually we turned to writing small and big sentences. (Moulawi, 2009: 38)

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The end of first half of the twentieth century was a particularly complex moment in the history of Arabi-Malayalam as its popularity was seriously waning. The switchover from Arabi-Malayalam to Malayalam, in part, was a result of a Britishbacked move with the purpose of ‘mainstreaming’ the Muslims of Malabar who had launched a series of political challenges against them, which culminated in the Mappila Rebellion of 1921. Consequently, schools preparing Muslim students mushroomed in Malabar. Most of the schools were previously madrasas; the British administration in Malabar District directly and indirectly aided them in introducing ‘modern’, ‘secular’ education in Malayalam and English. A special curriculum was designed by the British administration with the support of a section of ulema which staunchly advocated for a radical restructuring of religious education under British aegis (Moulawi and Kareem, 1978: 75–76). Scholars such as V. Kunhimoyi Haji of Manchery were specially assigned to the successful execution of this thoughtfully designed project (Moulawi and Kareem, 1978: 75–76). Hajji prepared a set of textbooks called Hida-yutul Muslimin in 1924 for the standards I to VIII. Muslim Sanma-rga Dıpam, another set prepared by Abdul Gafoor Shah, was also meant for the students at the same level. Publication of these textbooks marked the beginning of the shift of Mappilas from Arabi-Malayalam to Malayalam in learning ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ subjects in the centres of religious learning. Establishment of training schools for Mappila teachers with the purpose of imparting ‘secular’ subjects in Malayalam and English accelerated the process further (Moulawi and Kareem, 1978: 76). The standardisation of the script also was seen by some scholars as a partial reason for the decline of this language (Shamsudheen, 1978: 14–16). The early decades of the twentieth century witnessed many efforts leading to the standardisation of the Arabi-Malayalam script and reformulation of the grammatical rules; prominent among them was the one which was initiated by the leaders of Islamic reform movement in Kerala such as Chalilakath Kunhammad Haji, Makti Thangal and Vakkom Maulavi who revised the script as a whole to accommodate all the sounds from Malayalam and Arabic.8 Although well accepted initially, the standardisation on the basis of certain scientific principles made the language more difficult to use for the ordinary Mappilas.9 The script became quite alien to those who had mere literacy in it.10 Introduction of modern schooling in the places which were previously centres of the Mappila Rebellion, in the initial stage, yielded a negative result with Mappilas seeing it as yet another cycle of colonial invasion. However, most of those who came from the elite families prescribed a complete switch over from traditional learning system using Arabi-Malayalam as the medium of instruction to modern education as a solution to Kerala Muslims’ backwardness. The persistence of ArabiMalayalam was a recurrent theme for all those who talked about the community’s underdevelopment and expressed a desire for development, progress and enlightenment. The reformist approach to education, seeing in it the means for individual emancipation and growth of the community can be found in many works (Moulawi, 1985). The faith in modern education was so widespread given that primers

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included lessons on the expression of difference between those who endorsed the value of secular education, and those who did not. Many such schools saw adherence to ‘modern’ education in Malayalam language as leading to the making of a ‘good society’ and nation. By attempting to align themselves with Malayalam, the Muslim elites presented themselves as espousing of a ‘national’ identity, as opposed to a ‘transnational’ one.

Malayalam: defining ‘the region and nation’ With the nationalist discourse gaining momentum in the middle of twentieth century, mainstream literature in Kerala underwent a lot of transformation. Malayalam literature written mostly in stylistically polished and highly Sanskritised Malayalam became the master narrative which shaped the imagination and the literary life of Keralites.11 After the linguistic reorganisation of states in India in 1956, Malayalam was regarded as the most perfect expression of the national-regional self (Kumar, 2010: 19–50). Malayalam literature became central to state-building and national development. The dominant aesthetic was connected to an ideology of nationalism and the progress of the ‘new’ nation. Literatures in other language varieties including Arabi-Malayalam were sidelined as a part of broader re-conceptualisation of literature in linguistic-national terms. Malayalam language became the most important marker of national-regional identity and a central element of the political imagination of Keralites.12 The concept of nation was used in a restricted sense, referring only to the people who shared a ‘common’ cultural memory and invoking the legacy of a ‘common’ cultural heritage. By embedding Malayalam literature in modern-national discourse, certain literary texts came to be regarded as representative of the Malayali’s national identity.13 The bulk of works under the label of Kerala literature had the national language (Malayalam) as their most basic organising principle in common, which, in turn, was closely tied up with the national imagination (Kumar, 2020: 18–50). The most socially concerned writers in the language saw Malayalam as a means to inculcate the values of modern nationalism. As in many parts of modern India, Muslims, whose education and rate of literacy were far less than the state average were one of the major targets of such education and uplift. Mappila linguistic and literary traditions were completely set aside on the grounds of a lack of national coherence and having cosmopolitan linkages. As the history of its origin entailed a complex interaction of histories of different regions, people and times against the backdrop of maritime trade, Arabi-Malayalam seldom bore the characteristics of any one place or nation. Owing to its dissociation from the national boundaries and lack of rootedness within the socio-cultural milieu of one region, there was a tendency to consider Arabi-Malayalam literature as a divergence from the new ‘national’ norm. In the process of constructing a new ‘Malayali/Keralite’ identity in the 1940s and 50s, ‘standardised’ Malayalam became a political instrument for enhancing national sentiments. In the nationalistic frenzy emphasising the ‘particular’, the

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culture of Kerala was stripped of its ‘cosmopolitan’ content and moulded into a more parochial national pattern. Secular-national historical narratives invented new ways of looking at regional histories and disseminated new images of Kerala culture on an unprecedented scale. There are several studies that testify to the search for ‘authentically national’ traditions that became a ubiquitous characteristic of the twentieth century Kerala (Kumar, 2010: 19–50). The cultivation of specific national cultural markers was not limited to constructing literary identity. Music that had particular stylistic features or was associated with ethnic or cultural groups but not linked to a coherent regional identity was also completely sidelined. There was even less legitimacy for the musical genres developed by Arabi-Malayalam language as many approached them and studied them as instances of folksongs with cross-cultural borrowings. Because of the tender themes - of love, lust and separation - occurring in the songs, they were gingerly accepted or were held at arm’s length by cultural theorists. Romance, fantasy and wild imagination made these musical compositions unappealing to self-styled ‘serious’ listeners of music. Over time religious institutions became the promoters of popular culture of Mappila Muslims as the ‘secular’ institutions seldom furnished opportunities. Mappila popular culture which otherwise had an important role in creating and shaping the Muslim public sphere of the early twentieth century came to be seen as much too lowbrow to warrant the attention of the ‘cultural theorists.’ From the traditional leftist view, Mappila songs were considered to be a part of non-secular culture, produced for exclusive consumption of a particular religious community, though Marxists in Kerala had successfully utilised the popularity and immense potential of it to make inroads into the Muslim community (Ilias and Shamshad, 2017: 22). To quote Kunjimohammed, a film maker and left politician, “scholars from the left group seldom admitted that the genres Mappila literature produced had something to say to them, even if they chose to do so unwittingly.”14 Besides the religious content, popular Mappila songs have often been subject to heavy criticism for being superficial and sensationalist (Aboobacker, 2014: 7). Treated as a separate realm of ‘subculture’, some literary theorists characterised Mappila songs as a ‘tasteless artifact’ forestalling the possibility of merging high art and authentic folk culture in the community (Aboobacker, 2014: 7–12). The religious content in the Mappila cultural traditions came under severe criticism by the Marxist cultural critics. The everyday construction of such genres, according to the left scholars, operated within the realm of divine pleasure and, thus, functioned as the most important instrument in mobilising people along religious lines. The traditional analysis of Mappila culture by the left scholars is profoundly grounded in both colonial and national-secular interpretations. This has been echoed clearly in the writing of C. Achutha Menon, noted left literary critic and the leader of Communist Party of India: Some notables from the community (Muslim community) approached the Government15 with the purpose of establishing an exclusive centre for the study of Mappila songs. The centre was proposed in memory of a Haji

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Hydrose. As far as my understanding is concerned, Hydrose’s genuineness as a poet is highly disputable. He has written some stuff ridiculing the Indian national movement and Gandhi’s ‘dubious’ role in it in particular…[W]hat we need is progress, integration, not disintegration…Hydrose is an icon of tradition and polarization. (Menon, 1982) Ironically, Menon himself had written extensively on the silence of authors on the contribution of marginalised groups to the culture of Kerala. The person referred to herein is Pulikkottil Hyder, a well-liked poet in Arabi-Malayalam in the early twentieth century. Hydrose was popular particularly for his staunch criticism of the then prevailing social and political order and his advocacy for radical reforms in the community. His works remained iconic for Mappila Muslim’s sentiments and the readers were drawn into an aesthetics and political consciousness popular in the panIslamic region. Menon’s reference, in fact, provides a clue to the changing priorities of nationalism that excluded alternate political imaginations. It is interesting to note that even judgements on orientation towards the modern or tradition were made, ultimately on the basis of how a person’s views related to the conception of the national-regional.

Literary History: asserting the ‘national-regional’ Within literary history there was a pronounced scepticism towards Arabi-Malayalam literary works which were seen as associated with the less prestigious genre of ‘vernacular’ community literature. Writing literary history in Kerala, as Udaya Kumar observes, can never be seen as a politically neutral act, but a selective process with some noticeable exclusions and inclusions. This was more evident in the case of Malayalam language which in no way was objective in rendering of events and traditions (Kumar, 2010: 19–50). Most of the initiatives reinforced a construction of ‘literature’ as something distinct that pertains to the nation and the region, a historically specific vision of literature that rejected the cross-cultural making of it. Despite its considerable body of literature and literary credentials, the mainstream history of literature in Kerala does not consider Arabi-Malayalam tradition as a part of its inheritance (Kumar, 2010: 32). Most of the ‘standard’ texts of literary history in both Malayalam and English did not recognise or render the term ArabiMalayalam as the authors often put it in the basket of ‘Muslim’ or ‘Mappila’ literature (Vallikunnu, 2008). Therefore, it was difficult for the classics in ArabiMalayalam to be presented in ‘serious’ literary conferences, festivals and school textbooks. Citing overwhelming production of liturgical texts and prayer books in the language, the historians of Malayalam literature always belittled it as yet another medium of religious instruction in addition to Arabic (Kuttaserry, 1972: 18–21). For some, the fact of complex linguistic fusions and vocabulary adopted from Arabic, and Persian genres placed Arabi-Malayalam outside the master narrative of

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Malayalam literature, though loan words from other languages are a common feature of every south Indian language including Malayalam (Chaitanya, 1971: 96). As it followed an aesthetic pattern popular in the wider Indian Ocean world and the substance of a majority of the texts were produced elsewhere and inserted into the local contexts, some of the writers of literary history presented Arabi-Malayalam literature as totally foreign to the literary sensibilities of Kerala (George, 1968; Iyer, 1955). Krishna Chaitanya (1971: 196) in his work A History of Malayalam Literature, presents the works of Muslims in Arabi-Malayalam language as “almost completely isolated.” He argues that only with modern education and the resultant switch over of the community to Malayalam language, did Muslims enter into the scene of serious literary writing (Chaitanya, 2011: 196–7). Chaitanya’s comment on the literary tradition of the Muslim community is reflective of that: The traditional Muslim literary effort has remained almost completely isolated till very recent time. It is only recently that the Muslim community has taken into modern education…[T]he script (Arabi-Malayalam) made the situation worse… [T]oday an attempt is being made to rewrite and publish many of the works in Malayalam script. (Chaitanya, 2011: 196–197) Such remarks are symptomatic of the ways in which the entire corpus of literary writing produced in Arabi-Malayalam was neglected. M. Leelavathi’s Malaya-lạ Kavita Sa-hitya Caritram (History of Malayalam Poetry), a comprehensive work ̣ dealing with the history of poetry in Kerala, for instance, pays only a little attention to poetry in Arabi-Malayalam and puts all the works belonging to this genre in the common basket of ballads (Leelavathi, 2011: 32). The neglect is more evident in Kerala Sa-hitya Caritram (History of Malayalam Literature), a work authored by ̣ Ulloor S. Parameswara Iyer, renowned poet and scholar of Malayalam language. This work, which is considered to be the most authoritative one of its kind, has only a half-page description of Arabi-Malayalam literature (Iyer, 1995: 269). The negative views about Arabi-Malayalam literature alongside the positive evaluation of an increasingly Hindu conception of Malayalam continued to be in circulation for many decades from the 1940s. By attempting to align themselves with Malayalam writing, and the new national-regional identity, prominent Muslim writers disengaged themselves from Arabi-Malayalam tradition. There was a significant shift in writing styles of the creative works of Muslim authors alongside changes in the content and imagination that indicated a serious transition. The influence of the reform movement and the widespread feeling that Muslim literature was constituted of Arabi-Malayalam led modern Muslim writers like Vaikkom Muhammed Basheer to produce more in the Malayalam language. Entuppu-ppa-kk Ora-nadaŗnnu (My Grandad Had an Elephant), one of Basheer’s most acclaimed works in Malayalam, is presented in the form of a conflict in the Muslim community between superstitious beliefs and conservative values on one side and

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modern and liberal thinking on the other. While the male protagonist Nizar Ahmed, educated in Malayalam language and forward looking, embodies liberal thoughts, the female protagonist Kunjuppathumma, a literate in Arabi-Malayalam is shown as having been brought up in an atmosphere of conservatism and shallowmindedness. Proud of his Malayalam language proficiency, the protagonist in this novel, Nizar Ahmed advocates the need for it by satirising Arabi-Malayalam and linking it with the idea of ‘progress.’ Basheer’s reformist message advocated socially useful roles for Muslim women, literacy in Malayalam, education, skills and activities that could take them beyond their conventional place in the family and society that eventually would alleviate the ill-effects of conservatism. Uneducated women were to be disengaged from the traditional way of learning in Arabi-Malayalam and introduced to Malayalam literature making them aware of developments in the outside world. Stressing their pedagogical values, these works were something significant for a number of features, including their portrayal of Arabi-Malayalam as a sign of backwardness of the community and their emphasis on the emancipatory potential of Malayalam. The making of a Malayalam region thus excised a history of cosmopolitan maritime influences and created a new landed regional history.

Conclusion Arabi-Malayalam language and literature must be understood as having a certain independence from the ‘nation’ in its traditional sense and operating to a large extent within the geographical imagination of an Indian Ocean region. More interesting, perhaps is the way Arabi-Malayalam literature - because its themes and aesthetics were produced elsewhere and inserted into local context of Malabar – needs us to rethink traditional notions of ‘identity’, ‘land’, ‘nation’ and move to larger canvases of ‘travel’, ‘mobility’, ‘hybridity’ etc. In the previous centuries, it, in fact, was the locus of, as Gayatri Chakravorti Spivak (2006: 21) termed, a “worl-ding”, a process in which more than one “world” may be realised and contested and no standardisation or homogenisation is in operation. “World-ing” slightly differs from cosmopolitanism in its traditional interpretation, though we tend to use both as coterminous concepts. Cosmopolitanism, in the positivist sense, endorses a trend of theorising reflecting an objective distance from one’s cultural affiliations, a broad understanding of other cultures and customs, and a belief in universal humanity. It is used to hold a promise of solidarity that is necessarily opposed to exclusivity and particularism. In its post-positivist versions, scholars like Appiah suggest, there is a scope or possibility for analysing cosmopolitanism in which individuals from varying locations enter relationships of mutual respect subscribing to their differing affiliations and beliefs (Appiah, 2006: 18). Pitched against what is termed ‘national’ this “worl-ding” stresses narratives of differently situated, but globally connected peoples of the Indian Ocean region. With a tendency to use history selectively by manipulating certain bits of the ‘national past’, certain episodes such as origin and spread of Arabi-Malayalam have always been ignored or suppressed. With the sudden increase in the popularity of

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literacy in Malayalam among the Muslims of Kerala since the early 1990s, ArabiMalayalam encountered a near-total rejection. The printing of Mappila songs and religious literature switched over completely to Malayalam and Arabic.16 The literacy campaign provided a thicker sense of national belonging and ‘progress’ and reinforced the necessity of achieving them through education in Malayalam language. The overt ideologies of ‘progress’ and ‘development’ of the community were carried to neo-literates mainly through specially designed primers, careful exploration of which would help us understand, how they worked as an effective tool for ordering the everyday life of Muslims along nationalist lines. The primers made fun of, sometimes even ridiculed spoken expression in Arabi-Malayalam language and textbooks printed in this language and taught at madrasas. Faith in “modern” education was considered to be central to the progress of a society and individual advancement. Literacy in Malayalam, in that sense, may be one of the most intriguing techniques that the state used for framing and homogenising culture in its effort to build a strong nation. Promotion of Malayalam must finally be seen as one of the many ways that the language as a part of national project participated in erasing the multi-cultural past of a particular community and a region as well. Now Arabi-Malayalam finds its expression only through textbooks in almost ten thousand madrassas which are affiliated to the orthodox Sunni factions across the state.17 As argued earlier, the decline of Arabi-Malayalam conforms to a more conventional and parochial vision of nation rejecting the oceanic cultural and political elements which contributed to the making of Kerala. In other words, the preferential position of Malayalam in the realms of literacy and literature in Kerala reaffirms the primacy of a national frame that lends support to the narratives of land-based communities and regions. It also exemplifies the efforts of the state culture not to promote certain values of cosmopolitanism which stand in opposition to the national imagination and ideas of ‘progress’ and ‘secular’, which the state considered crucial to the making of Kerala as a modern society.

Notes 1 Some arguments presented in this work have already been discussed in another work jointly written by the authors. See M.H. Ilias and Shamshad Hussain (2017). 2 As a part of an audio-visual documentation project entitled Arabi-Malayalam: LinguisticCultural Traditions of Mappila Muslims of Kerala aided by Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, New Delhi, the authors had carried out field research in Malappuram and Calicut districts of Kerala. The field research employing ethnographic method covered the use of language in a variety of social and cultural contexts. 3 Within the family circle the Mohiyudd-ın Ma-la was read, especially by women, on special occasions. 4 As a part of an audio-visual documentation project entitled Arabi-Malayalam: LinguisticCultural Traditions of Mappila Muslims of Kerala aided by Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, New Delhi, the authors had carried out field research in Malappuram and Calicut districts of Kerala. The field research employing ethnographic method covered the use of language in a variety of social and cultural contexts. 5 Mohiyuddd-ın Ma-la which is believed to have composed in 1607 CE by Kazi Mohammed of Calicut is the first known text in Arabi-Malayalam language. This popular devotional

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6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

classic depicts the history of the famous Sufi saint Sheikh Mohiyuddin Abdul Kader of al-Jilani of Baghdad, the founder of the Qa-diri order. Malayalam alphabet. Within the family circle the Mohiyudd-ın Ma-la was read, especially by women, on special occasions. K-ımiya Sa’da authored by Maulavi in 1919 was the first work that used standardised Arabi-Malayalam script. Interview with M.N. Karassery, a scholar of Muslim literature in Kerala by the authors held on 2 January 2012. Interview with Hussain Randathani, a scholar of Kerala Muslim history by the authors on 22 March 2012. Literature emerged as a necessary corollary of emerging national consciousness from the nineteenth century and the linking of language, literature and the nation found a warm reception. The concept of the nation became redefined as a community with a common cultural heritage and the members of the other social/religious groups were excluded from it. The themes of such works had neatly linked Indian nationalism with an exclusive linguistic Malayali identity. Interview with P.T. Kunjimohammed held on 26 July 2014. The Government of Kerala while C. Achutha Menon was the Chief Minister during 1970–77. Field work held in CH Press and Ashrafiya Book Stall (Thirurangadi) on 3 March 2013. Samastha Kerala Jamiat-ul-Ulema, an organisation of scholars following Sunni-Shafi’i tradition runs almost 10,000 madrasas, where Arabi-Malayalam is the chief medium of instruction in the lower classes.

Bibliography Aboobacker, K. (2014). Malaya-latile Esal ̣ . Vazhi (Malayalam). Calicut: Islamic Publishing House. Appiah, Kwame Anthony. (2006). Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Arasaratnam, Sinnapah. (2004). Maritime Indian in the Seventeenth Century. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Chaithanya, Krishna. (1971). A History of Malayalam Literature. Hyderabad: Orient Longman. Chaudhuri, K.N. (1985). Trade and Civilization in the Indian Ocean: An Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers. George, K.M. (1968). A Survey of Malayalam Literature. Bombay: Asia Publishing House. Ilias, M.H. (2007). ‘Mappila Muslims and the Cultural Content of Trading Arab Diaspora on the Malabar Coast’. Asian Journal of Social Science, 35(4–5): 434–456. Ilias, M.H. (2013). ‘Hadrami Sanca-ranalude De-sa-ntara Calananal’(Malayalam). Telicham, 15(2): ̣ ̭ ̣ ̭ ̣ 44–47. Ilias, M.H. (2020). ‘Shadow of Hagia Sophia’. Indian Express (New Delhi) 11 August: 6. Ilias, M.H. (2018). ‘Oxford Memories and Narrations of “Nations” Past: Accounts of Early Migrants from Kerala in the Gulf in the Post-Oil Era’. Oxford Middle East Review, 2(1): 69–88. Ilias, M.H. and Shamshad Hussain. (2017). Arabi-Malayalam: Linguistic and Cultural Traditions of Mappila Muslims of Kerala. New Delhi: IGNCA and Gyan Books. Iyer, Ulloor S Parameswara. (1955). Keralạ Sa-hityacaritram, Vol. 1. Trivandrum: University of Kerala. Kumar, Udaya. (2010). ‘Shaping a Literary Space: Early Literary Histories in Malayalam and Normative Uses of the Past’. In Hans Harder (ed.), Literature and Nationalist Ideology. New Delhi: Social Science Press, pp. 19–51.

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Karassery, M.N. (1995). ‘Arabic Malayalam’. In Asghar Ali Engineer (ed.), Kerala Muslims: A Historical Perspective. New Delhi: Ajanta Publishers, pp. 158–174. Kuttasesry, P. Mohamed. (1972). ‘Adunika Arabi Sa-hityavum Malayalatile Aspars´yatayum’ (Malayalam). Chandrika Weekly (Republic Day Special Issue, Calicut). Leelavathi, M. (2011). Malaya-lạ Kavitasa-hityacaritram (Malayalam). Thrissur: Kerala Sahitya Academy. Mansurali, T. (ed.) (2014). Arabi-Malayala Sa-hityava Padananal. ̭ Kozhicode: Lead Books. Menon, Achutha. (1982). ‘Ma-ppilạ Pa-.t.tukal’,̣ Yuva Kala Sa-hiti Annual Souvenir (Trivandrum). Menon, Dilip M. (1999). ‘Houses by the Sea: State-Formation Experiments in Malabar, 1760–1800’. Economic and Political Weekly, 34(29): 1995–2003. Moulawi, C.N. Ahmed and Kareem, K.K. Abdul. Mahata-ya Ma-ppila Sa-hitya Pa-rambaraym ̣ (Malayalam). Calicut: Published by the Authors. Moulawi, Umar. (2009). Ormakalude Theerath (Malayalam). Cochin: Da’wa Books. Moulawi, E. (1985). Moidu, Maulawiyude Ᾱtmakada (Malayalam). Kottayam: DC Books. Prange, Sebastian R. (2018). Monsoon Islam: Trade and Faith on the Medieval Malabar Coast. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ricci, Ronit. (2011). Islam Translated: Literature, conversion and the Arabic Cosmpolis of South and Southeast Asia. Ranikhet: Permanent Black. Shamsuddin, K.O. (1978). Ma-ppila Malaya-lam (Malayalam). Trivandrum: Published by Author. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. (2006). In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics. London: Routledge. Vallikkunnu, Balakrishnan. (2008). Ma-ppila Sa-hityavum, Navôdha-navum. (Malayalam). Kozhicode: Yuvata Books. Wink, Andrei. (1995). Al-Hind:Th e Making of the Indo-Islamic World, Vol. 1. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

12 ʿULAMAʾ NETWORKS ACROSS THE SEAS Understanding the Trajectory of Islam in Medieval Malabar Mohammed Shameem K.K.

Recent decades have witnessed a major historiographical turn facilitated by historians who try to move beyond conventional frameworks that take nation-states or regions as units of study and explore the possibilities of research on aquatic spaces such as the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean.1 One of the focal points of these historians has been the various sorts of networks forged by people who crisscrossed the water bodies with diverse motives. Today there is a copious amount of literature that investigates the manifold mobilities and connectivities across the Indian Ocean throughout the ages.2 As far as the maritime history of Malabar (which in the medieval times included the entire stretch of the modern Indian state of Kerala) in southwestern peninsular India is concerned, the littoral has already been well-established in the existing historiography as a space with dynamic commercial ties with various port cities located on the rims of the Indian Ocean and beyond (Gupta, 1967; Malekandathil, 2001; Malaparambil, 2012; Mathew, 2016). However, the region is yet to attract enough scholarship that explores its intangible networks involving the exchange and circulation of ideas, beliefs, values, etc. across the seas despite the fact that such networks might have tied far-off people for periods far longer than the lifespan of a manufactured commodity or merchandise. Hand in hand with the existing trans-oceanic commercial networks of medieval Malabar, the Muslims of Malabar had established multiple faith-related networks with overseas lands, which too contributed to the making of the Indian Ocean an integrated arena. Although this aspect of Malabar’s maritime history is not terra incognita (Kooria, 2016; Prange, 2018; Arafath, 2018), the antecedent literature shedding light on the Islamic ʿulama-ʾ (scholars) networks of Malabar does not engage deeply with medieval Islamic literature belonging to the genres of fatwa- and jurisprudence which were produced by actors involved in those very networks. Arguably, these constitute a major source of information for investigating such networks and interactions. Besides, the existing works do not DOI: 10.4324/9781003300939-17

198 Mohammed Shameem K.K.

offer us reasonable explanations for why such Islamic literature had come to be produced in Malabar during the sixteenth century unlike previous times. The present research is envisaged as an attempt towards filling such lacunae in the existing literature. The following discussion is divided into two parts. The first part deals with aspects of Malabar’s ʿulama-ʾ networks till the beginning of the sixteenth century. Here, an attempt is made to explain why one seldom notices any fatwa- or jurisprudence text being produced in Malabar during this phase despite the presence in the region of many Muslim settlements as well as Islamic scholars serving them in various religious capacities. This is followed by a section that engages with the trans-oceanic networks of Islamic religious scholars in Malabar during the sixteenth century. We discuss the ascendancy in Malabar of indigenous ʿulama-ʾ and contextualise the unprecedented development of the production of fatwa- texts in the region. This section also examines the chief actors involved in the trans-oceanic scholarly networks and probes what might have prompted the local ʿulama-ʾ in Malabar to look for legal opinions from stalwarts from the wider Islamic world. This apart, some of the important issues that were deliberated on through the trans-regional intellectual entanglements of scholars in Malabar and overseas lands are discussed with a view to showing how local ʿulama-ʾ in Malabar tried to address and engage with the legalistic aspects of everyday Muslim life in the region.

The Dominance of Foreign Merchants and ʿUlamaʾ Owing to its physical centrality in the Indian Ocean and the availability in its terrains of some of the sought-after commodities of international trade, Malabar had attracted to its port cities merchants from various overseas trading centres (Prange, 2018, pp. 32–58). Among those merchant groups who made their way into the southwestern coast of India for centuries without much interruption were Muslim merchants emanating from the nodal points of the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. Although it is still not certain exactly from what time onwards Muslim merchants of West Asia had begun to have commercial ties with Malabar, what is evident for us from available source materials is that by the late thirteenth century most of the port cities of Malabar had the presence of Muslim settlements sizable enough to have masjid ja-miʿ (congregational mosque) and religious offices such as ima-m (leader of prayer), khat.-ıb (preacher) and qa-dı-̣ (judge) (Ja-zim, 2003, 1: pp. 516–7). Over the course of time, Muslim settlements along the coast of Malabar grew in size as foreign merchants attracted converts from among the local populations, and from their union with local women, there was progeny who later on came to be known as Mappilas (Barbosa, 1921, 2: pp. 74–6). In spite of the presence of an expanding Mappila population, the religious affairs of these settlements and their Islamic institutions were largely managed and controlled by foreign merchants, who were known as paradesis (Barbosa, 1921, 2: pp. 75–6), until the beginning of the sixteenth century. From the Yemeni chronicle al-ʿUqu-d al-luʾluʾiyyah written - 1983, 2: pp. 203–6), we come to know of Calicut’s around AD 1400 (al-Khazrajı,

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Muslim jama-ʿah (conglomeration) which took care of the religious affairs of the city’s congregational mosque and which was composed of the leading foreign merchants of the city. It is likely that similar conglomerations existed in the Muslim settlements of other port cities in Malabar as well and that they must have played leading roles in the administration of religious affairs. The result of the dominance by foreign merchants in the religious affairs of the Muslim settlements of Malabar was that foreign ʿulama-ʾ were usually preferred for the religious offices of ima-m, khat.-ıb, qa-dı-̣ , etc. The dearth of competent scholars from within the local Muslims of Malabar during the centuries under review must have added to the increased demand for foreign scholars. Ibn Bat.t.u-t.a (1997, 4: pp. 39–49) in the mid-fourteenth century speaks of the several religious luminaries he happened to meet on the Malabar Coast, all of whom were foreigners from places as diverse as Mogadishu, Oman, Bagdad and Qazwin (in Iran) and who had been serving in the roles of ima-m, khat.-ıb, qa-d-ı̣ , muʿallim (teacher), etc. in the port cities of the coast. The advantage of such foreign scholars was that they were trained under Islamic savants and experts from the Islamic heartlands, along with their fluency in the Arabic language and familiarity with existing Islamic scholarships and literature. Sa-ıd, for instance, was a fourteenth century jurist of African origin whom Ibn Bat.t.u-t.a had met at the Malabari port of H-ılı- (near Ezhimala) and who had been serving in its congregational mosque after having spent several years at various learning centers of West Asia (Ibn Bat.t.u-t.a, 1997, 4: p. 41). Similarly, ‘Abd alRah.ma-n al-Ausı- was a qa-d-ı̣ active in Malabar during the late-fifteenth century and was from among those studied under the pupilage of such West Asian stalwarts as - al-Jawjarı, - Zakariya- al-Ansa-rı- and Muhammed ibn Abı- Shar-ıf (alShams al-Dın Malaybarı, 2013, pp. 51–2). If foreign ʿulama-ʾ were considered superior in the Islamic religious offices of Malabar, how did it affect the Islamic communities evolving in the port cities of the Malabar Coast? As far as the school of Islamic law followed in the Muslim settlements of Malabar prior to the sixteenth century phase was concerned, the impression left by our sources is that during this phase multiple forms or schools of law were subscribed to by members of these settlements. The identities of foreign merchants active on the Malabar Coast reveal that they hailed from diverse geographical areas in West Asia and Africa which followed different schools of Islamic law (Shameem 2018, pp. 133–43). If we believe Ibn Bat.t.u-t.a (1997, 4: p. 49), there were even followers of Sh-ıʿ-ıte Islam in Malabar during the fourteenth century. Despite this diversity, Sha-fiʿısm appeared to have been preeminent among the Muslim clusters of Malabar. The Timurid chronicler ʿAbd al-Razza-q, who visited Malabar in the mid-fifteenth century, observed that in Calicut most of the Muslim population were of the Sha-fiʿı- school (Thackston, 1989, p. 304). This orientation of the Muslim settlement in Calicut, the most prominent port city in Malabar at the time, must have been a reflection of the general pattern in other Muslim settlements of the coast. It can be safely assumed that among the paradesi merchants active in Malabar, the majority, at least during the fourteenth and fifteenth century, - hailing from such strongholds of the school as Egypt, were followers of Sha-fiʿısm

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the Levant, and Yemen.3 If Sha-fiʿ-ı tes dominated among the paradesis, then it may be surmised that those who were employed in various religious offices especially -̣ would be followers of Sha-fiʿısm qa-dıs and entrusted with implementing and administering Sha-fiʿı te legal system in the Muslim settlements. We are informed by Ibn Bat.t.u-t.a (1997, 4: pp. 40) that at the time of his visit to Mangalore, a port city on the northern part of the Malabar Coast, the qa-dı-̣ of its Muslim settlement was - al-Maʿabarı- who was a Sha-fiʿ-ı te from Coromandel (likely from Badr al-Dın among Arab families that had migrated to the southeastern coast of India). Such -̣ ima-m, khat-ıb, etc. must have administered the Sha-fiʿı- scholars serving as qa-dıs, . Muslim settlements’ day-to-day religious affairs especially those related to the aspects of trade and commerce in accordance with the legal traditions of the Sha-fiʿ-ı school and thereby made the initial contribution to the transformation of Malabar as an abode of Sha-fiʿısm. Despite the presence and service in Malabar of so many foreign Islamic scholars and savants trained in West Asia, prior to the sixteenth century why was there almost no literary contribution to the field of Islamic law and jurisprudence? As we will see later, the sixteenth century saw the compilation in Malabar of several fiqh (jurisprudence) and fatwa- (religious ruling) texts. However, nothing of this sort is known from the pre-sixteenth century phase in Malabar. One plausible explanation could be that as they seemed to have been attracted to Malabar mainly because of paradesi merchants, foreign scholars were rarely connected to or concerned with the Mappila members of the Muslim settlements, and so were usually not confronted with queries and conundrums arising out of Mappilas’ encounter with the local cultures and realities of Malabar. In fact, it would be queries and conundrums raised by local Muslims that would form a major trigger for the formation of trans-oceanic ʿulama-ʾ networks and for the birth of several fatwa- texts from the sixteenth-century onwards. Moreover, language barriers might have added to the communication gap between foreign ʿulama-ʾ and Mappilas, thereby depriving the former of the opportunity to deliberate on Islamic legal issues arising out of the latter’s everyday life and practices.4

Indigenous Scholars’ Ascendancy and Trans-Oceanic Entanglements After the Portuguese entry into the Indian Ocean and their attempt at monopolising seaborne trade especially that of spices with diverse control mechanisms, the paradesi Muslim merchants of Malabar had to leave its port cities and relocate to safer ports around the ocean by the early decades of the sixteenth century (Malekandathil, 2007, p. 271). With the retreat of the paradesi merchants, it can be assumed that many of foreign ʿulama-ʾ in Malabar, who had been serving in its Muslim settlements under the patronage mainly of these merchants, also departed Malabar, thereby creating a vacuum in the religious leadership and Islamic legal administration of the region’s Islamic community. This vacuum, however, was not left unfilled as there was an ascendancy of the indigenous scholarly class who would soon appear to hold the positions of khat.-ıbs, qa-d-ı̣ s, muft-ıs (jurists issuing

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fatwa-s), etc. and involve themselves in the customisation and administration of Islamic law in the Muslim quarters of Malabar during the sixteenth century. By indigenous scholars we mean not just members of the Mappila community per se but also those of Arab origin whose ancestors had been living in Malabar for generations and thus were assimilated to the local Islamic community. Members of the Makhdu-m family in Malabar were of this latter type. Their ancestor had migrated to Cochin during the fifteenth century, as is borne out from the biographical notes - 2013, p. 48; on some of its members from the sixteenth century (al-Malayba-rı, Randattani, 2014, p. 110). Ah.mad Zayn al-Dın, a major figure in the following discussion, was from the Makhdu-m family and was among the indigenous ʿulama-ʾ of Malabar who played prominent roles in the formation of trans-regional scholarly networks and compilation of legal texts. Unlike the erstwhile foreign scholars, the indigenous ʿulama-ʾ of Malabar were well connected to the Mappila Muslims and their everyday lives, and so were frequently confronted with queries pertaining to Islamic legal aspects. Even when they themselves could answer the questions raised by believers, the ʿulama-ʾ often preferred to seek the legal opinions of their teachers and other stalwarts from the heartlands of Islam such as Yemen, Mecca and Egypt. At times, multiple questions were raised to one single scholar and then, compiling his legal opinions, a fatwa- text was produced. On other occasions, the same question was raised to multiple savants, answers were compiled and a fatwa- text was produced. Many fatwa- texts of these types have survived to us. The al-Ajwibah al-ʿaj-ıbah ʿan al-asʾilah al-gar-ıbah (“Wonderful Answers to Strange Questions”) is the fatwa- text compiled by Ah.mad - listing the legal opinions given predominantly by West Asian jurists Zayn al-Dın including some of his teachers to the questions he himself raised on various occa- 2012). There is yet another untitled text compiled by Ahmad sions (al-Malayba-rı, . listing the answers given by the Meccan jurist ʿAbd al-Rau-f al-Wa-ʿiz ̣ al-Makk-ı (al- no date-a).5 This apart, there are fatwa- texts which do not provide us Malayba-rı, with the details of the one who raised the question but inform us of the scholar who responded to the questions. These include the al-Fata-wa- al-zabı-diyyah ʿala alasʾilah al-ka-liku-tiyyah (“The Zabidi Fatwa-s to the Questions from Calicut”) wherein we know that it was the Yemeni scholar ʿAbd al-Rah.ma-n ibn Ziya-d who gave the fatwa-s in the year 1548 but who raised the questions form Calicut is not known (alAjwibah al-zab-ıdiyyah, no date).6 Of this category there are also untitled fatwa- texts which list the fatwa-s given by such scholars as the Meccan jurist Ibn Hajar and the ̣ Yemeni jurist ʿAbd al-Alla-h ibn ʿUmar Ba- Makhrmah to the questions raised from - no date; Ba- Makhrmah, no date).7 Malabar on various occasions (al-Haytamı, Moreover, the al-Fatawa al-kubra, the fatwa text compiling the legal opinions of the renowned Meccan jurist Ibn Hajar, also includes around a dozen questions raised ̣ form Malabar and the answers given by him (al-Haytami, 2018). Although we do not know for certain who raised questions from Malabar to these savants of West Asia, it is not unlikely that Ah.mad himself was behind the scenes in many of the cases, given his tradition of seeking legal opinions from outsiders and his close associations with the foreign religious authorities, as will be discussed below.

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Who were the main actors involved in the intellectual exchanges between Malabar and the overseas lands? No contemporary or near contemporary biographic/hagiographic writings are available for reconstructing the life and works of - Makhdu-m, the only two theoAh.mad Zayn al-Dı-n and his uncle ʿAbd al-ʿAzız logians from Malabar who could be identified from among those who had connections with the religious circles of West Asia. Yet, their own writings and those of their contemporaries give some passing references to their life trajectories, which can be confirmed from later biographical works or notes that were written often based on oral traditions in circulation among the Muslims of Malabar. It appears - (d. 1586) was born into the Makhdu-m family of scholars as one that ʿAbd al-ʿAzız - who was a renowned theologian and Sufi saint of the sons of Shaykh Zayn al-Dın in early sixteenth-century Malabar and has been popularly known as the Makhdu-m Senior (al-Malayba-rı-, 2013, p. 43; Randattani, 2014, p. 118). ʿAbd al-ʿAz-ı z went on to become the chief faq-ıh and qa-d-ı̣ at Ponnani, a port city which was located at the estuary of the Bharathappuzha river and which was emerging as a prominent Islamic learning center in Malabar during the sixteenth century (Kooria, 2016, p. 196). His outstanding scholarship in the Islamic sciences earned him the honorific title shaykh al-isla-m, and in his capacity as the qa-d-ı̣ and muft-ı at Ponnani, ʿAbd al- was often involved in giving religious rulings on various issues, as well as in ʿAzız seeking fatwa-s from the luminaries of the Sha-fiʿ-ı school of law in West Asia (alMalayba-rı-, 2012, p. 166). Although not any separate fatwa- text of his has survived to us, some of his religious rulings as well as his questions to the savants of the Islamic heartlands accompanied by their answers have been found in the al-Ajwibah al-ʿaj-ıbah of Ah. mad (al-Malayba-r-ı , 2012, p. 166, 178–9). Among those who were consulted by ʿAbd al-ʿAz-ı z for legal opinions was Abdullah Ibn Umar Ba- Makhrmah (d. 1565), one of the renowned Sha-fiʿ-ı jurists of Yemen. In one instance, ʿAbd al-ʿAz-ı z had close correspondence with this Yemeni scholar on the legal validity of certain divorce practices prevalent among the local Muslims of Malabar (al-Malayba-r-ı , 2012, pp. 178–9). ʿAbd al-ʿAz-ı z was succeeded as the chief jurist and qa-d-ı̣ at Ponnani by his nephew Ah.mad Zayn al-D-ı n who too was known with the honorific title shaykh al-isla-m.8 After finishing basic studies in the Islamic sciences from the learning centers of Malabar under the tutelage of such scholars as his uncle ʿAbd al-ʿAz-ı z, Ah.mad went to West Asia for higher studies (Randattani, 2014, p. 121). The years he spent at the learning centers of Hijaz, Yemen and probably Egypt were the turning point in his scholarly life as there he was exposed to the best minds of the Sha-fiʿı- school of his time, the enormous corpus of Islamic literature and the literary traditions of those places and savants. Among those who became Ah.mad’s favorite teachers in Mecca was Ibn Hajar al-Haytami (d. 1566), one of the outstanding scholars ̣ in the history of Sha-fiʿ-ı sm who was based in Mecca and who had to his credit numerous literary works especially in jurisprudence and disciples hailing from far-off places such as South Asia (al-Haytami, 2018, 1: p. 7; al-Sayf-ı , 2016, pp. 44–68). Other prominent teachers of Ah.mad include the Mecca-based jurist ʿIzz al-D-ı n ʿAbd al-ʿAz-ı z al-Zamzam-ı (d. 1569), the Yemeni muft-ı Waj-ı h al-D-ı n ʿAbd al-Rah. ma-n ibn Ziya-d

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- Sayyid ʿAbd al(d. 1568), the Egyptian Sufi-cum-scholar Muhammed al-Bakrı, 9 Rah.man al-Safawı, etc. After pursuing higher studies overseas, Ah.mad came back to Malabar and rendered his religious services in various localities before being finally appointed as the chief jurist and qa-d-ı̣ at Ponnani in 1586 (Kooria, 2016, p. 196). While serving in Malabar, Ah.mad still maintained a rapport with his teachers and other scholars of West Asia. He did this either by personally visiting them during the Hajj pilgrimage or through correspondence facilitated by the existing trade and faith networks between Malabar and West Asia. In the al-Ajwibah al-ʿaj-ıbah, for instance, Ah.mad speaks of an occasion when he was in Mecca and was consulted by someone asking for a religious ruling on the ignoring of Hajj pilgrimage after vowing to perform it, to which he gave an answer in the form of a written fatwa- 2012, p. 154). In fact, along with considering pilgrimage trips to (al-Malayba-rı, Mecca as occasions for spiritual enlightenment, the theologian used to make them intellectually constructive by trying to approach his teachers as well as other religious experts in West Asia and discuss with them issues pertaining to Islamic law and jurisprudence. Al-Fakihi, one of the prominent disciples of Ibn Hajar, and the ̣ - notes in the introone who compiled his fatwa-s under the title al-Fata-wa al-kubra, ductory remark to the text that what had inspired him to collect and compile his teacher’s fatwa-s was the meticulous and unique nature of the religious rulings which were given to the scholars arriving from a wide range of places like India, Yemen, Iraq, etc. especially on the occasions of Hajj pilgrimage and which he wanted to preserve for the use of future generations (al-Haytami, 2018, 1: p. 7). Apart from the abovementioned teachers of his, Ah.mad also had met in West Asia such scho- ʿAbd al-Rahma-n al-Bajalı, lars as Shaykh ʿAbd al-Rau-f, Abu- Bakr al-Ashkharı, . ʿAbd al-Rah.man ibn Fahad, ʿAbd al-Allah ibn ʿUmar al-Ajlı, ʿĪsa ibn Ah.mad alZilʿa, Muhammed ibn ʿUmar al-Zilʿa and Shiha-b al-D-ın Ah.mad al-Azharı- during various occasions and sought their religious rulings on different issues (al-Malayba-rı, 2012, p. 170). At times when he could not visit these scholars personally, Ah.mad must have sought the help of Malabar’s merchants and pilgrims visiting West Asia to carry his written questions to the scholars and bring back their answers. - and Ahmad figures in the available fatwaAlthough none other than ʿAbd al-Azız . and other legal texts of sixteenth-century Malabar as being involved in transoceanic scholarly networks, it is not unlikely that there were many other theologians who too tried to approach foreign ʿulama-ʾ during their pilgrimage trips to Hijaz or by the medium of correspondence. Ah.mad, however, stands out from among all the indigenous scholars of Malabar in the forging of intellectual connectivities across the seas as can be borne out from the sheer number of the legal questions he raised to West Asian ʿulama-ʾ.10 Why did the ʿulama-ʾ in sixteenthcentury Malabar try to look for religious rulings from West Asian scholars? Wasn’t Ah.mad’s engagement with higher studies from the heartlands of Islam an indicator enough of his merit to make his own fatwa-s acceptable to the general Muslims of Malabar? As we indicated earlier, the ʿulama-ʾ of sixteenth century Malabar had not inherited any fatwa- texts from their counterparts of the previous centuries, implying that many legalistic issues arising out of everyday Muslim life in Malabar had

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remained unaddressed. As such, it was now the responsibility of the indigenous theologians, who rose to prominence after the departure of foreign ʿulama-ʾ, to attend to those legalistic issues including the ones emerging out of new political and commercial realities in the Indian Ocean world in general and in Malabar in particular, and to put forward convincing solutions for them. There was, however, the problem of credibility: unlike erstwhile foreign ʿulama-ʾ hailing from the Islamic heartlands, the indigenous scholars did not appear to have enjoyed much credibility in the eyes of the general Muslim populace in Malabar. There seemed to have been a general perception that what was trustworthy in religious affairs was that offered by ʿulama-ʾ from the Islamic heartlands. Therefore, in their attempt to offer more credible legal opinions and rulings scholars like Ah.mad strove to seek fatwa-s from the savants in Mecca, Yemen, etc. By so doing, the indigenous ʿulama-ʾ could also enhance their own credibility in the eyes of believers whenever their legal opinions were confirmed by foreign religious authorities. That ʿulama-ʾ in sixteenth-century Malabar were concerned about the credibility factor in legal opinions is vindicated by the al-Ajwibah al-ʿaj-ıbah. In one of the lengthiest discussions in the fatwa- text, Ah.mad speaks about the fatwa- s he had gathered from various West Asian savants regarding the case of a woman who had been married to and separated from multiple men (al-Malayba-r-ı , 2012, pp. 165– 70). Before posing the question he raised and listing the fatwa-s received, Ah.mad apprises us of the particular incident and circumstance that had prompted him to contact foreign ʿulama-ʾ with a legal question. Thus, it appears that the woman in question was an Arab who had come to Cochin along with her Arab husband in the mid-sixteenth century and had later married two other persons including a local theologian of the port city after she had been estranged from her Arab husband (al-Malayba-r-ı , 2012, pp. 165–6). The complexity of her case had puzzled the Muslims of Cochin and Ah.mad was the first jurist to be consulted by them on the legal validity of her marriages. He gave an oral fatwa- to all those who approached him, and when it was notified to the people, many of them refused to accept his ruling though some assented. It was at this juncture that Ah.mad decided to seek the legal opinions of his teachers as well as contemporary luminaries from West Asia on the matter. Among those who gave him written fatwa-s were his teachers Ibn Hajar Haitam-ı and ʿAbd al-Rah. ma-n ibn Ziya-d, and the Yemeni jurist ʿAbd aḷ Allah Ba Makhramah. This apart, he personally approached, possibly on a Hajj pilgrimage trip to Mecca, around a dozen of jurists including his teachers such as Abu- Bakr Muhammed al-Bakr-ı , ʿAbd al-ʿAz-ı z al-Zamzam-ı and ʿAbd al-Rah. ma-n al-Safaw-ı , all of whom gave him oral fatwa-s. Interestingly, the responses given by all these jurists more or less endorsed the oral fatwa- of Ah.mad. We do not know whether the Muslims of Cochin eventually complied with and acted upon the fatwa- of Ah.mad which now was validated by a pool of West Asian ʿulama-ʾ. What, however, turns out from the whole trajectory of this fatwa- case is how concerned religious scholars in sixteenth-century Malabar were about the credibility factor. They appeared to have felt that Muslim believers in Malabar were more likely to

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be convinced if they were provided with religious rulings offered by or vindicated by Islamic luminaries from West Asia. What were the issues that scholars like Ah.mad discussed with the overseas ʿulama- ʾ as reflected in the fatwa- literature? A perusal of the available literature reveals that the scholars deliberated on the legal aspects of a wide array of issues concerning the everyday lives of Muslims in Malabar. They fell broadly in the categories of rituals/worship (ʿiba-da-t), economic dealings (muʿa-mala-t), marital issues (muna- kah.a-t), and criminal laws (jina-ya-t).11 Here we examine only a few of them to show how the ʿulama-ʾ through their trans-oceanic intellectual entanglements engaged with legal issues arising out of Muslims’ lives in Malabar. The issue of customs duty appears to be something that puzzled ʿulama-ʾ in Malabar and thus several questions related to the tax system of the port cities of Malabar and the persons involved in it were raised. Since the socio-political realities in Malabar were different from that of West Asia, ʿulama-ʾ in Malabar were uncertain if the customs duties levied by its non-Muslim rulers on the merchandise of Muslim merchants visiting their port cities amounted to maks that was prohibited by scholars in the Islamic heartlands.12 Thus, one of the questions that Ah.mad Zayn al-D-ı n raised to the Meccan scholar ʿAbd al-Rau-f al-Makk-ı was whether that which was levied by “immoral” people with the support of their rulers on the merchandise brought to their countries or exported from them was maks which was prohibited by Islam and which could make those who take it fa-siqs (immoral) (al- no date-a).13 What Ahmad was alluding to here was the customs duties Malayba-rı, . which were charged in the port cities of the Zamorins and other sovereigns of -̣ Malabar and in the collection and distribution of which local Muslim qa-dıs appeared to have been sometimes involved. His question, in other words, was: -̣ who were involved in their Were such taxes a prohibited category, and the qa-dıs collection fasiqs and so ineligible? To this, al-Makk-ı responded that the customs duties mentioned in the question were maks and that whoever was involved in their collection would become fa-siq regardless of whether the merchandise belonged to Muslims or non-Muslims. The concern over the issue of maks is also evident in another question posed to the Yemeni scholar ʿAbd al-Alla-h Ba- Makhrmah by someone from Malabar, probably Ah.mad Zayn al-D-ı n himself. The query was whether the non-Muslim rulers of Malabar owned what they were taking from Muslim merchants as maks on the merchandise they brought in, and if not, whether it would be sinful for Muslims to pay maks to them (Ba- Makhrmah, no date). It also had a sub-question inquiring whether those Muslims who entered into partnership with the rulers of Malabar in what was collected as maks from the merchants were actually permitted to do so, and whether such Muslims could own their share if merchants paid the maks as donations (hibah). Ba- Makhrmah responded that the non-Muslim rulers, and for that matter Muslim sovereigns, could not own what they took from Muslim merchants as maks on their merchandise. As for the permissibility of paying maks, although there was the possibility of Muslims facing humiliation, there was a precedent in that the companions of the Prophet Mohammed were not prevented

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by him from visiting the Levant for trade even though they had to pay maks to the non-Muslim administrators of the region (Ba- Makhrmah, no date). To the subquestion Ba- Makhrmah responded that it was proscribed for Muslims to buy shares of maks collected from Muslim and non-Muslim merchants. In the case of the payment of maks as donation, if merchants did so out of their own choice and will, then such donations would be valid, whereas if they donated out of fear and compulsion, then such donations were invalid. Assuming that the abovementioned fatwa-s on the issue of maks were disseminated among the local ʿulama-ʾ of Malabar through various trans-local scholarly networks, it can be said that such religious rulings must have created an impression among the scholars that the customs duties that were levied on various commodities of trade at the port cities of the Indian Ocean rim were un-Islamic. Moreover, those Muslims who were involved in the collection and consumption of the customs duties like some of the qa-d-ı̣ s of Malabar were facilitating the dissemination of a practice that was against the teachings of Islamic law. But what if the messages of the fatwa-s were spread among the Muslim merchants as well? Although many of them must have paid maks taxes willingly for the sake of their trade ventures, at least some merchants might have been tempted to evade such taxes. The instances of attempts of tax evasion by Muslim merchants in Malabar had not failed to catch the attention of local ʿulama-ʾ. In the al-Ajwibah al-ʿaj-ıbah of Ah.mad is found a question raised by him to the Egyptian scholar Mohammed al-Ramlı- in which the protagonist was one Muslim merchant who tried to evade maks duty at some port city in Malabar - 2012, pp. 197–8). The merchant had arrived at the port city with (al-Malayba-rı, his goods but was hiding them from the customs officials of the city. When he denied that he had brought any goods, the officials asked him to swear by the Quran to prove his case. Now Ah.mad’s question was whether it was allowed for the merchant to swear by the religious text to dissemble (tawriyah). Ah.mad also enquired whether the merchant was permitted to swear an oath by the local method which involved the dipping of hands in boiling oil, in case it was not allowed for him to swear on the Quran. Ah.mad also added that it had been wellproved that Muslims’ hands would not be burnt or affected if they swore on pure lies by dipping their hands in boiling oil.14 Al-Raml-ı responded that the merchant could swear either by the Quran to dissemble or by the local method of swearing - 2012, p. 198). as the safety of his goods depended on such swearing (al-Malayba-rı, Such a fatwa justifying tax evasion by Muslim merchants must have been based on the view that maks charged on the merchandise of merchants was un-Islamic. What such intellectual deliberations on maks reveal is not just how members of the Islamic community in Malabar came to perceive the customs duties levied in the port cities of the region but also how diverse the perceptions of those very members were. Scholars like Ah.mad, and probably merchants influenced by them, were of the view that what was collected as customs duties in the ports of Malabar amounted to the proscribed maks, and so were skeptical of the legitimacy of qa-d-ı̣ s involved in their collection. Others must have felt that their involvement in the collection and consumption of maks was compliant with the Sharia and necessitated

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by the exigencies of ensuring proper conduct of maritime trade and of livelihood in non-Islamic socio-political settings. Another issue of concern for Malabar’s ʿulama-ʾ during the sixteenth century was the booty arising from naval warfare and encounters. With the entry of the Portuguese into the Indian Ocean and their attempts at monopolising its maritime trade, Muslim merchants on the Malabar Coast had often to be in confrontation with them. Many of them resorted to corsairing or privateering with the support of the Zamorins of Calicut in their attempt to retaliate against the Portuguese control mechanisms on the seas (Malekandathil, 2011). This they did by invoking the - 1996, pp. 17–26). With the course Islamic ideal of jiha-d or holy war (al-Malayba-rı, of time, however, pirates began to extend their naval attacks targeting cargo ships belonging to Asian merchants including their own co-religionists (al-Malayba-r-ı , 1996, pp. 58–9). How the booty collected from such naval encounters was to be distributed by the involved parties puzzled the local ʿulama-ʾ in Malabar. We find in the fatwa- literature some important questions that demonstrate how local Islamic scholars tried to understand and address the issue of booty in Malabar which offer us an insider’s view of the Mappilas’ naval encounters with the Portuguese and other commercial groups in the Indian Ocean. In a question addressed to Muhammed al-Khat.-ı b al-Shirb-ı n-ı , Ah.mad enquired about the booty (ghan-ımah) of Malabar where there was no Muslim sovereign or efficient qa-dı-̣ who could administer the distribution of booty in accordance with Islamic law (al-Malayba-r-ı , 2012, pp. 196–7). In Malabar, Ah.mad noted in the question, the booty collected from naval battles were distributed by the owners of -̣ The warships/ boats as per their own will, not in the presence of an Islamic qa-dı. owners used to distribute the swag among themselves and the adventurers or fighters who brought them, after considering each one’s expenses and efforts. Ah.mad wanted to know what had to be done if someone happened to receive through transaction or donation something that was part of war booty. Should that be distributed among the deserving as per the Sharia though it may have been difficult to find them, given back, or spent in virtuous deeds and donations? AlShirb-ı n-ı answered that the attempt should be to distribute what the person got from booty as per the teachings of the Sharia, and if that was not possible, then the wealth should go to the bait al-ma-l (public treasury) (al-Malayba-r-ı , 2012, p. 197). It seems that al-Shirb-ı n-ı was not aware that in Malabar there was no bait al-ma-l institution for Muslims as there was no Islamic rule in the region. Another question that Ah.mad raised to al-Shirb-ı n-ı regarding booty concerned what Muslim corsairs or pirates used to seize from Gujarati merchants visiting the Malabar Coast (alMalayba-r-ı , 2012, p. 196). He noted that non-Muslim merchants hailing from Gujarat were among those who paid jizyah tax to the Muslim ruler of the Gujarat Sultanate. He enquired about the plunder from such merchants: Should they be considered as booty and distributed among those eligible for as per the Sharia or must they be returned to the merchants? To this, al-Shirb-ı n-ı responded that if the merchants were paying jizyah tax in their home place, then the plunder taken from them should be returned and that if, on the contrary, they were not paying jizyah,

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then what was taken from them would be considered either ghan-ımah or faiʾ - 2012, p. 196). What such legal depending upon the way of seizure (al-Malayba-rı, queries and responses indicate is that those Muslims of Malabar who were involved in privateering and piracy throughout the sixteenth century had the ideological backing of religious leaders who perceived and narrated the naval encounter with the Portuguese as a holy war (jiha-d) and its plunder as gan-ımah or faiʾ though they were skeptical of the how it was distributed. Such an ideological underpinning for naval encounters, however, was not unconditional: the ʿulama-ʾ wanted those involved in naval fights to spare Gujarati non-Muslim merchants and their ships as they belonged to the ethical category of dhimmi (those who paid jizyah) and so ought to be given protection rather than being attacked.

Conclusion The foregoing discussion has tried to show that Malabar during the sixteenth century had witnessed an unprecedented development of the composition of several Islamic legal literature particularly fatwa- texts which were the outcome of the transoceanic intellectual entanglements of the ʿulama-ʾ in Malabar and its overseas lands. During the centuries when paradesi merchants held sway over Malabar’s maritime trade, the region’s Islamic religious institutions and offices were dominated by religious scholars hailing from foreign lands. They were less connected to the local members of the region’s Muslim settlements and so were deprived of the possibilities of being confronted with legalistic queries and conundrums arising out of Mappilas’ life in the socio-political settings of Malabar. This probably explained why there was little contribution to the field of Islamic legal literature in pre-sixteenth-century Malabar. The situation, however, changed with the departure from Malabar of foreign merchants and scholars consequent to the entry of the Portuguese into the Indian Ocean, and the ascendancy of the indigenous scholarly class who were well-connected to the Mappila Muslims and their everyday life. Indigenous scholars like Ah.mad Zayn al-D-ı n were confronted with legal questions pertaining to a wide array of subjects which had not been addressed in the classical legal texts produced in the heartlands of Islam. As these scholars interacted with the stalwarts from across the seas and sought their legal opinions on such issues as the above-discussed maks and war booties, the ʿulama-ʾ of the Islamic heartlands were being apprised of the realities from the ‘peripheries’ of Islam and of the challenges the religion faced as it found new frontiers in the Indian Ocean world. Even when they themselves could respond to legalistic queries, scholars like Ah.mad sought to look for legal opinions of savants from West Asia because they felt that the Islamic believers of Malabar were more likely to be convinced if they were offered fatwa-s of ʿulama-ʾ from the Islamic heartlands. The regular intellectual interactions with foreign ʿulama-ʾ and the legal opinions collected from them appeared to have eventually encouraged Ah.mad to produce jurisprudence texts, most importantly Fath. al-muʿ-ın (al-Malayba-r-ı , 2004), an Arabic text devoted to the Sha-fiʿ-ı jurisprudence that would gain during the subsequent centuries much

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popularity and acceptance among the Sha-fiʿı- clusters of the Indian Ocean world and attract commentaries even from jurists of the Islamic heartlands (Kooria, 2016, pp. 193–231). Unpacking more fatwa- and jurisprudence texts from Malabar and other Indian Ocean littoral spaces can significantly enhance our understanding of the trans-oceanic entanglements of the medieval times and of how contemporary Islamic scholars tried to address the legalistic issues arising out of Muslims’ encounter with new socio-political settings.

Notes 1 The trend was begun by Fernand Braudel with his works on the Mediterranean, and then his framework was taken up by later historians such as K.N. Chaudhuri. 2 For a review of the main historiographical accomplishments on the Indian Ocean, see M. Pearson. (2011) ‘History of the Indian Ocean: a review essay’, Wasafiri, 26(2), pp. 78–85. 3 If we examine those few names and affiliations of paradesi merchants that have survived to us, it appears that a major chunk of them were from such strongholds of Sha-fiʿ-ı sm as Yemen, the Levant and Egypt. See, for instance, M. Shameem (2018), Networks of trade and faith in the Indian Ocean: a study on the Muslims of medieval Malabar. M.Phil. dissertation. Jawaharlal Nehru University, pp. 141–3. 4 Even if Mappilas could have spoken some broken Arabic especially words and phrases needed in commercial transactions, they must not have been proficient enough to convey their legal concerns and queries to paradesi scholars. 5 The fatwa- text in question is an untitled collection which is yet to be published. The manuscript I accessed has been preserved in the Azhariya Library, Chaliyam. 6 As it is not known who compiled the fatwa-s in this text, it remains of anonymous authorship and is yet to be published. The manuscript I accessed has been preserved in the Ponnani Juma Masjid Library, Ponnani. 7 The manuscripts of both of these unpublished fatwa- texts are found in the Azhariya Library, Chaliyam. 8 Ah.mad is introduced as shaykh al-isla-m in a colophon inscription found on the cover page of a manuscript of his work Manhaj al-wa-lih. See A.Z.D. al-Malayba-r-ı . (no date-b) Manhaj al-wa-lih. bi-sharh. ah.ka-m ih.ka-m al-nika-h.. Manuscript. Riyad: Maktabat Jamiʿat alRiyad. 9 Ah.mad addresses in his works such teachers of his as shaykhuna- (“our shaykh”) in contrast to those scholars who were not his teachers and are introduced by him as al-shaykh (“the shaykh”). See, for instance, A.Z.D. al-Malayba-r-ı . (2012) al-Ajwibah al-ʿaj-ıbah ʿan alasʾilah al-gar-ıbah. Edited by A.N. Ahmad. Kuwait: Dar Aldeyaa, p. 56, 57, 170. 10 Ah.mad’s al-Ajwibah al-ʿaj-ıbah itself contains about 170 questions that were raised to Islamic scholars of West Asia. 11 These are the same categories that are generally adopted in the Sha-fiʿ-ı legal texts while dividing themes. See M. Kooria. (2016), Cosmopolis of law: Islamic legal ideas and texts across the Indian Ocean and eastern Mediterranean worlds. PhD dissertation. Leiden University, p. 195. 12 Maks is a loanword in Arabic that goes back likely to Armanic meksa meaning to defraud and to damage. It was a levy usually imposed at the rate of 10% of the saleable commodities at octroi posts and was among those levies that survived from the pre-Islamic days though Islamic scholars negated its validity as per Islamic law. The collectors of maks were generally designated as ma-kis or makka-s. See Z. Ahmad. (1988), ‘Ushu-r and Maks in Early Islam’, Islamic Studies, 27(1): 1. 13 As per the Sha-fiʿ-ı law, one of the conditions of a valid qa-d-ı̣ was to be ʿa-dil—rightful. If someone was known to be committing major sins or persisting on minor sins, he would

210 Mohammed Shameem K.K.

not be eligible to be a qa-dı-̣ as he was a fa-siq (“immoral one”) and not an ʿa-dil. See A.Z. - bi-sharh qurrat al-ʿayn bi-muhimma-t al-dın. - Edited by D. al-Malayba-rı-. (2004) Fath. al-muʿın . B.A. al-Jabi. Beirut: Dar Ibn Hazam, p. 610. 14 We could not find any other source to corroborate such a claim.

Bibliography Unpublished Sources Anonymous. (no date). al-Ajwibah al-Zab-ıdiyyah ʿala al-masa-il al-ka-liku-tiyyah. Manuscript. Ponnnai: Ponnnai Juma Masjid Library. Ba- Makhrmah, A.A.I.U. (no date). Untitled Fatwa- Collection. Manuscript. Chaliyam: Azhariyya Library. al-Haytam-ı , I.H.̣ (no date). Untitled Fatwa- Collection. Manuscript. Chaliyam: Azhariyya Library. al-Malayba-rı-, A.Z.D. (no date-a). Untitled Fatwa- Collection. Manuscript. Chaliyam: Azhariyya Library.

Published Sources Ahmad, Z. (1988). ‘Ushu-r and maks in early Islam’, Islamic Studies, 27(1): 1–11. Arafath, P.K.Y. (2018). ‘Malabar ulema in the Shafiite cosmopolis: fitna, piety and resistance in the age of fasad’, The Medieval History Journal, 21(1): 25–68. Dames, M.L. (ed. and trans.) (1918–21). The book of Duarte Barbosa: an account of the countries bordering on the Indian Ocean and their inhabitants: written by Duarte Barbosa, and completed about the year 1518 A.D. 2 vols. London: Hakluyt Society. Gupta, A. Das. (1967). Malabar in Asian trade I740-I800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. al-Haytam-ı , I.H. (2018). al-Fata-wa- al-kubra- al-fiqhiyyah. 4 vols. Beirut: Da-r al-Kutb alIlmiyyah. Ibn Bat.t.u-t.a. (1997). Rihlat ibn batu-ta al-musammah tuhfat al-nulla-r f-ı gara-ib al-amsa-r wa-aja-ib alasfa-r. Edited by A. al-Thazi. 5 vols. Morocco: Academyat al-Mamlakah al-Maghribiyah. Ja-zim, M.A. (ed.) (2003–2005). Nu-r al-maʿa-rif f-ı nuzum ̣ wa-qawa-n-ın wa-aʿra-f al-yaman f-ı al-ʿahd - - al-Maʿhad al-Faransi lil-Asa al-muzaffar r wa-al-ʿUlu-m al-Ijtị -ı al-wa-rif. 2 vols. S.anʿaʾ: maiyah bi-S.anʿaʾ. al-Khazraji, A.I.H. (1983). al-ʿUqu-d al-luʾluʾiyyah f-ı ta-rı-kh al-dawlah al-rasu-liyyah. Edited by M. B. Asal and M. al-Hawali. 2 vols. Yemen: Markaz al-Dirasat wa-al-Buhoos al-Yamani. Kooria, M. (2016). Cosmopolis of law: Islamic legal ideas and texts across the Indian Ocean and eastern Mediterranean worlds. PhD dissertation, Leiden University. al-Malayba-r-ı , A.A. (2013). Maslak al-atqiya-ʾ wa-manhaj al-asfiya-ʾ f-ı sharh. hida-yat al-adhkiya-ʾ ilatar-ıq al-awliya-ʾ. Edited by H.A. al-Tam-ı mi. Beirut: Dar Al-Kutub Al-Ilmiyah. al-Malayba-r-ı , A.Z.D. (2012). al-Ajwibah al-ʿaj-ıbah ʿan al-asʾilah al-gar-ıbah. Edited by A.N. Ahmad. Kuwait: Dar Aldeyaa. al-Malayba-r-ı , A.Z.D. (2004). Fath. al-muʿ-ın bi-sharh. qurrat al-ʿayn bi-muhimma-t al-d-ın. Edited by B.A. al-Jabi. Beirut: Dar Ibn Hazam. al-Malayba-r-ı , A.Z.D. (no date-b). Manhaj al-wa-lih. bi-sharh. ah.ka-m ih.ka-m al-nika-h.. Manuscript. Riyadh: Maktabah Jamiaʿt al-Riyad. al-Malayba-r-ı , A.Z.D. (1996). Tuhaft al-muja-hid-ın f-ı baʿd akhba-r al-burtugha-l-ın. Edited by Hamza C. K.Calicut: al-Huda Bookstall.

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Malekandathil, P. (2011). ‘Criminality and legitimization in seawaters: a study on the pirates of Malabar during the age of European commercial expansion (1500–1800)’. Fluxos & Riscos (1): 55–74. Malekandathil, P. (2007). ‘Winds of change and links of continuity: a study on the merchant groups of Kerala and the channels of their trade, 1000–1800’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 50(2): 259–286. Mathew, K.S. (2016). Maritime trade of the Malabar Coast and the Portuguese in the sixteenth century. New Delhi: Manohar Publishers. Pearson, M. (2011). ‘History of the Indian Ocean: a review essay’. Wasafiri, 26(2): 78–85. Prange, S.R. (2018). Monsoon Islam: trade and faith on the medieval Malabar Coast. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Radattani, H. (2014). Makhdu-mum ̣ ponna-niyum.̣ Ponna-ni: Jumuʿattu Pallị ̣ Paripa-lana Committee. - A.B. (2016). Nafa-ʾis al-durar fı- tarjamat Ibn Hajar - Amman: Dar al-Fath li-alal-Sayfı, al-Haytamı. ̣ Dirasah wa-al-Nashr. Shameem, M. (2018). Networks of trade and faith in the Indian Ocean: a study on the Muslims of medieval Malabar. MPhil. dissertation. Jawaharlal Nehru University. - J.D. (1991). Ma- rawa-h al-asa-t-ın fı- ʿadam al-maj-ıʾ ilá al-sala-tın - - Dhamm al-qada-ʾ waal-Suyutı, taqallud al-ahka-m –Dhamm al-maks. Tanta: Dar al-Sahabah Li-Turas. Thackston, W.M. (1989). ‘Kamaluddin Abdul-Razzaq Samarqandi: mission to Calicut and Vijayanagar’. In W.M. Thackston, A century of princes: sources on Timurid history and art. Cambridge, MA: The Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, pp. 299–321.

13 ENCOUNTERING THE ‘OTHER’ Pilgrims at Sea and Accounts of Journeys to Hejaz in the Age of Oceanic Mobility Muhamed Riyaz Chenganakkattil

This article engages with the hajj narratives in the age of oceanic travel, focusing on how the hajj has influenced the trans-oceanic mobility of Muslims from various Indian Ocean regions to Hejaz, a religious cosmopolis, and how they have shaped the experiences of the pilgrims in its articulative forms of self-narratives. These narratives written from a particular worldview explicate the nature of Muslim writings and their exchanges and encounters with the Other. Putting some select narratives produced from different historical backgrounds set in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries (1870–1930), this article grapples with the role of cosmopolitanism and imperial encounters in forging the peculiar persona and lifeworld of Muslim pilgrims. I consider that the pilgrimage to Mecca serves as a connective space in which various socio-cultural and political aspects are entangled. The hajj accounts written in this period of oceanic mobility can give us ways to understand political encounters of pilgrims with the imperial Other - British, Ottoman and Wahhabi - and make sense of how Muslims articulate their experiences from their specific pilgrim habitus. Furthermore, the article analyses the potential of these ‘connected stories’ to decentre the dominant discourse on travel and how they are imbued with a decolonial possibility. Narratives written from diverse backgrounds are characterised by their deep description of pilgrim’s perceptions of various ‘Others’, especially in their encounters with the imperial and co-religionists. I would argue that the world in which hajj narratives are set is deeply personal and political, leading to a conscious act of writing the self, a pilgrim self, structured on these experiences at sea and encounters of various kinds.

Introduction An anecdote runs like this: a Sufi saint from the Indian Ocean littoral crossed the sea floating on a prayer mat to perform the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. He DOI: 10.4324/9781003300939-18

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started his journey while he was praying, looking at the image of Kaaba woven in his prayer mat. In the middle of his journey to Mecca, he was accompanied by his contemporaneous spiritual masters, who had come together to an island of Faqirs in Yemen surrounded by exquisite pearls. When the saints resumed their travel immediately after the morning prayer, the prayer mats were threaded together in the form of a sizeable sacred carpet. After different episodes, such as the failed attacks of pirates and their conversion to the religion of saints, this apocryphal narrative ends in a vivid representation of their miraculous disembarkation in Jeddah and the bewildered state of the crowd of onlooker-pilgrims in the port city. This event of wonder-making depicts an image of a journey with supernatural elements. Furthermore, it enables the contemplative reader to mentally imagine an illustrative account of maritime crossings of a Muslim pilgrim for whom the prayermat served as his ship and his meeting with his co-pilgrims from various parts of the world as well as from different mystical traditions. This anecdote is not merely an engagement with the miraculous act but a pointer to understand how pilgrim mobility adds to the repertoire of the oceanic imagination of the hajj pilgrimage. Moreover, this anecdote provides an imaginative background of the travel to Mecca in the age of oceanic sail. I take the encounters of various Sufis as an initial anchoring point to reflect on the possible connectedness of Muslims with their spiritual heartland and with their fellow pilgrims through their writings. The historiography of travel for the hajj, the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, is mainly produced from the perspective of imperial and colonial paradigms of controlling the pilgrims’ body (Bianchi, 2017; Calderwood, 2017; Choudhury, 2016; Kraemer, 2000; Rahimi and Eshaghi, 2019; Slight, 2014), surveillance of mobility (Tagliacozzo, 2014), travel regulations, and colonial administrative policies on the pilgrimage (Kane, 2015; Low, 2015). Most of the historical narratives related to the religious phenomena of the pilgrimage are primarily framed based on ‘official’ documents in the colonial archives or on the colonial perceptions of Muslim pilgrims. As a result of this narrow focus on the ‘incomplete archives’, the scholarly engagement with the history of hajj tends to deal only with ‘official/bureaucratic’ accounts, largely neglecting the pilgrims’ local/personal/religious experience. I demonstrate an alternative mode of thinking about the history of the hajj, looking at the narratives written by the pilgrims to reflect on their immediate experiences of travel with its contextual and cultural value. Doing so delinks the history of the hajj pilgrimage journey from the widely accepted epistemologies of travel writings. In this process, the community of pilgrim travellers can be given adequate voice rather than focusing on the colonial narratives of engagement with the pilgrimage. Attention to pluriversal travel accounts of the hajj can construct ‘connected stories’ rather than ‘connected histories’ as that was the primary focus of the contemporary historians of the Muslim pilgrimage. Reimagining history through ‘connected stories’ would facilitate a rethinking of questions of how the pilgrims make sense of themselves through their assumptions and perspectives. The narratives of hajj function as a tool to decolonise the hajj’s official history, and they challenge the Eurocentric imaginations of travel that deal with the exotic and the unfamiliar. I

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argue for the decolonial possibility infused in the writings of pilgrims in examining how their actual experiences of travel constitute multiple perspectives in a huge corpus of Muslim travel writings. I am intrigued by related questions of how the written experiences of pilgrims are points of ‘decentring’, and how the connected stories of the hajj act as the crossroads of sources, and the confrontation of different testimonies of travel; they create new possibilities for historical narrative. This, hopefully, will result in reimagining the oceanic travels in terms of Muslim pilgrimage and its narrative reiteration of the lived pilgrimage experiences and encounters with the Other, both Muslims and non-Muslims. Importantly, writings of the hajj consciously create a corpus of texts which primarily explores the oceanic encounters and making of the cosmopolitan self of a pilgrim. The hajj, the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, has always remained in the hearts of believers as an idea that invokes Muslim cosmopolitanism. The centrality of Mecca in the lives of Muslims constitutes a basic premise of imaginative mobility which arises from the cross-pollination of the ideas of Muslim legal discourse and doctrinal theology of Islamic rituals into Muslims’ religious corpora. Though not bound to the physical movement of bodies and their actual border-crossing to the sacred geography of Muslim communities, this essential thread of connectivity through a network of faith has generated an inner call and motivation to cross the ocean from distant regions often misunderstood as peripheral to the heartland of Islam. As “a central connective node in a web of relations which constructed the Islamic world, Mecca and Medina served as a space of encounter. This space of encounter defined communities of belonging for those pilgrims that travelled there for hajj” (Kynn, 2020). As a ritual phenomenon and religious obligation layered with its various dimensions of politics and culture, Hajj has helped the pilgrims actualise their desire. Thus, Muslims from different parts of the world have participated in mobility that has become the locus of prolific interconnectedness, of encountering the Muslim other and reimagining their positions as pilgrims. To quote Joseph Conrad: “Eight hundred men and women with faith and hopes, with affections and memories, they had collected there, coming from north and south and the outskirts of the East, after treading the jungle paths, descending the rivers, coasting in praus along the shallows, crossing in small canoes from island to island, passing through suffering, meeting strange sights, beset by strange fears, upheld by one desire. They came from solitary huts in the wilderness, populous campongs, and villages by the sea. At the call of an idea, they had left their forests, their clearings, the protection of their rulers, their prosperity, their poverty, the surroundings of their youth and the graves of their fathers.” (Conrad, 1920) This excerpt is from Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim, an imaginative account that depicts the abandonment of the SS Patna, a fictional pilgrim ship, and the telling of the stranding of pilgrim passengers on a deserted Island. It squarely brings out the believers’ desire to reach Mecca, their religious commitment in joining the crowd

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of pilgrims, their sufferings at crossing a vast ocean, and their encounters with strangers. More interestingly, it captures the mental state of pilgrims who have embarked on their journey to Mecca from various corners of the world and have left their home and nation to dwell in a spiritual heartland and conceptual landscape of Muslims. This religion-induced movement across unknown terrains in different times has provided the Muslim pilgrims with a new mode of connectivity and multiple levels of experience. This experience has generated thousands of narratives articulating the perspectives on many aspects of the pilgrimage, on the spaces they visited, and on the people they encountered and the political world they perceived. The narratives of hajj describe how a ritual contributes to the making of connected stories in which the characters are pilgrims, and subject matter is related to their multifarious subjective experiences. This, as a result, produces knowledge about the pilgrim himself or herself. It necessitates a negotiation of their identity in an intercultural encounter through the comparative engagement with the Other that generates multiple conceptions of the self while framing various tropes of similarity and difference. Through their keen observation and imagination, Muslim pilgrims produced alternative knowledge about themselves as a community of believers, with their expression of the religious and socio-political flashpoints during their pilgrimage itinerary to Mecca. Further, this knowledge produced through a Muslim literary tradition, in a way, challenges the order of hierarchy presumed in European descriptions of the oriental as part of the colonial project of distinguishing the self from the other. Scholarly engagement with works of travel that engage with Said’s idea of Orientalism (Said, 1978) ignores Muslim journeys concentrating instead on European narratives from regions where European colonialism was at its peak. The task here is not to undertake a stringent criticism of Orientalism as a concept but to explore an alternative literary discourse and its decolonial function in decentring the existing narratives on the oriental written by outsiders. Therefore, to get a sense of how the insider Muslim, the pilgrim, articulates his experiences, one needs to consider the multiplicity of pilgrim voices and how they consciously engage in describing the self of Muslim pilgrims in a contextualised way. I would argue that pilgrims to Mecca were involved in the larger project of ‘writing each other’ and deliberately attempt to narrate Muslim encounters and perceptions. There is considerable evidence regarding the proliferation of the written accounts of journeys in which the authors draw an enmeshed picture of the event. At the same time, these journeys are trans-regional, trans-imperial, and transnational movements undertaken by particular communities of believers. This analysis through a comparative angle enables us to examine the changes and continuities in pilgrimage travel and its role as a site of religious, cultural, and socio-political encounters. Firstly, taking the hajj narratives, I study a representation of Muslim pilgrims’ maritime experience of the journey to Mecca from different ports of the Indian Ocean and their depiction of pietistic practices and places and objects of encounters associated with ritual. One could argue that rather merely a

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focus on human-to-human encounters, hajj is an all-inclusive journey for personal engagement with the objects and places of the sacred and not a mere contact zone with other people from a wide range of Muslim networks. Secondly, I explore how Muslims from the Indian Ocean region, especially the South Asian connections to Arabia, meet, reflect and recontextualise their experiences of the politically turbulent period in the age of steam and print in which the believers from different parts of the world participated in unprecedented mobility to the holy places with the advent of technology. Thirdly, I take early twentieth-century accounts of the hajj to examine the possible connection between the political and the religious narrated when a new Muslim political consciousness emerged because of the anticolonial agenda chalked out by the pan-Islamic movement. These narratives help to understand the hajj as a ‘connective space’ (Kynn, 2020) for the different points of encounter and perspectives with various manifestations in different Muslim contexts. Thus, through an understanding of the transformation of the pilgrimage at different periods, one could arrive at the historical conditions and events of how Muslims interacted with each other while at the same time negotiating with non-Muslims. We will see in what follows, the extensive points of contact among pilgrims, between pilgrims and empires, and between the pilgrims and the colonial authorities. In an obvious way, Muslim pilgrimage has served as a locus of layered networks constituted of global, local and trans-regional connectedness, facilitating an engagement between different Muslim cultures while at the same time claiming a universalist egalitarianism. The narratives express a sense of co-belonging in which the distinct communities come together for a ritual action, yet with differentiation of identity, region, and culture. Given the abundance of self-writings on the hajj and their continuous efforts in highlighting the elements of co-belonging, we need to pay attention to the presence of intercultural encounters in the longue dureé of pilgrimage to Mecca from the Indian Ocean worlds.

Hajj narratives in focus I have taken five hajj accounts across six decades to analyse encounters and perceptions of pilgrims. Two of them are set in the late nineteenth century and the rest in the early twentieth century. Each of the narratives introduces experiences of religious mobility across the distinct political world. They are: (i) Hafiz Ahmed Hassan Pilgrimage to Caaba and Charing Cross (1871), the hajj narrative of a Tonk Nawab prince who was driven out of the princely province along with other subjects of the kingdom; (ii) Irfan Ali Beg’s Safarname Makkah (1896); (iii) Sultan Jahan’s Story of Pilgrimage to Hejaz in 1904 (1909); (iv) Khwaja Hasan Nizami’s Safarname ba tasweeer (1911); and (v) Amjad Hussein’s Hajj-e-Amjad (1928). Hajj narratives can be termed as personal documents which textualise the pilgrims’ journey. This textualisation happens when a travelling pilgrim attempts to making sense of his or her experiences with different perspectives. Their contents provide the reader with an understanding of the commonality of experiences and

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contextualised perspectives of the mobility and interactions between people. Juxtaposed with the relevant contexts of travel, they reflect on the conditions of the port city, happenings on the seascape, and rituals of arrival in Jeddah, finally joining the crowd of global spiritual citizens of Islam. As the narrative source of pilgrim experiences, the narratives engage with a particular lifeworld wherein the religious interacts with the socio-political. In Bianchi’s terms, politics and piety intertwine with each other. One could say that “hajj narratives [are] inherently political, drawing on iconic religious symbols to imagine new communities and sharpen identities” (Ziad, 2013); both ‘highly politicized affairs’ (Shah, 2010). The engagement with the ‘political’ is premised on how the narrative is built upon the positionality of pilgrims based on their background, knowledge, and familiarity with encountered people and cities. At times, the pilgrim emerges as an ethnographer of the community around him; a historian of cities, architectures, and art objects. These narratives are written different strata of society: lay Muslims, elites, Muslim converts, religious scholars, and bureaucratic officials. Each act of writing demonstrates different aspects of politics. Hajj accounts of the early twentieth century until the mid-twentieth century a focus on the description of the social and cultural life of pilgrims aboard the ship, the pilgrimage ritual, and the return journey. Narratives of the Hajj in the steamship era articulate the shipscapes or lifeworld of pilgrims aboard in socio-cultural terms. In the colonial imagination, travel for Muslim pilgrimage is stereotypically understood as a site of devastating hunger, the spread of epidemics and contagious diseases of cholera, and plague (Tagliacozzo, 2015). Along similar lines, narratives exposit the medical problems and resultant instances of death (Mishra, 2012). Upon their return or even during their pilgrimage, pilgrims wrote about the experiences of journeying to Mecca and picture the cultural and social geography so that future pilgrims could prepare themselves for the future. These hajj accounts discuss the material context of hajj beyond the ritual and travelling for fulfilling it. In this regard, they narrate the different objects, and places especially the space of steamship and sites of inter-cultural encounters as ‘mnemonic devices to address personal and collective experiences which constitute the ‘extreme experience’ of a believer (Chenganakkattil, 2018). Tagliacozzo notes in his work on South-East Asian’s pilgrim accounts; the hajj writings were influenced by the material context of the travel rather than merely the aspects of pious mobility (Tagliacozzo, 2013). It could be said that most of the hajj writings narrated events that are linked to the political and social scenarios of the pilgrimage phases, the pre-ritual, mid-ritual and post-ritual stages. Such narratives are based on the pilgrims’ perception of the ritual’s world in terms of societal, cultural, and political relevance and their description of its material contexts. This echoes Barbara Metcalf’s analysis of south Asian hajj literary narratives as a modern phenomenon in which the haji, the pilgrim, takes centre stage in the narratives, and the pilgrimage acts merely as a condition for the experience. The task of the writers of the hajj shapes their persona and representation of the self (Metcalf, 1990). I would question Metcalf’s understanding of the hajj narratives as a modern

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phenomenon. For her, modernity in the narratives is contingent on elements of self-writing and self-representation with an assumption that they imitate modern genres of novel or travel writing. While the self is always represented in the hajj narratives , Metcalf’s engagement tends to ignore the possible connection between the religious and literary as she attributes the secular characteristics of a modern-day genre to a genre that is deeply connected with religious emotions. The narrative’s religious world shows that the emotion of piety co-constituted with spiritual and material contextualisation helped the writers position themselves throughout the writing. Metcalf fails to see that literary competence is infused into religious writing. Metcalf fails to attend to the broader corpus of works in which writers have engaged with their ‘religious’ self, which sits alongside the ‘narration of self’ in its modern sense, as she points out. Nevertheless, the problem lies in understanding a narrative in isolation from another body of works. The other available works can give us a sense of how the religious and material world are intertwined very efficaciously.

Hajj as Muslim Global Imagination Before a detailed analysis of the narratives, it would be helpful to have a preliminary glance at the role of hajj in global history to question the colonial interpretation of global history based on the knowledge produced by western writings. What would be the stake of non-western authors in reimagining the idea of global with multi-perspectival accounts of their experiences? To go back to the anecdotal narrative of wonder with which we began and imagine a mental picture of how the pilgrims come together, meet with each other, and imagine a cartographic representation of their travels; this would be sufficient as a picture of Muslim global. I contend that hajj could be seen as a precursor to the idea of Muslim global because, as a ritual, it incorporates believers from different parts of the world, thus orchestrating a public display of the interconnectedness of communities of faith. This engenders a sense of Muslim cosmopolitanism (Alavi, 2011; Aljunied, 2017; Cooke and Lawrence, 2005) and connects them to the wider Islamic world (Aydin, 2017). One could say that for Muslims, making connections with the rest of the world depended not just on meetings and encounters with others but also with objects, architectures, and spaces that connect them to a wider Muslim religious imagination. This is because Muslim pilgrimage “represented characteristics of the origins of the cosmos and exemplified features of the collective memory of the Muslim community, thus communicating a sense of communal identification” (Petersen, 2017). Travel has been a significant way for the pilgrims to get the experience of familiarity with unfamiliar Others. With the widening spectrum of Muslim global networks and unprecedented development in the religious mobility in South Asia, Muslims from the region, in significant numbers, undertook the journey to Mecca as ‘guests of God’. They resorted to various modes of travel: walking, the pedestrian crossing of the deserts, voyaging on yachts, wooden mercantile ships, and steamships. With the advent of

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technological advancements in transportation, believers from different parts of the world could join their fellow religionists in making a more comprehensive intercultural exchange possible. It is to state that along with motives of commercial exchange, religion worked as a primary catalyst in facilitating unprecedented access to the cities of the sacred. This religious mobility was understood as a problem or threat by state officials. Barbara Metcalf rightly points out, “by the turn of the century the political calculation changed to a different concern, namely, fear of the jihad and fanaticism associated with Muslims that were so much a part of the imperial imagination. This concern led to increased surveillance of pilgrims, masked to whatever extent was possible” (Metcalf, 2014). This, in turn, caused for emergence of new laws, pilgrim passports (Singha, 2008), administrative rituals of mandatory medical surveillance and the introduction of pilgrim ship acts (Green, 2015). Given the circumstances and unprecedented mobility of pilgrims, those in power invented new modes of regulating the pilgrim, and categorised them into levels of pauper, destitute, and wealthy Muslim pilgrims (Low, 2017).

Pilgrims at Sea as a Method Sebastian Prange observes, “seas are useful analytical units to transcend national boundaries and explore history in the longue durée” (Prange, 2018). Taking a cue from the remarks by Sugata Bose, “religion, even more so than the idea of nation, proved adept at crossing seas” (Bose, 2006), I will look at the hajj as one such facilitator of that crossing. I engage with the hajj in the age of steamship, or in a broader sense, how hajj by sea has affected the experiences of the pilgrims. Hajj by sea was given significant attention in historical writings, specifically looking at new oceanic developments and techniques of regulations such as medical surveillance in the quarantine centres in the Islands at the Red Sea and administrative activities. However, there is a lacuna regarding how the pilgrims experienced those regulations, what were their politically motivated responses, how did they manage to travel by sea during the time where there were no sophisticated technologies of luxury cruise ships, how did they see the space of the ship and port city as a site of emerging new political consciousness of Islamic unity? More importantly, what was the change and continuity in the maritime hajj experience? Journeys to Mecca by sea continued to be conducted till the late twentieth century. Indian authorities discontinued state sponsorship of maritime hajj in the late twentieth century. I undertake the task of juxtaposing the colonial narrative of hajj from a historical point of view based on the archives, with pilgrims’ experiences of the contemporary period. I contend that even as the sea is an analytical tool to understand the global history of mobility and hajj, pilgrimage narratives are possible points to connect the dots in the historical analysis to incorporate the perceptions of various actors in the pilgrimage. Taking a cue from Bose’s observation that religion crosses the seas easier than do state forms, I argue that Muslim pilgrimage as an intimate, connective space constitutes a phenomenon that evokes the necessity and desirability of moving to Mecca.

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Muslim pilgrim communities perceived their journey by sea as a viable medium for trans-oceanic religious, social and political exchanges with their fellow-pilgrims from distant lands and as a feasible arena for developing new ideas and ideologies. In historical understanding, the sea has been perceived as a political space, (Kooria, 2016; Slight, 2016), whereas the travellers on the pilgrim ship constitute a community bound together by religious sensibilities and a longing for a sacred destination (Buitelaar et al., 2020). The hajj itself was a phenomenon that evoked a feeling of trans-local in the form of a desire, that need not have been accompanied by physical mobility within that sacred geography. For those who had already performed the hajj, the experience “suffuses everyday life with memories of the Ka’ba and a reaffirmed sense of trans local belonging in the global community of Muslims” (DeHanas, 2013). The travel to Hejaz itself engenders a site for mobility in which Muslim political consciousness and the cultural self of the pilgrim actively emerge. During politically turbulent times, colonial authorities tried to trace the elements of pan-Islamic and nationalistic sentiments among the Muslim pilgrims from the colonies and limit their movements. Therefore, the trans-oceanic travels of Muslims posed the challenge of increasing fervour for anticolonial and anti-imperialistic activities, especially in the wake of the Ottoman attempts to act against the British Empire in the Hejaz territories (Low, 2015). In consequence, though the colonial authority claimed management of the hajj pilgrimage, the developments in the Muslim world and its vehement criticism of the Christianised British gave sufficient reason to prevent Muslims’ excessive flow to Mecca. However, in any case, despite authorities having forged new modes of regulations and surveillance, Muslims from diverse geographies created a religious global. This emotional struggle against the colonials began from their embarkation on the ship. Various pilgrim-authors recount in their hajj narrative that the ship which carries the hajjis has become a miniature of the Muslim world or replica of Mecca, which accommodates people from diverse geographical backgrounds. Sugata Bose remarks in the same manner when he analyses the movement in the Indian Ocean. He writes, “Muslim colonial subjects who undertook the pilgrimage could never be wholly subjected to the discipline of states. The hajj turned out to be a crucial Indian Ocean activity that was a vehicle for an anticolonial current that state boundaries could not contain” (Bose, 2006). More precisely, such settings became a site of ‘communal belonging’, be it the steamship or pilgrim hostels in the port cities. Kris Alexanderson adds: “Hajjis’ intimate exposure to a varied population onboard, all nevertheless united in their religious duty to fulfil the fifth pillar of Islam, introduced them to new experiences, identities, and ideas. This exposure was further intensified upon their arrival in the Middle East, where thousands of hajjis from diverse geographic, ethnic, and economic backgrounds converged, including Muslims free from European colonial rule and others active in nationalist struggles against imperialism in other European colonies.” (Alexanderson, 2014)

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Furthermore, the metaphors of ‘family’ and ‘home’ are employed to demonstrate the feelings of ‘community’ in which every passenger aboard the ship adheres to the same faith and belief system. In the accounts of hajj experiences, the pilgrim ship was represented as a mobile hub or ‘space on the move’ with a deep political consciousness of unity and Islamic solidarity, and the port cities such as Bombay, Aden, Jeddah as an archipelagic realm of political, social and religious networks. Khashaf Ghani comments on the possible reasons why Muslims consciously invoked metaphors of community and how they visualised their desire for a global umma through the medium of hajj. Ghani argues that the dissolution of the Muslim empires in the wake of British colonialism was the point when “the Muslims from South Asia started manifesting the signs of political and social awareness as a community” (Ghani, 2019). In the modern era of new modes of exchanges, the pilgrimage to Mecca represented a viable medium to take the idea of pan-Islam further, and to some extent helped the Muslims in shaping and framing their socio-political attitudes. For example, let us consider the Hajj treatises produced from different parts of the world. One was Shihristani’s ‘dangerous Hajj in the age of Wahabism’, and the other Ismail Amritsari’s call for boycotting British sponsored Hajj and instead choosing a pilgrimage route which gave due benefits to the economy of Muslim regions. Each of them announces a need to understand the hidden politics of pilgrimage. The pilgrimage to Mecca is referred to as ‘dangerous Hajj’ given the fact of the organisers and their political motives. Taken together these two small treatises written in 1920 and 1935, respectively, represent the social and political forces which contribute to reframing a religious activity with its para-ritual elements as an appropriate site for nurturing political and social imaginaries. In this politically and socially imagined scenario of the pilgrimage, the primary goal of the believers from the various global contexts is to strengthen their identity consciousness and reimagine a politically charged community. Within the purview of political backgrounds, both at the local level in the form of regional tensions and the global level as in the political instability around the world, pilgrims responded to their various encounters in a language that would consciously frame their context-oriented experiences. The late nineteenth century was a beginning point in the production of a huge amount of literary works on the hajj; the age that Nile Green chracterises as the industrialised hajj of the masses and its counterpart, the printed hajj narrative. Different travellers certainly took different lessons from their experiences (Green, 2015). Not only did the seascape feature in the narratives, but the cities and ports became the points of narrative articulation in terms of the portrayal of their differences and similarities in language and cultural practices. Cities such as Bombay, Karachi, Aden, and Jeddah are described as cosmopolitan and pilgrim cosmopolis in their limited sense. Thus, one could discern that in outlining the cosmopolitan outlook that emerged out of pilgrimage journeys, the narrative representation of the encounters with cities is a useful tool.

Encountering the Imperial European Other In Green’s terms, critical comparisons offered by pilgrims emanates from their strange encounters with the imperial at one level, and with fellow pilgrims at

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another level. Some of the narrations of the former encounter reveal that the pilgrims had prior knowledge of the empire as a result of having served as officeholders in the British empire as clerks and collectors. While pilgrims narrate their encounters with the officials, they tend to perceive the empire differently from the Muslim pilgrim writers who lay out resistance against the colonial power in their respective regions. Despite his loyal commitment to the British in the earlier days of Tonk, Hassan emphasises the neglect by the empire of its princely stakeholders. He narrates the condition of the journey like this: “the Sir Bartle Frere with more than four hundred souls on board, ready for sea. The passengers were crowded together, cooped up in holes and corners of the ship in every conceivable stage of discomfort and confusion. The foul stench that polluted the cabin’s atmosphere is impossible to describe. And what was my consternation when, the ship already being, as I thought, crammed with living beings so that it would be impossible to squeeze another creature aboard, on the morning before we set sail, the proprietor came on board accompanied by a boatful of fresh passengers. How they ever managed to stow themselves away was a mystery to me, which was not even solved by the Government official who came on board to inspect the ship.” (Hassan, 1871) One can see the annoyance against the bureaucratic officials and the pretence of management of pilgrimage in a well-structured manner. Hassan continues the lament over the colonial authorities towards Muslims concerning the conduct of the pilgrimage to Mecca from Bombay to Jeddah as he writes: “the intolerable inconvenience of being so dreadfully crowded so many human beings shut up in that narrow space and the sickening smell from between decks. Ah! It was something indescribable. Utterly prostrated, I lay day and night on the deck, deeming that I had reached the extremity of human suffering and that my condition could not possibly be rendered worse than it was. Alas! I soon found out that Fate had something yet in store for us and that there were lower depths still of aggravated suffering than that I had already sunk. Rather than posing a stringent direct criticism of the pilgrimage administration, Hassan connects the worsened state of pilgrims with the filth, dirt, and uncleanliness of the ship, as he narrates the suffering on the ship “laden with filth which emitted a most frightful odour.” (ibid., 1871) A two decades later, another pilgrim, Irfan Ali Beg, positions himself as a loyal British subject as he is a collector of Manipur, yet he poses the vehement criticism of the empire in terms of the administrative fault lines. Beg as critical of: “the government’s Pilgrim Department set up in Bombay to deal with the annual influx of pilgrims to and from the port. Its activities in assisting pilgrims

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were hampered by a lack of information about the timings of ships’ departures, which caused much anxiety among the pilgrims who were keen to get to the Hijaz.” (Slight, 2014) Beg’s criticism arises from the angst and pain of pilgrims on their journey to Mecca and the unscrupulous treatment by the British authorities. His concern with exploitative torturing of pilgrims on the site of sanitary regulations is read like this: “no one knows anything about water, nobody has an idea where to get it. Neither officers come to us, nor do they allow us to approach them. They do not even ask about our hunger and thirst. It is a strange emotion. Whom to ask and beg for water. I saw co-pilgrims screaming out for water. This is an unusual drama that we disembarked for the safety of our physical health, and now we are being treated like this. It has struck five in the evening, but we did not get anything, either water or a beating stick. Eventually, I got to know that a little water was being distributed. When the sunset, the light gave us sight to prepare food. However, the pauper and poor pilgrims are sleeping out of hunger” (Beg, 1896). According to Beg, the travails of the pilgrimage were caused by the sheer negligence on the part of colonial authorities; Muslims were trapped in a system that saw them as passive objects. Paradoxically enough, despite his urgent call for action against the British maladministration of the hajj and his testimony on the pitiable state of pilgrims he exalts the Queen throughout the narrative with constant expressions of loyalty towards British and prayers for the eternity of the kingdom in the Hindustani regions. Towards this end, Beg covers many pages in his narrative to describe the Queen of England on the occasion of her birth anniversary and expresses his wholehearted prayer and wish for a prolonged rule of the British over his nation as he states bluntly: “God, Make her kingdom eternal”. Sultan Jahan Begum, the granddaughter of Sikander Begum, the nawab of Bhopal, set out for her pilgrimage from the princely state of Bhopal in 1904 after assigning her state to proxy administration. The Begum articulated in her hajj narrative the friendly and kind encounter with the British empire. She narrates: “On hearing from the Political Agent that my request had been granted, I began preparing for the journey and giving the necessary orders. Most of the important matters connected with the journey could only be accomplished through the kindly help of the British Government, of which mention will be made from time to time. My thanks and those of the entire Muhammadan community of India are due to the British Government for the sincere, considerate, and generous help they gave me in my religious wanderings, for the subjects of Britain enjoy today freedom, liberty, and security such as are enjoyed nowhere else. The consideration shown by the British Government to every faith and creed is wholly without precedent in history. My heartfelt

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gratitude is due to the Government for their special attention to me. It is simply the result of their kindness that I enjoyed all possible comfort and ease in my journey.” (Jahan, 1909) It is evident from this narrative that most of the engagements with the British were on the political ground of friendship which enabled the smooth functioning of the journey to Mecca. The correspondences included in the narratives show that alongside the friendly encounters Jahan Begum also criticised the carelessness, irresponsibility, and inattentiveness of the empire towards the queries of a Begum of a prominent princely state in India. Nevertheless, she reflects on the benevolence of the empire and requests attention to her requests. Upon her royal requests, the British had to rethink the establishment of quarantine centres for particular pilgrims. The British response towards the Begum’s requests highlights the status of pilgrims from the kingdom and imperial consideration for them. The requests concerned creating a particular quarantine system for these pilgrims, the complete disinfection of the train to Bombay from Bhopal, and of the ships, compliance with the Turkish regulations for the pilgrim ships and lastly, a strict agreement on communicating a report if plague breaks out in the region before the pilgrimage. When Begum reached the Yanbu, she communicated with the British officials like this: “Permit me to say that ordinary pilgrims are allowed permits to proceed to Mecca with arms. The honours bestowed on me by the British Government are not unknown to the Turkish Government. I, therefore, want you to kindly intercede for me to have these aforesaid persons [referring to the soldiers] permitted to take arms with them. For I hope that through your intercession the Porte will accede to my request, and with this hope, my said men are taking arms with them.” (ibid., 1904) One could see here how a female ruler interacted with many British authorities to make her pilgrimage to Mecca possible in ease and comfort, and how these interactions compelled the British to act effectively to boost political friendship. To elaborate on pilgrims’ perception of the colonial, the exciting encounter between a Hindustani and British officer narrated by Hasan Nizami in his Safarnama ba-tasweer (1911) is illustrative. Unlike the pilgrim-authors described before, Nizami follows an understanding of the social other as he encounters Europeans from a different perspective. He provides a sarcastic account of how the British relate to the silliest things around them, engendering disrespect and indignation towards their imperial status. “Alas, Indian Muslims lose their respect through their acts. Something unpleasant happened today. A cap worn by an Englishman came under an unknown uneducated local who was in the First class. When the Englishman came back from

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work, he looked for his cap. He was clueless that his cap would be under this heavy “statue.” The Englishman became silent after looking here and there. When this “elephant-like” man stood up, the cap was found crushed under him. The Englishman lost his temper and hurled abuses. Oh Gosh! It was appropriate (for the fat man) to seek forgiveness, but he was unaware of the incident. When I got to know, I sought an apology on his behalf. A similar incident happened in my cabin. Some Muslims from the Third-class coach came to meet me. Moreover, Rustom’s coat and trousers got stains. When Rustom Ji came back, he saw stains on his clothes. These people were present then. The poor Parsi [Rustom ji] became silent, and I was embarrassed. I sought an apology. Because of these acts, the Europeans hate us and consider us “animals” (Nizami, 1911). Another instance that strikes Nizami is how a group of African boys interact with a colonial officer. Nizami reconstructs the incident for his reader to give a tinge of narrative importance on how the symbolics of strength, power and ability work regardless of the race and creed of the person. The instance woven around the three characters of English, African and a pilgrim is a similar representative of pilgrims’ possible thoughts on the ‘colonial’. Nizami puts it like this, “When we returned and started our journey on the ship, a boat dhow boy asked an Englishmen, drop the coins to the river, I will take it out. Thus, the Englishman threw the coin, and the boy immediately dived into the river and brought the coins back, holding them in his mouth. When he reached close to the ship, the dhow man got the one rupee like the reward for four persons. Then he told in fluent English: Oh master, now you jump to the river, and I will toss the coin, and bring it to me. Upon hearing this, the English master started laughing”. Nizami sees courage in the African boy, which changes his conception of subjecthood to the empire, and he identifies an inability in the colonial master and overemphasises the strength in the African boys. On another occasion, Nizami protests the lack of promised facilities in the ship and argues with a fellow traveller saying, “I said that Englishmen are not so poor, that they will run out of their wealth. They asked like this, why did the English leave their land and come here? This kind of perception has been prevalent among these people. In a different approach to justify his response to British colonialism, Nizami engages in an immediate sarcastic conversation with some African pilgrims. He says, “I asked one of them what his name is? He responded, ‘Noor’ (Light). I said, your name is Noor, but your colour is too black. The effect of Kufristan (Land of Infidelity) has darkened the light” (ibid., 1911). Here, Nizami, in choosing the word ‘Kufristan’, a word that denotes the different world of non-Muslims, has attempted to expose the colonial impact and its presence itself on the lives and perceptions of the people in the Indian Ocean littoral. For him, the colour of his skin represented a view which approaches the problem of colour from a different perspective which is of making the colonial as the reason for lack of ‘Noor’, which in some sense of religious concept can be understood as the presence of moral good in a person. The experience of Nizami with the British is depicted more clearly in the following episode from his narrative:

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“Today morning for an hour, I had a conversation with Basra’s British Consul General regarding global Muslims, especially Turkish Muslims. He speaks good Persian. He is concerned about the helpless state of Muslims. Sultan Abdul Hameed was mentioned. The General said, “Albeit, he was not a good man. However, he was one of a kind. Furthermore, now with the establishment of the Parliament, every Turk has become Abdul Hameed. They do not consider anyone worthy in front of them.” I said, “In your opinion, has there been any progress for the Turks because of the Parliament?” The General replied, “In my knowledge, they have not progressed an inch. They are just into coffee addiction and smoking tobacco. They boast a lot but seldom act. Their plans are to establish the railroads, tramways, and flights on each street. Nevertheless, they do not think the materials needed to build this infrastructure are out of their reach. The Turks are only a war community. Militancy is pervasive in each of its members. It is a good thing, but society progresses only through trade and labour. The foundational roots of Turks are strong because of the war, only which can cement their roots. But not an inch of progress. Not even one Turk has the capability to organise trade, which is essential for them these days. I find this progress in Indian Muslims. I have expectations from them that they will reach their destination before the Turks can. Because progress always follows from humility coupled with the willingness to learn. The Turks, intoxicated by their power of Empire, imagine themselves as the knowledge possessors. And they do not do anything.” I think the Counsel General’s views about the Turks are based on the misconceptions prevalent in Europe” (ibid., 1911). According to Nizami, the Britisher in the conversation, Francis Crow, was belittling the Turkish to convey to the Muslim pilgrims from different parts of the world his vision of an anti-Turkish or anti-Ottoman sentiment. To do this, Crow characterised the Hamidian Regime, ruled by Sultan Abdul Hamid, as inept and an inexperienced empire. The primary intention behind spreading anti-Ottoman propaganda was to give the British a foothold in establishing a trade monopoly through the lands of Arabia. Nizami challenges the perceptions held by the British consul as they come from the European misperceptions about the Turks. Similar to the descriptions given by Beg (1896) on the lack of administrative attention to the pilgrims, Ahmed Hussain Amjad’s, a Deccan pilgrim from Hyderabad, “Hajj-e-Amjad’, an Urdu hajj narrative with a mixture of poems and prose, narrates a story with a torturous event of medical surveillance in the quarantine centres under the authority of British rule. Amjad writes, “we were asked to remove our clothes and [were]naked in a bathroom. Our belongings were fumigated, and we were given a fumigating shower” (Amjad, 1928). This incident, quite like Beg’s narrative on the scarcity of drinking water, shows the unscrupulous acts and behaviours towards pilgrims perpetrated by colonial authorities. In his own words, he describes this context metaphorically as ‘the festival of madmen’ (majzoobon ka mela): saare kapade utar gaye hein; khali ek khoul hogaya hoon. Hajj se pahle hi Kamran me; haji Bahlu-l hogaya hoon (All clothes are removed; I have become a mere skeleton. In Kamran, before the pilgrimage itself; I have become

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haji Bahlul) (Amjad, 1928). The picturisation of the forced encampment experience at the quarantine centre likely conveys how the sanitary administrators treated the Hindustani pilgrims. In the colonial archival records, one could see the stereotypical image of the pilgrims as carriers of “filth, dirt and contagious disease”. To prevent infectious diseases, the British established these quarantine centres. For Amjad, this treatment appears like the treatment of madmen in the lunatic asylums. The comparison of nakedness with madness, expose how the British approached the pilgrim body and its corporeal treatment. The metaphorical analysis of the pilgrim as imprisoned madman and further as a figure of Bahlu-l, [a wandering devotee of God who left “his wealthy life wearing rags” as the consequence of the forced crackdown on him imposed by a ruler of his time], displays the bitterness towards the treatment by the authorities. This is clearer in his lament over the complete removal of clothes from the pilgrim’s body and the resultant experiences. In this selective use of the image of Bahlul, Amjad might have indicated the ill-treatment experienced by pilgrims and torturous attitudes of the colonial officials. To cite another instance from the narrative, Amjad employs ‘Tankistan’ within quotation marks to imply an interesting sarcastic expression denoting the condition of pilgrims and their ship of Inglistan. It accounts for an understanding of how the English used its maritime monopoly of pilgrimage transport to pack the ship with an excessive number of pilgrims. Owing to this, the pilgrims could not move from one space to another for even basic needs, which caused diseases unprecedented. Amjad narrates, “Ship is too crowded. Not even an inch of space to move across. Captain is hard-hearted like Munkar Nakeer. Was it tankistan or Qabaristan?” (ibid., 1928). The pilgrim recollects his memories of the ship as a place where the space is given measured and calculated without being given sufficient place to breath enough. Another metaphorical usage to highlight the special narrowness of the ship Amjad uses the word ‘Qabaristan’, which means a graveyard. He compares the ship captain to the angels of interrogation and punishment according to the Muslim theological imagination of the other-worldly. The apparent condition of pilgrims compared to the extreme experience of death, torture, and punishment, as expressed in Amjad’s words, connotes mal-administered pilgrimage transportation. “On the third day, the ship reached Karachi. We travelled with ease to Karachi. Upon reaching Karachi, nine hundred pilgrims swept the ship like a flood. Not just one or two pilgrims! Mostly Bukharis. Now, the pilgrims have been given a small inch of space. Thank God; fortunately, it was not the season of summer. Otherwise, the breath would have finished. It is only the crowd of Bukharis visible inside the everywhere of the ship. The ocean of water beneath us. Felt suffocated due to the dirt and stinking smell. Captain comes every day. He brings more Bukharis and makes the space narrower.” (ibid., 1928)

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Encountering the Ottoman Other On another end of pilgrimage administration, the Ottoman Empire controlled the Hejaz. Especially in the regions of Hejaz, the Ottomans exerted their power to present the pilgrimage as smoothly organised, which led them to implement new developments in the region. For Muslim pilgrims from the Indian Ocean littoral, Ottoman Turks were represented as the political saviour of the Islamic faith. Hassan, in his exile hajj in the 1870s, writes on the army and Pasha of Mecca, its commander, on the shereef of Mecca, and his role in the administration of justice in the Hejaz, thus reinforcing the power of Ottoman sultan in the holy sites of Muslims. Hassan recollects his first encounter with the Ottomans on Arafat, an important place for the Muslim pilgrims to commune. He visualises the arrival of pilgrim caravans and the procession celebrating the arrival of many pilgrims from different parts of the world. In Hassan’s words: “The Pacha and the High Shareef of Mecca repair in great state to Arafat, accompanied by troops, artillery preceding and cavalry following them, and guns being fired at intervals the whole time the procession is on the way. Their tents are pitched in front of the hill, in the centre of the plain, and, seated within, the Shareef receives, with great honour and respect, the letter which is annually sent to him. By the Sultan, through the superior official of the two kafilas.” (Hassan, 1871) In this way, Hassan observes the political engagement of the governor of Mecca with the Sultan by showing the exchange of imperial order in the form of letters conveyed through the arriving caravan. More than describing the exchange of the letter as one of the ways of the pilgrim expression of the encounter with the Ottoman, he further picturises how the Ottoman rule in Egypt exists and its role in the pilgrimage management. As an all-pervasive account of the caravan arrival, Hassan explains the royal procession and the ceremony of Mahmal arrival [Mahmal is a sacred equipage carried by the pilgrims from Egypt to Mecca on the annual pilgrimage. As I call it, a political ritual originated in the early periods of Islam.] For him, this ceremony itself represents the strength of the Ottoman made possible through the organisation of the pilgrimage ritual. The arrival of global Muslims to Mecca and Ottoman authority over Hejaz are depicted in his narrative like this: “The caravans consist of several soldiers, cavalry, artillery, and infantry, and all the pilgrims that assemble, both by way of Egypt and Syria and from Persia as well. The principal man in the kafila is generally entrusted with the new covers, the outer and inner veil or curtain of the holy Caaba, which the Viceroy of Egypt sends annually to Mecca, in obedience to the Sultan’s orders. The same functionary also brings the heavy sums of money which are allotted for expenditure at Mecca at the different seasons.” (ibid., 1871)

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Like the arrival of Mahmal, Hassan highlights another instance in which Kiswa, the sacred curtain of Kaaba, is seen as the political symbol of Ottoman authority. For him, the political figure of the Ottoman was expressed on the sacred cover as it was inscribed with names of the sultans from the Ottoman empire, as the sponsors of the hajj pilgrimage for the entire Muslim world. Hassan encountered the Ottomans in the textual expression of their political legitimacy on a sacred object covering the entire Kaaba. As a Hindustani pilgrim under the British Empire, Irfan Ali Beg reflects on the status of fellow-Hindustani pilgrims in the land of the Ottoman empire. For him, it seems that the Indian Muslims are always disregarded as poor Others and are the victims of institutional negligence, owing to their status as British subjects. Historically, it is seen that, at least from a prevalent perception across the Muslim regions, the Ottomans served as a locus of connection between various Muslim subjecthoods to put them under a particular rubric of political authority of Muslim faith. With a comparison of Indian Muslims with Ottoman Muslims subjects in terms of politics, Beg says: “The fact is that the Indians in this country are helpless. The Govt of Osmania, if for the sake of people in general issue orders, the Indians cannot be benefited by them. As the carrying out of the said orders is in the hands of the servants of that kingdom, the benefits are limited to the subjects of that kingdom only. Up to the present moment, I got no opportunity to find out if the Hindustanis can enjoy the same privileges here as the subjects of the Government of Osmania do. It does not matter if a subject of this Government has no clothes on his person, notwithstanding that he has weapons around his waist. However, look at our chicken-hearted Indians who tremble to utter the name of arms, and their timidness is due to their government having prohibited them generally to wear arms.” (Beg, 1896) In this attempt, he places the Indian Muslims as the ignored Muslims as they are not benefactors of the Ottoman empire, as he observes that they are deprived of basic privileges for the survival of pilgrims in the Hejaz. Showing an Ottoman bias towards its non-subjects, the foreign pilgrims, Beg challenges the figure of benefactor for the Muslim community typically used to describe the Ottoman empire among Muslims around the globe. Consider the stereotypical image of the Ottoman among some Muslim elites who work associating with the British. He depicts Turks as armed and prepared for the war even if they have no proper clothes on their bodies. This is somehow perpetuated by the British to tarnish the image of the Ottoman as the helper of Islam and thus to portray it as a war community. Beg narrates his first encounter with the Ottoman in Mecca through a notice pasted on the entry gate to the sacred precincts of Haram. This notice primarily addresses the pilgrims coming from faraway places like Java, Malaya and India. After providing a complete translation of the notice, he

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criticises the idea of Ottoman patronage of Muslim pilgrimage and shows its limitedness and bias imbued in its actualisation. Beg writes: “The sympathy for Islam and its patronage is oozing out of this notice, and it is just as it ought to be. But, looking at the state of Indian Hajis, I find some occasion to pity, and I think that it is not out of place to regret that the Turkish power is not yet fully aware of the circumstances of the pilgrims who visit the sacred city from regions and places far away. Else they would have done much more to clear the way and to protect the lives of Hajis than to save them from mere pecuniary difficulties.” (ibid., 1896: 147) The Ottoman imperial other, which Beg encountered through a notice has become an object of immediate criticism after his bitter experiences of Ottoman attitudes towards Indians in Hejaz regarding extraterritorial belonging. Nevertheless, Beg defines the difference between the Ottoman and Indian through observing the pilgrims throughout his journey. His visual encounter with Ottoman pomp and the political procession takes us back to what Hassan described as the political life of the Ottoman sheriff and his soldiers in Hejaz. On the occasion of the pilgrimage sermon given at Arafat, Beg encounters the Ottomans in all their political pomp and public display of their military power in front of the Muslim pilgrims from across the globe in order to showcase Ottoman strength and project political legitimacy. He picturises this instance with the following details: “The pomp of joy which was displayed by the army of Sultan at the time of finishing the sermon is never to be forgotten from the mind. Within a space of three miles, there were perhaps ten cannons whose roars were renting the sky and whose smoke had all mixed with the atmosphere. They impressed the terror of Islam in every mind. From the officer down to the camp followers, the Turkish army were all clad in Ihram or pilgrims’ white garb, were bareheaded and were armed with weapons. Their uniformity had become a special uniform for them, and their protection of the creatures of the creator was itself an adoration to God.” (ibid., 1896) Although Beg is critical of the Ottoman management of the pilgrim affairs, he has clearly explained how a Muslim empire tries to enter the hearts of pilgrims using the exhibition of political power, thus acting as a protector of the Islamic faith. It helps impress an image of a politically strong empire in the pilgrims’ minds. This impression acts as a viable medium for constructing different images of the Ottoman. Beg identifies a uniformity in this Ottoman political act. For him, this political act might ensure the protection of entire Muslims, and all activities meant for the protection of pilgrims might be considered a virtuous act of worship. These two narrative instances by Hassan and Beg could be represented as a typical

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example of the Indian pilgrims’ encounter with the Ottoman. The most typical in the narratives is how the Turk soldiers perform their political show of protecting the caravan en route to Hejaz from different parts and from Mecca to Medina to visit prophet Muhammad’s sacred tomb. The experience of Sultan Jahan in 1905 explains the intervention of Ottoman soldiers with the affairs of royal delegates of Bhopal, especially in their readiness and strenuous efforts to create a protective wall against the attacks of Bedouin Arabs. Like Beg, Sultan Jahan chose to comment upon the negligence of a Muslim government towards the plight of Hindustani pilgrims. These three historical instances of the pilgrimage reveal a trend of literary writings adopted by Muslim travellers. Their imagination has always been imbued with the distinctive drawing of the Muslim other, especially the other’s function in the protection of pilgrims in Mecca and other Hejaz regions. Whereas the previous authors, Hassan (1871), Beg (1896), Sultan Jahan (1909), are concerned with the exposition of the political pomp of the Ottoman, Khwaja Hasan Nizami (1911) highlights two crucial instances in his narrative to visualise the Ottoman presence in the pilgrims’ port cities, and in sacred cities. Nizami gives these instances advising caution on how the British perceive the Turk engagements with the Hindustani pilgrims with regards to the political manoeuvring of the Ottomans in the land of colonial empire. The focus of Nizami’s account in the following excerpt allows us to reflect on the Muslim imagination of the extraterritorial religious and communitarian allegiance to the Ottoman at one level and territorial political allegiance to the British at another level. Nizami discusses the conflicts in 1911 as the harbinger of a new world political order. To do this, Nizami mentions the meetings with Jaffar Bey, a newly appointed Turkish consul general at Bombay, through his continuous discussion with him. The conversation with Jaffar Bey in which he takes up ‘Great War’ to engage with the Muslim condition in the Turkish lands and to know the violent conflicts and losses incurred on the Muslim lives. He narrates: “For two days, there were constant meetings with Jaffar Bey to discuss the ‘Great War. There were good discussions on Turkish Islamic and dervish topics for about two hours. It has been only fifteen days since Jaffar Bey started working on his duty as consul. He is too slim bodied, but he is of great strength and might. He does not know any languages other than Turkish and French. However, he conversed with me with the help of his deputy. On the first day of our meeting, Jaffar Bey and I had seen a card that belonged to an intelligence officer, so to speak, a spy associated with the British Government. In a talk with that officer, I had to be very cautious. Time and again, I had to prove my loyalty to the British.” (Nizami, 1911) By portraying Jaffar Bey and his talks as the reliable source of information, Nizami constructs some of the episodes in his narrative on the wealth of knowledge possessed by the Ottoman on the matters of war, on the issues of political turbulence

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in the Balkans, and in the Italian and French territories. The World War was yet to happen - in 1914 - three years after Nizami’s journey to Hejaz. After long hours of exchanges on Hindustani Muslims and their relationship with other religious communities, Nizami recalls Jaffar Bey’s advice on loyalty to the British authorities and an expression of empathy (hamdardi) on Indian Muslims under that authority. This states that Muslim pilgrims or travellers in general, in the early 1900s were always targets of suspicion in the eyes of colonial rulers because of the increased political expression of loyalty to the Turks and the idea of Ottoman Khilafat. Nizami recounts his encounter with a sheikh haram, a religious figure of Hejaz. He insistently talked about the inactiveness of the Ottoman government regarding the establishment of a global framework for Khilafat. Concurrently he emphasises Mecca and Medina as two potential centres for disseminating a Muslim political concept. He suggested to the Sheikh that every Muslim region in the world accepts Turkey’s Khilafat, and they collectively agree that the Sultan of Rum is considered to be their religious representative. Yet, the concept lacks vigour lacking a pragmatic approach to the problem. In his words, it is a useless idea unless it is given a “practical manifestation” (Bose, 2006). For this reason, Nizami proposes, the Ottoman rulers should make an intensive relationship with the pilgrims and intervene in their affairs according to the religious need and concerns. For instance, Muslims in some countries have different perspectives and conflicts of opinions regarding the problems they encounter. The Ottoman Khalifa should give a clear-cut order to solve these problems and unite them under the unique banner of Islam to avoid further complex political negotiations. Furthermore, he suggests to the Sheikh that it could be implemented by establishing a house of Islamic affairs (dar-ul-iftaa) in the region of Medina, where the diverse problems of the entire Islamic world can be addressed promptly by providing the relevant solutions. Such an institutional system can be extended by setting up a department of communication that enables us to learn the religious issues of the Muslim world. If the Muslims of any country experience some difficulties concerning their religious existence, this department would be able to address them through a proper channel. Apart from this practical approach, Nizami notes, there should be a two-part process of allegiance-making to the Ottoman Khalifa. Firstly, through the medium of Khalifa’s representatives from different parts of the world, every pilgrim can proclaim their allegiance to a Muslim institution outside their national and cultural context. Secondly, those pilgrims who have sworn allegiance to him in Hejaz should be given the responsibility of proclaiming the concept of Khilafat among their countrymen. However, this allegiance should be necessarily devoid of any intervention in the national and political matters of the countries where pilgrims come from. Rather, it is an oath-taking of complete obedience to the divine commands, sacred tradition of the Prophet, and the Caliph’s orders in the matters of religion. In sum, an obedience to theological matters of the Islamic faith is the kernel for setting up allegiance to the Ottoman. Therefore, seeking extraterritorial religious sovereignty is possible. As a response to whether the language could hinder

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communicating the message, Nizami explains the role of linguistic diversities of pilgrims as a feasible way. For instance, Javanese and Hindu pilgrim guides should convey the message to Javanese and Hindustani pilgrims. Since the pilgrim guides are dealing with pilgrims from linguistic belts, the possible solution would be to find ways to translate the message most easily. Nevertheless, this practical manifestation of communicating an Islamic message could be of concern for the colonial authorities. Nizami reveals that if religious matters are kept as the foundation of these activities, no non-Muslim governments will be suspicious. Even if yet the suspicion remains, it should be understood that non-Muslim rulers always had looked at the Muslim pilgrimage with the eye of suspicion or paranoiac fear and found that the hajj has the potential to be subversive; a dangerous conspiracy against the non-Muslims. Given the circumstances of Nizami’s travel to Mecca, one can see how he takes up the religious power vested in Ottoman Khalif and its utility in strengthening the Muslim faith. The pilgrims before him mostly related their encounters regarding the Ottoman based on their experience but not with a keen eye on how such Muslim religious power can be utilised to create a universalistic religious thought across the globe. They saw the sovereign power of the Sultan in each of their encounters with the pilgrim caravan. Nizami consciously evokes a need for unification of Muslim countries’ fragmented sovereignties to a more unified religious sovereignty propelled by a Muslim caliphate imagination by a giving it a practical apparatus. Yet, to mention a historical fact, the claim for the Caliphate was suppressed, failed, and it led to the establishment of another political authority to look after the affairs of Muslim pilgrimage. Though not a direct contact with the Ottoman, there was another kind of encounter with ‘Ottoman’ with its post-imperial presence in the memories of residents of Hejaz. Amjad (1928) meets a group of people who respectfully approach him and engage in a cordial relationship. This was because these people who were subjects of the Ottoman empire had got financial support from the rulers of Deccan. He says the Government of Nizams was actively involved in providing pecuniary assistance to the Hejaz people. Looking at these people, he thinks about an imperial contact between them and recollects how a government in Deccan was constantly helping the administration of pilgrimage. I would characterise this mode of encounter with ‘Ottoman’ as a memory encounter in which the Ottoman and its collaborations with Deccan are remembered through the memories of people around him. Given that his hajj happens in the period of the Wahhabi kingdom, he laments the absence of such philanthropic activities in the current time as he states, “now not even a single penny does come to this place from any part of the Islamic world” (Amjad, 1928). He calls Deccan and its peculiar status in the eyes of the Hejazi community as the ‘shadow of God’ (dhill-ul-Allah) “who rained the shower of mercy in the drylands of Hejaz, and who, through Ottomans, made the poor Muslims rich and wealthy” (ibid., 1928). In the following section, I highlight how distinctly the pilgrim viewed the pilgrimage and orchestrated their narrative of encounters with this new religious power in Hejaz, namely Wahhabi.

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Wahhabi Encounters After the second decade of the twentieth century, pilgrims encountered a new Hejaz with its altered and transformed representation of power in the hands of Wahhabi rulers. In this period, the encounters of pilgrims with the political authority of the host nation were typically characterised by a critical turn in pilgrims’ approach and expression towards reformist religious innovation under the rule of Ibn Saud. He was called a ‘progressive monarch’ who, with the help of the British, had taken on the helms of sacred cities after several centuries of Ottoman authority over Hejaz. This had been a significant turn contributing to the diversified experiences of pilgrims from different sectarian communities. I show two distinct ways in which the political plays a major role in understanding religious reformism propounded by the state. After the collapse of the Ottoman empire in 1921, the Saudi ruler had ventured to undertake propaganda of religious reformism or as the opponents of Wahhabis call it a dangerous agenda for eradicating religious objects and symbols from the sacred geography of Muslims. Pilgrims saw this evacuation of religious iconography as a political project of undermining the traditional Islamic practices of shrine visitation and intermingling with pious Muslims and instigating an orthodox kind of Islam for the global Muslims. Two, an encounter with an emerging religious figure in the Saudi state as the protector of holy shrines. For a more elaborative understanding of the two ways of encounter, I pick some narrative instances from Hajj-e-Amjad. Firstly, Amjad narrates the instance of an emotional response on his visit to the graveyard of early Islam’s figures, a Najdi (referring to a follower of Wahhabi religious ideology) inquired him about the reason for his crying. Amjad responded: “We are deeply sad about your acts. In our Hindustan, domed structures are erected even on the tombs of less famous saints. You have broken the hearts of lakhs of Muslims by destructing [sic] these old sacred architectural monuments of noble people.” (Amjad, 1928) This moment in the narrative comes after Amjad’s visitation to the destroyed historical monuments to show the problem of the Wahhabi community with their reprehensive innovations, and their attempt to eliminate the symbolic markers of Islamic tradition. Secondly, Amjad depicts the royal arrival of the King to the sacred precinct. To do this, he remembers a tumult that took place in front of the door of Kaaba as a resistance to the present rulers of Hejaz. The scary state of an unpleasant incident is described like this, “earthquaking-like thudding sound shook the sacred place. The pilgrims who were standing fell to the floor, those who were sitting were stampeded, those who were stampeded were smashed under the feet of others, heads collided with and against each other, hand and faces were injured. All and sundry ran amuck out of

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the fear. Everyone is loudly pronouncing the final words of Shahada” [refers to the words of allegiance to the divine and prophetic tradition] (ibid., 1928). In trying to understand the actual account of the tumult in Mecca, he conjectures the incident as a war and as firing based on the pilgrims’ various perceptions and interpretations of ‘what happened in Mecca that day’. After reaching Mecca, he witnesses a political clash with the ruler of Hejaz. He records it like this: “A frenzied pilgrim created much tension in the region of Mecca”. Amjad recollects this experience in a section on ‘day of Running, day of the war. Doubting the site’s sanctity and questioning the ‘secure region’ as proclaimed in the Holy Quran, he articulates the chaotic situation of firing and conflict between pilgrims. He ponders why a place that is supposed to be ‘apolitical’, and a haven for the believers has become a place of chaos. He writes about an interesting instance of a rebel pilgrim who swirled his sword, standing atop a citadel, shouting out and speaking against the activities of the current government as an outcry of rebellion against the politico-religious positions laid out by the government. The background of this explosive situation is described further with the arrival of King ibn Saud to the courtyards of the mosque for a grand congregation of Muslims. The military officials cordoned him. Upon seeing this, pilgrims panicked and started running madly to protect their lives. From these two incidents, one can see how some non-conformist pilgrims looked at the people in power and saw the reformist acts as a threat to the sacred legacy and traditions. In this sense, pilgrims were involved in resistance against the political authority of Wahhabis. After the collapse of the Ottoman empire, pilgrims from the Indian ocean regions had to deal with the state of affairs in the Wahhabi kingdom, and ponder how to restore the traditional Islamic markers to the land of Hejaz, and resist the ‘cultural policing’ (Jaffrelot and Louër, 2017) of the Saudi rulers towards pilgrims. Each of the narrative threads connects to a particular point of the politics of religious reform under the rubric of Wahabism’s homogenisation project that emerges from its rigid ideological structure. Fascinatingly enough, the narratives produced in the wake of Wahhabi propaganda have grappled with these encounters of rigid religious politics and its barbaric actions.

Conclusion In his studies of South Asian Muslims, Francis Robinson demonstrates this characteristic as ‘self-instrumentality’ (Robinson, 1999). This representation of the self and instrumentality of the self of a pilgrim takes place at various possible junctures. I highlight a few points of reference to make the reader understand what constitutes the making of self of a pilgrim in a close relationship with the Other. This ‘Other’ could constitute multiple characteristics. I identify three such characteristics. Firstly, I discuss ‘understanding the Muslim Other’(Lambert-Hurley, 2006) as an initial point to arrive at how Muslim pilgrims themselves perceive the other though they are situated under the same religious rubric. Secondly, I take encountering the imperial Other to explore questions of political vulnerability, authority, and criticism by chalking out different forms of encounters within Muslim global imagination, from

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Ottoman imperial authority to British subjecthood framed under the unique perception of pilgrim subjectivity. Thirdly, I relate how these encounters create a sense of cosmopolitanism based on the experiences of pilgrims in their specific spatial-temporal context. This produces a rupture and dissolution in our conventional understanding of Muslim cosmopolitanism, which proposes a heightened sense of co-existence within which the variegated identities and social imaginaries stand as markers of perspectival conflict in each pilgrim-writers’ understanding of the people and culture. There are two lines of inquiry for understanding or redefining the pilgrim self against the various Muslim others. One is the question regarding Muslim universalism, and the other is a query of what is the Muslim other in the narrative world of hajj. Firstly, it hints at the situation related to the pilgrimage journeys in the colonial time and how the religionists perceived their travel as a movement into the seamless array of encounters with their co-religionists from other parts of the world, and their quest for religious universalism while at the same time exposing a rupture in the presumed universalistic tendencies in the Islamic context. Understanding the narratives of the hajj as writings from ‘the margins’ about the journey to the centre, which is Mecca, the conceptual landscape of all Muslims (Shah, 2010), could unearth the various perspectives within the Muslim literary imagination. This would offer new meanings on the religious mobility, which turns into an arena of encounters. In this encounter with Muslim Other and imperial Others, pilgrims could nurture the political consciousness and generate a sense of transnational belonging. Given that the hajj is a generator of contact zone on the move and with the ideal purpose of making a global congregation of Muslims possible, it accommodates people from diverse backgrounds to take the form of a global event. It gives a sense of Muslim globality as it gathers a spatially distanced group of believers to the heartland centre of their Islamic faith. It increases a sense of Muslim solidarity as part of its universalistic aspirations. However, while at Mecca and other spaces of encounters, the fellow citizens or fellow South Asians feel a sense of the ‘local’. One thing that might be apparent here is that every space is deeply cosmopolitan while intensely local. The sense of local in the cosmopolitan spaces emerges profusely through the narrative representation of the self in contrast with the Other. Barbara Cooper, in her analysis on the Muslim pilgrims to Mecca, remarks, “globalization (or even cosmopolitanism for that matter) does not annihilate locality: cultural forms at more proximate scales are given heightened, not reduced salience with globalization” (Cooper, 2002). While cosmopolitan consciousness imbued in the universalistic aspirations of Muslims, the communitarian and identarian realities explicate the fact that the hajj, while undertaken for the universalistic purposes, pilgrims situate themselves in the geography of faith, ritual, and identity under the strict imperial authority (Fischer and Abedi, 1990). One can see the “contested social, economic and political inferences from various local-global contexts” (McLoughlin, 2011) as the two approaches of ‘global and ‘local’ are brought together. Over time, different writers highlighted the political instabilities and imperial power vested in the conduct of

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the pilgrimage itself. Two streams of politics with regards to pilgrim mobility can be identified here; one, for some political figures, travel for hajj became a formidable site for shaping new futuristic discourse on the state of Muslims from across the world. This peculiar politics itself can be approached in two ways. One, the politics which argues for the Ottoman authority over the Hejaz, and two a politics in which a variable set of critique of Ottoman authority, and thus a call for change in the authority. The matters of politics ostensibly show the nature of narratives as works of negotiating the competing political and ideological priorities. In this way, various authors set the stage to look at the global concerns against imperialistic and colonial rule, placing the communitarian political sentiments amassing the pilgrims to Mecca. The resistance offered by the pilgrims were primarily rooted in religious sentiment. Criticism has been made through remarks on the shortcomings of an empire and its repressive traditions, Ottoman being the focus of the negative criticism in the accounts by the trustworthy ideological pilgrims of the British empire and vice versa. Nevertheless, the positive appraisal of the British as the colonial authority in the various parts of India often turns into a mild criticism of their maladministration and mismanagement of the pilgrimage. However, they are infused with new political consciousness of Arab nationalism in the wake of the Ottoman empire’s deteriorating situation in the Arab lands. This Arabo-centric nationalism further questioned the Ottoman’s foreign domination and political lineage in the Hejaz, a sacred site of Global Muslims and thus argued for an Arab-ruled Hejaz with the support of the British as an imperial mediating agent. This array of political upheavals is evident in the hajj writings’ narrative analysis. Though the narratives tend to be stand-alone historical sources to understand the political transformations in the oceanic mobility to Mecca, they work as a cross-reference into the more significant political problems encountered on pilgrims’ way to Mecca and during the days of their stay in a faraway place.

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14 CHRISTIANITY, CONVERSION AND CASTE Reflecting on Identity in Dalit Christian Malayalam Writings in Post-Colonial India Steven S. George

Introduction Colonialism, a system inherently built on violence and exploitation, mitigated the historical denial of education and opportunity to untouchable communities in India. Various policies sanctioned by British government granted permission and opportunity for the untouchable communities to educate and create new identities for themselves not premised on their caste. This complex interaction of British colonisation with untouchable communities created what I call a passage in India. Untouchables who converted to Christianity inaugurated the initial situation of modernity for themselves. A few of the early novels from India in the nineteenth century are written by people from the untouchable community discussing themes of emancipation, liberation, education, profession and modernity. The paper establishes a trajectory of double consciousness and dejection in the modern nation-state experienced by Dalit Christians. The Middle Passage in oceanic and global south scholarship is seen as a site of abjection. The middle passage is conceived as a space where one leaves behind an identity and imagines a new identity and is most often connected with the metaphor of the ship, and the fact of slave ships, and indentured labour. Paul Gilroy refers to the slaves as the first modern subjects, who make and invent themselves afresh after being uprooted, and therefore exemplify the dilemma of modernity. The middle passage is a space of disempowerment, as people are forced into slavery and taken across seas against their will, but at the same time it becomes a potential space of empowerment to forge new identity. The paper does not apply Gilroy’s metaphor of the middle passage into Dalit Christian identity. It attempts to analyse the passage of Dalit Christian through oceanic scholarship, in which they forego older slave-like

DOI: 10.4324/9781003300939-19

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identity, forge new identity, that are ultimately subjected to a yet-to-be identity in an independent state. T.M. Yesudasan uses the concept of ‘double consciousness’ as characterising being at the same time a Dalit and a citizen of savarna India following on from W.E.B. Du Bois (Yesudasan, 2013) I intend to argue a sense of double consciousness for Dalit Christians juxtaposing it with savarna India and the savarna church. According to the 2011 Census, Dalits account for a population of around 16.6 percent in India, and Christians account for 2.3 percent. The paper attempts to draw a lucid trajectory between the three C letter words: Christianity, conversion and caste. Christianity has often been “studied largely as an offshoot of Western imperial impact, mediated by European missionaries.” (Malekandathil, 2016: x) It is crucial to establish the historical ambit of Christianity, a minority religion in India. One needs to destabilise the narrative from the ‘centre’ of European Christianity and provide an “alter-narrative” to Christianity in South Asia. It points us towards a longer shared history of the world, and oceanic imagination. The Syrian Christian churches in Kerala have a long history of cosmopolitanism within indigenous Christianity. (Mustata, 2020) At the same time there is the exploitation of and discrimination towards the Dalit Christians. These juxtapositions offer possibilities of hybridity, multiplicity, and dialectical engagement with the predicament of Dalit Christians. The paper ventures to address the issue of Dalit Christians from an oceanic imagination, against the terrestrial imagination of modern nation-state which fails to address the multiplicity and hybridity of identities. The paper has four sections that seek to address the fundamental questions related to Dalit Christian identity. The first section on insular identities applies oceanic scholarship to look at Christianity in India. It looks at two hybrid and cosmopolitan communities, the Syrian Christians and Dalit Christians. It discusses the hierarchisation of Syrian Christians and Dalit Christians, as a phenomenon developed by the nation-state. The second section engages with the question of identity for the Dalit Christian. It draws theoretical arguments from the Presidential (Scheduled Castes [henceforth SC]) Order issued on 10 August 1950, and interpretation of the first amendment of the Constitution. The former limits SC status to Hindus and the latter allocates reservations based on historical background. The third section deals with conversion narratives of the nineteenth century and the narratives which emerged in the twentieth century as part of Dalit movements and draws a contrast between both the narratives. The former is centred on the Bible and the Church is seen as a source of emancipation, education, and liberation. The latter is in opposition to the Church. This section traces the trajectory of identity formation for Dalit Christians. The fourth section presents short stories of Malayalam Dalit writers in a post-independent India, where they feel rejected both by the State and the Church. This portion highlights the crisis of intermediate identity and alienation felt by Dalit Christians.

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Cosmopolitan and Insular Identities “…somehow the stereotype of ‘Christianity’ as being an almost exclusively Western imposition upon the world continues to survive and thrive—being repeated, over and over again, as if repetition alone will bring veracity.” (Frykenberg, 2010: 3)

Christianity in India according to oral traditions dated way back to 52 AD with St Thomas arriving in Malankara, Kodungallur, Kerala. Malankara was located inside a lagoon not far from the ancient city of Muziris, also later known as Kodungallur (Cranganore), or Mahadevapattanam. The oldest internal traditions concern a common belief that the Apostle came by sea from Arabia, that he landed on the Malabar coast within a lagoon that was open to the sea, and that this was located close to the historic seaport of Kodungallur. (Frykenberg, 2010: 92) Any child going to the Sunday catechism classes (in Malayalam referred to as veda-vadam meaning sacred/divine knowledge) reiterates the origin tales of the arrival of St Thomas in 52 AD. According to Frykenberg (2010: 92) “Each community, from out of its own store of cultural and material resources, sought to preserve its own oral traditions, its own epic historical narratives (itihasa-puranas), and its own narrative genealogies or lineages (vamshavalis). Family members told and retold their own stories – about how their own family and their own community first came into being; how much adversity they suffered or how great the good fortune that came to them or brought them honour and status; how their own people first settled onto special lands or gained special distinction; and, among other things, how they first developed their own unique institutions.” The Sunday school is an institutionalised phenomena within the Syro-Malabar churches of India. The transfer of the knowledge of the origin myth is via books and oral lectures. However, there is no particular historical veracity to the origin myth except for its being passing down. These stories are celebrated in song and verse, lyrical sagas, such as the Margam Kali Pattu, the Rabban Pattu, and the Thomma Parvam, tell about ‘the Coming of the Way of the Son of God’ into the lineages of families. (Frykenberg, 2010: 93) Further the stories entail further how it was Jesus Christ who commanded Thomas in a dream to India and much more. A significant aspect of the historical records of Syrian Christians relate to their claim to an upper caste background. Indian Christianity is older than Christianity in the West and has developed, over many centuries, a range of Indian communities, belief structures, and ritual and cultural forms and practices. Nevertheless, it has been studied largely as an offshoot of Western imperial impact, mediated by European missionaries (Malekandathil, 2016: ix). It invalidates the widely accepted claim that it is mostly the oppressed caste that convert to Christianity due to the influence of European missionaries. The existence of Christianity in Malabar in the first century claims an already existing ‘secular’ nature of religious existence in the Southern part of India. St. Thomas arrived by ship (boat) way before Columbus; and inaugurated the origins of Christianity. I do not insist here on chronological

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primacy but point to a silenced history which made its way through the ocean without the idea of an enterprise. This community memory breaks with the “hegemonic interpretation of Modern Europe, modernity” (Dussel, 2000: 468) as the centre. The Christianity being discussed here traces its route from Syria and the languages in use are Syriac, Aramaic, Latin and Greek. The presence of Christianity in 52 AD in Kerala suggests an alter-narrative to the flow of Christianity, which is mostly understood as a colonial imposition in Asia, Africa or Latin America. This history plays a crucial part in understanding the role of indigenous Syrian churches in Kerala. The presence of Christianity in Malabar registers a cosmopolitan presence. It advances the idea of an oceanic history both as an idea and as a fact. While we advance this idea of an oceanic passage of Christian religion and indigenous Malabar people, it is the hierarchies that the Syrian churches created that mark the unexplored terrain of the identity paradox for the Dalit Christians. In the nineteenth century the Protestant church began to exert supremacy over the indigenous Syrian church due to colonialism. “The shift from an older religious identity to a new one dominates historiography, and the Indian Christian is, thus, forever poised between two different communities, with a hyphenated identity rather than with a completed one.” (Malekandathil, 2016: x) In a post-independent India, the Syrian churches came into prominence due to their proliferation and social power as also pre-Christian history in which they had been ostensibly ‘upper castes’. The new Christian, weak Christian or lower caste was pitted against the old-Brahminical Christian. It is a unique and strange form of attachment of caste to a religion which has no caste discrimination in it. The codification of caste in Hindu religion is based on the varna and jati structures. The Christian religion in India did not adopt a codified and structured caste system; despite that only the untouchable community that converted remained untouchable within it. These terms or processes neither exist in any legal books nor the church registers; it exists like a public secret where discrimination is inevitable because of the constant attachment of Dalit Christians with a history of slavery and untouchability.

The Question of Identity “Double consciousness emerges from the unhappy symbiosis between three modes of thinking, being, and seeing. The first is racially particularistic, the second nationalistic in that it derives from the nation state in which the ex-slaves but not-yet-citizens find themselves, rather than from their aspiration towards a nation state of their own. The third is diasporic or hemispheric, sometimes global and occasionally universalist.” (Gilroy, 2007: 127)

The study of the crisis of identity for a Dalit Christian is a unique proposition. This section dwells on the subject of the identity of the Dalit Christians in post-independent India. The ghost inside the Pulaya woman in Ayyappan’s short story Pretabhashanam (Ghost Speech) asks God a question: ‘How can a Pulaya woman be a sister to a Christian, old man (Anthony, 2012)? The question of ghost speech is the

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central paradox a Dalit Christian experiences in the model of the post-colonial nation state. In the story Kunjakkov’s sister is possessed by the ghost of a Pulaya Dalit Christian woman. Kunjakkov, who is a Syrian Christian has a sexual affair with the woman but refuses to marry her, and she commits suicide. The ghost reflects upon the question whether a Pulaya woman belonging to the Dalit community can ever share a relationship or an equal status with a Christian person. The Pulaya community in Kerala is one of the majority Dalit castes who work on lands and paddy fields. The story introduces the idea of caste-based discrimination within the Christian religion, in Kerala, India. Christians in India are a minority religion who comprise 2.3 percent of the population. It is a conceptual paradox to practice untouchability in Christianity, as the religion does not have the concept of impurity or untouchability. An application of Du Bois’s conceptualisation and Paul Gilroy’s extension of the paradigm of double consciousness makes evident the unhappy symbiosis in the lives and experiences of Dalit Christians. The Dalit Christians live a Christian life, their being is as the the yet-to-be Christian, and they are constantly seen as an untouchable. Their lives and identities are construed within these three stages. Paul Gilroy uses the idea of the Black Atlantic to describe the diasporic space of the imagined affinity of ex-slaves from Africa in the modern nation-states of Europe and America, respectively. However, their thinking is weighed down by the experience of race and racism within a nation-state. Nivedita Menon (2004: 1817) quotes Partha Chatterjee and argues “Here lies the root of our postcolonial misery: not in our inability to think out new forms of the modern community but in our surrender to the old forms of the modem state.” The article comments on various provisions that pose the problem within the Constitution regarding the incomplete modern project. She further states, “It is this understanding that animates the amendment to Article 15 that would enable the government to make special provisions for backward classes (Menon, 2004: 1817).” The provision for affirmative action for backward and scheduled castes in the Constitution of India is one of the prominent pillars promoting social justice. KT Shah in the Constituent Assembly Debates argued that by using the phrase backward, there was an acknowledgment of citizenship distinguished by the social background. The particular reservation provision is for the scheduled caste within the Hindu religion (terminology used legally by the State). It does not apply to those who have converted to other religions. In 1956 the definition of the scheduled caste was expanded to include Sikh Dalits, and in 1990 to include Buddhist Dalits (Webster, 2016: 4). Similarly, tribal people who converted into Christianity are provided the Scheduled Tribe reservation. The crisis remained for the Dalit who converted to Christianity or Islam. The Dalits who convert to Christianity extinguish their access to the State’s reservation policies. The Dalit Christian, denied an opportunity for social justice by the State, aspires to dignity and liberation through the Christian religion. For the Dalit Christians, Jesus Christ becomes a ‘God of the Dalits’ as his message was for the liberation of the oppressed. D. Rajan’s 1987 novel Mukkany contemplates the dilemma and identity crisis of Dalit Christians in contemporary India. The Dalit

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Christian are discriminated against based on their origins, even after generations of conversion. S/he becomes a ‘Lower Caste Christian’ or ‘New Christian’ or·Weak Christian before the society and Church. The Dalit altogether fails to become a Christian as such. He/she becomes a ‘Dalit Christian’ instead (Raj, 2015: 148). The Dalit community is equally cynical about the converts, as they depart from the liberal paradigm of rights and justice, and at the same time, continue to bear their caste. The dilemma for the ‘Dalit Christian’ is in how their caste attaches to them, even though the state does not provide them any benefits of reservation, while they continue to bear the mark of humiliation and oppression. The rhetoric of conversion involved conceptions of redemption and salvation. However, in praxis, the Church offered neither.

Expression and Identity in Dalit Christian Writings “The Cherma [sic] are absolute property; they are part of the livestock on an estate……The Chermas may be sold, leased, mortgaged, like the land itself or like any cattle or thing.” (Alexander Walker, quoted in Menon, 2006: 80)

The untouchable community undergoes a remarkable shift with the possibilities of conversion and education. The question of identity is now directly being reflected upon by people who once never had the option of expression. The converted untouchables move from near-to bonded slave like situation to that of an individual. Creating and forging new identities for themselves, one observes the rhetoric of the modern subject in the Christian converts. While the nineteenth century offers emancipation as a modern subject, the twentieth century is a reflection of the failure of the modern project. This section attempts to draw a contrast between Dalit Christian writings that emerge in the nineteenth century during European colonisation and twentieth century in a post-independent India. The nineteenth century is the period when European colonisation was at its peak. The idea of the Europeans coming with the “sword in one hand, and the Bible in the other” (Crouch and Stökl, 2014: 11) had been a reality for the subcontinents of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Desmond Tutu, among others has said, “When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible, and we had the land. They said, “Let us pray.” We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible, and they had the land.” However, we need to qualify the story of the violence of colonialism with the internal violence within colonised societies towards subordinate sections. Violence has existed in Hinduism since its endogamous stratification into castes and the sub-castes. The untouchable community within it has been deprived of land, education, equality and from being human itself. On the one hand, is the horrendous violence of slavery and indentured labour by the British; on the other hand, is the relentless situation of perennial slavery for the people belonging to the untouchable caste. The idea of identity is crucial to the untouchable caste that has to remain a slave forever because what it has been subjected to, it cannot surpass. They are subject to

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marginality, both empirically and conceptually. The sanction for the same comes from religious texts as much as secular power. Arguably within the fold of Hinduism, the idea of the individual does not exist, there are only social beings deriving their profession and identity through their caste. The nineteenth century provided a sense of relief and release for the untouchable caste because their masters had a master now. Through conversion, untouchable communities could ostensibly relinquish their traditional conditions of extreme duress and create a new identity for themselves through the Christian way of life. Conversion seemed to offer emancipation, education, and liberation for the untouchable. The creation of selfhood and identity was reflected in the emergence of novels in the nineteenth century. The novel was an expression of self by the self. It was a space for the individual to write freely as an individual subject, presenting their perspective, and selfhood. The untouchable caste not only had an opportunity for education and emancipation but also had a medium for self-expression, the novel. Dilip Menon uses the examples of three 19th century novels to highlight the changing nature of identity and experience of the subaltern castes. In the novel The Slayer Slain (Ghatakavadham, 1865, Kottayam, written by an English missionary’s wife), we see the attempt to argue for the supremacy of Protestantism over indigenous Syrian Christianity. (Menon, 2006: 78) The association of empire and Protestantism gave it a political valence within society. While the untouchable community could convert, the Syrian Christians remained a closed community which argued for an ancestral claim over Christianity. The second novel, The Victory of Knowledge (Saraswativijayam, 1893, Kozhikode), was written by a member of the Tiyya community, Potheri Kunhambu. (Menon, 2006: 78) It deals with an untouchable Pulaya man who converted himself to Christianity, educated himself, and became a judge. The possibility of a Pulaya becoming a judge is a revolutionary situation for a historically oppressed caste. One can observe three facets here; the first is the accessibility of education to all against the idea of education reserved for only a particular caste, which was the case in Hinduism. Secondly, education and conversion as a form of liberation from bonded labour. Third, the changing of power structure through the introduction of modern systems, civil law, court, and schools. The Pulaya presided over the trial of Namboodri Brahmin in court, where he treats him fairly, despite the unfair historical treatment by the Namboodri community towards the Pulaya community. The Christianity pictured in the three novels, including Joseph Muliyil’s Sukumari related to a redemptive, equal, and just situation in the political context of British colonialism and Christianity. These novels at the same time depict the multiple set of narratives emerging at the time, other than ‘one’ national narrative, which was mostly in resistance to imperialism. These novels chronicled a modern subject freed from the oppression of caste. These self-expressions through the idea of an individual, portray a sense of a new identity. These were narratives that emerge from the Christian converts. In general, education and job opportunity allowed people from the oppressed castes to participate in the public sphere. The Independence of India led to a

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revolutionising of the public sphere by bringing fundamental rights into the Constitution that completely abolished any discrimination on the basis of caste and allowed equal opportunity for everyone. However, the slave castes were despised and remained yet-to-be citizen as the public sphere never allowed for equal participation for the Dalits. This led to one of the most significant literary and political movements in India. The emergence of Dalit Literature in the 1970s followed the publication of the Dalit Panthers Manifesto. Most of the people in the Dalit Panthers were themselves writers and poets. A new wave of “freedom, dignity and equality” writing emerged in the Marathi literature in the 1970s. In the early 1970s, Dalit writings occupied a negligible presence in the mainstream Malayalam literature (Unnikrishnan, 2018: 9). K. Satyanaraya and Susie Tharu (2013: 65) categorise the “Dalit assertion in Kerala into two broad phases: the activities of the SEEDIAN (Socially, Economically, Educationally Depressed Indian Ancient Natives) group and Dalit Christian movements beginning in the 1980s and, in the 1990s and after, the activities around the Dalit Women’s Society, Dalit Students Forum, the Adivasi Gothra Mahasabha and a substantial amount of intellectual and creative work by activists, writers and painters, as well as academics working in universities. Similar to the emergence of Dalit Literature in Maharashtra, Dalit literature in Kerala had a relationship with social and political movements. These movements strengthened the emphasis on an intersectional analysis of the community, which started contemplating different types of problems within the ambit of Dalit protests. The rise in Dalit literature and Dalit movements countrywide was the biggest reflector of the failure of the modern subject in espousing dignity and equality among the oppressed castes. The nineteenth century writings by slave caste converts marked a new beginning with a new identity. The twentieth century writings reflect the agony, despair, and anger within the Dalit community in general, and Dalit Christian community in particular. The Dalit Christian’s contemp included one addition set of institution apart from the state, and the society, that is the church. In the 1980s two novels emerge reflecting the agony and crisis of Dalit Christians in post-independent India. Samvatsarangal by S.E. James written in 1984. The protagonist Daniel Upadeshi brings Christianity to Maranthadam, the locale of his life and Dalit revolution. Upadeshi cannot separate himself from his past and the struggles he had witnessed and experienced. Thus, the experiences before conversion are considered as vital for the construction of the Dalit Christian’s identity as their experiences after conversion. The attempts by Upadeshi to build a church and a congregation in Maranthadam are treated with scepticism, confusion, horror, and violence. Both the Dalit and upper-caste gods are shown to be offended by the arrival of a new Christian god in their habitat (Raj, 2015: 137). ‘samvatsarangal’ literally translates as a multitude of years. The turmoil of Daniel in the past few years represents the dilemma of thousands of Dalit converts to Christianity. Mukkany by D. Rajan (1987) recounts the lives of Parayas, a Dalit community in Southern Travancore, whose occupation was to cut bamboo in the Sahyadri mountain ranges and earn a livelihood from various products made with it. The novel brings to light the internal hierarchies within the Parayas and attempts to

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create a space for their myths, beliefs, and customs in Malayalam literature. The cultural specificities and linguistic variations within the Dalit communities get painted in letters through this novel. This is also a ‘chronicle novel’ (Ayrookuzhy and Chirackarodu, 1995: 32), narrating the story of three generations of Parayas (Raj, 2015: 143) from colonial to the postcolonial situation. Despite converting, the stigma of untouchability and being an ex-slave is constantly attached to them. It reinforces the slave identity even for the fourth and fifth generations of Dalit Christians. There are two different modes of passage and experience we see in the nineteenth century narratives and the Dalit Christian narratives from 1980s. On the one hand is the expression of a new-self separated from the rigid identity of caste and slavery during British colonialism, and on the other hand is the incompleteness of the modern project, where Dalit Christians are in a perennial cycle of ‘yet to be’.

Intermediate Identities “Are we temple people or church people?" Kartika Immanuel, a seven-year-old boy, questions his grandmother in Prince Ayyaman’s short story Karthik Immanuel’s Spiritual Musings (Kartik Immanuelinte Atmeeya Chintakal) (Renukumar, 2019, p. 122). He asks this question after Bivin, a Syrian-Catholic boy in his class, brings his family chronicle to show Kartik his descent from a Brahmin family baptised by St Thomas. Bivin points towards Kartik and says, “They are not real church people…they are backward ones” (Renukumar, 2019: 123). Young Kartik grows curious about his identity and belonging. The temple is the place that historically denied entry to his clan, the church is the place where he should have found peace, but in post-independent India, churches entrench his backwardness. This part juxtaposes the Angry Young Man movement of Britain and transposes it to the Dalit Christians. The angry young man referred to the angry youths of Britain who were protesting against the disdain of the State. Even after education and adhering to rules of the public sphere, the youths are unemployed and do not see social mobility in their future. These frustrated citizens, having voting rights, found it challenging to inter-mix between classes. It depicts a complete breakdown of the welfare model in the lives of the people (Kroll, 1961). In Kerala, there is an educational loan scheme for promoting the education of children born from inter-caste marriage. In Kartik Immanuel’s story, his father is a Dalit Christian, and his mother is a Syrian Christian, but they are refused this scheme because the scheme applies only to intercaste marriage within the Hindu religion. The couple was outcasted from society for marrying beyond the realms of their caste. Caste plays an implicit role in the fold of the Church. As discussed earlier, the discrimination is inevitable, but the benefits of state machinery are not available. TKC Veduthala Father, here, keep your Venthinga! (Achante venthinga, inna! 1957) is a story that comes three decades before the Dalit movements in Kerala. The story envisages the tales of Kandankoran, a person from the Pulaya community baptised into Christianity, now a devout Catholic. It is only after serving many years in Church that he realises he is always given the menial jobs in the Church, while the other members of the Church do not do these jobs. He retaliates and asks

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the priest to take back his venthinga (black scapular thread blessed by the priest). This return is a result of a series of humiliation and exploitation Devassy feels. The removal of venthinga is a metaphorical reference to the heaviness of the past that he had to carry in his life, through the streets and the Church. The protagonists of these stories feel a sense of dejection and betrayal by the Church, state, and community. The primary cause of this failure in their perception is an incomplete project of becoming modern. Conversion failed to provide them the emancipation promised. The state has failed them by denying them the reservation they deserve. They are stuck in between, the Dalit Christians are subjected to an incompleteness, and a sense of failure. These writings from the margins present a fundamental contradiction in the centre. It destabilises the claims of equality promised by the centre. The failure is a result of terracentric approach of perceiving identities. The rigidity within identities became more apparent and visible in an independent country and churches. In the twentieth century, as India became independent, it moved towards a terracentric statist model of the nation. In Veduthala’s Father, here, keep your Venthinga!, the protagonist’s wife refuses to convert to Christianity and tells him, “Who wants to live a life of a half-convert?” He was further called in the story “Kandankoran Devassy and Pulayan Devassy,” always regarded with these double appellations. At a particular juncture, he is referred to as a eunuch, neither here nor there. He is called a vampire bat; neither animal nor bird; an unsightly creature. In Prince Ayyaman’s short story Karthik Immanuel’s Spiritual Musings, the couple going to the state office for an educational loan is called an amphibian. “You can live both on land and in water. Neither the snake on land nor fish in water is going to take you as one of them” (Renukumar, 2019: 127). All these metaphors are negative and carry a derogatory connotation. Neither this nor that. However, when Immanuel’s asks, “what is a hybrid?", his grandmother answers honestly, “Two distinct varieties of seed are combined to form a new breed with greater productivity and quality known as a hybrid (Renukumar, 2019: 123)” Edward Said (1997: 290) states, “cultural experience or indeed every cultural form is radically, quintessentially hybrid.” In a world that does not acknowledge hybridity, overlapping, and shared histories, the reference to bats, eunuchs, and amphibians connotes a thought that is incompetent to see beyond the binary. This kind of thinking arguably belongs to a rigid terrestrial mode of perception, where binaries of male–female, black–white; land–sea; upper caste–lower caste, Syrian-Dalit Christian dominate the language of everyday life. The problem is not only about the untouchable community, it is much larger. People do not have the language to address hybridity and multiplicity of identities. It is a direct ramification of the endogamous and rigid society we live in. The story of Kartik Immanuel’s Spiritual Musings is suddenly disrupted in the end by Hindu–Muslim riots in Gujarat. This sudden disruption in the story is a critical commentary on the endogamous rigidity of our society. It refers to the historical rejection of multiplicity, hybridity, and diversity in post-independent India, which has made its people very inward-looking. There is a deliberate move towards a more rigid society. There is an attempt to suppress the country’s hybrid, oceanic, and multifarious history. Communities like the Syrian Christian that are hybrid communities themselves resort to a rigid

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and endogamous outlook and created havoc for the Dalit Christian community. The failure of State, Church, and community in providing a solution for Dalit Christians reflects the failure to recognise citizenship as a modern concept per se.

Conclusion The paper attempts to use ocean as a method to investigate the complex history of Christianity on the Indian sub-continent. This paves a path to think beyond binary and rigid identities. An oceanic history allows us to move away from a terracentric approach and view the world from a longer shared historical perspective. The paper theorises the ways in which cosmopolitan and insular identities came to be in Christianity. Syrian Christian history in the subcontinent ostensibly reflects the cosmopolitan nature of Christianity. It provides for an alter-narrative of Christianity, that distances itself from the European missionary centred Christianity. At the same time, Syrian Christians become an insular community in relation to the Dalit Christians. One of the historical and cosmopolitan communities becomes the fundamental source of discrimination towards another hybrid and evolving community. The question of identity for Dalit Christians from the state, church, and society’s perspective reflects the binary created through a terracentric approach which excluded the Dalit Christians from Scheduled Caste status, however the discrimination remained consistent. It is through their own expression through Dalit Christian literature and movements, we observe the multiplicity of contradictions that exists within their identity. The paper constantly carries forward the idea of an aqueous world instead of a land centric world. The aqueous is an indicator of a larger shared history of the world. The Dalit Christians’ contradiction of identity is a resultant of a land-centric modernity that fails to see beyond the binary or accommodate hybrid and cosmopolitan identities. The inability to identify people with multiple identities is the one of the major reasons reason for the incompleteness of the modern project. Dalit Christians are one of the locus points through which we can refer to the multiple fragmentations within the idea of citizens. Their reference as ‘amphibians’ in real life and literature demonstrates the significance of belonging either to the land or the water. Belonging to both land and water at the same time is an incomprehensible notion within a terracentric framework. Therefore the modern idea of the citizen has to be qualified in light of the contradictions arising from the social and historical background. To identify the question of where someone belongs, it becomes essential to locate their background. The crisis remains with the inability of the concept of citizen to identify people who are outside the framework of rigid identities or occupy a double identity as citizen and untouchable.

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Crouch, Carly Lorraine and Stökl, Jonathan. (2014). In the Name of God: the Bible in the Colonial Discourse of Empire. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill. Dussel, E. (2000). ‘Europe, Modernity, and Eurocentrism’. Available at: http://biblioteca.cla cso.edu.ar/ar/libros/dussel/artics/europe.pdf. Accessed 6 February 2021. Gilroy, Paul (2007). The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. London: Verso. Frykenberg, R.E. (2010). Christianity in India: from beginnings to the present. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Indiankanoon.org. (2014). ‘Article 15 in The Constitution Of India 1949’. Available at: https:// indiankanoon.org/doc/609295. Accessed on 6 February 2021. Kroll, Morton. (1961). ‘The Politics of Britains Angry Young Men’, Social Science, 36(3): 157–166. Malekandathil, Pius et al. (eds) (2016). Christianity in Indian History: Issues of Culture, Power and Knowledge. New Delhi: Primus Books. Mawani, Renisa. (2018). Across Oceans of Law: the Komagata Maru and Jurisdiction in the Time of Empire. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Menon, Dilip M. (2006). The Blindness of Insight: Essays on Caste in Modern India. Delhi: Navayana. Menon, Nivedita. (2004). ‘Citizenship and the Passive Revolution: Interpreting the First Amendment’. Economic and Political Weekly, 39(18): 1812–1819. www.jstor.org/stable/ 4414964. Accessed on 6 February 2020. Mustata, R. (2020). ‘Religious Entanglements and Shared Texts: The Western Syriac Revision and Reception of the Malabar Sermonary’. Nidan – International Journal for Indian Studies, 5(1): 26–54. Available at: https://journals.ukzn.ac.za/index.php/Nidan/issue/ download/119/vol5. Accessed 26 December 2021. Raj, Rekha. (2015). ‘Politics of gender and dalit identity Representation of Dalit women in contemporary Dalit discourses in Kerala’. Handle.net. Available at: http://hdl.handle.net/ 10603/163273. Accessed 6 February 2021. Renukumar, M. (ed.) (2019). Don’t want caste: Malayalam stories by dalit writers. New Delhi: Navayana. Said, Edward (1997). ‘Overlapping Territories, Intertwined Histories states’. In Twentieth century literary theory: a reader. New York: St Martin’s Press, pp. 290–293. Satyanarayana, K. and Tharu, Susie J. (eds) (2013). The Exercise of Freedom: An Introduction to Dalit Writing. Delhi: Navayana. Unnikrishnan, Parvathy. (2018). ‘The Articulation Of Dalit Dilemma In The Short Stories By C. Ayyappan’. International Journal of Research and Analytical Reviews, 6(1). Available at: www.ijrar.org/papers/IJRAR19J1554.pdf. Accessed on 6 February 2021. Webster, J.C. (2016). ‘Dalit Christian History as a Field of Study’. In T. Sarkar and J.L.K. Pachuau (eds), Christianity in Indian History: Issues of Culture, Power and Knowledge. New Delhi: Primus, pp. 3–24. Yesudasan, T.M. (2013). ‘Towards a Prologue to Dalit Studies’, in K. Satyanarayana and Susie Tharu (eds), The Exercise of Freedom: An Introduction to Dalit Studies. Delhi: Navayana, pp. 148–158.

15 RAINBOW WATERS Towards a Queer Coalition between India and Botswana1 Kashish Dua

We need a more textured account of the activism in India and Botswana that led to the respective judgments to decriminalise homosexuality and the connections between them. Was the Indian judgment reported in the Botswana press, taken up by activists and lawyers etc? As of now the paper is an outline; we need detail. Fahad Bishara’s book which looks at the circulation of legal precedents and judgments in the Indian Ocean would be a useful framing argument alongside that of Vijay Prashad. The impetus behind this essay lies in numerous news reports that followed the judgment of the Botswana High Court in 2019 to decriminalise homosexuality (Osborne, 2019; Grief, 2019; Brown, 2019; Human Rights Watch, 2019; Devika, 2019; Mhlanga, 2019; Bearak, 2019). A noteworthy point in most of the international media reports on this court decision was an invariable reference to the 6 September 2018 judgment of the Indian Supreme Court that repealed Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code thus decriminalising homosexuality in the country. I became curious about these repeated cursory references to the Indian Supreme Court judgment and wanted to know if there were any other reasons for bringing up the repeal of Section 377 except for the fact that these judgments were passed within just 9 months of each other. This is why the essay carries out an examination of the Batswana and Indian court judgments and subsequently, ventures a comparative study of the socio-cultural and political positioning of queerness in India and Botswana. This comparative analysis and the insights gained from such a study helps in making a case that the issue of homophobia as a possible colonial import remains under-addressed in Indian Ocean studies. The essay argues that Indian Ocean studies have focused on the connections the Indian Ocean has helped to establish between Africa and Asia in terms of trade relations, movement of labour, involvement in struggles of independence, etc. However, an aspect that often gets excluded is how the Indian Ocean allowed for pre-colonial connections between Africa and Asia but also facilitated the coming in of the British colonisers, the gradual DOI: 10.4324/9781003300939-20

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spread of Victorian morality and the associated Puritanical homophobia in countries like Botswana and India. This essay is divided into three sections. The introductory section engages with the legal judgments that decriminalised homosexuality in India and Botswana. It traces the history and studies the common origin of anti-sodomy laws of these erstwhile British colonies. The second section of the essay charts out similarities between India and Botswana vis-a-vis relative pre-colonial tolerance of queerness, and evidence of existence of queer individuals and relationships through the vocabulary of local Indian and Batswana languages. It also examines the introduction of homophobic laws through colonisation and the transformation of this homophobia into “protective homophobia” (Kaoma, 2018: viii) in the post-colonial context. The essay’s final section draws on Vijay Prashad’s understanding of the Third World as a “project” (2007: xvi) and Ahmed Sukarno’s 1955 speech at Bandung Conference as crucial reminders of the significance of global South association. It discusses the contribution of queer activism in the legal transformations in India and Botswana. It extends Fahad Ahmad Bishara’s conclusions on the circulation of law in the Western Indian Ocean and East Africa to envision the possibility of return to a global South legal framework that existed before the implementation of British-Indian laws. This allows for an exploration of the benefits a coalition between India and Botswana can offer towards emancipation of queer individuals. The essay ends with preliminary suggestions that can initiate strategy formation for queer liberation from a local standpoint.

Letsweletse Motshidiemang v. Attorney General and its Reliance on Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India According to the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA) State Sponsored Homophobia Global Legislation Overview Update 2019, until June 2019, 32 out of a total of 54 African states had laws that criminalised homosexuality making Africa contribute almost half of the 70 UN member states with anti-sodomy laws. On 11 June 2019 this number dropped by one as the Botswana High Court decriminalised homosexuality by declaring Sections 164(a), 164(c) and 165 of the Penal Code as ultra vires to the Constitution.2 The Letsweletse Motshidiemang v. Attorney General 2019 judgment declared that these sections violated Batswana Constitution’s Section 3 (liberty, privacy, and dignity), Section 9 (privacy) and Section 15 (discrimination). At a time when other African states like Uganda, Nigeria, South Sudan, Burundi and Liberia have attempted to expand and strengthen their antihomosexuality laws, the Botswana High Court judgment received much media attention for its step towards emancipation of queer individuals. This judgment is crucial both as a landmark decision as well as reflecting the situation of the legal struggles for rights of queer individuals in Botswana. The judgment by Justice M. Leburu, agreed upon by Justice A.B. Tafa and Justice J. Dube, works as a comprehensive text that surveys some significant legal developments pertaining to queer rights at a global level. It also engages with the history of sodomy laws in detail and then reaches its conclusion by referring to protection of

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rights to privacy, dignity, liberty and anti-discrimination that have been the foundation of decriminalisation judgments in other nations. It is interesting that like the news reports on the June 2019 Batswana judgment, the judgment itself makes repeated references to the 6 September 2018 Indian Supreme Court judgment. The reliance on the Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India for bringing about a change in Batswana’s centuries old sodomy law can be better understood through a closer look at the Batswana judgment. The Batswana High Court judgment interestingly begins charting the history of the offence of sodomy from the Bible and goes on to highlight the way the Old Testament and the New Testament perceive homosexuality as a sin. The judgment uses these examples to convincingly argue that the basis of the sodomy laws was nothing but the protection of religious beliefs. In paragraph 51 of the judgment, Justice Leburu comments on the United Kingdom’s inclusion of sodomy as an offence by stating, “In the early ages after the creation of the United Kingdom, England incorporated into its common law an offence of sodomy, for purposes of protecting the Christian principles upon which the Kingdom was founded” (2019: 27). Justice Leburu further refers to two scholarly articles titled “This Alien Legacy: The Origins of “Sodomy” Laws in British Colonialism” (Human Rights Watch, 2008); and “The Sodomy Offence, England’s Least Lovely Criminal Law Export” (Kirby, 2011) that connect the contemporary sodomy laws in erstwhile British colonies to the British statute of 1553 that criminalised homosexuality. This eclectic inter-textual referencing in the judgment succinctly presents changes in the discourse around sodomy and additionally brings to attention the way multiple jurisdictions have decriminalised homosexuality in the past. The Batswana judgment relies on Michael Kirby’s essay to establish that samesex activities were morally unacceptable to the British and their anti-sodomy laws were implemented in the colonies like Botswana without consultation with the local population. The judgment uses Kirby’s work to argue that it was in India in 1864 that the anti-sodomy law was first introduced by the colonisers through Macaulay’s Indian Penal Code (IPC), which stated: Section 377: Unnatural offences – Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal shall be punished with imprisonment for life, or with imprisonment … for a term which may extend to 10 years, and shall be liable to fine. Explanation – Penetration is sufficient to constitute the carnal intercourse necessary to the offense described in this Section. (2019: 30) The IPC then became a model that got implemented without many changes in 1885 when Bechuanaland became a British Protectorate and introduced antisodomy laws through Section 164 and 165 in the following terms: 164. Unnatural offences Any person who –

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(a) has carnal knowledge of any person against the order of nature; Or (b) has carnal knowledge of an animal; or (c) permits a male person to have carnal knowledge of him or her against the order of nature; is guilty of an offence and is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding seven years. 165. Attempt to commit unnatural offences Any person who attempts to commit any of the offences specified in section 164 is guilty of an offence and is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years. (Botswana Penal Code, Division III, Offences Injuries to the Public in General, Offences against Morality) A very direct relationship, in fact, a replication of the legalities governing queerness in India and Botswana can be noted in the way the Botswana judgment contextualises the anti-sodomy law and highlights IPC as its source of origin in Botswana. Thomas R. Metcalf identified India as “a nodal point from which peoples, ideas, goods, and institutions – everything that enables an empire to exist – radiated outward.” (2007: 1) His historical analysis of the laws drafted by Macaulay and their replication in other British colonies like the states in Southern Africa reveals that these laws were different from the laws followed in Britain and were specifically thought out to rule India with minimal difficulties. Metcalf’s research, thus, hints at a deeper connection between India and African states like Botswana which came under the influence of the same precepts of sodomy laws. What is striking is the way the Botswana High Court judgment comes back to Section 377 of the IPC for the amendments made to it in 2018 in Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India to move towards a repeal of its own anti-sodomy laws. It is important to observe that Letsweletse Motshidiemang v. Attorney General 2019 judgment repeatedly cites the Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India judgment in paragraphs 122 and 123, 140 and 147 to support its argument of how anti-sodomy laws work against privacy, dignity and liberty, respectively that are otherwise guaranteed by the Batswana Constitution. The similarities in the legal trajectory concerning queerness in India and Botswana are not limited to the replication of the IPC and a reliance on it for decriminalisation of homosexuality. It extends to other postcolonial developments and debates around anti-sodomy laws which I will explore in the following section.

Queerness in India and Botswana: An Overview of Semblances One can overstate the semblance between the discourse on queerness in India and Botswana but the striking similarities in the way queerness has been understood, tolerated if not celebrated, challenged and defended in these two erstwhile colonies cannot be ignored. The aim here is not to homogenise the lived realities of queer people in the global South but to notice the similarities in the way lives have been

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shaped by the legacies of British colonialism as Brown et al have proposed in “Sexualities in⁄of the Global South” (2010: 1573). The Indian Ocean became a route for the British to enter both India and Botswana and with them entered the conflicted discourse of Victorian morality. Cultural imperialism and the resulting erasure of comparatively more sexually liberated pre-colonial cultures have been commonly identified in major scholarly works that deal with sexuality in India and African states like Botswana. Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai argue that “British educators and missionaries often denounced Indian marital, familial, and sexual arrangements as primitive” (2000: 196). They state that these educators and missionaries viewed. Indian monarchs, both Hindu and Muslim, as decadent hedonists, equally given to heterosexual and homosexual behaviour… In contrast, British monarchs, especially Queen Victoria, were held up as models of family propriety… these views of Indian sexual practices, propagated in the context of colonial rule and Victorian puritanism with its deep antipleasure and antisex bias… social reformers tried to form an ideal Indian man, woman, child, and family, largely on the model of the British Victorian nuclear family. Monogamous heterosexual marriage came to be idealized as the only acceptable form of sexual coupling… (2000: 196–197) Similarly, Enze Han and Joseph O’Mahoney write: In Africa…many such discourses often portray homosexuality as “unAfrican,” …it is most likely the opposite. It was British colonialism that brought this aversion to homosexuality to its colonies rather than homosexuality itself. (2018: 105) In addition, Sylvia Tamale, Anjali Arondekar and Jessica Hinchy’s works also identify European Victorian cultural norms and the associated homophobia as major influencing factors that gave rise to a deep-seated attitude of sexual repression in these regions. The causes are often identified in the British Empire’s desire to control the sexual conduct of its officers deputed in the colonies and ensure the governmentality of non-heteronormative colonial subjects. The introduction of anti-sodomy laws in the penal codes of colonies like India and Botswana and the fear of punishment worked on both coloniser and colonised. Cultural imperialism and thereby the urge to imitate the coloniser may have led to the dispersal of homophobia among the colonised. The gradual internalisation of homophobic attitudes and their unabashed articulation become evident in Vanita and Kidwai’s exegesis of the decline of positive representation of same-sex love in literatures from India following the colonial influence (2000: 200–205). Although India and Botswana gained independence from Britain, the penal codes introduced by the British were carried forward and adopted by these

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independent nation states. What changed in India and Botswana from the colonial to the postcolonial time period was the form of homophobia. The intolerance towards queer people that had consolidated during a long-standing colonial period led to an amnesia of a relative pre-colonial sexually liberal culture. The heteronormative foundations of independent nations made people lose sight of colonial laws’ role in the repression of erstwhile positive representations of queerness. Focus on heterosexual families and procreation became the way of the supposedly Indian and Batswana way of life which left no space for queerness that lies outside of this heteronormative structure. By 1967 United Kingdom itself had recognised antisodomy laws as problematic and had decriminalised homosexuality. Up until the 1990s there was a comparative silence around queer issues in India and Botswana but globalisation and activism around sexual liberation started influencing discussions around queerness in these erstwhile colonies. What caused a large-scale reaction from both anti-queer and pro-queer agents in India was the release of Deepa Mehta’s film Fire (1998) that revolved around two married Indian and Hindu women who enter in a relationship with each other. The works of Adrian Jjuuko and Monica Tabengwa (2018), and Kapya Kaoma (2018) reveal that African countries came to the attention of conservative US evangelicals who had begun losing their hold on Anglo-American regions given the rise and spread of the queer movement that gained momentum with globalisation. Monica Tabengwa and Nancy Nicole reflect on the specific case of propagation of homophobic sentiments by the Evangelical Fellowship of Botswana and its National Secretary, Pastor Biki Butale who called for rejection of the supposed “foreign culture” of queerness (2013: 341). This shift of spatial operation of the right-wing American agenda to Africa initiated a more explicit articulation and manifestation of homophobia in the form of anti-gay agenda. Political and religious leaders in both the countries continue to make statements that queerness is imported from the West which is why it has no place in the supposed “native” culture of India and Botswana, respectively. When the UPA government in 2013 decided to review the Supreme Court decision that had rejected the Delhi High Court ruling of 2009 and had recriminalised homosexuality, several religious leaders came together for a public convention and issued joint statements opposing homosexuality. According to an Economics Times news report: Jamaat-e-Islami Hind president Maulana Syed Jalaluddin Umari warned the government from enacting any bill which decriminalises homosexuality or depreciates section 377 of the Indian Penal Code… Shankaracharya Omkarananda Saraswati of Prayag Peeth said homosexuality was “a disease” and suggested that homosexual persons should go in for medicines and consult spiritual gurus. (2013) These anti-gay sentiments of Indian leaders find semblance in the statements given by the Assistant Minister of Labour and Home Affairs, Olifant Mfa to The Botswana

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Gazette in 2006, who called homosexuality “barbaric, whether you argue it from the perspective of religion or culture”, and that such individuals should “go for counselling and serious therapy so that they can be brought back to normality” (cited in BONELA and LeGaBiBo, 2008). The anti-gay arguments which dissociated queerness from an assumed idea of Indian-ness and African-ness created a need for a “politics of being” where the assertion of queer identities by Indian and Batswana individuals that they were both queer and Indian or Batswana formed a counter-discourse to the alienation of queerness. This “politics of being” led to the production of many texts that looked back at the past of India and Botswana to find evidence of existence of homosexuality in pre-colonial culture. Much has been written about the non-heteronormative sculptures on the walls of Sun Temple Konark and Khajuraho (Sharma, 2016; Pandey, 2018). Similarly, active research has been done and published to unearth the existence of queerness in ancient Indian literary material like Vatsyayana’s Kamasutra (Vanita and Kidwai, 2000: 46–53) and several narratives from mythology. The African queer studies like works of Sylvia Tamale (2011), Marc Epprecht (2013) and others have also focused on highlighting the historical existence of queer individuals and relationships as well as representation of queerness in art and architecture. The works of these scholars reveal that same-sex practices in the form of marriages between women was accepted in over 40 ethnic groups that lived across Sub-Saharan Africa. The vernacular languages of India and Botswana have also been found to have specific words relating to queer people and queerness. For example, Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai give evidence of words like “ayoni” (2000: 25) (non-vaginal sex), “chapatbaz” (2000: 192) (a term used by courtesans who had sex with women) and “dogana” (“homoerotically inclined women”) (2000: 220) that have been used in ancient and medieval Indian texts. In the context of Africa, Adrian Jjuuko and Monica Tabengwa in Envisioning Global LGBT Human Rights comment that “many indigenous languages contain words that refer to homosexuality, for example, the Lugandan word bisiyaga…In the Shona language, the words murumekadzi and mukadzirume can be loosely translated as man-woman and woman-man, respectively. The first refers to a man who takes on female roles and the second to a woman who takes on male roles” (2018: 70). The semblances between India and Botswana can also be mapped on the emergence and strengthening of queer activism in respective nation-states. The 1980s AIDS crisis and the neglect of prisons as spaces in need of sexual health measures catalysed activist work towards men who have sex with men in both countries. The AIDS Bhedbhav Virodhi Andolan (ABVA), the first HIV/AIDS activist movement in India founded in 1988 received attention for its publication of a pathbreaking report on LGBT people titled “Less than Gay” (1991). Subsequently, in 1994, the organisation filed a petition at the Delhi High Court to repeal Section 377 and allow access to condoms in Delhi’s Tihar Jail. (Dave, 2012: 172–175) While ABVA’s lack of resources to pursue a court case could not bring about a legal change, the fight to repeal Section 377 was continued by the Naz Foundation, an HIV/AIDS and sexual health non-governmental organisation (NGO) founded in 1994. The Naz

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Foundation filed another petition for reading down of the anti-sodomy law in 2001 and based it on the violation of the right to equality (Article 14), the right to be free from sex-determination (Article 15), the right to fundamental liberties (Article 19) and the right to life and privacy (Article 21) (Misra, 2009: 23). This petition faced rejection by the court on the grounds of lack of Naz Foundation India Trust’s personal grievance due to Section 377. The rejection of the 2001 petition prompted the formation of a coalition of many LGBT and non-LGBT groups in the form of Voices Against 377. The collection of personal narratives and testimonials by the Naz Foundation and Lawyers Collective, an NGO founded in 1981 strengthened the case enough for the Delhi High Court to read down Section 377 in the historic 2009 judgment. However, this decision was overturned by the Supreme Court of India in 2013 and had left it to the Parliament to decide on the matter on the basis of religious opposition and arguments based on public morality that stated that the people of India were not ready for the decriminalisation. Five years later, a fresh petition filed by queer individuals that highlighted the personal implications of a colonial law like Section 377, led to the landmark 2018 Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India ruling that decriminalised homosexuality in India. A similar development charged the queer movement in Botswana during the early 2000s. The Botswana Network of Ethics and Law on HIV and AIDS (BONELA) founded in 2002, for most part of its functioning remained in constant tension with the state and bodies like the National AIDS Co-ordinating Agency (NACA) regarding the inclusion of concerns of queer persons during decisions and policy formations for prevention of HIV/AIDS in the country. BONELA brought out frequent publications in the form of reports and journal issues that highlighted the violation of rights of queer people and specially prisoners as a consequence of legally endorsed homophobia through anti-sodomy laws.3 As per the news report “BONELA to present homosexuals study”, it was only in 2010 that NACA allowed BONELA to present its findings on “the contribution of multi-concurrent relationships in the spread of HIV, especially among homosexuals” (2010). The government of Botswana allowed the operation of HIV/AIDS NGOs like BONELA but came down harshly on the Lesbians, Gays & Bisexuals of Botswana (LeGaBiBo), an advocacy group that was initially founded as a project at the Center for Human Rights in 1998. LeGaBiBo which was denied registration by the Registrar of Societies, Ministry of Labour and Home affairs, fought official opposition by receiving financial support from BONELA. The applications were rejected on the basis that the Botswana Constitution did not recognise homosexuals. However, LeGaBiBo received favourable judgments by the High Court in 2012 and by the Court of Appeal in 2016. In 2003, Botswana, like India in 2013, had also witnessed rejection by the Botswana High Court of a challenge posed to the constitutional validity of anti-sodomy laws on the basis that the society was not ready, and the constitution must reflect public opinion. LeGaBiBo’s victory to register itself as the first organisation that works on queer issues and the May 2018 report ““The law needs to change, we want to be free”: The impact of laws criminalising same-sex relationships in Botswana” published by

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United Nations Development Programme, Southern Africa Litigation Centre & Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals of Botswana (LeGaBiBo) proved to be instrumental. These developments paved the way for LeGaBiBo’s inclusion in the Letsweletse Motshidiemang v. Attorney General case as amicus curiae. The judgment recognised the role of LeGaBiBo in submitting significant matters and facts related to law that assisted the court in coming to a decision (2019: 8–11). Based on the above precepts it seems relevant to explore Kapya Kaoma’s coinage and understanding of the phrase “protective homophobia” that he engages with in his book titled Christianity, Globalization, and Protective Homophobia: Democratic Contestation of Sexuality in Sub-Saharan Africa (2018). Kaoma right at the beginning of his book argues that homophobia in Africa works by neglecting the gay experience which is African in nature by dissociating the queer and African elements of an individual’s identity. He contextualises the resistance to queerness in Africa by noting trends in the influence of globalisation which argue for sexual plurality and a ‘global gay agenda’. For many Africans this signifies the “spread” of homosexuality as against the opposition that African Christianity’s sexual mono-culturalism posits. It is then he conceives of a specific kind of homophobia that he terms as “protective homophobia” which according to him is: The attempt to justify the opposition to sexual diversity on the premise of protecting African cultural identity, children, and religion (Christianity or Islam) from the assumed assault of the Western “global gay agenda.” (viii) He goes on to explicate the working of this special kind of homophobia by explaining the inter-connections between religious, cultural, and postcolonial predispositions. He remarks: Aside from viewing same-sex relations as sinful, religious predisposition benefits from the ongoing global shifts in Christian demographics from the North to the South, and Africa in particular. This growth has increased the church’s influence in African politics. (viii) This religious predisposition links to cultural predisposition where the multiculturalism of globalisation is resisted by relying on the idea of the US Christian Right’s “traditional family values” that deems homosexuality as a foreign vice. According to him, the postcolonial predisposition operates through a mistrust of the global North. This influences the perception of the negative experiences of Africa like the economic exploitation of the global South, human rights abuses by the global North and hypocrisy in the application of international laws amongst several others. This also becomes a cause for viewing the involvement of the global North in protecting and promoting queer rights in Africa as a negative interference.

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Kaoma’s ideas seem instrumental if they are extended and applied to India. In an effort to “decolonise” its culture, India like African states, seems to be blindly adopting the colonial attitudes towards queerness. The expanding criminalisation of queerness in countries like Uganda in Africa and filing of petitions to challenge decriminalisation of homosexuality in India indicate that certain political and religious leaders project “true” African and Indian identities that ironically adopt Victorian norms and morality. This internalisation of Victorian sexual repression and the domination of Euro-American models of resistance and theorisation has unfortunately overshadowed the need to focus on the global South queer identities. Euro-American political pressure on the global South to be queer friendly and the replication of the not so inclusive Pride walks as a means of assertion of identity and resistance, have worked in favour of the argument of queerness being un-African and un-Indian. The concluding section will tap into this crisis and go back to 1955 in an attempt to forge an alliance between Africa and Asia to explore the possible solutions.

Bandung Conference, Laws in the Indian Ocean and the need to Revive the idea of the “Third World” The Indian Ocean has been the connecting space through which colonial repression as much as postcolonial resistance has worked. The similarities of the struggles of queer communities in Botswana and India and the common challenges faced call for a reassessment of the relationship of these two countries. Vijay Prashad’s The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World (2007) is a suitable starting point for exploring the abiding connections. In the introduction to his book Prashad calls the Third World not a place but a project which arose from the battles that Africa, Asia and Latin America fought against colonialism. He states that this project was meant to fulfil the basic necessities “of life (land, peace, and freedom)” as desired by the people of these regions (2007: xv). One of the important parts of this project became the meetings of the leaders of these people and the Bandung Conference organised by the Indonesian President Ahmed Sukarno in 1955. This became an important platform for the creation of an ideology and institutions that could fulfil the dreams of their people. It was at the Bandung conference that Sukarno delivered his famous speech, where he said: Let us remember that the highest purpose of man is the liberation of man from his bonds of fear, his bonds of poverty, the liberation of man from the physical, spiritual and intellectual bonds which have for long stunted the development of humanity’s majority. And let us remember, Sisters and Brothers, that for the sake of all that, we Asians and Africans must be united…We are united by a common detestation of colonialism in whatever form it appears…We can mobilize all the spiritual, all the moral, all the political strength of Asia and Africa on the side of peace. (Asia Africa Speak, 1955)

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These ideas seem more than relevant for the contemporary condition of queer individuals in India and Botswana. “Protective homophobia” has weakened the possibility of a safe land, peaceful existence and freedom to be one’s authentic self, for the queer people of India and Botswana. Violations of individual rights arising from this can fought by learning from the connections that the Third World project wanted to establish. Queer liberation in these two nations requires comprehension of how Indian and Batswana queer people face a different kind of subordination that is enabled by local socio-cultural and political factors that demand a more local rather than global approach, activism and theorisation. Prashad comments that Bandung produced “a belief that two-thirds of the world’s people had the right to return to their own burned cities, cherish them, and rebuild them in their own image” (2007: 33). It is precisely this sentiment that is needed to understand that after decriminalisation, India and Botswana have a long way to go in coming up with local strategies to fight homophobia. A large part of Indian and Batswana queer population does not identify with and very often is not even familiar with global North labels of LGBTQ or global gay sub-cultures. There is a need to realise that the ways of the global North cannot yield quick and effective results. Thus, the Indian Ocean needs to be utilised for forging connections towards a joint global South struggle against “protective homophobia” and hetero-patriarchy. Indications of successful workings across the Indian Ocean are present in Fahad Ahmad Bishara’s historical documentation of the legal regulation of economic life in the Western Indian Ocean during 1780–1950 (Bishara, 2017). Bishara subtly undoes the unquestioning faith in the British-Indian legal structures. His study of the legal relationships between what can be called global South agents (retailers, traders, caravan leaders, plantation owners, katibs or scribes, etc. from East Africa, Arabia and India) draws attention to indigenous legal systems that contributed immensely to the commercial success in this region. This system faced marginalisation with the introduction of British-Indian laws, migration of lawyers from India to East Africa and the construction of the Ugandan railway network that further spread the hold of British-Indian laws in the hinterlands of Africa. For years, several organisations in Botswana and India have been working on LGBTQ issues within a terrestrial and national framework however there are important lessons that Prashad and Bishara’s ideas hold for the future of queer movement in the global South. Organisations like the Naz Foundation in India and Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals of Botswana (LeGaBiBo) in Botswana which have played crucial roles in the legal struggle against criminalisation of homosexuality have followed a nation-centric methodology., LeGaBiBo has begun collaborations with ILGA to hold pan-African conferences to discuss and debate the futures of queer liberation. LeGaBibBo has also collaborated with GALZ: An Association of LGBTI People in Zimbabwe which, according to Epprecht: …has spearheaded efforts to organize a pan-African network of LGBT groups… Such a network would aim to respond to human rights crises in

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Africa with a unified voice, and to share experiences that could lead to greater self-confidence and reduced dependence upon Western gay rights associations. (2004: 240) Such collaborations need to be pushed further and need to be reimaged from a global South perspective. The potential of collaborations between Batswana and Indian LGBT organisations is immense. A close working together of legal agents, NGOs, support groups, scholars and political parties of India and Botswana can lead to productive ways of dealing with social homophobia in both the countries. The ideas of un-Africanness and un-Indianness of homosexuality can be unsettled by a collaborative effort to revive pre-colonial tolerant cultures of both the countries. A general awareness needs to be created to ensure that the resistance to homophobia does not end only on the pages of legal documents and leads to the introduction of civil rights for queer individuals in both the countries.

Notes 1 Acknowledgements: The foundational idea of this essay took shape in the summer of 2019 during a course titled “Thinking with the Sea: Histories of the Indian Ocean” offered by Jamia Millia Islamia in collaboration with University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. Coincidentally, during the time period of this course and my engagement with Indian Ocean studies, the Botswana High Court in a landmark judgment decriminalised homosexuality. I am extremely grateful to Dr Saarah Jappie for her valuable suggestions and comments on the first draft of this essay. I am indebted to Shanya Sharma for providing access to important legal documents and detailed discussions that helped in shaping the arguments of this essay. 2 The government of Botswana had appealed the High Court ruling to the highest court in the country, the Botswana Court of Appeal which was unanimously rejected on 29 November 2021. 3 See The Botswana Review of Ethics, Law and HIV/AIDS, 1(1) (2007) and “The Violations of the Rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Persons in BOTSWANA: A Shadow Report” (March 2008).

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INDEX

Abd al-Aziz Makhdum 202 Addis Ababa 88–91 Adua (Scego) 84–87 aesthetic theory 53–55 Ahmad Zayn al-Din 201–203 Alaol, Syed 101, 104–105; see alsoPadmabati Angry Young Man movement 248 Arabic cosmopolis 118–120 Arabi-Malayalam language: as alternative knowledge construction paradigm 184; history of 185–189, 186–188, 191–193; literary texts in 183–184, 191–193; music genres 190; Persian cosmopolis and 123–125; richness of 182–183; script of 118; shaming users of 181–182, 193, 194; song tradition 184; switchover to Malayalam 181–182, 188–190 Arakan 100–106 archipelagic thinking 43 architecture: in Cambay 156–157, 162; influences on 152–153, 163; Sandabur islands 158–159; town planning 162–163 artefacts uncovered 23–25 Badar patappa . -.t.tu 120–123 Bandung Conference 261–262 belonging 110–111 Beloved (Morrison) 83–84 benevolence 53–55, 55–57 Bengal delta: after partition 71; bhati (lowlands) 69–70; on Borgia World Map 63; depopulation of 75–76; ‘drying’ of 76; geomorphological change 65–66;

marine environment 70–71; in medieval period 63, 71–73; natural disasters in 65, 66; neglect of 65, 67; politics in 67; population of 67; slave raiding culture 73–75; towns in 72–73; unusual features 69–71; volume of water 69 Bengali ballads/literature: “destiny” in 106–107, 108–109; In the Shade of the Golden Palace 104; Mrauk U period 103; Nasar Malum 99–100; Nurunneha and the Tale of the Grave 99; Padmabati 106–112; Sayfulmuluk Badiuzzamal 105; Sikandarnama 104–105; The Lament of Shuja’s Daughter 100 Big Read Ancient Mariner project 40 Black Book, The (Pamuk) 23 boat people: Comprehensive Plan of Action (CPA) 174–175; constructed as threat to national security 169, 171, 172, 173, 175; oceans as sites of necropolitics 173–175; as the “other” 169–173; overview 168–169; pejorative meanings 168; Refugee Convention (1951) 171–173; search and rescue of refugees at sea 173–174; traffickers 174; see also refugees Boat People, The (Bala) 169–171, 172, 174 books overboard method 31–32 booty distribution (Malabar) 207–208 Borgia World Map 63 Botswana: homosexuality decriminalisation 252–255; queerness in 255–261 Braudel, Fernand 1 Butterfly Burning (Vera) 28–29 By the Sea (Gurnah) 81

268 Index

Calicut 159, 162 Cambay 156–157, 162 Carpentaria (Wright) 43–44 caste system 241–249 children (unaccompanied migrant) 30–31 Chinese settlements 160 Chittagong port 100, 102–103 Christianity: Indian 242–243; see also Dalit Christians cities/towns: in Bengal delta 72–73; Calicut 159, 162; Cambay 156–157, 162; Central Western Coast (Indian Ocean) 157–159; demographic composition 163–165; East Coast (Indian Ocean) 161–162; influences on 152–153; Kawlam 160; Lower Western Coast (Indian Ocean) 159–160; Sandabur islands 158–159; town planning 162–163; Upper Western Coast (Indian Ocean) 156–157 climate change 3 coastal imaginaries 64–65 Cooke, Stephen 49–50, 52–53 cosmopolitanism: Arabic cosmopolis 118–120; Arabi-Malayalam language and 183–189; ‘discrepant’ 5; hajj as Muslim global imagination 218–219; oceanic 6–8; overview 4–6; Persian cosmopolis 123–125; ‘rooted’ 6; Sanskrit cosmopolis 125–127; ‘vernacular’ 5; vs. globalisation 5; “world-ing” 193; world’s peripheries and 44–45 credit 144–145 creolised water 27–29 Dalit Christians: ‘double consciousness’ of 241, 244; identity question 243–245; intermediate identities of 248–250; writings 245–248 Dalit Panthers Manifesto 247 debris uncovered 23–25 debt 48–53, 142–145 “destiny” (in Bengali ballads/literature) 106– 107, 108–109 dhows: exclusively run by men 138; organisation of labour on 140–145; seasonal maritime calendar of 139–140 ‘discrepant’ cosmopolitanism 5 Drexciya 26 drowned bodies 26, 30 “dry technologies” 25–26 Durban 23–24 East India Company: Captain Lynch’s dealings with 48, 49, 51, 52–53; denial of slavery by 105; territorial conquests by 4

Ethiopia 89–91 European interstitial oceanic history 49 Exclusive Economic Zones 3 experimental underwater methods 25–26 Father, here, keep your Venthinga! (Veduthala) 249 fatwa- texts 201–206 fictional writings: Adua (Scego) 84–87; Beloved (Morrison) 83–84; Butterfly Burning (Vera) 28–29; By the Sea (Gurnah) 81; Carpentaria (Wright) 43–44; Father, here, keep your Venthinga! (Veduthala) 249; foregrounding of transoceanic movements 7; island themes in 64; Jane Eyre (Brontë) 83; Karthik Immanuel’s Spiritual Musings (Ayyaman) 248, 249; Lord Jim (Conrad) 214–215; Moby Dick (Melville) 38–39; Mukkany (Rajan) 247–248; novel form 84; reading-for-water method 29–31; Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Coleridge-Taylor) 39–40; Samvatsarangal (James) 247; Satanic Verses (Rushdie) 83; South African farm novel 29; The Black Book (Pamuk) 23; The Boat People (Bala) 169–171, 172, 174; The Shadow King (Mengiste) 87–89; The Slayer Slain 246; The Victory of Knowledge (Kunhambu) 246; see also Bengali ballads/ literature forgetting (sea as betokening of) 32 Ganga delta 67–68 GBM delta 68 globalisation (vs. cosmopolitanism) 5 global warming 3 hajj pilgrimage: encountering the Ottoman other 228–233; encounters with empire officials 222–227; encounters with Wahhabi 234–235; Hajj-e-Amjad (1928) 226–227, 233, 234–235; historical narrative framework 213, 215; Khwaja Hasan Nizami’s Safarname ba tasweeer (1911) 224–226, 231–233; Mecca as a space of encounter 214, 216; Pilgrimage to Caaba and Charing Cross (1871) 222, 228–229; pilgrims at sea as a method 219–221; religious mobility seen as threat 219, 220; role in global history 218–219; Safarname Makkah (1896) 222–223, 229–230; ship as ‘space on the move’ 221; Story of Pilgrimage to Hejaz in 1904 (1909) 223–224, 231; Sufi saint anecdote 212–213; writings of 214–218

Index 269

homophobia: as colonial import 252–257; “protective” 260–261 homosexuality decriminalisation 252–255 Horn of Africa: histories of 82; Italian imperialism in 86–87; novels 84–91 hybridity 249 Hyder, Pulikkottil 191 hydrocolonialism 26–27 hydrocosmologies (vernacular) 28 Ibn Battuta 152–166 identity (Dalit Christians) 243–250 incarceration sites (islands as) 64 indebtedness 48–53, 142–145 India: homosexuality decriminalisation 252–255; queerness in 255–261 Indian Ocean: Central Western Coast 157–159; Chinese settlements 160; connected literary sensibilities and 116–118; East Coast 161–162; Lower Western Coast 159–160; trade routes 7–8, 153–155; universalising aspect of 7; Upper Western Coast 156–157 Indian Ocean wind 82 In the Shade of the Golden Palace 104 intermediate identities 248–250 international laws/covenants 173–174 International Seabed Authority (ISA) 3 interstitial oceanic history 49, 51 Italian imperialism (in the Horn of Africa) 86–87 Jam Salaya 140 Jane Eyre (Brontë) 83 Jayasi 107–108 Kant, Immanuel 5 Karthik Immanuel’s Spiritual Musings (Ayyaman) 248, 249 Kawlam 160 Kerala 184–185, 189–190 labour: of being on relation 147–149; on dhows 140–145 Lament of Shuja’s Daughter, The 100 lands lost underwater 4 LGBT organisations 258–260, 262–263 literary methods: books overboard 31–32; reading-for-water 29–31 literature see fictional writings ‘local’ cosmopolitanism 6 Lord Jim (Conrad) 214–215 lost lands 4 Lynch, Captain Francis 47, 48–57

maks duty 205–206 Malabar 115–116 Malabar ulama- networks: booty distribution 207–208; fatwa- texts 201–206; foreign merchants and 198–200; foreign ulama199–200; indigenous scholars’ ascendancy 200–208; overview 197–198 Malaccan straits 53 Malayalam language and literature 189–193 ‘Malayali/Keralite’ identity 189–190 Mappila popular culture 190–191 maritime zones 174 masculinity of maritime labour 138 Mecca see hajj pilgrimage media (elements understood as) 26 Medieval Christendom 63 microbial aesthetic 26 microhistories 47 Middle Passage 240 migration: ‘good’ migrant-’bad’ migrant binary 112, 170–171; see also boat people; refugees; slave trade Moby Dick (Melville) 38–39 molecular remains 26, 30 monsoon winds 82, 139 Mrauk U 100, 102–106, 107 Mukkany (Rajan) 247–248 music: Adam Smith on 54–55; Arabi-Malayalam language genres 190; Arabi-Malayalam song tradition 184; in Badar patappa . -.t.tu 122; Mappila songs 190–191; see also pat.appa-t.t.us (war songs) Nasar Malum 99–100 natural disasters 65, 66 necropolitics 169, 173–175 networking: by women 147–148; see also Malabar ulama- networks Noakhali-Chittagong coast 100 northern theory predominance 37, 40 novels see fictional writings Nurunneha and the Tale of the Grave 99 oceanic cosmopolitanism 6–8 oceans as method 2 “Operation Legacy” 32 Orientalism 215 Ottoman Empire 228–233 Padmabati 106–112 paracolonial 2 partition 71 pat.appa-t.t.us (war songs): Badar pat.appa-.t.tu 120–123; Futuh Kisra wa Qaisar pat.appa-.t.tu 120; Moyinkutty Vaidyar 124–125, 127,

270 Index

184; origins of 118–120, 126; overview 115–116; Pat.appa-.t.tu 126–127; performance traditions of 121–123; Salasil pat.appa-.t.tu 125 patronage in maritime labour 142, 144–146 pa-.t.tu genre 126 performance traditions (pat.appa-t.t.us) 121–123 Persian cosmopolis 123–125 pilgrimage see hajj pilgrimage piracy 99–101, 207–208 postcolonial critical theory 41–44 print culture 31 privateering 207–208 promises at sea 49–50, 55–57 “protective homophobia” 260 Protocol Relating to Status of Refugees (1967) 173 Putuma, Koleka 30 reading-for-water method 29–31 reconciliation 110–111 Refugee Convention (1951) 171–173 refugee crisis 168 refugee drownings 30–31 refugees: insistence on documents from 172; “queue jumper” narrative 170; search and rescue at sea 173–174; see also boat people relation (labour of being in) 147–149 religious paraphernalia contours 24–25 resistance in interaction 42 resources exploitation 3 Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Coleridge-Taylor) 39–40 ritual paraphernalia contours 24–25 ‘rooted’ cosmopolitanism 6 Salasil pat.appa-.t.tu 125 Samvatsarangal (James) 247 Sandabur islands 158–159 Sanskrit cosmopolis 125–127 Satanic Verses (Rushdie) 83 Sayfulmuluk Badiuzzamal 105 seabed resources exploitation 3 search and rescue of refugees at sea 173–174 sea storms (language of) 108 Selassie, Haile 90–91 Shadow King, The (Mengiste) 87–89 shipwreck (in Padmabati) 108 Sikandarnama 104–105 silver 71–72 . -az-ı literature 118–120 sıra-mag

slave trade: absence of whip (India) 105; in Bengal delta 73–75, 100–101, 102–106; tales of capture 106–107 Slayer Slain, The 246 smell of the sea 81 Smith, Adam 54–55 social contract 55 Southern Ocean biosphere 44 South-South collaboration: geography’s effect on 40–41, 43; Moby Dick (case study) 38–39; in postcolonial analysis 41–44; resistance in interaction 42; Rime of the Ancient Mariner (case study) 39–40 storms (language of) 108 submarine aesthetics 25–26 sympathy 54–57 Taylor, Jason DeCaires 25 terra infirma 2 “thinking with” strategy 25 “tidalectics” 2 towns see cities/towns trade routes 7–8, 153–155 traffickers 174 translation (concept of) 117 unaccompanied migrant children 30–31 uncovered artefacts 23–25 underwater aesthetics 25–26 United Nations Conventions on Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) 173, 174 untouchables see Dalit Christians Vaidyar, Moyinkutty 124–125, 127, 184 vernacular cosmopolitanism 5 vernacular hydrocosmologies 28 Victory of Knowledge, The (Kunhambu) 246 voluntary service work 56–57 Wahhabis 234–235 Walcott, Derek 18 weather (language of) 83–84, 87, 91, 108 “wet ontologies” 2 wind see Indian Ocean wind; monsoon winds women: economic role of 146; labour of being in relation 147–149; networking by 147–148; writing in Arabi-Malayalam 184 “world-ing” 193 Zong massacre 30