Is There Singing in the Time of Crisis? Sounding Flood Songs of Coastal and Riverine Malabar in the Indian Ocean

Abstract

This study examines the flood songs of Malabar written as performative literary texts in the Arabi-Malayalam language that were prevalent among the Muslim community of Malabar in the twentieth century. These songs were written as eyewitness accounts of the historical monsoon floods that afflicted the coastal regions and hinterlands of Malabar on the shores of the western Indian Ocean. Flood songs as a genre offer a combined understanding of ecology, religion and performance of the recurrent floods that occurred in twentieth-century Malabar. They also provide details about the importance of collective memorialisation and the commemoration strategies adopted to record the seasonal disastrous floods which still afflict the region. This paper puts forth two fundamental questions regarding flood songs: first, how did flood songs ideologically define and internalise the origins and causes of environmental disasters in an oceanic-riverine complex? Second, how did these songs aesthetically express the religious experience of the flood, adaptations to them, and ways of managing the risks they imposed? This study investigates the unique manifestations of spirituality, music/sound and nature and the environment in the flood songs of Malabar, topics which remain unexplored in academic literature.

Keywords:

• Arabi-Malayalam
• coastal and riverine Malabar
• environmental disasters
• flood songs
• Indian Ocean
• spirituality

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their close reading of this paper and their detailed feedback. We also thank Radha Kapuria, Anna Schultz, Thibaut d’Hubert and Tomal Hossain for their insightful comments on the drafts in various stages of writing this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Bertolt Brecht et al., Poems, 1913–1956 (New York: Methuen, 1979).

2. Arabi-Malayalam is a language or style developed for writing Kēraḷa Bhāṣa (or the Malabari version of Tamil) using hybrid letters from the Arabic and Persian script: see O. Abu, Ar̲abīmalayāḷa Sāhityacaritr̲aṃ (Kōṭṭayaṃ: Sāhityapr̲avarttaka Sahakaraṇasaṅkham, 1970); Kēraḷa Saṅgīta Nāṭaka Akkādami, Samāgamaṃ (Trichur: Kēraḷa Saṅgītanāṭaka Akkādami, 1979); Institute of Mappila Studies, Ar̲abi Malayāḷaṃ (Thrissur, Institute of Mappila Studies, 1984); M.H. Illias and Shamshad Hussain, Arabi-Malayalam: Linguistic Cultural Traditions of Mappila Muslims of Kerala (New Delhi: Gyan Publishing House, 2017).

3. Recently, studies have appeared which discuss the nature/environment, culture/society and sound/music under a single theoretical framework. S. Allen and Kevin Dawe’s proposal of ecomusicology seems very helpful to bring the aforesaid ideas together and approach it as a methodology and a genre: see Aaron S. Allen and Kevin Dawe, Current Directions in Ecomusicology: Music, Culture, Nature (New York: Routledge, 2016). The recent discussions on spiritual ecology have also inspired this research to connect spirituality and environmentalism, especially while addressing questions about the spiritual or religious dimensions of understanding nature and its balance with regard to human life and human activities: see Leslie Elmer Sponsel, Spiritual Ecology: A Quiet Revolution (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2012).

4. For a discussion, see Aaron Patrick Mulvany, ‘Flood of Memories: Narratives of Flood and Loss in Tamil South India’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 2011): 5.

5. Meenu Jacob, ‘The Great Flood of Travancore, 1924’ (unpublished MPhil thesis, Mahatma Gandhi University, 2012): 77.

6. Michael N. Pearson, The Indian Ocean (London and New York: Routledge, 2003).

7. Gwyn Campbell, ‘Introduction: Bondage and the Environment in the Indian Ocean World’, in Bondage and the Environment in the Indian Ocean World, ed. Gwyn Campbell (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018): 1.

8. Greg Bankoff and Joseph Christensen, ‘Bordering on Danger: An Introduction’, in Natural Hazards and Peoples in the Indian Ocean World: Bordering on Danger, ed. Greg Bankoff and Joseph Christensen (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016): 1–30; 16.

9. Greg Bankoff and Joseph Christensen, ed., Natural Hazards and Peoples in the Indian Ocean World: Bordering on Danger (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).

10. Greg Bankoff, ‘Storm over San Isidro: Repeated “Disasters” and Civic Community Culture in the Nineteenth-Century Philippines’, in Natural Hazards and Peoples in the Indian Ocean World, 199–224.

11. See Alain Corbin, The Lure of the Sea: The Discovery of the Seaside in the Western World, 1750–1840 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994): 3.

12. See Vēlāyudhan Paṇikkaśśēri, Putiya Raṇṭu Kēraḷōlpattikaḷ (Kollam: Śrțrāmavilāsaṃ Press and Book Depot, 1963); Paṇikkaśśēri, Kēraḷōlppatti (Kottayam: Current Books, 2008); V. Rajeev, trans., Kēraḷamāhātmyam (Caritr̲aṃ) (Kottayam, National Bookstall, 2012). For the English translation, see T. Madhava Menon, trans., Gundert: Kēraḷōlpatti: The Origin of Kerala (Thiruvananthapuram: International School of Dravidian Linguistics, 2003). For the published manuscript in Malayalam, see C.A. Menon, ed., Kēraḷōlpatti (Madras: University of Madras, 1953).

13. The western Indian regions of Gujarat, Konkan, Karnataka and Kerala have different versions of origin stories related to Paraśurāman. For a detailed discussion of the Konkan stories, see Rosalind O’Hanlon and Christopher Minkowski, ‘What Makes People Who They Are? Pandit Networks and the Problem of Livelihoods in Early Modern Western India’, The Indian Economic & Social History Review 45, no. 3 (2008): 381–416; 387. For the Kannada version, see Nagendra Rao, ‘Gramapaddhati, a Medieval Text from South-Western India’, Vidyasagar University Journal of History 3 (2014–15): 27–37.

14. For a discussion on the Biblical flood and colonial understanding of the Paraśurāman myth, see Dilip M. Menon, ‘A Farrago of Legendary Nonsense? Myth, Time, and History in the Keralolpatti’, in Retelling Time: Alternative Temporalities from Premodern South Asia, ed. Shonaleeka Kaul (London: Routledge India, 2021): 185–199.

15. A medieval Maṇipravāḷam (premodern trivarna Malayalam) text speaks of the speciality of the land on account of its fertility, also a gift of Paraśurāman: ‘the rainy season, under the orders of Paraśurāma, comes here frequently like a mother comes to breastfeed her children’: see Kesavan Veluthat, ‘History and Historiography in Constituting a Region: The Case of Kerala’, Studies in People’s History 5, no. 1 (2018): 13–31; 22.

16. Jacob, ‘The Great Flood’, 60–69.

17. Mulvany, ‘Flood of Memories’.

18. P.K. Yasser Arafath, ‘Praḷayakālatt Naṭattaṁ Ninna Kattuṁ Ṟeyilvaṇṭiyuṁ’, Mathrubhumi Weekly, October 21–27, 2018: 40–49.

19. These literary sensibilities were connected via their socio-political proximity to cis-oceanic developments (here, environmental disasters) in the seaboards of the Indian Ocean. Its circulation was engendered by the socially situated intentions and historically motivated cultural necessity of the literati and their audience. For the idea of connected literary sensibilities, see Ihsan Ul-Ihthisam, ‘Paṭappāṭṭus in the Indian Ocean: Connected Literary Sensibilities and the Circulation of Texts and Sounds across Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit Cosmopolises’ in Oceanic Imagination and Cosmopolitan Cultures: Thinking Through History Across the Waters’, ed. Dilip Menon and Nishat Zaidi, (New Delhi: Routledge, forthcoming).

20. For further readings on the emerging field of Indian ocean ethnomusicology, see Julia Byl and Jim Sykes, ‘Ethnomusicology and the Indian Ocean: On the Politics of Area Studies’, Ethnomusicology 64, no. 3 (2020): 394–421; Patrick Eisenlohr, Sounding Islam: Voice, Media, and Sonic Atmospheres in an Indian Ocean World (Oakland: University of California Press, 2018).

21. David Armitage’s study on the history of the Atlantic Ocean explicates circum-oceanic history as a history of a particular zone of exchange, interchange, circulation and transmission, whereas trans-oceanic signifies the history of an Oceanic region through comparisons. Cis-oceanic history studies a particular region as a unique location within the Oceanic world and seeks to define its uniqueness as the result of the interaction between local particularity and a wider web of connections: see David Armitage, ‘Three Concepts of Atlantic History’, in The British Atlantic World, 1500–1800, ed. David Armitage and Michael J Braddick (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002): 11–27. As Michael Pearson argues, it is impossible to write a history of the Indian Ocean now, and all Indian Ocean history is now a history in the Ocean, as a part of the larger or global story: see Pearson, The Indian Ocean, 17.

22. Suagata Bose and Ayesha Jalal, ed., Oceanic Islam: Muslim Universalism and European Imperialism (New Delhi: Bloomsbury, 2020).

23. We accessed one of the first edition manuscript print copies of Tūphān Māla from Mahākavi Mōyinkuṭṭi Vaidyar Māppiḷa Kalā Akkādami Arabi-Malayalam Archives: Kāṭṭil Vīṭṭil Ahammad Kōya, Tūphān Māla (Kōḻikkōṭ: Cempakaśśēripaṟampil Valiyatoṭika Ālikkuṭṭi, 1909).

24. We accessed one of the rare manuscript print copies of Laukīka Mahātbhuta Māla from the private collection of Arabi-Malayalam archivist-cum-scholar Ashraf Saqafi Punnath: Kaḷattil Muhammad Kuṭṭi, Laukīka Mahātbhuta Māla (Tirūraṅṅāṭi: Pottayil Muhammad, 1924). This flood was also known as the Great Flood of 99 following the Kollam era dating of the event.

25. The annotated and appended copy of Veḷḷappokkaṁ was accessed through Mahākavi Mōyinkuṭṭi Vaidyar Māppiḷa Kalā Akkādami Reference Library: K.M. Abdullah and M.U. Abin Sha, ed., Veḷḷappokkaṁ: Muṇṭampaṟa Uṇṇimammad (Arīkkōṭ: Arīkkōṭ Grāma Pañcāyatt, 2019).

26. Bankoff and Christensen, Natural Hazards, 5.

27. Sunil Amrith, Unruly Waters: How Rains, Rivers, Coasts, and Seas Have Shaped Asia’s History (New York: Basic Books, 2018): 4. S Kamala Devi, in her PhD dissertation, draws a centennial history (1800–1900) of tropical cyclones in Coromandel with a special focus on the study of nature and character, chronology, affected areas, administrational, economic, social and psychological impact, disaster management, and relief and rehabilitation. She has citations from Tamil indigenous literary sources about the traditional knowledge of the denizens in understanding the historical cyclones that happened on the Tamil Nadu coast and the ways of local adaptation and disaster management: see S. Kamala Devi, ‘History of Cyclone on the Coromandel Coast with Special Reference to Tamil Nadu, 1800–1900’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Bharathidasan University, 2011).

28. W.L. Dallas, Cyclone Memoirs, Part IV, Arabian Sea, Into the Nature and Course of Storms in the Arabian Sea, Catalogue and Brief History of all Recorded Cyclones in that Sea (Calcutta: The Meteorological Department of The Government of India; Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1891).

29. Rosser William Henry and James Frederick Imray, The Seaman’s Guide to the Navigation of the Indian Ocean and China Sea: Including a Description of the Wind, Storms, Tides, Currents, &c., Sailing Directions; a Full Account of All the Islands; With Notes on Making Passages During the Different Seasons (London: J. Imray & Son, 1867): 87.

30. C. Ramaswamy, ‘On the Malabar Cyclone of May 1941’, Current Science 10, no. 7 (1941): 322–4.

31. Ramaswamy, ‘On the Malabar’, 323.

32. The only reference we managed to trace regarding the May 1909 storm surge was a very short one-line mention of the ‘disastrous storm, which passed over the West Coast in May 1909, causing considerable rain in the districts to the east of the Palghat gap, and there were 140 shipping casualties with considerable damage to vessels and cargo, and the loss of 20 lives’, in the Madras Administration Report of 1908–09 and 1909–10: see Madras (India: Presidency), Report on the Administration of the Madras Presidency, during the Year 1909–1910 (Madras: The Superintendent, Government Press, 1910): 42; Madras (India: Presidency), Report on the Administration of the Madras Presidency, during the Year 1908–1909 (Madras: The Superintendent, Government Press, 1909): 42.

33. Kōḻikkōṭ is the modern name of Calicut or Kālikūt. The position of qāzi (head of jurists) of Calicut was very powerful for its spiritual and political influence from the early times of known Muslim settlements in Malabar. The Calicut Qāzi family has contributed enormously to the Arabi- Malayāḷam and Arabic literary world. The first known literary piece in Arabi-Malayāḷam is Muḥyiddțn Māla (1607) in the māla genre, which was authored by Qāzi Muḥammad Kālikūtț (d. 1616?) of the Calicut Qāzi family. Abūbakkar Kuññi Qāzi (d. 1884), the eighth grandson of Qāzi Muḥammad Kālikūtț, was a prominent Sufi scholar of the time with a number of publications in diverse fields of knowledge. He wrote prolifically in māla literature, like Safțna Māla, Śāduli Māla, Taṭi Uruṭṭi Māla, Baṟakat Māla and Akhțda Māla. For more on the life and writings of Abūbakkar Kuññi Qāzi, see Unais P.K. ‘The Literary Contributions of Calicut Qāzis with Special Reference to Qāzi Abu Bakr Kunji’s Spiritual Works’ (unpublished Master’s thesis, Darul Huda Islamic University, 2017).

34. Kōya, Tūphān Māla, 1. All the translations provided in this article are our own unless mentioned otherwise.

35. For further readings on māla literature, see Muneer Aram Kuzhiyan, ‘Poetics of Piety: Genre, Devotion, and Self-Fashioning in the Mappila Literary Culture of South India’ (unpublished PhD thesis, The English and Foreign Languages University, 2015); P.K. Yasser Arafath, ‘Polyglossic Malabar: Arabi-Malayalam and the Muhiyuddinmala in the Age of Transition (1600s–1750s)’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 30, no. 3 (2020): 517–39; Ophira Gamliel, ‘On the Warp and Woof of Language: Arabic Malayalam and the Muḥyidțn Māla’, Iśal Paitṛkam 15 (2017): 24–30.

36. ‘Muḥyidīn Māla’, authored by Qāḍi Muḥammad Kālikūtț (d. 1616?), Calicut Qāḍi family, literalised the twelfth-century Baghdadi Sufi scholar Shaykh Muḥyuddīn ‘Abd al-Qādir al-Jīlāni’s saintly life into the newly invented māla genre in Arabi-Malayalam.

37. Muneer, ‘Poetics of Piety’, 186–87.

38. For Malabari Muslims, supererogatory rituals (other than mandatory rituals) like māla, mawlid and rātib are part of their everyday religious life. Their sacred soundscape is rich with such performative textual traditions. Those ritual soundings play an inevitable role in the fashioning of the piety and religious life of the Muslims in Malabar: see Muneer, ‘Poetics of Piety’; Ines Weinrich, ‘From the Arab Lands to the Malabar Coast: The Arabic Mawlid as a Literary Genre and a Traveling Text’, Entangled Religions 11, no. 5 (2020), accessed September 9, 2022, https://doi.org/10.46586/er.11.2020.9467. For a discussion of the term, ‘soundscape’, see R. Murray Schafer, The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World (Rochester: Destiny Books, 1994).

39. Iśal is the melodic-cum-metric convention used in Arabi-Malayāḷam lyrical poetry.

40. Pearson, The Indian Ocean, 39.

41. Kamala Devi, ‘History of Cyclone’, 152.

42. Ibid., 155.

43. Bamb is an Arabi-Malayalam prose style, which is used occasionally between iśals in the Arabi-Malayalam lyrical genres, which pastiches the Arabic prose conventions.

44. Tirutiruvākum aḷāhu subhānahu vata'āla avan tanṟe khudṟat arintiru amaṟāl baina samā viṇṭu tansīlu phil bah‌ṟil iṟakkiya ṟīhu shadāyid haiṟāniyakkatha navilattiru rēkha tantu aṟivittēār bōsaṇṭu nāmadhāril bandar māṣṭṭar yēṇṭē muṭicūṭi sinhāsanattilirikkuṁ yūṟōphināyakar kaibiḷayāṭṭakutbukaḷil sahiyāna daṟakās ṭōṟanṟ yeṇṭil taritte aṟint śaddu ṟīh yeṇṭē tūphān hayyar yeṇṭuṁ ‌ phērnaviluṁ qissa tanai tiruttuvatukk aṭakkaṁ tantu aruḷ vēṇṭane unvēṇṭu muṇṭinil tuṭaravaraṁ aruḷ pheṟiyavā kāphphu: see Kōya, Tūphān Māla, 3.

45. Susannah M. Hoffman and Anthony Oliver-Smith, ed., Catastrophe & Culture: The Anthropology of Disaster, School of American Research Advanced Seminar Series (Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press, 2002): 4–6; Anthony Oliver-Smith and Susannah M. Hoffman, ed., The Angry Earth: Disaster in Anthropological Perspective (Abingdon: Routledge, 2020): 1–17.

46. Hoffman and Oliver-Smith, Catastrophe & Culture, 8.

47. See Kōya, Tūphān Māla, Iśal 4, ‘fuṟaffeṭṭ abujāhil’, 4–5.

48. Sebastian R. Prange, Monsoon Islam: Trade and Faith on the Medieval Malabar Coast (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018): 16.

49. See Kōya, Tūphān Māla, Iśal 8, ‘āye baittukal’, 10–11, and Iśal 15, ‘mānidam qwāla’, 16–17.

50. See Kōya, Tūphān Māla, Iśal 8, ‘āye baittukal’, 10–11. The above iśals also represent the poet’s conscious effort to restate or reiterate the all-pervasive, inescapable and ubiquitous effect of disasters upon humankind, regardless of community, class or creed, and the impotency or helplessness of human beings in stopping or preventing such hazards.

51. Prange, Monsoon Islam, 46–47.

52. Prange, Monsoon Islam, 44.

53. Pearson, The Indian Ocean, 31.

54. Pearson, The Indian Ocean, 24; Amrith, Unruly Waters, 191.

55. See Kuṭṭi, Laukīka Mahātbhuta Māla, Iśal 4, ‘komb’, 7–8.

56. The flood of 1924 was also known as The Great Flood of 99 because it happened in the calendar year of 1099 in the Malayalam (Kollam) era. On the flood of 1924, other than the two Arabi-Malayalam poems, there are dozens of literary works in both Malayalam and Arabi-Malayalam, among them O.M. Moy‌duṇṇi’s Kēraḷa Jalaghōra Vr̥ttāntaṁ aka Parōpakāra Sahakaraṇa Māla and Ahammad Kuṭṭi Molla’s Malabār Vādaṁ Jalaghōra Gītaṁ: see Arafath, Praḷayakālatt; Ashraf Punnath, Laukīka Mahātbhuta Māla, Risala Weekly, December 4, 2019; Ashraf Punnath, ‘Praḷayattinoppaṁ Poṅṅiya Pāṭṭukaḷ’, Risala Weekly, September 12, 2018. For the works in Malayalam, see Jacob, ‘The Great Flood’, 58–74; T.K. Hamsa and Razaq Payambrot, ed., Veḷḷappokka Māla: Pāṭṭupustakam (Koṇṭōṭṭi: Mahākavi Mōyinkuṭṭi Vaidyar Māppiḷa Kalā Akkādami, 2018).

57. Kuṭṭi, Laukīka Mahātbhuta Māla, 1.

58. The quasi-governmental institution formed for the patronage, preservation and promotion of the Arabi-Malayalam literary traditions and performing arts prevalent among the Māppila Malabari Muslims.

59. Razaq Payambrot, WhatsApp voice message to author, November 3, 2021.

60. Hamsa and Razaq, Veḷḷappokka Māla, 8–12.

61. Allen and Dawe, Current Directions; Jeff Todd Titon, Toward a Sound Ecology: New and Selected Essays. (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2020).

62. Sponsel, Spiritual Ecology; Rebecca Dirksen, ‘Haiti, Singing for the Land, Sea, and Sky: Cultivating Ecological Metaphysics and Environmental Awareness through Music’, MUSICultures 45, nos. 1–2 (2018).

63. Pharanāyavan kalphitta amarkaḷ vokke, faḥshāʾi mahā maṟṟaṁ naṭann mikkē | ariffam qurʾānum hadithum bābā, ābattuṭē sāram bedint asbābā | mannānavar tanṟe bidi phiṣatt, manuvar ghaflattil taṭi naśitt | connē farḍāya namaskāramā, covvil eṭukkāte laʿibil qawmā | uṇṇān kaṭapheṭṭa ghanikaḷ ellām, uḷḷe zakāttukaḷ koṭuphatillā (Iśal 9). It phōlē ramaḍānil farḍānē ṣawmun, itamuḷḷōr aṭima ḥajjatumānē (Iśal 10): see Kuṭṭi, Laukīka Mahātbhuta Māla, Iśal 9 and Iśal 10, 2–13.

64. See Sponsel, Spiritual Ecology, 21.

65. Sayyid ʿalawī waliyar maqāmuḷḷil jalam dakhalāyē, muṟaphaṭi jāmam muṟiyāte sharafuṭe bēdam ōtiṭunnē | mudiyare majlis atil phāni uyarnn arayōḷam….: see Kuṭṭi, Laukīka Mahātbhuta Māla, Iśal 6, ‘taṭaki maṇatte’, 9–10.

66. See Abdullah and Abin Sha, ed., Veḷḷappokkaṁ, Iśal 38, ‘appaḷannabi’, 145–46.

67. See Abdullah and Abin Sha, ed., Veḷḷappokkaṁ, Iśal 7, ‘bamb’, 63–66.

68. See Abdullah and Abin Sha, ed., Veḷḷappokkaṁ, Iśal 8, ‘kutira varav tōnittāḷḷ’, 67–75.

69. The term ecosanity is adopted from Sponsel’s work and signifies rational or reasonable behaviour towards nature. Sponsel ponders over the two choices we have in the modern world, ecocide and ecosanity: see Sponsel, Spiritual Ecology, 188.

70. Corbin, The Lure of the Sea, 2–3.