Malabar Secrets: South Indian Muslim Men's (Homo)sociality across the Indian Ocean

Abstract

This article is concerned with transformations in forms of male sociality and same-sex intimacy among Muslim men from Kozhikode (formerly known as Calicut) in Kerala, South India. I focus in particular on the way in which the globalisation of capital and labour markets – in particular, long-term migration to the Gulf countries of West Asia, a predominantly male affair – has produced novel forms and spaces of homosociality. By highlighting long-term religious and trade connections between Kozhikode and the Arabian Peninsula, the article problematises hegemonic representations of masculinities and same-sex relations in India as an expression of a specifically “Indian culture” and provides a more nuanced understanding of the effects of the disciplining power of heteronormativity associated with Indian modernity.

Keywords:

• India
• masculinity
• homosociality
• same-sex intimacy
• Indian Ocean
• migration
• Islamic reform

Acknowledgments

This research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (UK), the Nuffield Foundation (UK) and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK). I thank Ashraf K. Muhamed, Muraleedharan Tharayil, Katy Gardner, Ben Soares, Kaveri Harriss, Andrea Cornwall and Mark Johnson for their invaluable comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

Notes

Malayalam is the language spoken in Kerala; Malayalis are the people who inhabit Kerala.

See, for example, films such as Angadi (1980, dir. I.V. Sasi), Godfather (1991, dir. Lal and Siddique) and Ritu (2009, dir. Shyamaprasad), in which Muslims appear as abnormal characters, both comical and dangerously “homosexual”. I thank Ashraf K. Muhamed for pointing me in this direction.

See Kugle (2002) on the construction, post-1857, of the “manly Muslim homosexual”.

Throughout this article, homosex denotes a local term used to indicate same-sex sexual practices, but does not suggest the existence of a “homosexual” identity.

Koyas are matrilineal only insofar as they recognise descent through the female line; inheritance follows a combination of matrilineal traditions and shariah law (cf. Gough, 1961, p. 415ff; cf. McGilvray, 1989).

Islam prescribes five daily prayers: Fajr (dawn), Zuhr (noon), Asr (afternoon), Maghrib (sunset) and Isha (night).

Iftar is the evening meal with which Muslims break their fast during the month of Ramadan.

Islamic reformism here is a gloss to refer to a number of different organisations, in particular Kerala Naduvathul Mujahideen and Jama'at-i-Islami, which share a common orientation towards the renewal of religious practice (see Osella and Osella, 2008b).

In Kuwait and the Gulf region, the diwaniah is a room in a house for meeting male visitors, but refers more generally to a place where male relatives and friends meet on a regular basis.

See Cohen (2005), khanna (2007) and Boyce (2007) for a critical review of the debate in India. Compare with Boellstorff's discussion of the authenticity of modern gay and lesbi identities in Indonesia (2003; 2005).

In the context of queer/same-sex activism, MSM itself has become a fully-fledged identity (khanna, 2007; Boellstorff, 2005; 2011).

See Massad (2007) and Al Kasim (2008) for a critique of the orientalist nature of such an opposition.

I note that “masculinity” and “femininity” are seldom explored, but are taken for granted as transparent and singular, and therefore as not inflected by caste, class, community or region.

In a similar move, Boellstorff argues that in Indonesia gay and lesbi desire for heterosexual marriage “… does not stem from a primordial localism: it is an imperative to choose marriage that is deeply bound up with nationalist conceptions of marriage as symbol and exemplar of proper citizenship” (2005, p. 117).

I am indebted to Mark Johnson for suggesting this line of analysis.