36. Dr. C. Padmanabhan

Abstract 36. 

Dr. C. Padmanabhan                                                                                                                                   

Contact Zones and Combat Songs:
On the Many Voices of the Subaltern in  “Cherur Padappattu”

Abstract

European colonial interventions in Malabar have generated numerous social as well as literary texts and subtexts which have ostensibly adopted a multitude of discursive strategies covering a wide spectrum ranging from complacent appropriation of the situation to active abrogation.  One striking example for a note of active dissent is the song, “Cherur Padappattu” or ‘Battle Song of Cherur’ jointly composed by Muhammad Kutty and Muhayuddin in Arabic-Malayalam, recounting an armed encounter between rebelling Mappillas and the soldiers of the British East India Company at a place called “Cherur” near Thirurangadi in the year 1841. The British authorities had subsequently banned the sale as well as recital of the song and had seized the manuscript of the song from the printing press at Thalassery.  The song is a uniquely representational specimen of a subaltern articulations occurring beneath numerous cultural as well as political constraints and limitations and these have a direct bearing on the text of the song.  Structurally speaking the discourse map of the song is vertically related to the other texts coming under the broad umbrella of “Mappilla Literature” and horizontally to the texts on colonial intervention.

The song was paraphrased and included in William Logan’s “Malabar Manual” first published in 1887. Logan’s inclusion of the song, the format he chooses for it and his commentaries on the song offer an interesting reading as to how the song was read by the colonizers, and assimilated into the literary tradition of Malabar.  Reading Logan reading the song provides a unique opportunity to unravel a second layer of associations related to the song. The first is based on the song itself and the second is based on Logan’s rendering / reading of the song.

The present paper proposes to read the song against the backdrop of Mappila cultural articulation as well European interventions.  It also proposes to read Logan’s paraphrased translation of the song both as a gesture of translation and also as an act of situating a subaltern articulation in a cultural hierarchy constructed by the coloniser.