School of Critical Studies

Asses of Malappuram: Reading the Malabar Rebellions Differently

Tuesday 17 May 2022, 2-3pm (UK time)

 

In the past few decades, several historians have analysed the foundational characteristics of a series of rebellions that happened in the British colonial Malabar in southwest India between the 1790s and 1920s. The rebellions were primarily targeted at the British colonial officers and their local intermediaries. Both colonial and postcolonial observers have investigated the fundamental motivations of the rebels and have concluded the rebellions being agrarian, communal, anti-colonial, nationalistic, etc. Moving away from such essentialistic readings, this talk explores the rebellions from the perspectives of animals who were forced to stand at the forefront of the human conflicts. A major part of the imperial and colonial project was carried out on the hinterlands of Malabar by animals. In the rebellions, they hardly resisted the subjugations in order to work tirelessly for the colonial apparatus while also often being brutally attacked, tortured and butchered. Focusing on the stories of a few mules from Malappuram in southern Malabar, the talk will demonstrate their diverse predicaments in the battlegrounds.

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First published: 24 March 2022