KOCHI: Over centuries, Kerala has seen the rise and fall of many great kingdoms and imperial powers. The geographical location of the state, which appears to be slim silver stream on the map of India, was so significant that it bore witness to one of the earliest cosmopolitan trade activities in the country. Within the myriad strands of Kerala’s historical narratives, the Malabar coast — comprising the south-western shoreline of mainland India wedged among the Western Ghats and clutching the Arabian sea — stands as an important bulwark. It is hardly a surprise that the region continues to enjoy considerable attention from Indologists, academicians, artists and history buffs around the world.
However, a fatal flaw made by those who write history is to valourise selective incidents, events and persons while disregarding others. Only recent and scrupulous attempts by young scholars have been able to cull out anecdotes that until now were hidden away from the annals.
One such Instagram project titled @malabar.manual by Kasaragod native Aflah Habeeb Mohammed is attempting to document the little known bygone chronicles of the Malabar coast through archival images.
“I have always been fascinated by Malabar as a region and the cosmopolitanism of its culture which originated long back. I have been reading about its history since I was in school.
However, in college, I encountered a few people who would mock the people and architecture of this region. That prompted me to read more and motivated me to start the Malabar Manual,” says Aflah, an architecture student who digs into every possible source to find information. “I have to be extremely responsible while posting something. I try to be politically correct and cross check the veracity of the literature I have.”
Launched in May last year, the page is a well researched non-linear compilation of remarkable events and personalities based in Malabar — most of which have faded from collective social memory over time.
For example, a post details the events leading up to the development of Atlanta, the first indigenous scooter made in 1961 by an engineer in the labour department called P S Thankappan. N H Rajkumar was the visionary behind it. Another archival image delves into the inaugural day proceedings of the first all-women police station in the world that was launched in 1973 inKozhikode by then prime minister Indira Gandhi.
Aware of the gravitas of his project, Aflah hopes to go beyond the topographical confines of the region to probe Malabar’s influence on the rest of the world. “The region has been relegated to the northern districts of Kerala, but the erstwhile Malabar extended to parts of Karnataka and even reached Goa. In fact, I found that the indentured labourers who were taken by European colonists to West Indies, Africa and SouthEast Asia have named settlements there after Malabar. I would like to make my followers familiar with that,” says the 25-year-old.