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Paper short abstract:

This proposed paper will mainly look into the cultural memories of Mappila Muslims shared through generations about the idea of the apocalypse, the floods, and the spiritual dimensions associated with nurturing hope and survival instincts amidst chaos and utter anarchy.

Paper long abstract:

Cultural memory is considered a part of the "outer dimension of human memory," which includes mimetic memory, the memory of things, communicative memory, and cultural memory. The German anthropologist Jan Assmann proposes that cultural memory is the process by which society ensures cultural continuity by preserving, with the help of mnemonics, its collective knowledge from one generation to the next. Arabimalayalam, a vernacular script form developed and continues to thrive amongst the Muslim community in the Malabar region of Kerala, is the linguistic outcome of the cultural contact between Kerala and Arabia. Vellappokkamala (poems on floods) is a genre of Arabimalayalam literature that primarily focuses on literary renderings of floods. More than a hundred poems are written on the events that occurred during and after the major floods of the 20th century in Kerala [ floods of 1909, 1924, and 1961]. As memory is situated in an individual's historical, social, political, and cultural contexts, cultural memory works as a mode through which members of a specific community or group create, form, refashion, and reclaim their identity and preserve the cultural continuum. As cultural memory comprises the ideas of reference to time and place, reference to a particular group, and ability to reconstruct itself, the proposed paper will mainly look into the cultural memories of Mappila Muslims shared through generations about the idea of apocalypse, the floods, the ways to cope with it and the spiritual dimensions associated with nurturing hope and survival instincts amidst chaos and utter anarchy.