Dubai Letter Songs: Emotions and Migration in Kerala,India (1970s–1990s)

The Region as Limits to ‘Desirable’ Modernity

In Kerala, the articulation of regional identity strengthened in the 1960s and 1970s. The tensions in the definition of Malayali identity manifested in multiple arenas, including film and literature. The arthouse Malayalam movies of the 1970s made a conscious effort to articulate the regional as rooted in the history and culture of the Nair caste (Radhakrishnan 2009); ‘the authentic culture of Kerala is coded as upper caste Nair through the demonising of the objects and the opulence of the Gulf returnee who is usually from the marginalised groups’ (225); and the region and its culture were ‘understood as an inside that needed to be kept isolated from the ills of the outside’ (221). The films tied the ‘inside’ to ‘virtues’ and the economic and social structure around the tharavad (the ancestral Nair house and family). Qualifying space and spatial experiences as, and segregating these into, ‘desirable’ and ‘undesirable’ seems to be fundamental to the cultural codification and circulation of regional identity. The Malayalam media considered Madras (now Chennai) an undesirable space of Malayalam movie production and the Gulf an undesirable space of Malayalam movie consumption (221). The film industry’s practice of designating and segregating experiences concerning spaces as desirable or undesirable indicates the possibility of its prevalence in other sectors too. Of particular interest here is whether such constructs were applied to make sense of practices such as migration. Moreover, how Malayali society understood the success and failure of migrants outside Kerala is vital for our analysis of the ‘emotionalisation’ of the migrant subject. The Malayalam arthouse movies of the 1970s— controlled predominantly by upper-caste men—projected the anxieties of the Malayali encounter with modernity (221). The narratives of arthouse movies saw mobility, the most common encounter possible with modernity, as tragic and traumatic to the ‘ideal’ Malayali man. Men—mostly lower-caste, Christians and Muslims who successfully negotiated and integrated outside the region, particularly in the Gulf—were caricatured as the illegitimate products of modernity and, hence, undesirable subjectivities (221).

The role of the Malayalam film industry in codifying the Malayali identity is essential for understanding the origins of the Songs and similar creations in at least two ways. First, the popularity of movies ensured wide reach. Second, people associated with the film industry and allied fields imbibed the coding process uncritically and replicated it in their work. Jameel worked closely with the theatre and film industry right from his adolescence; it is probable that he was influenced by the cultural coding process. One cannot miss the association between his views on migration, integration and negotiation with modernity reflected in the Songs and his experiences with attempts to integrate with modernity in cities outside the region, such as Madras (now Chennai) and Bombay (now Mumbai). Jameel’s encounters with theatre and left politics are essential for understanding the influence of the idea of ‘desirable’ Malayali modernity on him.

Jameel’s Adolescence and Socialisation

Jameel, a school dropout, spent his childhood fully immersed in singing and painting, mostly confined to his home (Jameel 2010). His debut in theatre and music happened through the Nilambur Yuvajana Kalasamithi (henceforth Kalasamithi), the cultural wing of the undivided Communist Party in Eranad taluk of Malappuram district in Kerala. Once part of the theatre, he seems to have embraced the liberatory experience of theatre:

(I) started to know the outside world after beginning in theatre. The curiosity to know everything led me to read. (I) I bought books for whatever money I earned. Mysticism, Philosophy and science were dear to me. I read books on theology and cosmology. (Rasheed 2009: 317)

During his engagement in the Kalasamithi, Jameel interacted and worked with left political activists (Jameel 2010). In his later works, Jameel never referred to the influence of left political ideals on his creative work. However, he would have not escaped the codifying effect of regional identity and the cultural process in constructing the ‘ideal’ Malayali modern man, led by left liberals, who mainly came from the upper castes, especially the Nair caste. Reflecting on the role of the Nair caste in the cultural codification process, the Nairs could ‘integrate with the service class and construct a hegemony over the middle-class ethos in the State by the 1970s’ (Radhakrishnan 2009: 229). The hegemonic Nair middle-class ethos influenced ‘the intellectuals, filmmakers, theatre activists, and political leaders of the revolutionary politics’ (230). Jameel’s creative work—with the Kalasamithi and the Malayalam theatre and film industry—must have led him into close contact with the ideas of the Malayali middle class, who dominated these fields. An analysis of Jameel’s encounter with modernity outside Kerala reveals the possible impact of his exposure to the knowledge and practices that constitute the regional identity in his later creative work and, particularly, in forming an opinion on the desirability/undesirability of migration to the Gulf or negotiating modernity outside Kerala.

By the time Jameel wrote the Songs, he had gone through tragic and traumatic experiences of integrating with modernity outside the region. The first was his effort to break into the Bombay film industry as a singer. In the late 1950s, Jameel made his first trip to Bombay to act and sing in the play Duniyavil Njan Ottakanu (‘I Am Alone in the World’) as part of the Kalasamithi. The play was successful and the success gained him many friends in Bombay: ‘Motivations of a beautiful and bright future tied me to Bombay. I decided not to return home with the troupe. I expected that my interest areas of singing, painting, photography and acting would turn me into someone different’ (Jameel 2010: 147). After continual effort, the music director of the film Dil Dekhe Dekho made Jameel an offer, but the producer was not ready to engage a beginner (Rasheed 2009). Shocked and disappointed, Jameel slipped into depression and had to be hospitalised: ‘Reaching home, I withdrew into myself, staying inside for months without any contact with the outside world. I preferred to stay in a dark room. I hated light. The cries of crows and chirpings of other birds were intolerable to my ears. I had become mentally ill’ (147). Later, Jameel tried to make a career in the Malayalam film industry—based in Madras, the undesirable exterior of Malayalam movie production. However, he failed to comply with the industry norms: ‘The film field demanded obedience and compliance. I was sick and tired of it. I realised that cinema was not my cup of tea’ (Rasheed 2009: 318). Jameel took a strong position against going out of the way to please the authorities and left Madras.

In attempting to integrate with modernity outside Kerala, Jameel experienced failure and rejection. If Bombay was the space of modernity that negated his skills, Madras was the space of modernity that rejected his self. One cannot but wonder if these experiences cemented Jameel’s belief—encounters with modernity outside one’s region are disastrous, as success can come only through undesirable negotiations; and because as a practice migration goes against one’s ‘authentic’ regional identity, it is undesirable and should be abandoned.

The second layer to the articulation of regional identity was the construction of Nair caste history, practices and aesthetics as the default history, practices and aesthetics of modern Malayali identity (Radhakrishnan 2009: 229). This aspect of Malayali aesthetics is evident in the differentiation between Malayalam cinema and Tamil cinema (Radhakrishnan 2009). Malayalis criticise Tamil cinema for its excess of stardom and emotionally charged performances—which is quite unlike the aesthetics of the Malayalam cinema. The technique of othering by condemning excess is not limited only to cultural practices outside Kerala but extended also to those within the region that do not conform to the Nair caste aesthetics; for instance, ‘bright colours and strong designs in clothing’ are identified with the lower castes (Osella and Osell 2000: 121).

Consumption is one practice that is important for our analysis. Historically, consumption in Kerala was limited to the upper castes such as the Nambuthiris and Nairs and for upper-class Christians (Osella and Osell 2000). In the latter part of the 20^th century, consumption as a cultural practice was generalised to Gulf migrants, and condemned as undesirable, and the social meaning migrants attach to consumption discredited. In the public sphere and policy circles, migrants are blamed for ‘irrational consumption’ and ‘economic irrationality’ and for transforming the state into a consumer state. These criticisms are far-fetched: most migrant families use the major share of the remittance to repay debts and support family members and relatives; only a tiny percentage is available for procuring luxury goods (Osella and Osell 2000).

‘Adopting moralism as a political strategy’, a section of the intelligentsia in Kerala continues to induce guilt in ‘others’—an operation essential in historicising Nair caste practices and aesthetics—and blame migrants for the development of consumerism in the state to critique globalisation:

Moralistic appeals are made from a claimed position of political correctness and try to achieve their ends by inducing a sense of guilt in those addressed. This facilitates a grim divide between the perfect ‘us’ and the contaminated ‘them’ and blinds one to the internal fissures of ‘us’. (Devika 2007: 2468)

Devika’s analysis of the critique of globalisation helps us to understand the powerful strategy of making ‘them’ feel guilty: for being a migrant, a migrant wife, a transnational family. The Songs give this guilt emotion. The emotionalisation of guilt can be traced further to narratives of the Kerala model of development and the definition of the Malayali family.

The Transnational Family

Modern Kerala understands ‘family’ as a monogamous patrilocal unit. The idea seems to have evolved during the period between the early 19^th century and the early 20^th century.

Early in the 19^th century, the colonial administration made three major changes to the laws on ‘descent, succession and inheritance’ to the Nair tharavad in the Malabar region (Arunima 1996). One, relating to property rights and tenurial status, gave the tharavad inalienable rights over its lands in relation to tenants and cultivators. Another declared the tharavad an impartible entity and its land rights inalienable—a court of law would recognise the claims only of resident members and not of tharavad members who lived separately. The third elected ‘the eldest male on the grounds of age and gender as the individual responsible for managing its economy and making revenue payments’ (Arunima 1996: 293). The colonial administration assigned the headship of the Nair tharavad to the eldest male member (karanvar) to codify the state–subject relationship and simplify the tax regime. But the assignation redefined the idea of ‘family’ because, in precolonial Malabar, it was not unusual for a Nair woman to leave the tharavad after marriage or relocation, set up her lineage (thavazi) and, if the eldest member of the family, manage the property and day-to-day affairs of the tharavad. The gendering of descent, succession and inheritance relegated women to the interiors of the tharavad, reshaped the matrilineal kinship system and brought about changes in society and politics. To explain these changes, Arunima (1996) uses Carole Pateman’s (1988) idea of the ‘sexual contract’: the state–subject interface is created by a contract between the state and men that excludes women. By choosing the eldest male member as the sole representative, the colonial administration cemented the idea that a ‘household’ or ‘family’ may only be male-headed and only the eldest male members may legitimately represent it in public or negotiate with civil society or the state. This idea was contrary to the Nair matrilineal practice. The idea is crucial to understand why the social unit of the transnational family is considered undesirable in Kerala: As her husband is away, the Gulf Wife, the eldest member of the house, represents the family and negotiates on its behalf with civil society and the state—violating and challenging the ‘sexual contract’ and the idea of the ‘desirable’ family, the norm for over a century, and still followed by non-migrant families. To respond to the ‘challenge’ posed by the transnational family, therefore, civil society must discredit it as ‘undesirable’.

The stigma and doubt over the transnational family seem to be rooted also in the caste reform movement. Late in the 19^th century, educated Malayali youth used colonial legal ideas of the family to wrest power from the elderly. The youth considered the tharavad the site of political, economic and libidinal oppression and saw an opportunity in legal developments such as the enactment of the Malabar Marriage Bill of 1887 to undermine it. ‘Marriage as a prime example of the contract was seen as offering a panacea from the predicament of the Tharavad, a means of contracting themselves out of the trammels of the joint family system’; and modern educated Malayali men used the marriage reforms as a pretext to undermine the authority of the tharavad and ‘to gain control over [the] sexuality and fertility of women’ (Arunima 1996: 301). This historic moment seems discursive in defining masculine identity in modern Kerala, but it could not have been used to its fullest potential to gain political control over the tharavad unless an individual’s identity was liberated from the tharavad. The caste reform movement performed that role.

The movement constructed an ‘ideal’ of ‘caste community’. And it identified and nominated the patrilocal monogamous family as the fundamental unit of the caste community and assigned it primacy over all other ideas and forms of ‘family’. The notion that ‘[a] man, [a] woman and their children’ constitute the ideal unit of the ideal caste community (Arunima 1996) has proven discursive. Antithetical to that ideal is the transnational family, a unit that spans geographies and requires women to assume the headship and negotiate with civil society.

Marupadikathu: The Reply

Once Dubaikathu caught the attention of audiences in Kerala and the Gulf, Jameel (2010) wrote the Marupadikathu (Reply Letter), a sequel:

Amidst the sumptuosity of luxury and comfort

Even if you feast on gold each day [a usage for extreme prosperity]

Even with increasing remittance of foreign money

Even in the utmost secure confinement inside (your) home

It is bound to happen, you are bound to make mistakes

You are bound to be trapped in the temptations around you. (85)

The migrant labourer husband does not console his wife or acknowledge her sacrifice or service to the transnational family and Malayali society—reminding her of their contribution to society and the economy—or, even, express pride in his contribution to the economy of the region. Instead, he discredits his wife’s charge that he has deserted her and accuses her of losing her values while indulging in the fruits of his hard-earned labour. He adopts the moral frame of the upper castes to criticise the social world of migrants and himself as well (86):

The tortures treatment meted out by the man (migrant) is nothing but murdering the wife

Our Islam forbids it

The poor woman also has a life

[You] jump [to raise] but only to fall

[You] jump [to raise] but only to fall [failure]

The seeds of betrayal sown by [migrant labourer’s] greed for money are reaped again and again

[And the] downfall continues.

The husband discredits his, and migrant labourers’, pursuit of fortune at the cost of separation from family. He portrays his aspiration for a good life as betrayal and material progress as a moral decline. The ‘failure’ of his masculinity evokes self-pity and indignation (85):

A husband who does not know the need of a woman

Idiot, he who is responsible for her error

Opportunities are the mother of need

One who leaves room for such opportunities is the king of fools

(We) still hear, we still see

(We) still hear, we still see instances

Many (of) extramarital relationships

Still happening and will continue to happen?

I am not an angel (malaikah), is a pronouncement heavy on (my) heart

It is a shot fired from a double-barrelled gun into my consciousness (manasil)

(Shot fired against a) man of dignity and pride (manabhimanam)

Impossible for anyone to answer

(Anyone’s) masculinity will be frozen, (it) will shatter

Masculinity will be frozen, (it) will shatter,

The summit of wealth will be shaken in no time

Shaken in no time.

These extracts express anxiety over the shift in the transnational family from consumption to ‘greed’. Thus, the Marupadikathu is an emotional rebuttal that resorts to self-criticism, blame and accusation. To defend himself, the migrant labourer husband applies the ‘fall in values’ frame, a moral and patriarchal frame that reflects the hegemonic upper-caste ethos. He uses the same frame to criticise the social world of migrants.

The application of the ‘fall in values’ frame indicates the continuing influence of upper-caste ideals over modern Malayali society (Devika 2007); the intelligentsia applies the ‘fall in values’ framework to analyse consumerism, which they claim has depoliticised society (2465), and criticise the growth in the neoliberal tendency (Devika 2007). The intelligentsia suggests that the forces depoliticising society are external to Kerala.

Kathupattu: The Narrative Strategy

The preceding discussion has shown the historicity in the construction of the ‘desired’ regional Malayali identity vis-à-vis the undesired migrant identity. It also illuminated the ways and experiences that could have shaped Jameel’s self. The young Jameel was associated with Malayalam theatre and active in the cultural and art arena of Malabar, an arena dominated by upper-caste males. The Malayali intelligentsia and Malayalam films and theatre of the time communicated the message that migration, migrant labour and transnational family were undesirable. It would have been impossible for the message to have eluded Jameel. Jameel’s choice of the Kathupattu form and the plea to his brethren to return home are structured also by the experience of the reform movements in Kerala in the 18^th and 19^th centuries and Jameel’s proximity to the Mappila arts.

Reflecting on the practices of the reform movement period, Devika (2015) states that novel writing as a practice, and the novel as a medium, served the purpose of modernisation and self-assertion of upper-caste communities, and lower-caste communities such as the Ezhava community, in Kerala. In most of these ‘upper-caste’ novels, the consolidation of community identity is achieved through narrating the life journey of a female protagonist whose trials and tribulations stand in place of the community struggling for self-definition and social space. Nevertheless, in many of these works, hidden behind the female figure is the hand of the male reformer who shapes her subjectivity and directs her conduct in desirable ways (Devika 2015: 8). Informed by upper-caste aesthetics, the narrative strategy in Malayalam novels continued to serve caste communities across Kerala as a model for self-assertion and modernisation. For Mappila Muslims, however, the ‘reform’ project was far from over in the second half of the 20^th century.

Till the Portuguese arrived at Malabar in 1497, the Mappila were a thriving group (Dale 1980). Their fierce conflict with the Portuguese for control over the spice trade, and a failed rebellion against the British state for rights over land and religious assertion, marks the beginning of their marginalisation (Dale 1980; Gangadharan 2004; Panikkar 1989). The Mappila constituted a religious group distinct from other Muslims in central and south Kerala and in the rest of India (Punathil 2013). History of colonial marginalisation, the urge to maintain a distinct identity on religious lines while sharing the Malayali-ness and Kerala’s social structure hindered the participation of the Mappilas in the wider public sphere well into the early decades of post-colonial Kerala (Punathil, 2013).

The sociopolitical context in which the Songs took shape was marked by the emergence of the Mappila into the wider public sphere of Kerala and the increasing migration of middle- and lower-class Mappila to the Persian Gulf.

One should not wonder if Jameel sensed that the transnational family and Mappila migration practices challenged the ‘ideal’ of the Malayali family and posed a threat to the resurgence of the Mappila in the wider public sphere. The narrative strategy of the Songs—the female protagonist who stands the trials of society—resonates with the experiences of caste-community mobilisations in Kerala. The plea in the Songs suggests that Jameel assigns to himself the role of reformer, a reformer who invokes guilt among the ‘deviating’ Mappila and inspires self-reflection so that they return to the fold of the ‘ideal’ Malayali subnational identity. The choice of Kathupatthu as a medium to communicate with his Mappila brethren in the Gulf might not be an accident but rather a deliberate decision. A well-known Mappilapattu writer and singer at local concerts in Malabar, he was well aware of the reach and popularity of Mappilapattu in Malabar. The style of the Songs suits the transnational family structure to convey the trials and tribulations of Mappila women and the ‘perils’ of migration posed to the Mappila community.