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Journal of Creative Communications
http://crc.sagepub.com/content/8/2-3/231
The online version of this article can be found at:
DOI: 10.1177/0973258613512574
2013 8: 231 Journal of Creative Communications
Bindu Menon
The Blazon Call of Hip Hop: Lyrical Storms in Kerala's Musical Cultures
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240 Bindu Menon
Journal of Creative Communications, 8, 2&3 (2013): 231250
English, is used for formal and informal communication in Kerala, but has complicated relations
with the speakers identity. Like everywhere else in India, English marks the speaker as modern, urban
and sometimes living outside Kerala. This forms part of the repertoire of Television programmes,
FM Radio Shows and musical albums where these identities are represented. The urban youth
Malayalam is often portrayed in them are denigrated as Manglish, a mix of English and Malayalam.
Interestingly enough the Malayalam in the videos features various dialects of Malayalam language
juxtaposed with English.
Street Academics bilingual lyricism opens up questions of expressivity, identity and language that
global hip hop culture gives rise to. Discussing the shortcomings of World English as a limited paradigm
in understanding rap lyricism in Japan, Pennycook writes:
This is also not to deny that the world English paradigm has been extremely important and successful in helping
our thinking on sociolinguistics of the global spread of English; by looking at the development of multilingual-
ism, by questioning the status of errors and divergent language forms, and by focusing on issues of native speaker
norms and bilingual creativity. It indeed had done a great deal for our thinking about norms and standards in
different Englishes. But at the same time, it has tended to operate with a limited and limiting conceptualization
of globalization, national standards, culture and identity. (Pennycook 2003, p. 517)
While firmly located within global popular music flows, Street Academics affirms the place of
Malayalam rap in the Kerala context through colloquial dialects of Malayalam and a lyrical dexterity
in both languages.
Native Bapa and the Political Artifice
The music video Native Bapa by the musical movement Mappila Lahala is on the other hand a political
address and is hardly about the rap artist as an individual. Envisaged as a multiple genre musical
movement and not particularly a musical band, Mappila Lahalas first music video Native Bapa
combines and renders a specifically local prose dialect into rap lyricism. It mobilizes diverse set of
signs, practices and musical genres to reconfigure modes of address to both state terror and civil
societal complacence. The video is directed by Muhsin Parari and performed by the Street Academics
band rapper Haris Saleem alias Maapla, film actor Mamu Koya and graffiti by R.J.V. Ernesto of Street
Academics.
To make fuller sense of the video it is imperative to trace the genealogy of cultural representations
of Muslim social life in Malayalam high and popular culture alike and the historical as well as contem-
porary constructions of the Muslim identity in Malabar. The name of the movement Mappila Lahala
also needs to be contextualized. The name clearly ushers in a set of questions related to historiography
around the historical events of 1921in British Malabar. The historical event is referred to as Mappila
Riots in the colonial government records and by historians and is to be later named as Mappila Rebellion
by Nationalist historians and leaders alike; thus distinguishing and distancing it from possible descrip-
tions like Revolution and in the process limiting the meanings of it. The Revolt has been studied
variously since then producing a rich body of work leading to fresh reappraisals in historiography
(Ansari 2003; Ansari 2008; Arnold 1982; Dale 1975; Hardgrave 1977; Panikkar 1989; Wood 1976).
at MUDRA INST COMMUNICATIONS on February 24, 2014 crc.sagepub.com Downloaded from
The Blazon Call of Hip Hop 241
Journal of Creative Communications, 8, 2&3 (2013): 231250
Both a protest against the British Rule and uppercaste feudalism, the peasant revolt in fact later was
recognized as a movement for Independence by the Government of Kerala. Nationalist leaders like
Annie Beasant, C. Sankaran Nair and K.P. Kesava Menon criticized the Rebellion (Panikkar 1989)
and literary representations by prominent writers constructed the rebellion as a lawless Mappila land
of looting and killing, where women were subjected to several indignities. This discourse of colonial
writings and literary representations that constructs the Malabar Muslim as fanatic, barbaric and
ignorant has permeated all spheres of social life giving birth to stereotypes in everyday life and com-
monsense (Ansari 2003). The socio-economic progress and political mobilization in the Malabar Muslim
community has not completely demolished these stereotypes. In a recent paper on the status of Malabar
Muslims, Punathil says:
Overall, the journey of Mappila Muslims from the colonial history to the present is a journey from a clearly
subaltern position to that of a more powerful community, experiencing considerable educational and economic
progress and political empowerment. Although the Muslims of Malabar are no more a subaltern community and
show a unique history of social development compared to their counterparts elsewhere in the country, stereotypes
and stigmas surrounding their religious identity continue to persist in the public sphere even today, often in new
forms. While such experiences have much in common with many Islamic communities in India and elsewhere
in the new global political circumstances, it does not astonish that sometimes such situations also invoke the
local collective memory of Mappilas, which often takes them back to the colonial history of subordination and
struggle. (Punathil 2013, p. 16)
The musical movement envisaged by Mappila Lahala employs the term Mappila Lahala in its polysemy
as an event whose vortex throws up several concepts, stereotypes and ideas which are still in circulation,
on which the video attempts a semiotic reconstruction. By reverting to the term Lahala, which in
colonial history and administrative records was denigrated to the status of riots, the video also attempts
reclamation of history and lay claims to contested issues of historiography. The title of the video Native
Bapa is also seen to be resonating with Black histories of literary and cultural production. The title
Native Bapa, it has been observed to have its intellectual lineage in the African American author Richard
Wrights the Native Son
4
(Dalit Camera 2013). As in Wrights sympathetic approach to the protagonists
crime and his accusation about the systematic creations of criminals out of the African Americans by the
system, Pararis video weaves the nexus of lies, misrepresentations and maneuvers of the world that
constructs the Muslim Terrorist and the Muslim as Terrorist. The borrowings from African American
history can be supplemented with pertinent narratives of histories of loss in the context of the dark years
of Indias Emergency, as in the case of the missing student Rajanof the Regional Engineering College,
Calicut whose father Prof. T.V. Eachara Variers search and life long struggle for his missing son has
been narrated through the trope of Pathos in Malayalam newspapers, left and human rights discourse and
cinematic imagination.
5
The search for a son by a Father also raises some questions related to gender
politics of the video in the context of a community of Muslim women in their own right and as grieving
mothers, daughters, wives and sisters.
Taking as its premise the 2008 encounter killing of Four Kerala Muslim Youths in Kupwara,
Jammu & Kashmir, the video begins as a conversation opener. One of the youths from Kannur, the
northern district of Kerala, whose mother disowned her son by saying that she does not want to set eyes
upon his dead body as he is a traitor drew enormous media attention.
6
Layered with historical material
the video is a temporal movement between the rebellious Muslim past signified in the very title of the
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at MUDRA INST COMMUNICATIONS on February 24, 2014 crc.sagepub.com Downloaded from
The Blazon Call of Hip Hop 243
Journal of Creative Communications, 8, 2&3 (2013): 231250
musical movement, nationalist past of the Muslim community, the nationwide crisis of secularism and
state terror that stereotypes the Muslim community. In this sense, Mappila Lahala moves out of the
realm of music into diverse forms of political speech and articulation. More than any other popular
cultural form rap and hip hop aesthetic can be seen as offering the possibilities of mixing and create an
interplay between music, rhythm, lyrics and language.
At the heart of the video are some of the political debates that involve the community. The repeated
tagging of the lead character of the video as a reluctant secularist pries a set of questions around the
crisis of secularism signposted by many scholars (Bhargava1998; Jaffrelot 2009; Needham & Rajan
2007) and reassessment of the place of religion in Public life. These cularization theses that modernity
has led to the substitution of religious traditions with rationalism, scientism and individualism, have
been the source of wide ranging critical enquiries in the latter half of twentieth century. The central
argument of the thesis is that public life has secularized and that which is religious has been privatized
(Kurtz 1995). In multi-religious societies, simultaneous strands of secular forces and religious revival-
ism competes and a singular trend towards secularization has been debatable in recent years. The
acknowledgement of the intersection of the sacred and secular in modernity has lead to an understanding
of how the geographies of religion have emerged in each of these contexts. This body of work has
emerged mostly in the interstices of disciplines like Philosophy, Art History, Anthropology, Sociology
and Media Studies. The crisis of secularism in the subcontinent was most strongly signaled by the rise of
Hindutva forces and catastrophic events like the demolition of the Babri Masjid and the Gujarat Pogrom
(Basu 1993; Hansen 1999; Jaffrelot 2009; Rajagopal 2001).
The video problematizes the coerced entry of Indian Muslims into the Secular Subject position and
the simultaneous unavailability of such a position for them. Secularism as a dominant nationalist trope
has positioned itself against Religious minorities, by masking its easy availability to mainstream religious
communities. The Muslim community has been more than once pitched as fanatics and anti-secular/
anti-national as in the case of the Uniform Civil Code debate (Menon & Nigam 2007).
The Father, the lead character of the music video, played by Mamu Koya, brings in many inter-textual
references. A mainstream Malayalam film actor, etching mostly comic roles, Mamu Koyas humour can
be seen many a times drawn from his Calicut Muslim dialect. The links between humour, vulgarity and
dialect has been established in the context of Malayalam cinema (Venkiteswaran 2012) and thus in
Malayalam popular culture. In the hierarchical order of dialects in Malayalam mainstream cinema,
except for the upper caste language of certain regions, the rest are often rendered exotic and funny. It is
this order that the video upstages with a rhythmic rap rendition of the same dialect by Mamu Koya
(Muhsin Parari, Personal Communication 3 March 2013). The contentious politics of coercing a religious
citizen into the virtuous secular citizen is publicly articulated through a series of malleable senses like
humour, satire, sarcasm and pathos. The sharpness and the play with stereotypes and at times the ironic
distance that the video displays is probably characteristic of bilingual rap elsewhere, like in the Turkish
German context as shown by scholars (Ickstadt 1999).
The visual iconography of the video draws from rap culture in general through the performativity of
the rappers, graffiti spread over the urban landscape of the post colonial town of Calicut. All through the
video, the rapper ironically deploys the term bomb with characteristic intonation in Malayalam that
connotes disbelief. The disbelief can be seen as associated with the narratives of terrorism that is often
propagated through the media in which often common place objects and things; things of everyday use
gets imbued with meanings and are rendered suspicious. In the lyrics of the video the father recollects all
the objects associated with his lost son nostalgically and gestures to how they are suddenly made part
at MUDRA INST COMMUNICATIONS on February 24, 2014 crc.sagepub.com Downloaded from
244 Bindu Menon
Journal of Creative Communications, 8, 2&3 (2013): 231250
of a signage of terrorist activity by the state agencies. In another sequence, the father narrates the
transformation of the towel that he gave the son, spontaneously thinking of the cold weather outside to a
towel with a secret code of the terrorist outfit. By weaving a palimpsest of such objects, words, graffiti
and the urban landscape the video is able to pronounce the web of discourses that pronounces every
Muslim as a potential terrorist. The music while inspired by the rap genre also has an interesting mix of
melody. The video in its oratorical style revives the memory of the term rebellion and rebel, explaining
its true meaning and distinguishing the rebels loyalty to religion and distances itself from terrorism that
jeopardizes the sense of community.
Rap Music Videos and Public Sphere
The YouTube launch of Native Bapa provides an important opportunity to understand the video sharing
site as an alternative public forum and the affective politics that this video text sets in motion. It is also
imperative to assess YouTube as a digital collection, archives and library to undertake this project.
It is important to note that part of the collection that is made on YouTube, for instance, is as a result of
the memories of the people putting it together. This choice of YouTube for a launch is perhaps most
appropriate for publics of this nature.
According to Habermas the public sphere facilitates rational discourse on public affairs directed
toward the common good and (supposedly) operates autonomously from the state and/or the economy.
Habermas critiqued the modern public sphere as a realm completely dominated by corporate forces with
advertising and public relations as its core objectives that use the public sphere as a vehicle for capitalist
hegemony and ideological reproduction (Habermas 1991). Habermas conception of the public sphere
excludes simple expression of opinions about public affairs by individuals or a public consisting of unor-
ganized assembly of individuals since he argues that a reasoning public is the prerequisite to a public
sphere (Habermas 1973) and places the rational critical debate at the heart of the functioning of the pub-
lic sphere. The contemporary public sphere according to him then, has been so molded by corporate
forces that it has compromised the sphere into becoming merely a mediator between society and state
(Ibid 1973).
An important critique to the Habermasian Public Sphere is Frasers concept of the counter-publics
(Fraser 1992). Unlike the elite bourgeoisie monopoly that is implicit in Habermass public sphere implicit
in Habermass public sphere, Fraser imagines the formation of Counter Publics in a post-industrial model
with the acknowledgement of co-existing public spheres or alternative public spheres that generate
discourse. These multiple public spheres and their varied ideological standpoints exist in order to give
voice to collective identities of diverse interest groups in opposition to the exclusivist tendencies that
Habermasian public sphere exude (Ibid 1992).
The conception of public sphere as a discursive arena allows one to accommodate plurality and
multiplicity of publics where the public sphere is conceived as a fluid structure, changing in response
to the influences of politics and public policy and almost always being constituted by conflict, which
in turn shapes social relations through cultural or ideological contest or negotiation among a variety of
publics. Frasers proposition of multiple subaltern counter-publics contextualizes these multiplicities
of publics as, parallel discursive arenas where members of subordinated social groups invent and circu-
late counter-discourses to formulate oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests and needs
(Ibid 1992, p. 123).
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These counter publics challenge and ideologically compete with the bourgeois public sphere in
consonance to form what Negt and Kluge has termed as oppositional public spheres (Negt & Kluge
1992). While they point to an overtly proletariat character of these oppositional public spheres, one can
map these spheres as overlapping, heterogeneous constitutions as well as ones which hold semblance of
a collective identity such as those formed on the basis of caste, gender and/or race. The development
of multiple oppositional or alternative public spheres together constitutes a fragmented public sphere
akin to the postmodern structure which serves to break the monopoly of hegemonic forces and offers the
prospect of having diverse voices in the course of generating public discourse (Ibid 1992).
The concept of oppositional subcultures can be read as a subset of the greater debate of counter
publics, rap generally has been studied as subculture and some of the recent literature on Internet
subcultures elucidate them as alternative cultures and as practices to the dominant culture of the
established society, which are self constructed either within or against the governing culture from which
they are born with characteristic features such as associations with emergent youth culture and
occasionally politically resistant and activist temperaments (Kahn & Kellner 2005).
It is worth exploring at this point the critical purchase of the term subculture to understand rap in the
Kerala context. A term that has been long in use to research Youth, Style, Deviance and Popular Culture,
subculture was initially used by the Chicago School to refer to urban gangs and subsequently in British
Sociology to research delinquent behavior (Dvarionaite 2007). The most influential body of work on
subculture has been what is referred to as the new subculture theory developed by scholars at the
Birmingham Center for Contemporary Culture (Ibid 2007).
7
The most important in this corpus has been
the work of Hebdige (Hebdige 1979) where he extended semiotics and struggles of meaning making and
Phil Cohens Ethnographic techniques to understand urban youth cultures and their deviance through
behavioral style, dress, musical codes, etc. Hebdige did not see subculture as sheer resistance but as
contested sites of hegemony and meaning making (Ibid 1979).
The use of the term subculture has been challenged in the contemporary context where it is argued
that under post modern conditions musical cultures are fragmented and no longer part of sub cultures and
have moved to neo-tribes and scenes (Tanner et al. 2009).It is worth exploring the different inflections
of broad range of positions between individualism and collectivity in Street Academics and the collective
identity as the sole source of articulation in Mappila Lahala. While Street Academics is formed through
social media networks (Haris Saleem, Personal Communication 19 April 2013), making them more
available to the description of Neo Tribes and Scenes, Mappila Lahala has its roots in older socialites
like film clubs and political organizations like the Students Islamic Organization and Solidarity Youth
Movement as their context (Muhsin Parari, Personal Communication 3 March 2013.)
Derrida and Lyotard argue against Habermas overemphasis on rational accord as a precondition for a
public sphere. While Derridas de-constructivist approach premises on an undecidability as the necessary
constant in any form of public deliberation (Derrida 1997). Lyotard argues that anarchy, individuality and
disagreement as fundamental to the genuine experience of democratic emancipation (Lyotard 1984).
Charles Hirschkind in his work on the Islamic Cassette sermons analyses then as Islamic Counter
Publics, an emergent arena of Islamic deliberative practice that, while articulated with the discourses and
practices of national political life, remains structured by goals and histories not easily accommodated
within the space of the nation (Hirschkind 2001). He also cautions us that:
This arena should not be understood in terms of an abandonment of politics but, rather, as an attempt to establish
the conditions for the practice of a particular kind of politics. Indeed, insomuch as the moral discourse that
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constitutes this domain is directed at the remaking of the practices and institutions of collective life in Egypt,
it is fundamentally political. (Hirschkind 2001, p. 5)
The You Tube archive is within the public domain, accessible to all and narrates tales of various genres.
Public, free and openness to share are the characteristics of this digitally enabled public sphere and
archive. Many of the comments to the Native Bapa video also leads to rich discussions about the social
history of Muslims in Malabar to music, lyrics and contemporary questions around Religion and
Secularism. It helps us to think about the Internet as a site where perhaps the horizon of experience
(Hansen 1995), may be examined and not the rational articulation alone. The horizon of experience,
here, is the manner in which people have been able to bring to bear upon the video text, differing
conceptions of music, society and history. One can also see the registering of a personal history amidst
the various other histories that come along with YouTube video texts.
The circulation of these videos on YouTube or indeed websites like Facebook on the Internet, func-
tions in similar ways. On these websites we may note a greater emphasis on the relationship between
fans and the music. Interestingly, it is through the Internet, that these videos are produced in the local
market, but are circulated in transnational spaces for viewing and comments by diasporic Malayalee
viewers. The simultaneous presence of sonic, graphic and written text relocates the Internet user within
the domain of the public sphere, open to the possibilities of alternative domains of the public. It is these
new collectivities that are created, in the form of a different public sphere, which is sharply driven by
speed and technology, which creates a space where people are able to articulate social concerns and
tastes, access them legally and non-legally and forge new modes of communication. The Internet as can
be seen from the discussion above, through its form, provides the space for a new publicto come into
being. In this way, the Internet seems to be able to encode experiences indifferent ways, allowing for
itself to become an archive and a public sphere that has a wider range of access.
Conclusion
Rap music and Hip hop culture has been part of a global music landscape capturing the imagination of
youth. Rap has been theorized as vernacular culture, oppositional cultural politics and sub culture in
various national contexts of music culture. (Whiteley et al. 2004; Fernandes 2011). In the Indian context
rap music and hip hop style has been theorized as providing the semiotic template of a hyper fashion
(Osella & Osella 1999) and providing the visual iconography for a resignification of lower caste
bodies (Niranjana & Dhareswar 1996). The Indian context also poses the commercialized rap style, often
shorn off its politics and is an exacting mix of reckless masculinity, misogyny and regressive argument
about return to the roots through female body (Duggal 2011; Sarcar 2012). Through the analysis of
recent Hip Hop music videos from Kerala I argue that these videos can generally be seen as posing
questions about language and mainstream musical culture in the Kerala context while providing a
kaleidoscopic view of contemporary Kerala landscape. Native Bapa, in its direct manner of speaking
and oratorical style of address mobilizes a range of local language use, experiences and memory
specific to the community to cut through the detritus of political artifice. I argue that these music
articulations enabled by new media technologies and platforms like You Tube can be seen as laying
claims to history, retrieve historical memory and intervene in contemporary politics. We can further
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argue that the Internet circulation of these videos help new kind of publics come into being around these
video texts and in certain specific contexts like Native Bapa mobilize a shared affective politics,
memory and identity through political speech and dexterous and lyrical language.
Acknowledgements
I am deeply indebted to T.T. Sreekumar, J. Devika and K.N. Sunandan for their valuable comments on an earlier
draft. Thanks are also due to the pertinent comments of the anonymous referee which helped me rework the article. I
extend my gratitude to Darshana Sreedharan for her invaluable support during feldwork, without which I wouldnt
have been able to do this article. I am grateful to Muhsin Parari and Haris Saleem for sparing their valuable time for
insightful interviews on their work.
Notes
1. The geographical development in Kerala has been such that it has developed as a series of networked small towns
all through Kerala, thus creating an urban expanse with no primate city. For a detailed discussion see Sreekumar
T.T. (1993). Urban Processes in Kerala 19001981. CDS, Trivandrum.
2. The Beemapalli incident constitutes a black day in the history of modern Kerala when the Police fired at the
residents of the Muslim residential area killing five men and injuring another 52 on 17th May 2009. The Police
claim to have shot at the residence in order to control communal violence which later reports by Human Rights
organizations disprove. Beemapalli market area also housed the biggest pirate CD market which boasted an
impressive collection of European Art cinema, Korean New Wave and other East Asian Cinemas like Hong Kong
and China thus leaving a big dent in Keralas cinephiliac imagination and consumption.
3. While Biryani is a rice dish, considered part of authentic Muslim cuisine, Sulaimani is again the mostly North
Malabar reference to Lemon Tea and Akashvani is the Hindi term for the State owned Radio Broadcasting
service. The link between all three words is that they rhyme with a ni at the end of each word thus creating a
mockery of traditional Malayalam poetic meter and rhyme.
4. The video is a discussion on the music video Native Bappa and Filmic Ghettos of Mattancherry held at
English and Foreign Languages University at Hyderabad. The Panel Discussion featured Muhsin Parari, Hashir
K. Mohammed, Dr. Satish Poduval and Dr. HariPrasad. During the course of the discussion Dr. Satish Poduval
interestingly traces the various influences of the video Native Bappa in Richard Wrights Native Son and
Mohsin Hamids Reluctant Fundamentalist.
For the video see Dalit Camera Ambedkar, [Dalit Camera: Through Untouchable Eyes]. (2013, February 14).
Resisting the Frame: Muhsin Parari ( Native Bapa) Hashir K. Mohammed (Ghetto). [VideoFile]. Retrieved from
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZUlGo4YElc
5. P. Rajan a student at Regional Engineering College, Calicut was arrested on March 1 1976 and was missing
since then. His father T.V. Eachara Varrier filed a Haebeus Corpus which revealed his death in police custody
due to extreme torture. The case took Kerala by storm and the then Home Minister K. Karunakaran was forced
to resign as the Chief Minister in 1978 in the context of some adverse comments by the High Court. Prof.
Variers historic struggle against state atrocities during Emergency is etched vividly in his memoirs T.V.E. Varier
(2004) Memories of Father, Asian Human Rights Commission & Jananeeti. For the details of the case, see What
Happened to the Rajan Case? (1981, October).
Retrieved from http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2013/04/how-to-cite-a-news-report.html and the wiki page
retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajan_case Shaji N. Karuns cine recreation of EacharaVarier in the
film Piravi (1988) but embodies the power of family and lineage in his quest for his lost son, the only heir.
6. Son killed trying to cross the LOC, she says my country is far more precious (2008, October 29). Son Killed
Trying to Cross the LOC, She says my Country is far more precious (2008, October 26). The Indian Express.
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248 Bindu Menon
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Safiahs story was carried widely in National print and broadcast media as well as websites, celebrating her as
the secular mother who puts her nation before her motherhood.
Retrieved 12 April 2013 http://www.indianexpress.com/olympics/news/son-killed-trying-to-cross-the-loc-
she-says-my-country-is-far-more-precious/378360/0
7. The centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies was instituted in 1964 at the University of Birmingham and grew
to be influential in the field of contemporary culture and inaugurating such areas of study as subculture, popular
culture and media studies. The centre was home for many influential intellectuals of post war world such as
Stuart Hall, Paul Gilroy, Angela McRobbie, Dick Hebdige, Phil Cohen and David Morley. The school was shut
down in 2002 in a controversial decision by the University of Birmingham.
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Bindu Menon is Assistant Professor, Department of Journalism, Delhi University New Delhi, India. Her
research focuses on the history of regional cinema in India with particular reference to Malayalam
cinema during 19301960. E-mail: binmenen@gmail.com