Aṟabimalayāḷa Akṣaramāla: Polemic of Script and Language Pedagogy in Muslim Print Publics.

Abstract

This paper examines the Muslim engagement with the rise of Malayalam print culture in late 19th and early 20th-century Kerala, focusing on reformist efforts to standardize the Aṟabimalayāḷaṁ script. Faced with perceptions of the script’s “inferiority” and widespread Malayalam “illiteracy”, Muslim intellectuals sought to reform Aṟabimalayāḷaṁ to align phonetically and orthographically with standardized modern Malayalam. Even though Aṟabimalayāḷaṁ remained a crucial medium of instruction, it was simultaneously framed by reformers as an obsolete and obstructive script, hindering efforts to modernize the Malayali Muslim community and integrate them within broader socio-cultural frameworks.

The paper traces this dual trajectory by first exploring pre-print pedagogical practices in ōttupaḷḷi and madrassa and then analyzing the production of standardized script guides and alphabet books (Akṣaramāla) alongside multilingual language pedagogy texts for Malayalam, Tamil, Urdu, and English. Situating these educational interventions within broader reformist polemics on print, the paper argues that the eventual marginalization of Aṟabimalayāḷaṁ script was not simply an outcome of external pressures but emerged from internal discourses aimed at reshaping Muslim identities as modern Malayali subjects. This study reveals the complex intersections of script, print, and pedagogy, shedding light on the socio-cultural negotiations underlying language standardization in early modern and colonial South Asia.