The 'undefined' in Malabar: tracing the statelessness in post-partition India

During the Indian partition of 1947, a group of Mappila labourers from Malabar (Kerala) who had travelled to Karachi for employment opportunities were denied entry to their homeland upon return. What ensued was a decades-long legal and political battle to regain their lost citizenship. This study examines their lived histories and strives to understand the numerous contestations of citizenship that were engendered in Malabar. It investigates the various ways in which the Mappila labourers performed their ‘Indianness’ and analyses how the state and its machineries responded to the issues of the Mappila labourers. The essay further contends that faith becomes the sole reason for marking the citizenship of Mappila labourers. Building on these insights, the study, in totality, argues that the Indian partition of 1947 has affected communities in South India, thereby challenging a prevalent notion in partition scholarship.