Ossan

Last updated

Ossan is a community/status group of Muslims in Kerala, south India. The Ossan men were the traditional circumcisers [1] among the Muslims of the central Malabar Coast (northern Kerala). [2] [3] The Ossan women were experts in pre- and post-delivery care of pregnant women (midwifery). The Ossans formed the lowest rank in the Kerala Muslim community "hierarchy", and were an indispensable part of the village community of Muslims of Kerala. [2]

It is speculated that the original form of the title Ossan is "Otthaan", derived from the Arabic word Khatthaan meaning an expert practitioner of circumcision.

The Ossans were formerly considered as a low status group among the Muslims of Kerala. Ossan community is still figured as a financially backward group among some of the Muslim families in Kerala. Matrimonial alliances with financially elite Muslim families are rare in some parts of Kerala. [1] [3]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nair</span> Caste group in India

The Nair also known as Nayar, are a group of Indian Hindu castes, described by anthropologist Kathleen Gough as "not a unitary group but a named category of castes". The Nair include several castes and many subdivisions, not all of whom historically bore the name 'Nair'. These people lived, and continue to live, in the area which is now the Indian state of Kerala. Their internal caste behaviours and systems are markedly different between the people in the northern and southern sections of the area, although there is not very much reliable information on those inhabiting the north.

The Malayali people are a Dravidian ethnolinguistic group originating from the present-day state of Kerala in India, occupying its southwestern Malabar coast. They are predominantly native speakers of the Malayalam language, one of the six classical languages of India. The state of Kerala was created in 1956 through the States Reorganisation Act. Prior to that, since the 1800s existed the Kingdom of Cochin, the Kingdom of Travancore, Malabar District, and South Canara of the British India. The Malabar District was annexed by the British through the Third Mysore War (1790–92) from Tipu Sultan. Before that, the Malabar District was under various kingdoms including the Zamorins of Calicut, Kingdom of Tanur, Arakkal kingdom, Kolathunadu, Valluvanad, and Palakkad Rajas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mappila Muslims</span> Muslim community

Mappila Muslim, in general, is a member of the Muslim community of same name found predominantly in Kerala and Lakshadweep Islands, in southern India. Muslims of Kerala make up 26.56% of the population of the state (2011), and as a religious group they are the second largest group after Hindus (54.73%). Mappilas share the common language of Malayalam with the other religious communities of Kerala.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Liberation Struggle (Kerala)</span> Anticommunist backlash against E.M.S Ministry

The Liberation Struggle in Kerala (1958–59) was a period of anticommunist protest against the first elected state government in Kerala, India, which was led by E. M. S. Namboodiripad of the Communist Party of India. Organised opposition to the state government was spearheaded by the Syro-Malabar Church, the Nair Service Society, the Indian Union Muslim League, and Indian National Congress.The funding of the movement mostly came from outside of India, mobilised by the CIA and international Catholic organisations. Although termed a "liberation struggle", the campaign was largely peaceful by taking the form of statewide meetings and public demonstrations. Following mass protests in 1959, the Indian government finally bowed to pressure and dismissed Namboodiripad on 31 July 1959.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Demographics of Kerala</span>

Kerala is a state in south-western India. Most of Kerala's 34.8 million people are ethnically Malayalis. Most of the Malayalam and English speaking Keralites derive their ancestry from Dravidian communities that settled in Kerala. Additional ancestries derive from millennia of trade links across the Arabian Sea, whereby people of Arab, Jewish, Syrian, Portuguese, English and other ethnicities settled in Kerala. Many of these immigrants intermarried with native Malayalam speakers resulting in formation of many Muslim and Christian groups in Kerala. Some Muslims and Christians thus take lineage from Middle Eastern and European settlers who mixed with native population.

Reservation is a system of affirmative action in India created during the British rule. It provides historically disadvantaged groups representation in education, employment, government schemes, scholarships and politics. Based on provisions in the Indian Constitution, it allows the Union Government and the States and Territories of India to set reserved quotas or seats, at particular percentage in Education Admissions, Employments, Political Bodies, Promotions, etc, for "socially and educationally backward citizens."

The Marakkars are a South Asian Muslim community found in parts of the Indian states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Sri Lanka. The Marakkars speak Malayalam in Kerala and Tamil in Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Islam in Kerala</span> Overview of Islam in the Indian state of Kerala

Islam arrived in Kerala, the Malayalam-speaking region in the south-western tip of India, through Middle Eastern merchants. The Indian coast has an ancient relation with West Asia and the Middle East, even during the pre-Islamic period.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Feminism in India</span> History of the feminist movement in India

Feminism in India is a set of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and opportunities for women in India. It is the pursuit of women's rights within the society of India. Like their feminist counterparts all over the world, feminists in India seek gender equality: the right to work for equality in wages, the right to equal access to health and education, and equal political rights. Indian feminists also have fought against culture-specific issues within India's patriarchal society, such as inheritance laws.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ezhava</span> Hindu community of Kerala, India

The Ezhavas are a community with origins in the region of India presently known as Kerala, where in the 2010s they constituted about 23% of the population and were reported to be the largest Hindu community. The Malabar Ezhava group have claimed a higher ranking in the Hindu caste system than do the others, although from the perspective of the colonial and subsequent administrations they were treated as being of similar rank.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Indian Jews in Israel</span> Immigrants of Indian Jews communities that reside in Israel

Indian Jews in Israel are immigrants and descendants of the immigrants of the Indian Jewish communities, who now reside within the State of Israel. Indian Jews who live in Israel include thousands of Cochin Jews and Paradesi Jews of Kerala; thousands of Baghdadi Jews from Mumbai and Kolkata; tens of thousands from the Bene Israel of Maharashtra and other parts of British India and the Bnei Menashe of Manipur and Mizoram.

The thangals are a social group among the Muslims of Kerala, south India. The thangals are often regarded as roughly equivalent to the more general Sayyids or Sharifs, or the descendants of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, of the wider Islamic culture. Most members of the community practices endogamy and rarely marry outside from their community.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vakkom Moulavi</span> Indian journalist and reformer (1873–1932)

Vakkom Mohammed Abdul Khader Moulavi, popularly known as Vakkom Moulavi was a social reformer, teacher, prolific writer, Muslim scholar, journalist, freedom fighter and newspaper proprietor in Travancore, a princely state of the present day Kerala, India. He was the founder and publisher of the newspaper Swadeshabhimani which was banned and confiscated by the Government of Travancore in 1910 due to its criticisms against the government and the Diwan of Travancore, P. Rajagopalachari. He was an avid reader of Rashid Rida’s Islamic magazine, Al-Manar. Vakkom Moulavi is known as the father of Islamic renaissance in Kerala.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Religion in Kerala</span> Overview of religion in the Indian state of Kerala

Religion in Kerala is diverse. According to 2011 census of India figures, 54.73% of Kerala's population are Hindus, 26.56% are Muslims, 18.38% are Christians, and the remaining 0.33% follow other religions or have no religion. As of 2020, Hindus, Muslims, Christians and others account for 41.5%, 43.9%, 13.9% and 0.7% of the total child births in the state, respectively.

The Kerala Gulf diaspora refers to the people of Kerala living in the West Asian Arab states of the Persian Gulf. A report presented in 2014, estimates that 90 percent of Kerala's 2.36 million-strong diaspora resides in the Middle East. Nearly 80 percent of Indians living in Kuwait are from Kerala according to the 2008 survey commissioned by the Department of Non-resident Keralite Affairs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kiryathil Nair</span> Sub-caste

Kiryathil Nair or Kiriyath Nair is a Kshatriya Nair subcaste, of martial nobility, having performed the functions of Kshatriyas in Kerala, India. This subcaste was among the highest-ranking subcastes of the Nair community along with Samantan Nairs with whom they share a close history. They constituted the ruling elites (Naduvazhi) and feudal aristocrats (Jenmimar) in the regions of Malabar and Cochin in present-day Kerala, India, and have traditionally lived in ancestral homes known as Tharavads and Kovilakams.

Love jihad is an Islamophobic conspiracy theory promoted by right-wing Hindutva activists. The conspiracy theory purports that Muslim men target Hindu women for conversion to Islam by means such as seduction, feigning love, deception, kidnapping, and marriage, as part of a broader demographic "war" by Muslims against India, and an organised international conspiracy, for domination through demographic growth and replacement.

Puslan is a community-status group of Muslims in Kerala, south India. They were the traditional sea fishermen of the central Malabar Coast.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kerala Nadvathul Mujahideen</span> Kerala based salafi organisation

Kerala Nadvathul Mujahideen (KNM) is an Islamic organization in the state of Kerala founded in 1950. The organization is part of the Islamic reformist Mujahid Movement and follows the principles of Salafism. The Kerala Nadvathul Mujahideen was formed as a result of renaissance activities among Keralite Muslims led by scholars and clerics such as Sheikh Hamadani Thangal, K.M. Moulavi and Vakkom Moulavi and E. Moidu Moulavi and Ummer Moulavi. Kerala Nadvathul Mujahideen is considered as the successor of Kerala Muslim Aikya Sangam, the first Muslim organization in the state of Kerala, founded in 1924. The Mujahid movement laid the foundations of Islamic renaissance in Kerala by campaigning against corrupted practices of the Sufi orders, superstitions, false beliefs, polytheism etc, and called for the revival of true Islamic practices to the Muslim community in Kerala which had until then been severely lacking in crucial aspects of religious and socio-civic knowledge. The Mujahids consider themselves as proponents of authentic Islamic reform, pursuing a purified concept of Tawhid.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Malaysian Malayalees</span> Malayalee diaspora in Malaysia

Malaysian Malayalees, also known as Malayalee Malaysians, are people of Malayali descent who were born in or immigrated to Malaysia from the Malayalam speaking regions of Kerala. They are the second largest Indian ethnic group, making up approximately 15% of the Malaysian Indian population. The bulk of Malaysian Malayali migration began during the British Raj, when the British facilitated the migration of Indian workers to work in plantations, but unlike the majority Tamils, the vast majority of the Malayalis were recruited as supervisors in the oil palm estates that followed the kangani system, and some were into trading and small businesses with a significant proportion of them running groceries or restaurants. Over 90% of the Malayalee population in Malaysia are Malaysian citizens.

References

  1. 1 2 Ameerudheen, TA. "Do Muslims in Kerala follow the caste system? Murder of Dalit Christian groom ignites debate". Scroll.in. Retrieved 17 June 2018.
  2. 1 2 Kunhali, V. "Muslim Communities in Kerala to 1798" PhD Dissertation Aligarh Muslim University (1986)
  3. 1 2 Siddidqui, M. K. A., editor. Marginal Muslim Communities in India 501-514.