In this episode, we speak with Dr Amal Pullarkkat, faculty at MG University, on the crisis in the Indian higher education landscape and the dwindling of democratic educational spaces in India. What do these changes mean for student movements? What does it mean to be a teacher through this crisis?

In season 3 of Ala podcast, we hold a series of conversations with educationists, academics and activists on Education in Kerala. We begin with an exploration of the legacy of protestant mission schools in Kerala and how their engagements undergirded by their interactions with the British State, caste and religious communities informed childhood making in colonial Kerala. Who was the good educated child? What kind of values were refracted through these constructions? In this episode, Divya Kannan, author of "Contested Childhoods : Caste and Education in Kerala" joins us to narrate a fascinating story of schooling in Kerala. In this episode, we begin with an exploration of the legacy of protestant mission schools in Kerala and how their engagements undergirded by their interactions with the British State, caste and religious communities informed childhood making in colonial Kerala. Who was the good educated child? What kind of values were refracted through these constructions? 

Image Credits:

Reference: BMA C-30.60.030
Title: "Schülergruppe aus dem Waisenhaus in Paraperi. Miss. Eckelmann u. Frau. "
Creator: [leer] N
Date: before 08.1905

As Ala turns five, tune in to this special episode with Ala's editors, as we reflect on the blog's journey so far, the motivation behind our workshops, podcast other experiments, and contemplate what keeps us going each month. We brainstorm about what we have in store for the next year, and we hear from mentors and former editors who have worked with Ala.

We wrap up this season of our podcasts on Kerala modernity with a discussion on sartorialism and the politics of the body in Kerala. Malavika Binny and Rekha Raj explore how clothing, and by extension, the body itself, have been both sites of violence and protest in Kerala, and closely tied to questions of class and caste.

With streaming services bringing transnational attention to Malayalam cinema, it becomes important to examine the nature of Kerala's "new gen" cinema and to locate it in a longer history. C S Venkiteswaran, film critic, Don Palathara, film director, and Jolly Chirayath, actor, feature in Ala's first audio essay on cinema in Kerala.

In this episode, we speak with Sudha Padmaja Francis, an award-winning independent documentary filmmaker about her practice as a filmmaker and her documentary Ormajeevikal, a film that captures the city of Kozhikode through a community of music lovers.

In this episode, we speak with Linto Francis, a researcher in Linguistics, about the influence of language in shaping how we understand the world and also interpret ourselves, and the debates that emerged in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries around language and modernity in Kerala.  

In this episode, we speak with K.P. Girija about the modernisation of the indigenous systems of medicine in Kerala. Her recently published book Mapping the History of Ayurveda: Culture, Hegemony, and the Rhetoric of Diversity examined the history of institutionalisation of Ayurveda in the 20th century, and the complex process associated with it.

In this episode of our ongoing podcast series on Keraleeyatha, we speak with Prof Dilip Menon and Dr Mahmood Kooria about the role of the Indian ocean in shaping the social and political history of Kerala, and revisit the limitations of a "terracentric" idea of modernity and the nation-state.

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Interview: S. Harikrishnan

In Season 2 of Ala podcasts, we hold a series of conversations with experts, academics and activists on rethinking modernity in Kerala. In this episode, we begin this endeavour by focussing on texts that suggest that a strand of anti-caste literature can be traced back to at least the 14th century in Kerala.  

Why then do we see "modernity" as something that emerged only in the colonial era? What do the three medieval texts tell us about alternative strands of literature? Why do we mainstream some histories while marginalizing others? In this episode, we discuss these questions with Prof. T.T. Sreekumar.

Interview: S. Harikrishnan

Artwork: Nidhin Shobhana