From Pathumma To Professor
By: Umer O Thasneem
Once confined to stereotypes, Kerala’s Muslim women are carving new futures—with pen, stethoscope and passport
She was a staple of Malayalam films—the semi-literate Muslim woman who spoke rustic Malayalam laced with Arabic and looked at the world with innocent bewilderment.
She was either the submissive wife of a patriarch or the hapless grass widow, scuttling from pillar to post for someone to read a letter from Arabia. The song ‘Qatharil ninnum kathonnu vannu / Kath kitti Pathumma tharichangu ninnu’ captured her confusion perfectly.
Her gullibility invited laughter. Vaikom Muhammad Bashir’s Kunchupathuma in ‘Me Grandad ’ad an Elephant’ exemplified this character—afraid to venture outdoors in daylight, convinced that wandering jins would ensnare her with devilry.
Though Kunchupathuma did not hail from Malappuram, she became the stereotype whose symbolic sweep extended beyond its geography. But is this ‘thatha’ now fading into memory? It appears so. Just as the domineering ‘Hajiyaars’ are vanishing, so too are the ‘thathas’. Thanks to the spread of English-medium schools, large-scale migration and changing family patterns, Kerala’s Muslim community is undergoing a tectonic shift.
Girls are increasingly educated and mobile. When the Ukraine war broke out, many Malayali students evacuated from the region were young women from Malappuram. Today, large numbers of Muslim girls study in countries such as Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Egypt, Malaysia, and Bangladesh—something unimaginable just a decade ago, when mobility was restricted and early marriage considered inevitable.
In the late 1980s, outrage erupted when a Muslim women’s magazine carried a matrimonial advertisement inviting grooms for girls aged just fifteen. That world is gone. Today, many women seeking partners are in their late twenties, with medical or professional degrees. Some families boast four or five daughters who are doctors.
The educational boom among girls is visible in research too. Farook College, long dubbed the ‘Aligarh of the South,’ now has research departments dominated by women scholars. Their dissertations range from ‘Muslim Women and Sartorial Resistance’ to ‘Quantum Fiction’ and ‘Polyverses’.
This changing demography is striking. Once a boys-only institution, Farook now counts nearly 80% of its students as women and has a woman principal.
Many Muslim girls are enrolled in prestigious universities abroad. Neha Jubin topped the UK A-Level exams in 2015, while Reema Shaji secured an engineering scholarship in the US—stories that made headlines.
Yet this progress has come at a cost. Boys are struggling to keep pace and this imbalance is feeding into marital discord. Young men raised in patriarchal traditions often find it hard to adjust to educated, assertive women. Advocate T M Khaled in Calicut said this is leading to a rise in divorce cases.
But the stigma around divorce is also fading. For many young women, it is no longer ‘die-vorce.’ In Vagamon, Muslim women were in the forefront of even organizing a divorce party, a defiant message to men unwilling to adapt.
In joint families, educated brides often ruffle a few feathers. A college lecturer recalls how his parents were shocked by his wife calling him by name and using singular pronouns. For decades, uttering a husband’s name was a no-no. The reformer Vakkom Abdul Khader once named his son after himself in the hope that his wife would be forced to say his name. Legend has it she never did.
Today, Muslim women speak openly about their marriages on social media—something only Kamala Das once dared to do. Some post photos seeking partners, listing their conditions.
A PhD researcher in English put it bluntly: “I won’t agree to marriage unless I know the salary and qualifications of my partner. A suitor once claimed he had a B.Tech. I checked the university records and found he had failed three papers. I warned him not to deceive other girls.”
Not all men resist change. One medical graduate, married to a dentist, said: “I help her in the kitchen. I even change our twins’ diapers. My father or grandfather never did such things—but then, they never married doctors.”
More boys are realizing they must adapt. The old model of masculinity—rigid, unquestioned, patriarchal—cannot survive in this new world. A softer masculinity is emerging, one with fresh ‘software and hardware’: Pruning old habits, learning new skills, even if that means training in changing diapers or draining dryers.
(The writer is asst professor, dept of English, Calicut University)
Once confined to stereotypes, Kerala’s Muslim women are carving new futures—with pen, stethoscope and passport
She was a staple of Malayalam films—the semi-literate Muslim woman who spoke rustic Malayalam laced with Arabic and looked at the world with innocent bewilderment.
She was either the submissive wife of a patriarch or the hapless grass widow, scuttling from pillar to post for someone to read a letter from Arabia. The song ‘Qatharil ninnum kathonnu vannu / Kath kitti Pathumma tharichangu ninnu’ captured her confusion perfectly.
Her gullibility invited laughter. Vaikom Muhammad Bashir’s Kunchupathuma in ‘Me Grandad ’ad an Elephant’ exemplified this character—afraid to venture outdoors in daylight, convinced that wandering jins would ensnare her with devilry.
Though Kunchupathuma did not hail from Malappuram, she became the stereotype whose symbolic sweep extended beyond its geography. But is this ‘thatha’ now fading into memory? It appears so. Just as the domineering ‘Hajiyaars’ are vanishing, so too are the ‘thathas’. Thanks to the spread of English-medium schools, large-scale migration and changing family patterns, Kerala’s Muslim community is undergoing a tectonic shift.
Girls are increasingly educated and mobile. When the Ukraine war broke out, many Malayali students evacuated from the region were young women from Malappuram. Today, large numbers of Muslim girls study in countries such as Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Egypt, Malaysia, and Bangladesh—something unimaginable just a decade ago, when mobility was restricted and early marriage considered inevitable.
In the late 1980s, outrage erupted when a Muslim women’s magazine carried a matrimonial advertisement inviting grooms for girls aged just fifteen. That world is gone. Today, many women seeking partners are in their late twenties, with medical or professional degrees. Some families boast four or five daughters who are doctors.
The educational boom among girls is visible in research too. Farook College, long dubbed the ‘Aligarh of the South,’ now has research departments dominated by women scholars. Their dissertations range from ‘Muslim Women and Sartorial Resistance’ to ‘Quantum Fiction’ and ‘Polyverses’.
This changing demography is striking. Once a boys-only institution, Farook now counts nearly 80% of its students as women and has a woman principal.
Many Muslim girls are enrolled in prestigious universities abroad. Neha Jubin topped the UK A-Level exams in 2015, while Reema Shaji secured an engineering scholarship in the US—stories that made headlines.
Yet this progress has come at a cost. Boys are struggling to keep pace and this imbalance is feeding into marital discord. Young men raised in patriarchal traditions often find it hard to adjust to educated, assertive women. Advocate T M Khaled in Calicut said this is leading to a rise in divorce cases.
But the stigma around divorce is also fading. For many young women, it is no longer ‘die-vorce.’ In Vagamon, Muslim women were in the forefront of even organizing a divorce party, a defiant message to men unwilling to adapt.
In joint families, educated brides often ruffle a few feathers. A college lecturer recalls how his parents were shocked by his wife calling him by name and using singular pronouns. For decades, uttering a husband’s name was a no-no. The reformer Vakkom Abdul Khader once named his son after himself in the hope that his wife would be forced to say his name. Legend has it she never did.
Today, Muslim women speak openly about their marriages on social media—something only Kamala Das once dared to do. Some post photos seeking partners, listing their conditions.
A PhD researcher in English put it bluntly: “I won’t agree to marriage unless I know the salary and qualifications of my partner. A suitor once claimed he had a B.Tech. I checked the university records and found he had failed three papers. I warned him not to deceive other girls.”
Not all men resist change. One medical graduate, married to a dentist, said: “I help her in the kitchen. I even change our twins’ diapers. My father or grandfather never did such things—but then, they never married doctors.”
More boys are realizing they must adapt. The old model of masculinity—rigid, unquestioned, patriarchal—cannot survive in this new world. A softer masculinity is emerging, one with fresh ‘software and hardware’: Pruning old habits, learning new skills, even if that means training in changing diapers or draining dryers.
(The writer is asst professor, dept of English, Calicut University)
Next Story