Basil Islam SPC

This Foundation Project implemented by IFA will study the Muslim community’s spatial formations and sensorial practices in Kayalpattinam, a southern coastal town in Tamil Nadu. It will explore how various traditions negotiate the influx of modernity in different socio-religious contexts in a Muslim-majority district. Basil Islam SPC is the Coordinator for this project. 

Basil Islam SPC is a documentary filmmaker, editor and writer based in Perumbavoor, Kerala. He has a bachelor’s degree in Sociology from Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, and a postgraduate diploma in Islamic Thought and Social Process from Thansia Islamic Academy, Kerala. Basil has made documentary films and written extensively on the Muslim question in India. Given his experience, Basil is best suited to be the Coordinator of this Foundation Project of IFA. Afeef Ahmed, Azna Parveen, Sidra Ali and Thoufeeq K will join Basil as collaborators for this project. 

This project will study Kayalpattinam, a municipality in the Thoothukudi district of Tamil Nadu through an interdisciplinary lens of Henri Lefebvre’s concept of social space, Amos Rapoport’s theorisation of cultural relations of physical forms, ideas of Gopal Guru and Sundar Sarukkai on the ‘everyday social’, and Charles Hirschkind’s reflections on the ethical self-cultivation. It intends to explore the built forms and spatial structures of Kayalpattinam and how they translate into the sensorial everydayness of the space and influence the spatiality of the town. 

Kayalpattinam is a Muslim-majority coastal town where livelihoods depend on trade. Marked in history as one of the major ports of the Coromandel Coast, this was once part of the famed Silk Route. Even before the advent of Islam, this town had trade relations with the Arabs and Greeks. 

The formation of the everyday social and the built forms in Kayalpattinam are strongly mediated by distinct moral imaginations rooted in piety and religiosity. The town plan, architectural forms, and appearance of various buildings and social spaces in Kayalpattinam reflect its history, religious commitments and social arrangements. There are numerous mosques, Sufi Khanqahs and taikas (halls for small spiritual gatherings of women) in Kayalpattinam, aiding these distinct spatial formations. These gendered spaces are reproduced and preserved through the distinct construction modes in public spaces, such as roads and shops; and private spaces, such as houses. The religious festivals are a part of the everyday life of Kayalpattinam as they extend throughout the year in the form of Kandhuris (religious commemorations) and recitals of various religious texts. All these practices consist of primarily gathering people into various forms of the social, aided by the reproduction of sound through various means.

The project will investigate how religious communities exist in and their traditions negotiate the spatiotemporal environments of modernity using a variety of possibilities to maintain their unique identity; and how the potentialities of spaces and senses are utilised to redefine moral boundaries in the incursion of visuality, to form a new moral subject through a specific configuration of the human sensorium.  

The outcomes of this project will be an essay, audiovisual documentation, and a catalogue of ritual performances and built forms. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA, along with final reports, will be an essay, audio-visual documentation, and a catalogue of ritual performances and built forms.

This project suitably addresses the framework of IFA’s Arts Research programme as it attempts to explore a relatively underexplored cultural sphere of Kayalpattinam, a Muslim-majority municipality. 

IFA will ensure that the project is implemented on time and that the funds expended are accounted for. IFA will also review the progress of the project at midterm and document it through an Implementation Memorandum. After the project is complete and deliverables are submitted, IFA will put together a Final Evaluation to share with the Trustees. 

This project is made possible with support from BNP Paribas India.