In this paper, I explore the evolution of a local version of football, Sevens, in the Malabar region of the southern Indian state Kerala in the 1930s and trace its transregional and transnational journeys over the past 80 years. Focusing on the colonial treatment and portrayal of the Mappila Muslim community whose encounter with the British force gave birth to this Seven-a-side game which has been a subaltern bodily practice from its very inception, this paper aims to contribute to the historical and anthropological understanding of the region, community, and various corporal politics that shape the everyday sociality of this southern end of the Indian subcontinent. By relying on postcolonial historiography, this paper shows that the fanatic Mappila bodies, a nomenclature the British deployed to suppress the local responses to colonial exploitation, violated the rules and codes, and reversed the many logics of a game endowed with didactical scopes in colonial imaginations and practices. This fundamental deformation created variegated noises, including colonial, nationalistic, and secular, around Sevens in the narrative public domain. In postcolonial Kerala, the growing popularity it received deeply disturbed fans and officials of proper football and high culture alike, reducing the performance into an aggressive display of the masculine might of men in the former fanatic zones. However, the Sevens kept making statements by finding fields not only across the state but also, from the 1970s onwards, in the many countries of the Persian Gulf through the migrant population from the Malabar region. Hence, by elaborating on these aspects, this paper offers a comprehensive picture of Sevens football culture, thereby problematizing the relationship among the sporting culture, community, state, and global capital.
