Architectural Historiography of Malabar’s Religious Buildings: A Methodological Critique

This article critiques the historiographical tendency to classify Malabar’s religious buildings as either ‘Indic’ or ‘non-Indic’, or as expressions of siloed sectarian identities, such as Hindu, Muslim, Christian and Jewish. Drawing on the material and architectural study of temples, mosques, churches and synagogues, it argues that these structures are better understood as entangled forms shaped by shared building traditions, artisan mobility, climatic adaptation and interreligious patronage. Descriptions of mosques and churches as ‘temple-like’, or synagogues as anomalous, reveal a diffusionist logic that assumes singular cultural origins and one-way influence. In response, the article proposes transculturality as a methodological framework that shifts analysis from models of unidirectional influence to processes of convergence, adaptation and situated translation in Malabar’s architectural history. Rather than treating transculturation as exceptional, it argues that it was, in fact, constitutive of the very formation of architectural traditions and practices in the region over time. The article therefore calls for a decolonial re-reading of Malabar’s religious architecture beyond civilizational essentialism and sectarian taxonomies.