In the pre-colonial period, Kerala had an unusually high proportion of literate people, including women, compared with most of the Indian subcontinent. The reasons were attributed to the extensive growth of overseas commerce, the buying and sale of lands, cash rents and mortgages that needed the knowledge and use of accounting and legal documents. Also in matrilineal castes like the Nayars, where the women held a higher status, it was customary for them to learn to read.

Sreedhara Menon and Gough have both argued that in the early British period, there was ‘an alarming increase in illiteracy’ because of the wars of the late eighteenth century in which schools were disrupted, and the British, by introducing English as a medium of instruction, discouraged Sanskrit learning and the running of the vernacular village schools. Both in British Malabar and in the princely states of Cochin and Travancore, regular public instruction was re-established only towards the end of the nineteenth century.

Traditional Muslim Education

Trade, both overseas and inland, was the traditional economic activity of the Mappillas of the coastal towns of Malabar. Therefore, the Mappilla traders and merchants, by virtue of their occupation, would know basic arithmetic and accounting, and in the case of overseas merchants, at least have some geographical knowledge.

Mappilla religious learning was centred around the mosque.