ONE BEE AND FOUR FLOWERS: POLYGAMY AS DEPICTED IN MALAYALAM LITERARY WORKS

ABSTRACT Polygamy was a contentious issue within Muslim community always; the reformers within the community were battling for the ban of it, while orthodox religious leaders were adamant to preserve it at any cost. The Quranic principle, that a Muslim man can have up to four wives in special circumstances, has been misinterpreted in different ways and it has been taken as a license for a man to satisfy his licentiousness and thereby to threaten his wives. Literature as well as cinema has given adequate representation to this evil within the society or in other way it has played a crucial role in perpetuating the anti Islamic idea that a man might have wives to his heart's content. The paper tries to analyze the depiction of polygamy in some Malayalam novels.