Mammootty's career made it to Kerala college's history syllabus

In addition to the four-year BA Honours History course of Maharaja's College in Kochi, senior Malayalam actor and college alum Mammootty has been officially included as part of a new course named History of Malayalam Cinema. The second-year students this year will learn about his three-decade-long career, proposed by the college board of studies.

Mammootty has appeared in more than 400 films in five decades of acting and received three National Film Awards. The fourth-highest civilian award, Padma Shri, was given to him in 1998. He received various state and Filmfare awards, honorary doctorates in 2010, and Kerala Prabha from the state government in 2022.

The elective will have students examine Mammootty's career move from second lead to the top star, deconstruct his acting of historical and literary characters, the importance of his award-winning performances, and his experiments in foreign languages. It is a rare case of an actor from today being examined in an academic history course. The new syllabus also names other prominent Maharaja's notable alumni like India's first scheduled-caste woman graduate and Constituent Assembly member Dakshayani Velayudhan and reformers and thinkers like Arnos Pathiri and Tapaswini Amma.

While Mammootty's coming may come as a surprise, the faculty feels his corpus of work, diversity of performances and cultural standing make him a subject for scholarly examination rather than effusive fanboying. "Academic discernment and not sentimental fanboying" is Zakharia Thangal, head, History Department.

Mammootty's upcoming films are debutant Jithin K Jose's Kalamkaval with Vinayakan and multistarrer Patriot with Mohanlal and Fahadh Faasil by Mahesh Narayanan.