Panaikulam or Panaikkulam is a village located in the eastern part of

Ramanathapuram district Ramanathapuram District, also known as Ramnad District, is one of the 38 administrative districts of Tamil Nadu state in southern India. The old Ramanathapuram District consists of Present day Virudhunagar and Sivagangai districts, it touches th ...

Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is the southernmost States and union territories of India, state of India. The List of states and union territories of India by area, tenth largest Indian state by area and the List of states and union territories of Indi ...

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

.Panaikulam location on Wikimapia
/ref> The inhabitants of this village are primarily

Tamil Muslims Tamil Muslims are Tamils who practise Islam. The community is 10 million in India, primarily in the state of Tamil Nadu where 90% of the Muslim community identified themselves as Tamil Muslims. In Tamil Nadu, the majority of Tamil-speaking Mus ...

History

The history of Panaikulam is more than 500 years old. The oral information has been collected from the old people and with the help of a will document written by one of the descendants in the family of the first migrants, it is known that Tamil-speaking Muslims migrated from adjacent parts of Ramanathapuram (e.g. Kothakottai, Udaichiyarvalasai, aalappuli) to a place with pond and lot of palm trees. They named it as Panai (meaning ''palm tree'') kulam (meaning ''pond''). This pond (now called as Pugaloorani) served as the water source for the people and their cattle. Slowly the migrated population moved towards the inner parts of the village and established a mosque (now Jumma Mosque) for praying.Panaikulam
, Panaikulam website The migrations continued from the adjacent villages of

Ramanathapuram Ramanathapuram (), also known as Ramnad, is a city Municipal Corporation in Ramanathapuram district in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is the administrative headquarters of Ramanathapuram district and the second largest town (by population) ...

and Panaikulam became a Muslim village. Some of the migrants used handlooms to weave the cloths and made business out of it. After some time, the mosque was built up using natural stones. It is indeed a very rare architectural beauty. During the nineteenth century, opportunities present in

Malaya Malaya refers to a number of historical and current political entities related to what is currently Peninsular Malaysia in Southeast Asia: Political entities * British Malaya (1826–1957), a loose collection of the British colony of the Straits ...

(now called

Malaysia Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. Featuring the Tanjung Piai, southernmost point of continental Eurasia, it is a federation, federal constitutional monarchy consisting of States and federal territories of Malaysia, 13 states and thre ...

) attracted Panaikulam people and many of them went to Malaya to earn money. They mostly settled in

Penang Penang is a Malaysian state located on the northwest coast of Peninsular Malaysia along the Strait of Malacca. It has two parts: Penang Island, where the capital city, George Town, is located, and Seberang Perai on the Malay Peninsula. Th ...

in businesses such as money exchange and restaurants.

Language

The primary language spoken by the people of Panaikulam is

Tamil Tamil may refer to: People, culture and language * Tamils, an ethno-linguistic group native to India, Sri Lanka, and some other parts of Asia **Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka ** Myanmar or Burmese Tamils, Tamil people of Ind ...

. Even though the accent is similar to that of the

spoken in rest of

, it has unique words probably borrowed from

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

, Malay and

Urdu Urdu (; , , ) is an Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in South Asia. It is the Languages of Pakistan, national language and ''lingua franca'' of Pakistan. In India, it is an Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of Indi ...

. Certain peculiar words like nadayam (for slipper) and aanam (for curry) are used.

Food and cuisine

The food habits practised by the Panaikulam people have similarities with

Tamil Muslim Tamil Muslims are Tamils who practise Islam. The community is 10 million in India, primarily in the state of Tamil Nadu where 90% of the Muslim community identified themselves as Tamil Muslims. In Tamil Nadu, the majority of Tamil-speaking Mus ...

cuisine, Sri Lankan Muslim Sri Lankan Tamil Muslims cuisine and

Malay cuisine Malay cuisine (; Jawi script, Jawi: ) is the traditional food of the ethnic Malays of Southeast Asia, residing in modern-day Malaysia, Indonesia (parts of Sumatra and Kalimantan), Singapore, Brunei, Southern Thailand and the Philippines (most ...

. For example, the foods such as Watalappam and

Idiyappam Idiyappam, also known as indiappa, noolappam, noolputtu, santhagai, or ottu shavige, is a Sevai, string hopper dish originating from southern India. It consists of rice flour pressed into noodles, laid into a flat Disk (mathematics), disc-like ...

are regularly prepared and eaten by Sri Lankan Tamil Muslims and

settled in

and

Singapore Singapore, officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island country and city-state in Southeast Asia. The country's territory comprises one main island, 63 satellite islands and islets, and one outlying islet. It is about one degree ...

Notable person

Haji Mastan Haji Mastan, popularly known as Sultan Mirza, was an organised crime gang leader, originally from Tamil Nadu and based in Bombay. He was one of the infamous trio of mafia gang leaders in Bombay for over two decades from the 1960s to the early 1 ...

- The birthplace of Haji Mastan is Panaikulam. * K.A.N Bahurdeen, patriarch for the K.A.N (Kati-Adham-Naina) clan, philanthropist and founder of Bahurdeen School, first school to be established in Panaikulam for the village and its surrounding areas. Now it is run by government under the name Bahurdeen Government Higher Secondary School.

References

{{Reflist Cities and towns in Ramanathapuram district