Byari (Beary)

The Bearys (Byari) are a Muslim people of Tulu Nadu, the coastal strip of Karnataka around Mangaluru (Dakshina Kannada and Udupi) and the Kasaragod district of Kerala, with smaller settlements in Kodagu, Chikkamagaluru, Hassan and Uttara Kannada. Their name is usually derived from the Tulu word byara, trade, and they trace their Islam to Arab traders and early preachers associated with Malik ibn Dinar, whose companions are said to have founded mosques at Kasaragod, Mangaluru and Barkur; Mangaluru's Zeenath Baksh mosque is among the oldest. They speak Beary (Byari), a form of Malayalam heavily influenced by Tulu and written in Kannada or Malayalam script, and number about one to one and a half million. Karnataka set up a Beary Sahitya Academy in 2007, and the first Beary-language film, Byari, shared India's national award for best feature film in 2012.

Bearys combine the Tulu culture of the Mangalore coast with Mappila traditions of the Malabar coast: rice, fish and coconut cooking, rice breads (pathiri) and the long wedding festivities of the coast. They are known as traders, shopkeepers and, in recent decades, as builders of schools, colleges and hospitals funded from the Gulf. Families are close-knit and marriages are mostly within the community; women's education has risen fast.

Bearys are Sunni Muslims of the Shafi'i school. Traditional practice centres on the mosque, the madrasa and shrines of saints (dargahs) such as Ullal's Syed Madani dargah, with annual urus festivals; reformist and Gulf-influenced movements criticise shrine visits, and the community is divided between traditionalist and reformist organisations.

There is no Bible, film or recording in Beary, which is mostly spoken rather than written; Bearys read Kannada and Malayalam, in which the complete Bible, the JESUS film and audio resources exist. JP records almost no Christians among them, and Karnataka's 2022 anti-conversion law and communal tension on the Mangalore coast make any conversion costly.