Combating Capitalism: A Case Study of Left Polity in Kerala

ABSTRACT

This paper traces the trajectory of left governments in Kerala, as against that of the government of India, in the context of Indian federalism, and Kerala government’s more recent resistance to the political right-wing upsurge in the state, to draw out strategies and patterns through which left governments in Kerala have survived and persistently deployed socialist policies. In doing so, the paper tries to understand both twenty-first-century capitalism and modes of resistance, drawing from Kerala’s vision and model of socialism. This trajectory is charted by tracing the class–nation–state interactions at the level of both the state and the federation. In this context, the paper tries to understand the democratic processes the state government engaged in, which shaped the political life, public sphere and popular culture of Kerala as such. It does so by analysing the various social, economic, and political measures undertaken at both centre and state levels, and their outcomes, as a means to understand the functioning and survival of democratically elected left governments; and analyse whether through this experience can be derived a way forward for left politics, governance and development.

KEYWORDS:

• State
• socialism
• Kerala
• India
• capitalism

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was presented in the 14th Forum of the World Association for Political Economy, held at the University of Manitoba, Canada. The author is grateful for the feedback received during the conference. The author would like to thank Dr Arindam Banerjee and Dr Niharika Banerjea (Dr. B. R. Ambedkar University Delhi) as well as the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions on the paper.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 As per WHO figures, at the time of writing this article, India was the third worst affected country in the world, after United States of America and Brazil. See https://covid19.who.int/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIotjh4u6V6wIVSq6WCh0CPQu_EAAYASAAEgIVDPD_BwE, accessed August 15, 2020.

2 Henceforth, when not mentioned otherwise, references to centre/union refer to the government of India, and state refers to federal units within the union, mostly referring to government of Kerala.

3 G. Mohan Gopal is a legal scholar, former head of the National Judicial Academy of the Supreme Court of India (NJA), and former vice chancellor of the National Law School of India, Bangalore. He is a leading proponent of judicial reform and justice in India. He was the founding member and second all India president of National Student’s Union of India (the student’s wing of Indian National Congress), and has been an active participant in Kerala’s political development ever since. The author of this paper interviewed G. Mohan Gopal on the topic of this paper in June 2019.

4 R. Parvathi Devi is a writer and has previously worked in the editorial section of Deshabhimani, Kairali and Asianet. She was a member of the Student’s Federation of India (SFI) in Kerala, is currently a party member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), and has been an active participant in Kerala’s political development. She is currently a member of the Kerala Public Service Commission. The author interviewed her in May 2019 for the purposes of this paper.

5 CPI(M), recognising the importance and continued relevance of the Sri Narayana Guru led anti-caste movement, celebrated the centenary of his declaration, “we have no caste,” from August 24–28, 2016, across party units in Kerala. See https://www.cpimkerala.org/eng/secretarys-page-details.php?id=206.

6 A title of veneration, used to refer to spiritual leaders. Here it is used to refer to Sri Narayana Guru.

7 Figures have been taken from a working paper enumerating the social/religious/communal composition of the people of Kerala. See Zachariah (2016).

8 Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes are references to communities that are socially, economically and educationally backward castes and tribal groups, which have been given special attention for affirmative action under the constitutional framework of India.

9 Crime rate is calculated as crime per one lakh of female population. See NCRB (2019, 195).

10 Indian National Congress was the majority party that formed the government in most other states and in the centre in India for the first few decades of India’s advent into a democratic republic.

11 A provision in the Constitution of India, which allows the centre to suspend state government and establish direct central government control in the state temporarily, on grounds of the breakdown of the constitutional machinery in the state. The makers of the constitution had intended that the provision would be used sparingly, only in severe situations of law and order breakdown. However, in the history of independent India, this has been consistently used by the centre to target unfriendly state governments.

12 Communal/Communalism in the context of this paper, and in general discussions in India, refers to social factionalism along religious lines, which often promotes a sense of difference and enmity among religious groups. Violence that erupts on the grounds of hurt religious sentiments, or clashes between religious groups like Hindu-Muslim violence is commonly referred to as communal violence.

13 The Supreme Court of India delivered a progressive verdict in September 2018 in the Sabarimala case allowing women of all age to enter the temple. It noted that the ongoing practice of denial of temple entry to women of menstruating age was unconstitutional, and denied women’s fundamental right to freedom of religion. The reactionary, orthodox, communal forces in Kerala organised themselves against the judgement and Kerala state’s implementation of it, and tried to turn it into an electoral agenda for the parliamentary elections of 2019.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ashwin Varghese

Ashwin Varghese is a PhD candidate in sociology at the School of Liberal Studies, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar University Delhi, India. He holds Master’s degrees in English literature and sociology, and has previously worked as a research assistant to legislators at Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies, Delhi. His doctoral work focuses on the power relations in the political economy of and everyday experiences in police stations in India. His broader research interests include political economy, state, law and public policy.