A new book asks whether welfare activities and inter-party violence in Kerala are linked

In order to elaborate on the particular role that practices of disbursing care and cohesive communities have played in the political conflict between the Hindu right and the party left in Kannur, I locate their emergence in the longer history of the Sangh’s mobilisation programmes in the region. As in Kannur, these programs have had a strong polarising agenda in other areas too. While the Hindu right in North Kerala has focused on the CPI(M) as its key political adversary in the region since the late 1960s, its activities have also been pitted against local Muslim communities.

As seen in the 1971–-972 Thalassery riot, Hindu right members have used staple tactics of generating strong attachments to the majority Hindu identity that Hindu Right Communities members purport to defend by staging conflictual situations with members of minority groups. Additionally, at various critical junctures in the late 1960s, the early 1970s, and the years following the lifting of the emergency, Sangh members organised contentious movements around majority and minority sacred geographies and symbols prevalent in Kerala.

Nationally, the late 1980s and early 1990s also saw Hindu right-wing organisations escalating their campaign around sacred spaces such as Babri Masjid that inaugurated a new phase of polarisation...

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