Communism, Subaltern Studies and Postcolonial Theory: The Left in South India 9781138056794, 9781032050553, 9781003195795

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COMMUNISM, SUBALTERN STUDIES AND POSTCOLONIAL THEORY

This book is a thematic history of the communist movement in Kerala, the first major region (in terms of population) in the world to democratically elect a communist government. It analyzes the nature of the transformation brought about by the communist movement in Kerala, and what its implications could be for other postcolonial societies. The volume engages with the key theoretical concepts in postcolonial theory and Subaltern Studies, and contributes to the debate between Marxism and postcolonial theory, especially its recent articulations. The volume presents a fresh empirical engagement with theoretical critiques of Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory, in the context of their decades-long scholarship in India. It discusses important thematic moments in Kerala’s communist history which include—the processes by which it established its hegemony, its cultural interventions, the institution of land reforms and workers’ rights, and the democratic decentralization project, and, ultimately, communism’s incomplete national-popular and its massive failures with regard to the caste question. A significant contribution to scholarship on democracy and modernity in the Global South, this volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of politics, specifically political theory, democracy and political participation, political sociology, development studies, postcolonial theory, Subaltern Studies, Global South Studies and South Asia Studies. Nissim Mannathukkaren is Associate Professor in the International Development Studies Department at Dalhousie University, Canada. He is the author of the book The Rupture with Memory: Derrida and the Specters That Haunt Marxism (2006). His research has been published in journals such as Citizenship Studies, Journal of Peasant Studies, Third World Quarterly, Economic and Political Weekly, Journal of Critical Realism, International Journal of the History of Sport, Dialectical Anthropology, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies and Sikh Formations. He is a regular op-ed contributor to the English-language press in India.

COMMUNISM, SUBALTERN STUDIES AND POSTCOLONIAL THEORY The Left in South India

Nissim Mannathukkaren

First published 2022 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 Nissim Mannathukkaren The right of Nissim Mannathukkaren to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-05679-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-05055-3 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-19579-5 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

To Ammachi and Appachen for being the “Grace” and “Joy” of my life

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments List of abbreviations

viii x

Introduction

1

1

Subaltern Studies, postcolonial theory and communism

22

2

Socialist beginnings

77

3

Towards communism

122

4

Questioning autonomy: relinking art and society

176

5

The rise of the popular in culture

220

6

Redistribution and recognition: the land reforms and the workers’ act

251

7

Reconstituting the political: the People’s Plan

295

8

The incomplete national-popular

356

Conclusion

408

Index

431

vii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book has accumulated a lot of debt from many people in their unstinting support in various ways. It would not have been possible without all the help rendered by Andalat, librarian at AKG Centre for Research and Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, for pointing to sources and procuring much valuable research material. I am grateful to him for going much beyond his call of duty. His own voluminous and painstaking compilations of original and inaccessible material on the communist movement as well as his own oral survey of subaltern Communist activists from the early period have been significant and are a vital source for those interested in research. The book would also not have been possible without the kindness shown by Pachu Ashan for sharing time as well as unpublished writings about his own experiences in the communist movement. Both Andalat and Pachu Ashan are sadly deceased. I thank Queen’s University and Dalhousie University for grants which aided the research process. Jayant Lele’s wisdom and unfailing encouragement throughout have proven invaluable in bringing this work to fruition. I have benefited immensely from conversations with him over the years as well as by reading his work. The seeds of this book were sown by grappling with, and being influenced by, his very original theoretical framework and his ruminations on “tradition” and “modernity.” I also take this opportunity to thank Eleanor McDonald and Grant Amyot for their critical inputs and suggestions when this work was in its rudimentary stages. I thank the staff at Kerala State Archives, Thiruvananthapuram; Kozhikode Regional Archives, Kozhikode; Tamil Nadu Archives, Chennai; National Archives of India, New Delhi; Nehru Memorial and Museum Library, New Delhi; Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram; Kerala Sahitya Akademi, Thrissur, and The British Library, London. I am very thankful to M. A. Jose, Kavita Krishnan, J. Devika, Vijayan, Vijoo Krishnan, Surjit Esthose and Prasenjit Bose for all their help during the course of this research. Anil Varughese has been a great sounding board, and I have gained many insights from discussions with Shajahan Madampat and Joseph Tharamangalam. I owe a special gratitude to Ravi Raman, Yasser Arafath and John viii

AC K N OW L E D G M E N T S

Roosa for reading parts of the manuscript and making very valuable comments. I thank Rajin Khan and Mitherayee Augustine for their meticulous assistance. Theresa Ulicki, John Cameron, Matthew Schnurr, Robert Huish, Ajay Parasram, Marian MacKinnon and Nicole Drysdale have been the most wonderful colleagues to work with and a great source of support. I thank Taylor and Francis Ltd. for the permission to include material from the following articles authored by me: “The ‘Poverty’ of Political Society: Partha Chatterjee and the People’s Plan Campaign in Kerala, India,” Third World Quarterly, March 1, 2010, 31 (2); “Postcolonialism and Modernity,” Journal of Critical Realism, October 29, 2010, 9 (3); “Redistribution and Recognition: Land Reforms in Kerala and the Limits of Culturalism,” Journal of Peasant Studies, March 1, 2011 (38), 2; “The Rise of the NationalPopular and Its Limits: Communism and the Cultural in Kerala,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, December 1, 2013, 14 (4). Aakash Chakrabarty and Brinda Sen at Taylor and Francis, Ltd., New Delhi, have been immensely patient. My brother, Ashim, sister-in-law, Reena, and niece and nephew, Kunjulakshmi and Kunjikannan, have been a pillar of strength. Finally, I thank Anu, Polu and Ashi for showing me, every waking moment, the world of manifold colors outside the world of books. Nissim Mannathukkaren Halifax, January 2021

ix

ABBREVIATIONS

ABYS ADB ADS AICC AMKS AMPU ATTUC BJP BPL BSP CDS CIA CID CITU CPI CPI (M) CPM CPSU CSDS CSP DM ESZs FC GDP HDI IHDS IPTA KARB KAWA KKS KLRAA KMPP

Abhinav Bharat Yuvak Sangh Asian Development Bank Area Development Societies All India Congress Committee All Malabar Karshaka Sangham All-Malabar Peasants Union All Travancore Trade Union Congress Bharatiya Janata Party Below Poverty Line Bahujan Samaj Party Community Development Societies Central Intelligence Agency Central Intelligence Department Centre of India Trade Unions Communist Party of India Communist Party of India (Marxist) Communist Party of India (Marxist) Communist Party of the Soviet Union Centre for the Study of Developing Societies Congress Socialist Party District Magistrate Eco-Sensitive Zones Forward Caste Gross Domestic Product Human Development Index India Human Development Survey Indian People’s Theater Association Kerala Agrarian Relations Bill Kerala Agricultural Workers’ Act Kerala Karshaka Sangham Kerala Land Reforms Amendment Act Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party x

A B B R E V I AT I O N S

KPAC KPCC KPMS KRA KRPLLD KSA KSKTU KSSP LDF MLA MSP NAI NGO NHGs NMML NSS OBCs PLM PTI RI RSP RSS SCs SDP SHGs SNDP SP STs TADA TNA TSC UP

Kerala People’s Arts Club Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee Kerala Pulaya Maha Sabha Kozhikode Regional Archives Kerala Research Programme on Local Level Development Kerala State Archives Kerala Karshaka Thozhilali Union Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishath Left Democratic Front Member of the Legislative Assembly Malabar Special Police National Archives of India Non-Governmental Organization Neighborhood Groups Nehru Memorial Museum and Library Nair Service Society Other Backward Classes Progressive Literature Movement Press Trust of India Rigorous Imprisonment Revolutionary Socialist Party Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh Scheduled Castes State Domestic Product Self-Help Groups Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam Superintendent of Police Scheduled Tribes Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act Tamil Nadu Archives Travancore State Congress United Provinces

xi

INTRODUCTION

This book is a thematic history of the communist movement in Kerala.1 In delineating this history, it will undertake a materialist critique of Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory. It will also engage with the critique by Vivek Chibber of Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory which has generated intense debates recently.2 The state of Kerala, which has a population of 35 million, was the first major region (in terms of population) in the world to democratically elect a communist government (in 1957). This, combined with the fact that the state has made phenomenal achievements in human development—initially, at very low levels of economic growth—and something to which the communist movement has contributed, has evoked a lot of attention among scholars both in India and outside. As one of them put it, “Under the impetus of a broad-based working-class movement organized by the Communist Party, successive governments in Kerala have pursued what is arguably the most successful strategy of redistributive development outside the socialist world.”3 This had led the United Nations and other global development institutions to commend Kerala as a “model” of development. The most significant aspect of this is the fact that it has been achieved through popular struggles and democratically elected governments. This particular development trajectory was especially achieved by the elimination of landlordism, the vesting of land rights in tenants, the protection of labor, the spending of resources on the public provision of education, health, agricultural credits and food.4 As we will see in the following, some of these achievements had their roots in developments beginning in the 19th century, much before the emergence of the communism and democracy. Some scholars, in the mid1990s, argued that, in effect, the “Kerala model may be taken as an early prototype of sustainable development because of improvements in the quality of life, environmental stability, social and economic equality, and the decline in political strife.”5 However, in the recent decades, persisting social inequality (especially of those marginalized and silenced by the model), cultural and economic consequences of transnational migration, tendencies of neoliberal capitalism, increasing economic inequality, ecological degradation 1

INTRODUCTION

and other deleterious tendencies show the need for a comprehensive, rather than a romantic understanding of the Kerala development experience. Communism was a late entrant into Kerala, compared to the other regions of India, with the formal constitution of the Communist Party only in 1940. What should be of interest to any student of history is the short span of time—just about two decades—in which many fundamental changes in society took place. For those who experienced them, and for those who dedicated their lives to communism, these were changes that were “more powerful and magical than what Aladdin’s magic lamp could have conjured up.”6 From our perspective, one of the keys to unraveling the significant transformation that made the “most ostentatiously deferential region in India in the early twentieth century . . . the most pervasively clamorous by the middle of the twentieth”7 is in the recognition that these changes did not come about on their own, but were brought about.8 Not by the bourgeoisie, but by the subaltern castes and classes, the peasantry, workers and other marginalized groups, thus, putting question marks on the famous dictum of Barrington Moore Jr.: “No bourgeois, no democracy.”9 This particular feature, I will contend, will be of utmost importance in the arguments proposed in this book. Kerala, as elsewhere in India, was a society characterized by extreme caste (and class) inequalities.10 Everyday activity had to signify one’s place in the social hierarchy and one’s deference to “higher” castes. Violations and transgressions were strictly punished. There has been a general consensus on the fact that caste oppression in Kerala was more severe than other regions.11 Along with untouchability, unapproachability was prevalent too.12 Among the main communities, at the top of the hierarchy were the Kerala Brahmins called Namboodiris. The Nairs were ranked below the Brahmins and preformed martial and administrative functions.13 They were followed by the Ezhavas/Thiyyas “who were in a social limbo” between the Shudras and the “untouchable” castes14 like the Pulayas, Cherumas and Parayas. Ezhavas/ Thiyyas were also considered as “polluting” and experienced untouchability like the Dalit castes although they were ranked higher than the Dalits.15 Caste is a stark reality among Christians. Almost 80% of Christians belong to the upper castes, who follow the Syrian rites16 and were historically considered superior to the polluting Hindu castes. Muslims in Kerala and Ezhavas/Thiyyas are a part of the administrative category called Other Backward Classes (OBCs) which include the Shudra castes.17 But there are caste-like hierarchies within Muslims as well. There was no prominent Hindu business caste in Kerala. Muslims and Christians were involved in trading activities.18 The land tenure system was characterized mostly by a strong caste–class correlation (especially at the top and the bottom). The upper-caste Namboodiris, Nairs and temple authorities (devaswoms) controlled most of the land as landlords.19 Nairs, Syrian Christians, Muslims and Ezhavas/Thiyyas leased lands as tenants with different kinds of superior and inferior rights. 2

INTRODUCTION

Ezhavas/Thiyyas also worked as agricultural labor, coir workers, toddy tappers, etc. The Dalit untouchable castes were largely the agricultural labor, who hardly had any rights on land. The most egregious aspect of the system was the existence of agrestic slavery of the Dalit labor.20 The sum effect of the communist intervention in society was that, on the one hand, it led to the sowing of the seeds of a national-popular will in the Gramscian sense21 which played a key role in postcolonial liberation. The national-popular was absent in Gramsci’s description of Italy during the 1930s. According to him: In Italy, the term “national” has ideologically very restricted meaning and does not in any case coincide with “popular” because in Italy the intellectuals are distant from the people, i.e., from the “nation.” They are tied instead to caste tradition that has never been broken by a strong popular or national political movement from below.22 The communist national-popular had some similarities to the early Dravidian movement in Tamil Nadu, in which, M. S. S. Pandian argues, the campaign for Tamil became not only a linguistic movement but also “a site for a ‘national-popular’ project by encompassing a range of democratic concerns connected with caste, gender and region, and involving different subaltern groups” which was against not just the Brahmin orthodoxy but also the homogenizing Indian nation state.23 However, the crucial distinction in the communist national-popular will was the presence of class (along with nationalism). Thus, it simultaneously attempted to negotiate exclusions based on class, caste, language, region and the nation. In the only other major Indian state where communism became dominant, West Bengal, its rise was due to its “promotion of a notion of social citizenship through class struggle.”24 On the other hand, the communist national-popular will in Kerala did not contend with all the exclusions equally or eliminate all hierarchies. In fact, the national-popular and its distinctness in terms of class could only partially address the question of caste. This is despite that one of the main factors for the entrenchment of communism in the initial phases was what Dilip Menon argues as the “reshaping of communism into a doctrine of caste equality.”25 And that the struggles for dignity and against blatant caste oppressions were bound together with those for material redistribution. The Dalit castes and the Indigenous people located at the bottom of the social hierarchy continue to be placed there despite substantive changes heralded by the communist movement, which also shows the incompleteness of the class agenda. The failure to deliver a decisive blow to caste in society and bring Dalits and Adivasis, numbering about 10% of the population, to high leadership positions and substantive equality within the movement would count as the greatest failure of communism. Communism could not make 3

INTRODUCTION

significant ideological inroads into the Christian and Muslim communities also in which religion and confessional political formations remained strong. The national-popular was further built by a reinforcement and recasting of some pre-existing exclusions like that of gender and the communist movement, like the rest of the society, was male-dominated.26 Thus, there was no simplistic progressive march to democracy and freedom, as in many linear accounts.27 The communist intervention was riddled with contradictions. There were formulations of theory which went beyond mechanical understandings, but they often did not become common sense. Culture became a vital aspect of the communist mobilization, but it was also used instrumentally, becoming subservient to political ends. Radicalism and conservativism, developmentalism and Luddism often mixed without any tension; the movement that created an extensive network of civil society organizations was also hostile to an independent civil society, and later, the emerging New Social Movements; the movement that sought “revolution” was conservative with regard to norms of family and sexuality; and finally, the revolution itself was postponed interminably in favor of parliamentary battles. At the same time, a semblance of the national-popular emerged, which contributed to the building of a social democracy, which, Richard Sandbrook calls as “the most radical social-democratic regime in the global South.”28 However, contrary to the dominant literature on Kerala welfarism and the democracy, it has to be understood that its significance is largely in comparative national and global terms; but, internally, there is a long way to achieving substantive equality for the most marginalized castes and classes. It is in the context of features like slavery, and extreme caste repression in Kerala, which still persists overtly in many other Indian states, that the social transformation brought about by communism, like the challenging and ending of feudal landlordism, acquires a bigger resonance in academic analysis considering also that it had to navigate the colonial state at first, and, later, the bourgeois democratic framework of the Indian state and a hostile federal government. I argue that a social democracy itself was realized because of imaginations and revolutionary dreams which went beyond that of social democracy. However, the full potential in the communist movement for more radical outcomes which existed and the goals of anti-capitalist, democratic socialism remained unrealized. The Stalinized framework29 also meant that the movement did not foster a vibrant culture of dissent and criticism. The distinctive feature of Kerala, in comparison with other states, has been the high levels of political mobilization and participation as well as militant struggles by the lower castes, classes and marginalized groups, which cannot be restricted to the communist movement alone. As has been well established, this “immense pressure” from below “is the heart of the Kerala Model”30 and has led to robust public intervention, substantial social expenditure and consequences like adoption of pro-poor policies and significant 4

INTRODUCTION

poverty reduction.31 According to Heller, in terms of substantive democratic outcomes and qualitative measures of democracy, “Kerala clearly stands apart from the center and from all other Indian states,” and resembles European social democracies.32 The kind of “subaltern politics of insurgent citizenship” that is now questioning India’s formal democracy in other regions and states33 thus has had a much longer provenance in Kerala. This construction of a relatively egalitarian development and welfare model makes Kerala seemingly very different from the general experience of what Partha Chatterjee terms as the “postcolonial misery”34 of much of the colonized nations—the extreme disenchantment following the nonfulfillment of the hopes and dreams that characterized the moment of liberation from the colonial yoke. If Kerala has avoided this denouement, it immediately throws up questions about the peculiar trajectory of this society in the Global South. Why and how this particular social transformation took place will be the natural questions that arise. Studies have dealt with this and the role of what has become popular as “public action.”35 Credit for it has also been attributed to state policy in both the colonial and postcolonial periods, as Manali Desai does, for example: “Kerala’s uniqueness has to be understood as a historical confluence of changes and continuities at three levels—state, regime, and government.”36 And there are scholars who attribute the successes in poverty alleviation more to migration-fueled remittances than the development state.37 Prerna Singh, in her recent work, has made a substantially new argument, against existing explanations like policies of princely states,38 Left party mobilization, and Christian missionaries, to explain the uniqueness of the Kerala development success. According to Singh, the introduction of progressive social policy (which led to development welfare outcomes) “occurred only after and as a consequence of the emergence of a sense of subnational community” in the late 19th century. It is this collective cultural identity that motivated the political elite to support progressive social policy.39 Post-independence years only saw a deepening of Malayali subnationalism with intense electoral competition between the Congress and the Communists, and their responsiveness to “subnationalism-generated mass demands for social welfare.” Its apogee was when the Communists took on the leadership of the Aikya Kerala (United Kerala) movement.40 Of course, Singh does not argue that “social welfare policies and outcomes are products only and/or entirely of a province’s strength of subnationalism” but that it is “a relatively novel and underexplored variable that . . . provides an additional significant and substantial fillip to social expenditures and development.”41 The central arguments that I propose here based on the theme of the national-popular will differ with this emphasis on subnationalism in some crucial ways. This book does not focus on the origins of Kerala’s development or its trajectory. Nevertheless, I argue that the problem of development here cannot 5

INTRODUCTION

be reduced to its political-economic aspects; instead the cultural imaginaries, which go beyond that of linguistic subnationalism that contributed to the building of the model, need to be examined. In the same way, it can be argued that without the construction of something akin to a national-popular will in the cultural sphere, the communist contribution to the politico-economic model could not have been realized.42 The uniqueness of Kerala in terms of class mobilization and the hegemony that the Communists were able to establish was made possible by the struggles in the cultural sphere, broadly conceived. At the same time, the silences of the national-popular, showing that it was not homogenous and seamless, have to be accounted for. Culture, thus, will be one of the main foci here.

What the book intends to do The point of this book is that it is interested in the larger theoretical question related to the nature of the transformation brought about by the communist movement as well as its engagement with the state and its implication for postcolonial societies. This is where Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory come in, and the book’s contention with them. The book seeks to make a theoretical contribution to the debate between Marxism and postcolonial theory as well as to the scholarship on democracy and modernity in the Global South. It will be the first to engage with the communist project in Kerala in relation to postcolonial theory and Subaltern Studies in a systematic manner.43 This book’s focus is not on a comprehensive survey of communism in Kerala or that of Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory. It focuses on how certain important aspects of communism, including its failures, can be used as an empirical substantiation of the critique of some of the central arguments of Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory. They also illustrate the difficulties that emerge from Vivek Chibber’s critique of Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory even when many of its contentions are relevant. What is stark in Subaltern Studies, despite its professed claim to recover the subaltern voice, is its curious omission of the working classes/peasants in building democracies in postcolonial societies. As Aijaz Ahmad argues, “In almost thirty years of their voluminous work, subaltern [scholars] have simply never engaged with either the histories and social analyses that Communist writers have produced, or with the actual activities of trade unions, peasant organizations and workers’ parties.”44 Sumit Sarkar too points out that this ignorance is despite that the organized communist movement in India is one of the largest in the world.45 One major aim of the book, therefore, is to fill this astounding absence and also understand the relevance of organized class-based politics and its successes when such politics has still not acquired salience in India. Ironically, in the same era when globally neoliberal capitalism achieved hegemony by decimating class-based politics 6

INTRODUCTION

of the subordinate classes,46 class-based analysis declined in India under the “cultural turn” of the Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory.47 The class-based analyses that exist also have generally adopted a reductionist approach.48 Further, the book is placed in the most critical juncture of India’s postcolonial history when new cultural imaginaries of religious majoritarianism, fused with unprecedented degrees of state power, are not just upending subaltern struggles for democracy but are threatening even India’s formal democracy.49 Therefore, class- and materiality-based secular politics acquires a particular urgency and relevance. And there is a need for renewing interest in class analysis given the criticality of class politics for the subaltern classes.50 Of course, in the absence of full industrialization and a proletariat in the classical sense, and with a large informal workforce in insecure and precarious work, the nature of class struggle itself has changed in India (and in the Global South).51 The book aims to throw light on the mode of subaltern resistance as well as subaltern–elite interaction, especially, in the early, more radical, mass-movement-driven period of communism (even under a Stalinized framework), until the capture of state power and its entrenchment in electoral politics at the expense of class struggles. The book also comes at a time when organized trade unions and dominant communist parties of the present have themselves become forces which are largely not conducive to aid further radical democratization and are becoming a marginal force electorally in India. Similarly, while theoretical critiques of Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory have existed in large numbers, engagements which base themselves on empirical examples are still very few.52 The prominent example in the recent times is the work by Vivek Chibber which seeks to engage with Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory, but does so by relying on empirical material generated by the Subalternists themselves or by other scholars,53 and material on the histories of Europe, and not India.54 Chibber’s book, as he acknowledges, “as a work of critique . . . operate[s] on the same level of generality as the theories that it interrogates.”55 Another lacuna of the book is that the cultural aspects, specificities, contradictions and the category of caste are ignored. How subjects on the ground actually construct meanings about oppression, hierarchy, liberation, Marxism and communism and so on are not a part of the framework of the book. It privileges the nomothetic over the ideographic.56 This might be a limitation resulting out of the theoretical scope of the book. However, this theoretical framework also ignores the wide range of theorizing produced by cultural Marxism, including that of Gramsci, leading to some of the problems outlined earlier. Besides, Chibber’s work is anchored, problematically, in a simple defense of the Enlightenment. Ironically, Subaltern Studies, too, which started with Gramsci, abandoned him later. One of the main endeavors of the present book’s materialist critique will be to think about culture and consciousness in a non-reductive way, 7

INTRODUCTION

which is vital to understand caste and social oppression. Therefore, categories like class are not simply self-evident. “Class relations are co-constituted by relations of race, ethnicity, caste, tribe, region and gender” to result in what Philippe Bourgois has termed as “‘conjugated oppression’.”57 The book will also engage with some other important concepts articulated by the Subalternists like the defense of the “fragment,” and “political society.” These have not been dealt with by Chibber as he acknowledges.58 The book will draw upon the rich theoretical literature on Subaltern Studies which produced important critiques right from its inauguration. Of course, the full theoretical implications of some of the Subalternist arguments became evident later.59 This is particularly true with regard to Subalternists taking on the mantle of postcolonial theory. Hence, there is a need to engage with these later theoretical transmutations. The broad questions that will be explored in the book are: (1) How did communism construct hegemony in a predominantly agrarian society? (2) How was this different from the bourgeois nationalist imagination? (3)  What are the theoretical implications of the transformation brought about by communism at the level of both society and the state, and its significant failures in Kerala, especially, with regard to caste, and how do they fundamentally put to question some of the central ideas of Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory? (4) What are the problems associated with the critiques of Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory located at the opposite end of the spectrum like that of Vivek Chibber? Some of the questions raised by Subaltern Studies are relevant even after almost 40 years since its founding. The renewed interest in empirical engagements with Subaltern Studies is an illustration of this. Thus, one of these critiques seeks to build a “constructive dialogue with the conceptual legacies of the Subaltern Studies project” and to redefine “subalternity in order to better grasp the dynamics of subaltern politics in India today.”60 Partha Chatterjee argues: “several of the questions raised by Subaltern Studies have been neither dismissed nor properly answered, while others are only now beginning to be addressed.”61 However, seemingly, the answers provided by the participants of the project itself have been less than satisfactory and, more importantly, have consequences for the subjects that it claims to speak for. Chatterjee accepts that the task of answering these questions cannot “be taken forward within the framework of the concepts and methods mobilized in Subaltern Studies” which was a “product of its time” and that “it has managed to scatter, reinvent and insert itself in several subsequent projects”62 subsequently. However, he does not think that the answers proffered before were flawed. This is what the book will contend with. It will argue that it is not the passage of time, and the emergence of new socio-historical conditions which have made many of the Subaltern Studies’ answers obsolete; even within the initial context and framework of the project, they seem to be incomplete. 8

INTRODUCTION

Thus, while Chatterjee accepts that the “heavily structuralist depiction” of the rebel peasant consciousness in early Subaltern Studies was a mistake for it was valid only for an analysis of colonial India. And that it is inadequate to understand Indian peasant in the present. The fundamental difference that necessitates a new understanding of subalternity is that unlike in colonial India, now the subaltern has to be made sense of within a “new framework of democratic citizenship—complex, differentiated, perhaps fundamentally altered from the normative ideas of citizenship in western liberal democracies, but nonetheless citizenship, not subjecthood.”63 I will argue that the ideas of democratic citizenship were not something that were only consolidated in post-Independent India, especially in the last three decades, but were a part of the struggles waged by the Communists (and others) even during the anti-colonial struggle. When Chatterjee lays out the context of the emergence of Subaltern Studies, he argues that when the project was formulated in the late 1970s, the Indian state lacked popular consent leading to violent repression and it was only later by the 1990s, under economic liberalization, that the state began to have a semblance of legitimacy with more and more people reposing faith in electoral democracy as an agent of change.64 This, again, ignores the momentous struggles to democratize the state that were undertaken right from the 1940s under the aegis of the Communists. Of course, we have to understand the historical context in which Subaltern Studies arose and to what type of historiography it was responding and criticize it within the framework of that context rather than indulge in a debate which is separated from the context.65 Thus, I am not seeking to critique the early Subaltern Studies project by a retrospective application of theoretical and historical developments since its emergence. It is not an anachronistic critique as Taylor characterizes Chibber’s criticisms.66 The proposal of new theoretical frameworks by Subaltern Studies to keep up with changing historical conditions is also problematic, in my view, because of its deep continuities with the earlier framework of Subaltern Studies.67 A case in example is Chatterjee’s exposition of “political society” to understand the “deepening and widening of the apparatuses of governmentality [which has] transformed the quality of mass politics in India in the last two decades.”68 Even Subaltern Studies’ transformation to take on concepts of postcolonial theory like that of the critique of modernity and Eurocentrism is not misplaced.69 The question of modernity is more important than ever before. Postcolonial theory has a wider set of concerns than Subaltern Studies. Postcolonial theory is “(largely [a] Foucauldian) program of unmasking Eurocentric essentialisms at work in the West’s representations of non-European ideas and behaviors.”70 At the same time, Edward Said, whose Orientalism was one of the founding texts of postcolonial theory, also engages with the work of Raymond Williams and Antonio Gramsci,71 something which has been ignored in the poststructuralist influence on postcolonial theory. The relevant questions which have been raised by postcolonial 9

INTRODUCTION

theory have not been answered adequately as well. This is especially so when the context in which postcolonial criticism is operating has changed drastically after the collapse of communism and the consolidation of neoliberal capitalism.72 Here, liberalism has declared the end of history and socialism as a possible future has been completely obliterated.73 This is the juncture in which capitalism has declared its triumph that “a Marxist critique is unforgoable.” Thus, there is a need not only to study different regions of the world in an interlinked fashion from early modernity but also to recognize “capitalism (not ‘Eurocentrism’ or ‘cultural imperialism’) as underwriting those relations in their historically specific form of ‘uneven and combined development.’ ”74 Here, as we will see from the empirical case, communist movement was not focused on a teleological political decolonization alone, but raised important questions about state and society which are critical now, as they were then. Scott argues that postcolonialism is not necessarily a better theory than anti-colonialism for it inhabits a different question–answer complex from the latter. He also wonders if the questions that were asked by postcolonial criticism are something that needs to be answered since the context has changed now.75 Thus, he thinks that postcolonial criticism has “lost its point and become normalized as a strategy for the mere accumulation of meaning.”76 Similarly, Taylor argues that therefore, Chibber’s critique is “a work of scholarly necromancy. It resurrects a horde of the dead: dead polemics, dead methodologies, even dead fields.”77 I would, on the contrary, argue that the postcolonial questions of power–knowledge relation, the domination of Euro-American conceptualizations of knowledge (which continue, especially in development), the critiques of the Enlightenment and modernity, are still relevant for the discussion on alternative futures especially in the new context of the deepening ecological crisis which threatens the survival of the planet itself. This is provided that they are conjoined with an understanding of the proper place of capitalism as well a non-reductionist and non- binary understanding of modernity. This has not necessarily happened despite theorists like Dipesh Chakrabarty’s recent theoretical explorations. For instance, his extension of the earlier critique of the Enlightenment and the Western humanist tradition to understand and deal with the ecological crisis but also the acknowledgment of the limitations of Subaltern Studies and postcolonial criticism and the need for some Enlightenment thinking in doing so.78 However, what I am primarily focused on in the book is not the direction that postcolonial theory is taking in the present, rather, as noted previously, in a critique of Subaltern Studies and its alignment with postcolonial theory’s concerns in the context that they arose. Any articulation of the future direction of postcolonial theory will, nevertheless, has to contend with its past. Besides, as we will see in the following, I am not considering the entire gamut of Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory, which is a vast and varied area of scholarship. 10

INTRODUCTION

Different strands I am not proceeding here on the assumption that the Subaltern Studies project is characterized by a complete unity. As Ludden points out, “Its internal coherence has been less intellectual than personal and more formal than substantive.”79 Similarly, Subaltern Studies itself has shown various shifts both in ideas and personnel80 and, also, “plurality of theories” and “methodologies.”81 Postcolonial theory is also very broad ranging from Marxist feminism to libertarianism.82 It has a “fairly eclectic mix of ideas, both materialist and antimaterialist, even though the most prominent theories have been unapologetically postmodernist.”83 Therefore, it is also important not to reduce the figures like James, Fanon and Cabral to the present articulations of postcolonial theory. In this book, I focus only on the Subaltern Studies scholars from India who have contributed to the further shaping of postcolonial theory. I will focus mainly on the key figures of Indian Subaltern Studies like Ranajit Guha, Partha Chatterjee, Gyan Pandey, Dipesh Chakrabarty and Gyan Prakash. The entire range of Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory and scholarship is obviously not covered by these scholars.84 At the same time, they are important figures within Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory.85 Chibber argues that Indian Subaltern Studies “is representative of many of the central ideas that are associated with postcolonial theory; it is extremely influential; and its internal consistency makes it not just representative, but the most attractive and plausible denizen of this body of work.”86 It has: remained committed to a stable and remarkably coherent set of propositions about the dynamics of the (post-) colonial world, its evolution over time, and the ways in which that part of the globe differs in its structure and culture from the West.87 However, the problem with this argument is that Chibber conflates Subaltern Studies with postcolonial theory. Besides, it gets the chronology wrong as we saw earlier. As Benita Parry argues, Subaltern Studies “was a recipient and not an initiator of .  .  . [postcolonial] theory’s epistemological premise.”88 And as Timothy Brennan points out, “internalizing the already entrenched positions of postcoloniality allowed the subalternists to acquire a more general reach.”89 Chibber’s reduction of postcolonial theory to Subaltern Studies (or Subaltern Studies to a few scholars) is problematic because he does not consider the work of Said, Spivak or Bhabha, some of the most important figures of postcolonial theory.90 Therefore, this book does not seek to claim that it is a critique of the entire oeuvre of postcolonial theory, or for that matter, Subaltern Studies. The references to both Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory in this book should be seen with this caveat. 11

INTRODUCTION

Chapter outline The book will present a detailed empirical substantiation of the theoretical critique of Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory. The communist transformation of society in Kerala will be studied through what the book considers as three important thematic moments in its history which also correspond to certain time periods. These are the processes by which communism initially established hegemony in society, including its cultural intervention, the institution of land reforms and workers’ rights, and the political decentralization project. The book does not seek to provide an exhaustive account of communism since the 1930s to the present, a task which is beyond its scope. Thus, while it focuses on the cultural, economic and political aspects in some chapters, it does not consider them chronologically and comprehensively across different time periods. Certain schematic generalizations are unavoidable here. The thematic nature of the book also means that there could be other important themes like gender, or caste, through which the communist movement can be looked at. The book is divided into eight chapters. The first chapter will outline as well as critique the central theoretical concepts of Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory such as the autonomy of peasant politics, the split between subaltern and elite domains, fragments, Marxism as a part of Eurocentric universalism, culturalism, externality of modernity, the glossing over the structural aspects of capitalism, governmentality, passive revolution and political society. It will also critically engage with Vivek Chibber’s work on Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory. Further, it will make some theoretical observations about the communist movement. The second and third chapters cover the period from the 1930s to 1957 and will examine the processes through which the Communists constructed a national-popular will in society, thus establishing a different relationship between the elites and subalterns. Contrary to the arguments that posit communism as merely addressing local or regional concerns—which had little to do with class, anti-feudalism or anti-imperialism—it will be argued that the communist success can only be understood by the simultaneous negotiations of exclusions based on class, caste, language, region and the nation, and bring about their unity, even if this is ridden with gaps. These chapters will critique the Subalternist and postcolonial valorization of the spontaneity and autonomy of peasant politics as well as the positing of religious consciousness as the main framework of the peasants. The emergence of class-consciousness could, thus, be said to be the most important feature of the period under consideration. Chapters 4 and 5 will look at the communist intervention in the cultural sphere again covering the period from the 1930s to 1957. The communist cultural assertion will be seen as another facet of the construction of the national-popular. If postcolonial theory posits anti-colonial nationalism as

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INTRODUCTION

having desired to fashion an aesthetic that was both national and modern and yet different from the Western, the communist project went beyond this to incorporate the crucial dimension of the need to communicate with the masses, and for them to express themselves. More importantly, it was an important attempt at fusing the compartmentalized spheres of art and social life. What these chapters show is that changes in the material sphere cannot be understood unless the cultural/ideational sphere, which influences them and is influenced by them, is also understood. The communist engagement was equally characterized by many contradictions and failures with regard to the question of caste and culture, which prevented the formation of a much deeper national-popular. There were also deleterious tendencies of seeing culture as a mere appendage to political struggles. Chapter 6 will focus on the communist negotiation of social transformation in the economic sphere (1957–1974) by specifically looking at the process of the struggle for, and the implementation of land reforms and the legislation for agricultural workers’ rights. The argument is that the communist project bridged the material/cultural split that characterized the bourgeois nationalist imagination (and postcolonial theory) by recognizing that the subaltern classes could not be citizens of the modern political order without a structural and material transformation of the social system in their favor. The land reforms were still not revolutionary, for the agricultural laborers, largely from the Dalit castes, only became owners of tiny homesteads and not cultivable land. Adivasis were similarly marginalized. Yet, the land reforms (and labor laws) brought about under the aegis of the communist mobilization have fundamentally moved away from the general trajectory of passive revolution that characterized the larger Indian social transformation. This is in contrast to one of the fundamental assumptions of Subaltern Studies project and postcolonial theory, which posit governmentality and passive revolution as the general characteristics of colonized societies’ experience with modernity. Chapter 7 will look at the communist intervention in the political sphere by focusing on the decentralization project, the People’s Plan Campaign first initiated in the period 1996–2001 by the Left government. It will be argued that the People’s Plan constituted an attempt by communism to inaugurate new forms of political sociability which are not just anchored in older forms of community and restructure the role of the state itself. It was undertaken at a time when the communist movement was going through severe stagnation and de-radicalization caused by the abandonment of radical class struggles for electoralism and under the new economic climate of neoliberalism. Twenty-five years thence, the Plan has not necessarily gone beyond social democracy in a radical fashion and is showing signs of being routinized. While it was an important effort at the extension of popular sovereignty and staggering the effects of neoliberal capital, it has not addressed the structural inequalities in society. The Plan puts into question postcolonial theory’s 13

INTRODUCTION

notion of political society and its understanding of the relationship between state, civil society, political society and modernity in the Global South. The failures and prospects of the Plan and the struggles around it demonstrate the breakdown of the binary set up by Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory. Chapter 8 will focus on the incomplete nature of the communist nationalpopular. As the dreams of communism faded, there is intense disenchantment with the actual trajectory of the communist movement and the paradoxes generated by its existence under the global hegemony of capitalism. The inability to herald substantial equality for the Dalits and Adivasis and formulate a program to radically challenge caste meant that communism is confronted by independent Dalit and Adivasi and other civil society movements, arising from the marginalization of these groups within it. Importantly, the failures of the communist movement themselves are not fully explicable by Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory. Similarly, postcolonial theory, with its disavowal of the material and fear of economic reductionism, finds it difficult to theorize the communist movement’s increasing envelopment by capitalism. The conclusion will tie up and elaborate some of the main arguments.

A note on method The book is primarily a qualitative study which uses quantitative data as well. It uses different kinds of methods. Texts constitute the main research material. A variety of texts has been studied: government records and publications (including records of the colonial government from the archives), Communist Party documents and publications, autobiographies, biographies, private papers of Communist leaders/activists, literary and cultural work, statistics related to the economy, newspapers and periodicals. Here, Andalat’s voluminous compilation of material from Communist Party and union newspapers, publications and souvenirs from the early period, some of which is otherwise inaccessible or lost, has been very helpful. Further, the source compiled by Andalat after a house-to-house survey of certain parts of communist-dominated Northern Malabar in the mid-1980s is particularly useful.91 This work documents the biographical details of 141 Communist activists born from the 1870s to the 1920s, and their participation in various struggles and agitations gleaned from the actors themselves or their immediate family and friends.92 The lives of the activists, who constituted the lower echelons of the Communist Party structure, provide insights into what made communism the force it became. Textual data has been supplemented with data from a purposeful sample of 105 interviews, of Communist leaders, activists, sympathizers and others (including specialized informants) that I conducted in various periods: 2003–2005, 2010–2014 and 2016–2018.93 14

INTRODUCTION

The book is not a micro-history94 or an ethnographic study with the attendant benefits of depth and thickness. It is focused on a broader grasp of the communist movement in Kerala rather than a specific locality only. Nevertheless, it uses a small component of ethnographic data collected from the town of Muvattupuzha where most of the interviews were also conducted. The attempt is to make sense of the local in its interrelationship with the macroprocesses at work. The town is located in central Kerala, which was a part of Travancore before. Thus, the book gives an understanding of informants from a place which is outside the communist heartland of Malabar in North Kerala, the usual focus of research on communism.95 It is also significant for the fact that it was the first municipality after the formation of the state of Kerala to elect the Communists to power (in 1959). Yet, it is not a communist stronghold. Non-Communist representatives have represented Muvattupuzha in the State Assembly for most of the years since 1956. Like Kerala as a whole, it has a substantial percentage of Muslims and Christians.96 The book interprets the data with the intention of understanding the authors’ categories rather than the imposed categories that are mostly part of positivist studies. However, the actors’ and authors’ points of view have not been treated as an explanation either. For example, many of the Communist Party accounts tend to eulogize the role of the party and the movement, and the colonial state sometimes exaggerates the threat of communism. The methodological triangulation seeks to avoid the biases arising from relying on a single approach.

Notes 1 It will be dealing with the dominant parliamentary form of communism, not its radical strands which are still outside electoral processes and which also have left a mark on the political and cultural imaginary of Kerala. 2 Vivek Chibber, Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital (London: Verso, 2013). 3 Patrick Heller, The Labor of Development: Workers and the Transformation of Capitalism in Kerala: India (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), 7. See, for global comparative perspectives, Richard Sandbrook et al., Social Democracy in the Global Periphery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Joseph Tharamangalam, “Human Development as Transformative Practice,” Critical Asian Studies 42, no. 3 (2010): 363–402; Richard Sandbrook, Reinventing the Left in the Global South: The Politics of the Possible (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). 4 Govindan Parayil, “The ‘Kerala Model’ of Development: Development and Sustainability in the Third World,” Third World Quarterly 17, no. 5 (1996): 941. For example, Kerala has the most expansive set of schemes for unorganized workers and also the best-operating Public Distribution System of food in India (R. Ramakumar, “Public Action, Agrarian Change and the Standard of Living of Agricultural Workers: A Study of a Village in Kerala,” Journal of Agrarian Change 6, no. 3 (2006): 321, 324). 5 Parayil, “‘Kerala Model’,” 941.

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6 Andalat,* Communist activist, interview, July 2003. See also his Rekhayillatha Charitram [History without Documents] (Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha Publishers, 1987), 17. Names of interviewees indicated by an asterisk are actual names; the rest are pseudonyms. 7 Robin Jeffrey, Politics, Women and Well-Being: How Kerala Became a Model (Hampshire: Macmillan Press, 1992), 96. 8 Andalat, Rekhayillatha, 17. 9 Barrington Moore, Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1967), 418. Moore does recognize that “the wellsprings of human freedom lie not only where Marx saw them, in the aspirations of classes about to take power, but perhaps even more in the dying wail of a class over whom the wave of progress is about to roll” (Ibid., 505). But this remains submerged in a reading that privileges the role of the bourgeoisie. 10 Brahminical scriptures described Hindu social system as consisting of four varnas (and many castes and sub-castes within each): Brahmin (priests, arbiters), Kshatriya (kings, warriors), Vaishya (traders, commercial class) and Shudra (cultivators, producers). The fifth group, the “untouchables,” is considered to be outside the caste system (untouchability is legally abolished). Since it is deemed to be performing “menial” and “degrading” jobs, it is considered “unclean” and “polluting.” This social group is politically known as Dalits and administratively, Scheduled Castes (SCs) in the present. Here I will be using the term Dalit anachronistically for periods before the origin of the term. The “upper” castes are known as savarna or caste Hindus, and the Dalits, outside the four-fold varna system, are termed avarna, or without caste. In real social conditions, scriptural classifications have variations across regions. The Indigenous people, the Adivasis, are administratively known as Scheduled Tribes (STs). 11 Thomas W. Shea, Jr., “Barriers to Economic Development in Traditional Societies: Malabar, a Case Study,” Journal of Economic History 19, no. 4 (December 1959): 511. 12 Ritty Lukose, “Re (Casting) the Secular,” Social Analysis 50, no. 3 (2006): 45. 13 C. J. Fuller, The Nayars Today (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 12. They consist of many subdivisions and sub-castes. Scholars consider that Nairs were originally of Shudra origin, but acquired Kshatriya status because of the absence of the Kshatriya community (Sunny Kappikkad, “Sabarimala Protests Are a Reminder of the Role of Caste in Kerala’s Enlightened Society,” interview by T. A. Ameerudheen, Scroll, January 3, 2019, https://scroll.in/ article/904875/interview-sabarimala-protests-remind-us-of-the-role-of-caste-inkeralas-enlightened-society. 14 Harish Damodaran, India’s New Capitalists (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 176. 15 Kathleen E. Gough, “Nayars: Central Kerala,” in Matrilineal Kinship, ed. David Murray Schneider and Kathleen E. Gough (Oakland: University of California Press, 1961), 313–315. Thiyyas are concentrated in North Kerala while Ezhavas are in Central and South Kerala. Although historically Thiyyas have claimed a higher status than Ezhavas, and there are some regional differences between the two, through popular imagination, state policy and political alliances, they have come to be seen as “synonymous or equivalent castes” which have different names. In the recent times, there have been attempts by some groups of Thiyyas to resist the subsumption of the Thiyya identity under the Ezhavas (Jillet Sarah Sam, “Place and Caste Identification: Distanciation and Spatial Imaginaries on a Caste-based Social Network, Ph. D Dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park, 164–166, 286).

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INTRODUCTION

16 K. C. Zachariah, “Religious Denominations of Kerala,” (working paper 468, Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, 2016), 29. 17 According to the 2011 Census, Hindus constitute 54.7%, Muslims, 26.6%, and Christians, 18.4%. Scheduled Castes are 9.5% and Schedules Tribes, 1%. Among the Hindu castes, in terms of population, besides the SCs, the main communities are Ezhavas/Thiyyas, 21.5%, and Nairs, 12%. Brahmins constitute only 1.2% (Zachariah, “Religious Denominations,” 29). 18 Shea, Jr., “Barriers to Economic Development,” 514. 19 Temples were managed by the Namboodiri and Nair janmies [landlords] (E. P. Gopalan, Report of the Malabar Tenancy Committee, 1940, vol. 1 (Madras, 1940), 96). 20 G. K. Lieten, The First Communist Ministry in Kerala, 1957–9 (Calcutta: K. P. Bagchi, 1982), 4–5. 21 Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, ed. and trans. Quentin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International, 1971), 198–199. 22 Antonio Gramsci, Selections from Cultural Writings, ed. David Forgacs and Geoffrey Nowell Smith, trans. William Boelhower (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1985), 132. 23 M. S. S. Pandian, “Towards National-Popular: Notes on Self-Respecters’ Tamil,” Economic and Political Weekly 31, no. 51 (December 1996): 3323, 3324. 24 Subho Basu and Auritro Majumder, “Dilemmas of Parliamentary Communism,” Critical Asian Studies 45, no. 2 (2013): 169. 25 Dilip Menon, Caste, Nationalism and Communism in South India: Malabar, 1900–1948 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 2. 26 This is beyond the scope of the book. The processes of liberation of the individual from community-based identities, in effect, individualization, in early modern Kerala, were simultaneously processes of “en-gendering” where gender specific exclusions were as important as before (J. Devika, En-Gendering Individuals: The Language of Re-Forming in Early Twentieth Century Keralam (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2007)). Thus, involvement of women in radical politics like that communist labor unions was ironically accompanied by “effeminization,” the process by which women were seen as weaker and more dependent on men than before (Anna Lindeberg, Modernization and Effeminization in India: Kerala Cashew Workers since 1930 (Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, 2005)). 27 While the achievements of Kerala saw a strong tendency in the earlier phase of Kerala scholarship to romanticize the Kerala development experience, the last couple decades or so have seen the emergence of a vigorous critical scholarship which complicates the narrative about Kerala by undertaking a strong critique of linear understandings of social change which do not admit contradictions and regressions. This book will imbibe the spirit of the latter without discarding the insights of the former. For my own critiques of such linear assessments while underlining the critical importance of the need to place Kerala in a comparative context, see Nissim Mannathukkaren, “The Conjuncture of Late Socialism in Kerala: A Critique of the Narrative of Social Democracy,” in Development, Democracy and the State: Critiquing Kerala Model of Development, ed. K. Ravi Raman (London: Routledge, 2012). 28 Richard Sandbrook, “Polanyi and Post-Neoliberalism in the Global South: Dilemmas of Re-Embedding the Economy,” New Political Economy 16, no. 4 (2011): 432. 29 Achin Vanaik, “Subcontinental Strategies,” New Left Review 70 (July-August 2011): 101–114.

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30 J. Devika, “Requiem for the Undead: On Kerala’s Sixtieth Birthday,” Kafila, October 16, 2016, https://kafila.online/2016/10/26/requiem-for-the-undead-onkeralas-sixtieth-birthday/#more-34118. 31 John Harriss, “Comparing Political Regimes across Indian States: A Preliminary Essay,” Economic and Political Weekly 34, no. 48 (November 1999): 3367–3377. 32 Patrick Heller, “Degrees of Democracy: Some Comparative Lessons from India,” World Politics 52, no. 4 (July 2000): 497, 517. 33 Alf Gunvald Nilsen, “‘Real, Practical Emancipation’? Subaltern Politics and Insurgent Citizenship in Contemporary India,” Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, no. 76 (2016): 32. 34 Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 11. 35 See, for example, Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen, India: Economic Development and Social Opportunity (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996); Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen, India: Development and Participation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); Richard W. Franke, Life Is a Little Better: Redistribution as a Development Strategy in Nadur Village, Kerala (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1993); K. P. Kannan, Of Rural Proletarian Struggles: Mobilization and Organization of Rural Workers in South-West India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988); Heller, Labor of Development. 36 Manali Desai, State Formation and Radical Democracy in India, 1860–1990 (London: Routledge, 2006), 8. 37 See Ritty Lukose, Liberalization’s Children: Gender, Youth and Consumer Citizenship in Globalizing India (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009), Chapter 1. 38 This is resorted to, among others, by Desai who argues that the land, education, and health-care reforms implemented by princely states of Travancore and Cochin in the 19th century were also factors that led to “Kerala’s divergence from India well before the post-independence era” (Desai, State Formation, 8). Before the formation of modern Kerala in 1956, it consisted of three parts, Travancore, Cochin, and the British-administered Malabar. 39 Prerna Singh, “Subnationalism and Social Development: A Comparative Analysis of Indian States,” World Politics 67, no. 3 (July 2015): 530, 508. See also, Prerna Singh, How Solidarity Works for Welfare: Subnationalism and Social Development in India (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2016). 40 Prerna Singh, “We-ness and Welfare: A Longitudinal Analysis of Social Development in Kerala, India,” World Development 39, no. 2 (2011): 286. 41 Singh, “Subnationalism,” 548. 42 Desai does not focus on the cultural aspects. But she does mention the criticality of the communist insertion in civil society as crucial to constructing a Gramscian form of hegemony: “the moral-political authority to transform society” (Desai, State Formation, 12). 43 Ravi K. Raman (Global Capital and Peripheral Labour: The History and Political Economy of Plantation Workers in India (London: Routledge, 2010)) undertakes a critique of Subaltern Studies but focused on the history of plantation workers in Kerala. 44 Aijaz Ahmad, “On Post Modernism,” The Marxist 27, no. 1 (January–March 2011): 32. Dipesh Chakrabarty is a partial exception here, but even he has not dealt with communism (see Rethinking Working-Class History: Bengal, 1890– 1940 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989)). 45 Sumit Sarkar, Writing Social History (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), 107. 46 K. Moody, “Neoliberalism: The Shadow of Class,” Dialectical Anthropology 32, nos. 1/2 (March–June 2008): 53–58; D. Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

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47 Vivek Chibber, “On the Decline of Class Analysis in South Asian Studies,” Critical Asian Studies 38, no. 4 (2006): 357–387. 48 Jens Lerche and Alpa Shah, “Conjugated Oppression within Contemporary Capitalism: Class, Caste, Tribe and Agrarian Change in India,” Journal of Peasant Studies 45, nos. 5–6 (2018): 934. 49 Alf Gunvald Nilsen, “Authoritarian Populism and Popular Struggles in Modi’s India,” Open Democracy, November 22, 2018, www.opendemocracy.net/en/ authoritarian-populism-and-popular-struggles-in-modi-s-india/. 50 See, for example, Indrajit Roy, “Class Coalitions and Social Protection: The Labouring Classes and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in Eastern India,” Journal of Development Studies (2020): 1–18, https://doi.org/10.1080/00 220388.2020.1826446. 51 Lerche and Shah, “Conjugated Oppression,” 929, 932. 52 Alf Nilsen and Srila Roy, eds., Reconceptualising Subaltern Politics in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2015) and Uday Chandra, “Rethinking Subaltern Resistance,” Journal of Contemporary Asia 45, no. 4 (2015): 563–573 are welcome examples in the recent past. See also, Kenneth Bo Nielsen, “Law and Larai: The (De) Judicialisation of Subaltern Resistance in West Bengal,” Journal of Contemporary Asia 45, no. 4 (2015): 618–639; Alf Nilsen, “Subalterns and the State in the Longue Durée: Notes from ‘The Rebellious Century’ in the Bhil Heartland,” Journal of Contemporary Asia 45, no. 4 (2015): 574–595. 53 Other relatively recent theoretical critiques are Vasant Kaiwar, The Postcolonial Orient: The Politics of Difference and the Project of Provincialising Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2014) and Neil Lazarus, The Postcolonial Unconscious (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 54 Michael Levien, “Subalternists Scrutinized,” Review of Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital, by Vivek Chibber, European Journal of Sociology 54, no. 3 (December 2013): 487. 55 Vivek Chibber, “Confronting Postcolonial Theory: A Response to Critics,” Journal of World-Systems Research 20, no. 2 (2014): 316. Chibber is not entirely correct here. While Subaltern Studies makes general claims, they are built on a literature of historically specific studies on various topics (see Utathya Chattopadhyaya, “Time to Move On? A Response to Vivek Chibber,” Kritik (blog), June 26, 2014, http:// unitcrit.blogspot.ca/2014/06/authors-roundtable-vivek-chibber.html). 56 Christopher Taylor, “Postcolonial Studies and the Specter of Misplaced Polemics against Postcolonial Theory: A Review of the Chibber Debate,” Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry 5, no. 2 (April 2018): 242. 57 Lerche and Shah, “Conjugated Oppression,” 927–928. 58 These have not been dealt with by Chibber as he acknowledges (Chibber, Specter of Capital, 27). 59 Chibber, Specter of Capital, 20–21. 60 Nilsen and Roy, Subaltern Politics, 5. 61 Partha Chatterjee, “After Subaltern Studies,” Economic and Political Weekly 47, no. 35 (September 2012): 44. 62 Ibid., 44, 49. 63 Ibid., 46. 64 Ibid., 45. 65 Bill Crane,“OnVivek Chibber’s Critique of Postcolonial and Subaltern Studies,”That Faint Light,November 11,2013,https://thatfaintlight.wordpress.com/2013/05/11/ on-vivek-chibbers-critique-of-postcolonial-and-subaltern-studies/. 66 Taylor, “Postcolonial Studies,” 244. 67 This is something that Chandra, “Rethinking Subaltern Resistance,” ignores. 68 Chatterjee, “After Subaltern Studies,” 46. This I will deal with in Chapter 7. In explicating this new theoretical position, Chatterjee relies on poststructuralist

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69 70 71

72 73

74 75

76 77 78

79 80 81 82

and postmodern theoretical tools. Therefore, it is curious that he lists postmodernism and deconstruction as among the theoretical schools that have seen their rise and demise in the last five decades (Chatterjee, “After Subaltern Studies,” 44). Taylor similarly argues that poststructuralism has “more or less collapsed” and that has diminished postcolonial theory’s impact as well (Taylor, “Postcolonial Studies,” 235). But he does not take into account its usage in theories like that of political society. See Dipesh Chakrabarty, Habitations of Modernity: Essays in the Wake of Subaltern Studies (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2002). David Scott, “The Social Construction of Postcolonial Studies,” in Postcolonial Studies and Beyond, ed. Ania Loomba, Suvir Kaul, Matti Bunzl, Antoinette Burton and Jed Esty (Durham, NC: Duke University, 2005), 389. N. Vandeviver, “Reorienting Orientalism: Edward W. Said as a Gramscian Critic” (paper presented at the Past and Present: Philosophy, Politics, and History in the Thought of Gramsci, King’s College London, London, United Kingdom, June 18–19, 2015). David Scott, “The Aftermaths of Sovereignty: Postcolonial Criticism and the Claims of Political Modernity,” Social Text48 14, no. 3 (Fall 1996): 5. Scott, “Aftermaths,” 11–12. Postcolonialism originated in a context, as Scott points out, not only in which the national liberation movements in the Third World had declined, but also one which was experiencing “the cultural turn.” Post colonialism, his view, was a tectonic shift from anti-colonialism which was only focused on political decolonization and that too conceptualized in essentialist and teleological terms (Scott, Social Construction, 391–392). See Kaiwar, Postcolonial Orient, for an excellent analysis of the material context in which postcolonial studies arose. Crystal Bartolovich, “Introduction: Marxism, Modernity and Postcolonial Studies,” in Marxism, Modernity and Postcolonial Studies, ed. Crystal Bartolovich and Neil Lazarus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 10. Of course, questions about colonialism and what they mean for the postcolonial present are something, as Scott argues, that need to be debated upon rather than taken for granted (Scott, Social Construction, 399). After all, the importance of the past for the present is looked at the vantage point of the latter. Scott, Social Construction, 392. Taylor, “Postcolonial Studies,” 234. Dipesh Chakrabarty, “The Climate of History: Four Theses,” Critical Inquiry 35, no. 2 (Winter 2009): 199, 207–8; See also, Dipesh Chakrabarty, “Postcolonial Studies and the Challenge of Climate Change,” New Literary History 43, no. 1 (Winter 2012): 1–18; Dipesh Chakrabarty, “Climate and Capital: On Conjoined Histories,” Critical Inquiry 41, no. 1 (Autumn 2014): 1–23. David Ludden, “A Brief History of Subalternity,” in Reading Subaltern Studies: Critical History, Contesting Meaning, and the Globalization of South Asia, ed. David Ludden (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001), 3. Ahmad, “Post Modernism,” 31. Vinayak Chaturvedi, “A Critical Theory of Subalternity: Rethinking Class in Indian Historiography,” Left History 12, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 2007): 10. Arif Dirlik, “Is There History After Eurocentrism? Globalism, Postcolonialism, and the Disavowal of History,” Cultural Critique, no. 42 (Spring 1999): 30. For example, the wider postcolonial tradition also consists of anti-colonial Marxists like Frantz Fanon, C. L. R. James, Amilcar Cabral, and so on (Chris Taylor, “Not Even Marxist: On Vivek Chibber’s Polemic against Postcolonial Theory,” Of C. L. R. James (blog), April 29, 2013, http://clrjames.blogspot.ca/2013/04/ not-even-marxist-on-vivek-chibbers.html). Then there is Pan-Africanism, which

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INTRODUCTION

83 84

85

86 87 88 89 90 91 92

93 94 95 96

Spivak argues is the first postcolonial argument. Postcolonial theory as we know today originating with Spivak and Bhabha is linked to the earlier scholarship of Edward Said and British Cultural Studies (Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital,” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 27, no. 1 (2014): 185). Then there is Latin American postcolonial theory as well as Subaltern Studies. Besides, as Taylor points out, postcolonial theory is in “deep debt to anticolonial and transnational feminism.” Taylor, “Postcolonial Studies,” 237). Pranav Jani, “Marxism and the Future of Postcolonial Theory,” review of Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital, by Vivek Chibber, International Socialist Review, no. 92 (Spring 2014). There are other excellent scholars within the school like Shahid Amin, Shail Mayaram, David Hardiman, Gautam Bhadra, etc., whose work did not always cohere with what has come to represent Subaltern Studies. Hardiman, for example, provided a strong class analysis and was the only Subalternist to make peasant differentiation a crucial argument (Chaturvedi, “A Critical Theory,” 12). Chatterjee argues in response to Chibber, who similarly focused on these scholars, that they are not “emblematic of postcolonial theory today” (Chatterjee, “Subaltern Studies,” 69). While Spivak argues that Chibber ignores “powerful subalternist historians” (Spivak, “Postcolonial Theory,” 184), it has to be said that the influence of Chatterjee and Chakrabarty on postcolonial theory globally is much more substantive than the others. Chibber, “Confronting Postcolonial Theory,” 311. Chibber, “Making Sense,” 618. Benita Parry, “The Constraints of Chibber’s Criticism: A Review of Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital by Vivek Chibber,” Historical Materialism 25, no. 1 (2017): 187. Quoted in Neil Lazarus, “Vivek Chibber and the Specter of Postcolonial Theory,” Race & Class 57, no. 3 (2016): 93. Jani, “Marxism.” Andalat, Rekhayillatha. Similarly, Jose Karimbana’s work on the participants of the various communist struggles in Koothattukulam, part of erstwhile Travancore, in the early period is based again on the accounts of the participants themselves (Jose Karimbana, Rakthasakshikalude Naadu [The Land of Martyrs] (Koothattukulam: Niyogam Books, 1996)). It is a very important location in the early history of communism and, as the book documents, four Communist activists from here were killed by the police. Five interviews conducted in 1999 have also been used. Sarkar, “Writing Social History,” 94. The town of Koothattukulam mentioned earlier falls in Muvattupuzha Taluk and is the latter’s neighboring town. Muvattupuzha Municipality’s total population (2011 census) was 30,397. Hindus constituted 39.91%; Muslims, 38.91%; and Christians, 21.10% of it. Scheduled castes numbered 5.22% and Scheduled Tribes, 0.46% (Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India, “Census 2011” (Government of India, 2011), www.census2011.co.in/data/subdistrict/5662-muvattupuzha-ernakulamkerala.html). Of the 9,916 main workers in the town, the number of cultivators was 207; agricultural laborers, 219; and workers in household industries, 211. The remaining were “other workers” (Ibid.).

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1 SUBALTERN STUDIES, POSTCOLONIAL THEORY AND COMMUNISM

The context of Subaltern Studies In the next few sections, I will lay out some of the central inter-related ideas and themes of Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory and their theoretical critiques. This reiteration is necessary for the purposes of the book’s main arguments and the empirical material that will be presented. It is also important to restate some of the critiques for the reason that the animated and elaborate discussion on Vivek Chibber’s critique seems to occlude the fact that some of the fundamental and cogent challenges to Subaltern Studies arose at the same time as the publication of the initial work. Marxist scholarship has also produced materialist critiques of postcolonial studies for a long time.1 Therefore, it is surprising that Chibber ignores the vast body of critique, like that of Sumit Sarkar, David Ludden, Vinayak Chaturvedi, Vinay Bahl, etc., with regard to Subaltern Studies, and Aijaz Ahmad, Benita Parry, Arif Dirlik, San Juan Jr., Timothy Brennan, Neil Lazarus, Vasant Kaiwar and others, with regard to postcolonial theory. As Lazarus argues: Chibber “ends up having to reinvent the wheel on quite a few occasions. He perversely chooses not to use the resources already available to him—those developed in the materialist critique of postcolonial studies over the course of the past three decades.”2 The Subaltern Studies project was founded in India toward the late 1970s by a group of historians who were disillusioned with existing trends of Indian historiography.3 Ranajit Guha, the founding father of the Subaltern Studies project, argued that a new form of history-writing was an absolute imperative as the historiography of Indian nationalism till then was dominated by “elitism—colonialist elitism and bourgeois-nationalist elitism.” If colonialist historiography reduced the history of Indian nationalism to the efforts of the “British colonial rulers, administrators, policies, institutions and culture,” in the nationalist version, it was “written up as a sort of spiritual biography of the Indian elite.” On the other hand, what Subaltern Studies was seeking 22

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to achieve was to write a history that brought to the fore “the contribution made by the people on their own, that is independently of the elite to the making and development of [Indian] nationalism.”4 Marxist historiography too came under scathing critique from the Subalternists for its alleged class-reductionism which fails to understand the unique modes of subaltern resistance under colonialism.5 While Marxism rejects bourgeois modernization, it still continues to work with the teleological assumptions of the former, seeing postcolonial history through the modes of production narrative and as a transition (or a failed transition) to capitalism.6 The Subaltern Studies, according to Spivak, theorizes “that the moment(s) of change be pluralized and plotted as confrontations rather than transition (they would thus be seen in relation to histories of domination and exploitation rather than within the great modes-of-production narrative).”7 Thus, the Subaltern Studies was seeking to write “people-centred histories” to rectify the “Indian Stalinist historians’ rigid and deterministic methods.”8

Who is a subaltern? As is obvious from the terminology used, Subaltern Studies, in the beginning, especially, drew inspiration from Gramsci, who grappled with the question of subaltern identity through a Marxist framework. Pandey argues that the term “subaltern” is “a relational position in conceptualisation of power” and in popular parlance is associated with “the down and out, the impoverished, oppressed, humiliated and scorned.”9 Ranajit Guha, conceptualized the subaltern as “the demographic difference between the total Indian population and all those whom we have described as the ‘elite’.”10 Pandey goes onto argue that although subalternity is most commonly associated with the most oppressed, “wretchedness and humiliation, attaches to individuals and groups . . . who are not obviously poor and downtrodden, and even to some who might be described as subaltern elites.”11 These descriptions are indeed very broad and problematic. While Gramsci conceived of the subaltern, he meant the “proletariat and other exploited classes.”12 Ahmad calls the Subalternist vagueness in the terminology as a characteristic of bourgeois sociology.13 However, Spivak argues that it is precisely because capitalism could not subsume all parts of society under it that the term subalterns were used.14 She thus criticizes Chibber for reducing the subaltern to the proletariat making it a “mechanical Marxist utopian pronouncement.”15 Earlier, she had argued that the original usage by Gramsci (to evade censorship in jail) “transformed [in Subaltern Studies] into the description of everything that does not fall under strict class analysis. This is so, because it has no theoretical rigor.”16 This vagueness about the subaltern, as we will see, is seriously debilitating when analyzing actual empirical histories. Instead of the very broad formulation, I will use the term subaltern to refer mainly to marginal peasants, workers and other exploited 23

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sections, especially those who bore the brunt of the caste and class oppressions of the feudal system as well as the emerging capitalist system.17 The working class can be, especially in the present, further differentiated on the basis of categories like rural–urban, agricultural–non-agricultural, skilled–unskilled, etc., with different levels of surplus appropriated from their labor.18

Peasant as a political subject It has been argued that after Gramsci, the more immediate influence on Subaltern Studies was the social history “from below” propounded by historians like E. P. Thompson.19 However, Subaltern historians themselves have not concurred. It was obvious from the beginning that the project of reclaiming the subaltern voice was not something that would be a mere inversion within the modernist discourse. Also, we have to take into account the cultural and linguistic turn that the project took from the late 1980s, placing it firmly in the “post” discourse camp. Dipesh Chakrabarty, prominent Subalternist, argues that this comparison to “history-from-below” approach of Eric Hobsbawm and Thompson is not entirely right as Subaltern historiography differs from the former in three important respects: it “necessarily entailed a relative separation of the history of power from any universalist histories of capital, critique of the nation form, and an interrogation of the relation between power and knowledge.”20 One of the main points raised by the Subalternists was the tendency among Marxist historians to term peasant revolts organized by the discourses of religion or caste as “backward” or “pre-political.” They, on the other hand, insisted that peasant’s consciousness was not a vestige of the past but a fundamental part of modernity and this consciousness was also able to read and relate to modernity correctly.21 The Marxists, according to them, believed in the Eurocentric and stagist notion of history in which the peasant has no future other than to “mutate into industrial worker in order to emerge, eventually, as the citizen-subject of modern democracies.”22 The main essence of Subaltern Studies could be summed up as “a democratic project meant to produce a genealogy of the peasant as citizen in contemporary political modernity.” The fundamental difference between political modernity in India and the West was that in the former it was not “founded on assumed death of the peasant.”23 The peasant does not have to transform into an industrial worker to become a citizen-subject. As we will see, this understanding, which Subaltern Studies puts forward as a unique theoretical contribution, was already a central feature of the communist project (as well as many other communist movements in the world) despite its deep implication also in modernism with regard to some other aspects. Therefore, it is important to recover that. Gyan Pandey argues that: 24

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The task of subaltern historiography was to recover this underdeveloped figure for history, to restore the agency of the yokel, recognize that the peasant mass was contemporaneous with the modern, a part of modernity, and establish the peasant as (in substantial part) the maker of his/her own destiny.24 Similarly, Chatterjee too reflects on the differences between Subaltern Studies and “History from Below” in Europe: The recounting in the latter body of work of the struggles of peasants and artisans in the period of the ascendancy of capitalism in Europe was inevitably written as tragedy, since the ultimate dissolution of those classes was already scripted into their history. Should we assume the same trajectory for agrarian societies in other parts of the world? Chatterjee argues that the “different sequencing of capitalist modernity” would mean that there would be different economic, political and cultural formations in the East. This also would result in historically unprecedented forms of primitive accumulation of capital.25 Thus, the distinction of Subaltern Studies is that it challenges not only the “pre-political” characterization of the peasant, but also functionalist arguments based on moral economy of the peasant.26 Moreover, the Western notion of the political as a “story of human sovereignty in a disenchanted world” does not apply to the Indian context where a strict separation between politics and religion is not sustainable.27 The endeavor to read Indian modernity in its own terms would mean the critique of the tendency in existing historiographies to describe it using negative prefixes borrowed from “European metahistories”: “Not bourgeois, not capitalist, not liberal, and so on.”28 Here it has to be noted that the Subalternists were not the first to note the different trajectories that agrarian transformation took. The differences from the Western path have already been theorized since the time of the Russian Revolution. Marx himself had seen the potential for a communist revolution in Russia even before the more advanced capitalist and industrialized Western societies.29 Here Marx’s concept of unevenness which was emphasized by Trotsky through his theory of “uneven and combined development” to understand societies in which capitalism coexisted with feudal forces of production and class relations is particularly useful. Here, an advanced industrial proletariat exists along with agrarian subsistence peasantry leading to a contradictory “amalgam of archaic with more contemporary forms” where peasants are “thrown into the factory cauldron snatched directly from the plow.”30 World capitalist development is inescapably uneven and combined which means “new juxtapositions, rearticulations and combinations of the old and new at all 25

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levels—technological, cultural, political, ideological, sociological, moral— and therefore of power relations.”31

For a different modernity The theoretical discourse inaugurated by postcolonial theory and affirmed by later Subaltern Studies is one which has increasingly raised the question of the nature of modernity in the South and especially, postcolonial societies. Postcolonial theory was, itself, a product of a conjuncture when all kinds of “post” isms were ruling the roost with the philosophical underpinning of disenchantment with (Eurocentric) modernity. According to the Subalternists, Indian history always has been read in terms of a “lack” or an “absence” from the perspective of (Western) modernity. Instead, they want to recover the deep ambivalences that mark modernity in India: Colonial Indian history is replete with instances where Indians arrogated subjecthood to themselves precisely by mobilizing, within the context of “modern” institutions and sometimes on behalf of the modernizing project of nationalism, devices of collective memory that were both antihistorical and antimodern.32 The implication is that Indian modernity fundamentally differs from Western modernity. Partha Chatterjee argues in a similar vein when he speaks about “our modernity.” The distinguishing feature of Indian modernity is the persistence of a certain skepticism of modernity’s values and consequences even in its acceptance, which, according to Chatterjee, stems from the intertwining of modernity with colonialism. As a result, while modernity in the West has been characterized by a conception of the “present as the site of one’s escape from the past, for us it is precisely the present from which we feel we must escape.”33 The complicity of “modern knowledges with modern regimes of power” has condemned the colonized to be perpetual consumers of a universal modernity. This subjecthood has resulted in the colonized’s urge to produce their own modernities.34 Chatterjee detects the adaptation of modernity not only in the “supposedly cultural domains of religion, literature or the arts. The attempt to find a different modernity has been carried out even in the presumably universal field of science.”35 While Chatterjee mostly seems to be endorsing the ambivalent modernities of the non-West as he recognizes that “one cannot be for or against modernity; one can only devise strategies for coping with it,”36 his is not a position that is itself rid of ambiguities. There is a constant falling back upon binaries. The anti-modernist strain in Chatterjee’s writings is also quite marked to be ignored. Thus, in an earlier essay, he argues that: 26

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for countries like India the concept of bourgeois equality and freedom, owing to their externality to the immanent forms of social consciousness, cannot even claim the same degree of effectiveness as expression of unity of society, despite their formal enshrinement in the political constitution.37 Elsewhere, Chatterjee makes a strong case against universalist notion of rights and modernity.38 Subaltern Studies’ critique of a universal modernity has important implications for the theory and practice of politics in the Global South. The crucial argument that the subaltern project makes is the “external” and “alien” character of modernity in India: “This externality is not something that can be casually mentioned and forgotten. It is inscribed on every move, every object, every proposal, every legislative act, each line of causality.” Moreover, the “[a]cceptance of modernity came to be connected, ineradicably, with subjection.”39 What colonial modernity inaugurated (despite the absence of political institutions of liberalism) was the: complete vocabulary of liberal rights in the economic and social fields . . . the idea of state as an impersonal regime of relations, the idea of an individual subject . . . the equality of rights and rightlessness .  .  . and finally a state which (illegitimately under colonialism) pretended to represent the collective interest of the society, and from whose legitimate interference nothing in society was morally immune.40 This externality was compounded by the fact that the national movement, led by the elitist middle class, rather than invent an ideal adequate to the “structure and discursive possibilities of their own society and history,” followed “tasks, models, ideals and historical paths that were universal, but enacted earlier only in Europe, through discourses that were equally universal.”41 Partha Chatterjee argued in a similar vein when he posited that nationalism, even when it opposed colonialism shared its thematic of reason, progress and modernity, accepted its Orientalist conception of India, and thus was a derivative discourse.42 Thus, “Third World” critiques of Eurocentrism tend to respond with an “essentialist ‘pure’ outside space or ‘absolute exteriority’ to modernity.” They “reproduce the binary oppositions of Eurocentric thinking and their hierarchical and authoritarian nature.”43 All agencies are invested in Europe. Even more recent writings of Dipesh Chakrabarty on the ecological crisis locate the origins of modernity in the Industrial Revolution of Britain from 1750.44 However, modernity is not just Euro-American; crucially, “its agencies [are not] necessarily Euro-American in origin”45 in the present. It is precisely the withdrawal into a binarism despite starting out to question it, as we will see in the following, it is the fundamental lacuna in problematizing 27

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modernity. Further, even the origins of modernity are complex, and have to be traced further back in time than the age of “colonial modernity.” As the historian Sanjay Subrahmanyam argues, the Subalternist school: effectively locates all agency and processes of change in Europe, and thus sees the Indian role as one of largely reacting and adapting to European initiatives. This ostensibly “radical” view of colonialism is thus unable to escape many of the same assumptions of modernization theory, and the even older colonial and exoticist view of India.46 Nilsen, following Gurminder Bhambra, argues that some tendencies of Marxist historical sociology also conceive capitalism as originating in Europe and spreading elsewhere. This, according to him, is something that characterizes Chibber’s critique of Subaltern Studies as well: the universalization of capital is conceived of as a process that originates in the internal properties of the bounded entity that is the English economy, and then subsequently radiates outwards to incorporate the non- western world in the orbit of capitalist accumulation.47

Stunted capitalism The Subalternists argued that Marxist and liberal scholarship have had a tendency to argue that certain undemocratic relationships—like personalized systems of authority—are not quite modern and that they would melt away under capitalism.48 In their view, the global history of capital does not reproduce the same history of power everywhere: “In the calculus of modernity, power is not a dependent variable and capital an independent one.”49 Chakrabarty accepts that Marxism is relevant but inadequate to theorize power especially in colonial societies. The fundamental characteristic of power in societies like that of India is the direct domination and subordination of the subaltern by the elite. According to Ranajit Guha, this feature “was traditional only insofar as its roots could be traced back to pre-colonial times, but it was by no means archaic in the sense of being outmoded.”50 Thus, it is a feature of capitalism itself. Colonialism in India survived only on the condition that the colonizing bourgeoisie failed in its universalizing mission. Colonial capitalism definitely impacted society but could not incorporate “vast areas in the life and consciousness of the people.” It was capitalism, but in Guha’s famous words, it was “dominance without hegemony.” Chatterjee, similarly, argues that this “‘retarded’ capitalism” cannot be explained “in terms of a time lag” but “as an expression of the historical limits of Capital’s universalizing mission.”51 This is something 28

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that has generated immense discussion after the publication of Chibber’s work.52 One of Chibber’s central contentions was that the revolutionary role that the Subalternists had attributed to the bourgeoisie in Western Europe was flawed for it was not based on actual history. This is also the strongest part of Chibber’s critique. If capitalism is not hegemonic, how is it that it has been seen as the main feature of colonized societies? Gyan Prakash, another prominent Subalternist, sees Marxism “as part of the history that institutionalized capitalist dominance” by universalizing the mode-of-production narrative.53 What Prakash wants to question is the “foundational” status attributed by Marxists to capitalism in understanding the colonization of India and also their tendency to read “particularistic” histories of “region, culture, race, nation” from the “universalistic” language of capitalism only. Instead, like Chakrabarty, he wants to assert “difference as the condition of history’s possibility . . . and that the histories of the metropolitan proletariat and the colonized are discrepant, even if both are exploited by capitalism.”54 Increasingly, under the influence of poststructuralism, “differences” became the main motif of Subaltern Studies. This was meant to counter the “problem of universality” in history. “[H]aving an egalitarian society and political democracy may be laudable thoughts in themselves but these thoughts are not as important or as sensitive to the philosophical questions of differences.”55 Marxist histories, according to the Subalternists, cannot understand the concept of difference as they naively assume that under the impact of capitalist industrialization, particularities like caste and religion will be replaced by universalistic ones like that of class. The divisions on the basis of religion, caste and language that mark the Indian working-class movement make Chakrabarty argue that the singular failure of Indian Marxists has been the lack of “an anthropological and theoretical understanding of culture(s)”56 which stems from their “disenchanted” and “hyper-rationalist” view of the world which shows “antipathy to anything that smacks of the ‘religious’.”57 Thus, he stresses that “culture is the ‘unthought’ of Indian Marxism.”58 This is because Marxism is Eurocentric according to postcolonial theory and Subaltern Studies. Thus, notions like “class struggle,” “bourgeois,” “proletarian,” “capitalism,” and “socialism” are termed by many postcolonial theorists as Eurocentric.59 However, as Chibber rightly points out, “the history of Marxian analysis in the twentieth century is the history of . . . understanding the specificity of the East.” Thus, some of the important theoretical contributions of the Marxist tradition after Marx’s death “were attempts to theorize capitalism in backward settings”: theories of Lenin, Kautsky, Trotsky, Gramsci, Mao, dependency and world-systems, revolutionary path in Africa, “modes of production” in India are all examples.60 Contrarily, postcolonial theory, as we observed before, by investing all agencies in Europe and seeing it as “an exceptional, pristine and autonomous entity” does not adequately engage with the question of the origins of capitalism in Europe.61 29

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Fragments Obviously, with the emphasis on differences, totalizing claims of other hegemonic discourses like nationalism too began to be questioned. Nation is the “teleology of progress tipping over into the ‘timeless’ discourse of irrationality” and leads to “the archaic body of the despotic or totalitarian mass.”62 Nationalism is merely an elite project.63 The focus thus began to shift to the “fragments” that resist such totalities.64 “Fragment” becomes the counter to the oppressions of the “grand narratives” of modernity. As Chibber puts it, “A postcolonial theory must, therefore, embrace the fragment, not only as a marker of resistance to dominant structures but as an analytical strategy. It is an antidote to the hubris of totalizing theories.”65 Chakrabarty argues that there is the potential of democracy in “fragmentary and episodic . . . knowledge-forms.”66 The “potentially richer definitions that a fragmentary point of view”67 promises are a big attraction. Again, fragments have little to do with materiality and political economy, but seemingly stand outside them. The tendencies of subalternism being merely an epistemological project, as we will see in the following, and not a political one, emerge here for they do not go “beyond challenging Eurocentric ‘knowledge-forms’ or ‘provincializing Europe’.”68 As Sarkar argues, the focus on “fragments” itself is not problematic. What is problematic is the situating of fragments outside their context and reading them in relativist way. What is missed is that the “fragment” is “either part of a bigger whole or whole by itself.”69 Subaltern practices break the boundaries between “totality and the fragment and inflect the totality with their allegedly fragmentary and episodic concerns.” While fragments are absolutely important, an “essentialist analysis” which sees the fragmentary and the episodic as “static and stable” is to be guarded against.70 In response to the critique by Marxists that such a focus on fragments hurts the unity of the oppressed, the Subalternists respond that the public sphere is already: fragmented under the pressure of democracy and cannot be united artificially by a Marxism that insists on reducing the many diverse experiences of oppression and marginalization to the single axis of class or even the multiple axis of class, gender and the ethnicity.71 While this is a valid argument, what is of concern is the culturalist framework used to understand the fragments. Such a culturalist understanding of fragments and the local is not used as a method to complement the analysis of “structured inequalities” and the struggles against them, but in substitute for it. This methodology also erases “the memory of more radical struggles for culture and identity, and renders localism into a metanarrative that postcolonialism supposedly repudiates.”72 While Taylor argues that 30

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postcolonial writers recognized this culturalism from a materialist point of view,73 this was not a general tendency, and besides, we are not dealing with the entire field of postcolonial scholarship in the book. Taylor also justifies early postcolonial theory’s turn to fragments as necessitated by the “depressing absence of a . . . collective subject of postcolonial liberation” and that “postcolonial theory emerged with a melancholic attachment to a lost revolutionary possibility that structured its articulation and development. It tried to find something to love in a politically hopeless place.”74 This, as we will see in the following with regard to Kerala, ignores the different trajectories of postcolonial liberation in various locations and the kind of possibilities that they opened up, even if they were not fulfilled completely. Rather than a melancholic attachment to fragments or the disavowal of liberation theory and practice, Parry argues for the recuperation of liberation theory as a revolutionary project: In aspiring to transform material and existential conditions, liberation movements did not seek to resurrect a pre-colonial past or imitate a capitalist present; and because alternative systems still stood in the way of capitalism’s accelerating global reach, popular Marxist struggles, despite the recalcitrance of pre-capitalist oligarchies and the hostility of an emergent bourgeoisie, looked forward to the immanent possibility of constructing socialist societies. This capacity to disengage from the past and imagine a transcendence of the existing social order makes liberation theory an original and indigenous project of modernity, neither enforced nor gifted by a predatory colonialism which had institutionalized economic and social retardation to further its own interests and inhibit colonial peoples from experiencing and conducting themselves as modern subjects.75 This has some parallels to the communist movement in Kerala.

A critique of evolutionism There is no denying the fact that Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory have justifiably criticized many of the linear, evolutionist and progressist notions of the theoretical paradigms like that of modernization and dependency. The older modernization theories and political development approaches were, as is well known by now, characterized strongly by the tradition–modernity dichotomy. “Traditional” societies did not have a history of their own and they have no future other than that of imitating the West. These are manifested in concern with the institutional lag in Third World societies and a fear of the masses overrunning whatever institutions are there,76 the emphasis on the role of Westernized elites in political modernization,77 the notions of a “non-Western political process,”78 and participant and parochial political 31

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cultures and so on.79 What we know as notions like that of “development” which had its origins in the West acquired a completely natural connotation.80 Under colonialism, Enlightenment reason became a ruse to suppress the Oriental “other” by constructing it as inferior. It drew its justification by presenting an image of the colonized as “children.”81 Modernization theories ignore that development discourse was “rooted in the rise of the West, in the history of capitalism, in modernity and globalization of Western state institutions, disciplines, cultures and mechanisms of exploitation.”82 Even theories like dependency which opposed modernization from a Third World perspective were ultimately operating “within the same discursive space of development,”83 and thus were not able to overcome their ethnocentrism. They unwittingly replicated the dichotomous categories of modernization theory like tradition/modernity, advanced/ backward, etc., through their categories like developed/underdeveloped and center/periphery. Further, it read off the salient features of social formations in the Third World from the laws of capitalist mode of production.84 Also, the dependency theories in positing a homogenous and abstract Third World did not pay enough attention to the questions of cultural specificity.85 (These characterizations of modernization theory and Eurocentric assumption were not just a story of the past when Subaltern Studies arose but are extant even in the present in mainstream, especially American, political science.)86 Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory offer an important corrective to the widespread tendency among such accounts of non-Western societies to treat them as mirror images (in the making) of Western societies, hence the appellations like “developing,”“modernizing,” etc., which have been used to describe them. The modernization paradigm, for instance: evacuates the contemporaneity of such societies, robbing the present of its immediacy and constricting its relations with the past and the future into narratives of loss or inadequacy. It is truly remarkable how this motif of a society, a culture, a history, a politics, even a personality permanently in a state of inbetweenness—a doubleedged failure—recurs across disciplinary contexts.87 Thus, what Subaltern Studies uncovers is the “‘subalternity of non-Western histories’ as much as the subalternity of social groups within those histories.”88 Subaltern Studies makes some original contributions in critiquing hegemonic discourses like that of nationalism and also in questioning the “objectivity” of archival material by bringing to the fore the linkages between power and knowledge. The need to understand the specificity of modernity in non-Western societies and the criticality of the “peasant question” are also important issues raised by the Subaltern Studies.89 The emphasis on the agency of the subaltern in an overwhelmingly elitistoriented scholarship was a welcome theoretical move. The fact that the 32

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subalterns and the subordinate classes have resisted oppression throughout history has enough empirical evidence.90 It spans across modern and pre-modern times, not just an outcome of modernity: “tradition has always been] capable of generating, from within, a critique of an oppressive social practice, . . . its legitimating ideology.”91 In that sense Ranajit Guha is right in arguing that there has been an “invariant notion of resistance to elite domination.”92 Guha’s study of peasant insurgency in India from 1783 to 1900 confirms this. The so-called pre-political peasants extended the scope of their attack from the European oppressors to the native collaborators of the Raj. Also, their consciousness was developed enough for them to identify “some of the basic elements of economic exploitation and the political superstructure which legitimated them.”93 The problematization of modernity is one of the most important contributions of postcolonial theory and this continues to be relevant. This is something that Vivek Chibber’s critique fails to acknowledge. There is an uncritical valorization of the Enlightenment, as well as a conflation of Marxism with Enlightenment thought.94 As a result, he ignores the fact that Marx was simultaneously, as Taylor argues, a critic of Enlightenment reason and he wanted to radicalize it by going beyond it.95 Chibber argues that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with Enlightenment theories and there is no imperative to develop new theoretical frameworks.96 Further, he states that “the Subalternist critique of Enlightenment theories is baseless.”97 Here the Enlightenment tradition is considered as all-encompassing, and there is not any need to go outside it. However, as we will see, while the Enlightenment is an important framework from which the communist struggles in Kerala draw from, there is a need to overcome the tendency to believe that it alone would be sufficient to advance justice for human and non-human others. Despite the contributions to the critique of the Enlightenment, there has been a tendency to dismiss the entire postcolonial studies stream by Marxists, which is, of course, a reaction to similar dismissal by postcolonial studies of Marxism. Subaltern Studies too takes Marxist theory as a central paradigm to contend with.98 In contrast to these binary positions, Bartolovich argues, there is a need to integrate both.99 The one-sided dismissal of postcolonialism by Marxism does not allow it to recognize the achievements of the former which includes the critique of Eurocentrism and the exclusionary violence committed by grand narratives of nationalism, secularism, etc., the understanding of power–knowledge linkages and explication of a wider sense of rationality.100 Aijaz Ahmad’s critique of Edward Said, while immensely useful in many aspects, also, as David Scott argues, tends to fall under this category of a Marxist progressivism and sectarianism.101 Therefore, it is important to see Marxism and poststructuralism in a “supplementary relation” rather than as only antinomies.102 And to “explore possible passages from Marxism to postcolonialism—and back again.”103 Besides, both postcolonialism and Marxism need a “decolonial intervention.”104 33

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Split between the elite and the subaltern Nevertheless, the book will argue that the Subalternist/postcolonial project is also imbued with problems which have deleterious consequences for the exploited classes and groups in the Global South. From the necessary recuperation of the agency of masses, Subaltern Studies takes it to the other extreme which posits agency as voluntarism. The valorization of the subaltern as the maker of her own history was already criticized by theorists like Gayatri Spivak who were sympathetic to the Subalternist project.105 The “colonized subaltern subject,” as Spivak reminds us, “is irretrievably heterogeneous.” The subaltern is not imbued with “determinate vigor and full autonomy” and ultimately it can only be “identity-in-differential.”106 The Subalternist notion of autonomy leads it to being an ahistorical conception. As Javeed Alam argued rightly, “Autonomy can never be an inherited condition of the exploited and oppressed masses but a dialectical possibility born of struggle and revolutionary advance,” instead, here it is located in a “mental space.”107 The subaltern itself becomes a reified category, with hardly any connections to reality.108 How different it is from the Gramscian conception of the common sense—the uncritical and unconscious way of perceiving and understanding the world—which is hardly unified, but a “fragmentary” and “incoherent” conception which contains elements of philosophy, a critical consciousness, is obvious here.109 It is the contradictory unity of critical and uncritical consciousness which makes common sense unique. The focus on the subaltern sphere as an independent one, and the split between the politics of subaltern and elite domains has led to a politics that is only focused on the “lower story” which could not threaten the larger political structure. Subalternity was detached from organized transformative politics. Subaltern social mobility and class differentiation within subalterns were not acknowledged.110 The connections of the subalterns with other social groups and also the need for leadership and intellectual tools that bridge elite–subaltern divisions were ignored.111 Also ignored are those sections of elite/bourgeois politics which are supportive of subaltern rights and are supportive of subaltern politics.112 Subalternists acknowledged that the earlier focus on the subaltern politics (and elite politics) as an autonomous domain cannot be sustained later with the emergence of modern mass politics. In the next stage, the Subalternists argue that the task is different: Now the task is to trace in their mutually conditioned historicities the specific forms that have appeared, on the one hand, in the domain defined by the hegemonic project of nationalist modernity, and on the other, in the numerous fragmented resistances to that normalizing project.113 34

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Nevertheless, here, a different understanding of nationalism or modernity is not provided, instead they are seen as a normalizing project which the “fragments” resist. National sovereignty is not possible because of “the contingency and arbitrary signs and symbols that signify the effective life of the national culture.”114 Similarly, Spivak sees anti-colonial revolutions as being unable to rise above the control by native bourgeoisie.115 Contrary to the split posited between subaltern and elite domains social transformation brought about by the Communists in Kerala can only be understood by the overcoming of this split, by the construction of the “national-popular” will which broke down barriers between the intellectuals and the people, the subalterns and the elites. In fact, as we will see throughout the book, this constituted an important feature of the communist movement. This is not unique to Kerala and was seen elsewhere too under colonialism. There were vibrant trade-union/working-class movements like that in Kanpur.116 In Telangana, a major communist insurrection took place, and the Communists were able to eclipse the Congress because they were willing, unlike the Congress, to address the material aspects of the deprivation of villages.117 In Africa, for example, organic intellectuals arose from rural peasant communities and developed alliances with urban people who had Western education.118 Besides, there were also peasant revolutions from below like in China, Mexico, Russia, Vietnam, etc., which are a good comparative point about why the Indian national movement took a bourgeois path unlike them, a question which was raised and later abandoned by Subaltern Studies.119 The most relevant aspect of the communist movement was that it acted as force that used the structural conditions to forge a new consciousness and politics. This is in accord with what Gramsci had postulated that the most favorable objective material conditions would not bring about a revolutionary change. That can only be a reality through “organized political will and social consciousness of the people.”120 This is where the Communists, contrary to the Subalternists’ assertion about Marxist stagism, overcomes it to see the peasant [as well as the agricultural laborer] as a citizen, a project which is supposed to govern the Subaltern Studies.121 The split between the two domains, as Sarkar points out, is not something that is seen in Gramsci, for that would mean the subaltern would not be able to change her subalternity. Contrary to Marxian dialectical approaches, the split and the positing of domination and autonomy would homogenize and essentialize the different domains. So even after supposedly overcoming the split, late Subaltern Studies has oscillated between homogenized binaries.122 Thus, what has started as a project which wanted to criticize the binarism of colonialism ended up reproducing its binaries like modern versus traditional or “the destructive imperialist versus the sustaining community of the victims.” While binaries are always helpful in “opening up questions of power,” they can also hinder an analysis of the actual complexities of the operation of power.123 35

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The Subalternists did not seem to be interested in the consequences of peasant spontaneity and militancy for liberation but only in spontaneity and subjectivity for their own sake.124 Rather than overcoming subalternity, as in Gramsci, the emphasis is on celebrating subalternity, which leads to the obliviousness to questions of power.125 To posit subalterns as “outside” power relations and resisting ignores the crosscutting nature of power.126 It also risks “flattening the complex lives of people living in colonies.”127

The linguistic turn and the disavowal of the material The later linguistic and cultural turn in Subaltern Studies which made its historians some of the main voices of postcolonial theory, had led to the characterization of social reality in terms of “culture,” “language,” “texts,” and “discourse.” With the focus on fragments and differences and the critique of Marxism that we saw, this was expected. This was what Chatterjee called as the poststructuralist moment which led to the move away from history to cultural theory and literary theory.128 This was under the influence of Spivak although she argues now that her influence is “insignificant.”129 While this was again not an unwelcome trend when empiricism and economic reductionism ruled the roost, the problem was the excessive emphasis on these elements alone. What Peter Dews pointed about poststructuralism can be applied to postcolonialism too: There is a “disanalogy between texts and institutions’ .  .  . [and] the consequent inability to give an appropriate account of the latter.”130 Literary works begin to stand in for all reality, and questions of evidence began to be supplemented by that of narrativization and representation. Material problems are converted into metaphorical ones.131 If Gramsci sought to supplement materialist with cultural analysis in his concept of hegemony, here culture substitutes material analysis.132 Ironically, Chibber, according to Taylor, despite undertaking a critique of the culturalism of Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory, “fails to articulate a sufficiently materialist methodology for the study of postcolonial history (much less culture).” This is because Chibber is “less interested in the dialectical, temporalized, temporalizing interpenetration of the universal and the particular, the abstract and the concrete.”133 Economic exploitation itself took a back seat in Subaltern Studies. The culturalist bent of Subaltern Studies was more accentuated in its reception outside, especially in the United States where, Ludden argues, there was a tendency to see cultures in essentialist terms, to analyze colonialism and nationalism as cultural phenomena and to shun Marxism.134 Sumit Sarkar points out with regard to the theoretical shifts of Subaltern Studies: What had started as an understandable dissatisfaction with the economistic reductionism of much “official” Marxism is now contributing to another kind of narrowing of horizons, one that 36

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conflates colonial exploitation with western cultural domination. Colonial discourse analysis abstracts itself, except in the most general terms, from histories of production and social relationships. A “culturalism” now further attenuated into readings of isolable texts has become, after the presumed demise of Marxism, extremely nervous of all “material” histories: the spectre of economic reductionism looms everywhere.135 While differences are emphasized, it is not analyzed as to how these differences are created and promoted in the real world.136 As we saw, fragments miss a material correlation. The emphasis on “autonomous communities” and the “politics of location” becomes ahistorical by ignoring the conjunctures that produced them.137 The shift to postcolonial critique meant that subalternity itself was approached in a different manner and seen as an effect produced by discourse: “The subaltern was not an autonomous subject outside the domain of elites, as initially proposed at the start of the project, but was now understood as constructed by dominant discourses produced by elites.”138 Despite the condemnation of the practice of reading Indian society through “European-derived social sciences and political philosophies,” the Subalternist debt to Michel Foucault is not unacknowledged.139 It seeks to “pluralize the history of power in global modernity and separates it from any universal history of capital.”140 Following Foucault, the history of modernity cannot be understood through capital alone, but through the emergence of a new disciplinary regime which occasioned and accompanied capitalism. In new institutions like work houses the instilling of “ethical consciousness of labor” was more fundamental than their economic role and testify to “the bourgeoisie’s great dream and great preoccupation of the Classical age: the laws of the state and the heart are at last identical.”141 This denial of the central role to capitalism in the constitution of modernity is problematic from the point of view of the subalterns for whom the theory is speaking.142 Crucially, Subaltern Studies ignores the ways in which world capitalism impacts subalterns or the processes of conjugated oppression: how colonial and post-colonial global capital interacted with the state and the local social structure through the mediation of caste, race, gender and the manner in which such identities were skilfully adapted to intensify the forms of accumulation through an intensified labour process.143 David Arnold, one of the members of the Subalternist school, looking back, had admitted that in not wanting to “reduce social experiences . . . [to] a crude and deterministic class analysis” had not concentrated on understanding the material aspects of the subaltern.144 37

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The problem is that while a move away from reductionist, teleological, economistic Marxism was required, postcolonial theory tends to move to the other extreme. As Stuart Hall puts it: What has resulted from the abandonment of deterministic economism has been, not alternative ways of thinking questions about the economic relations and their effects, as the “conditions of existence” of other practices . . . but instead a massive, gigantic, and eloquent disavowal.145 This disavowal has drastic consequences for the project of postcolonial theory. This is where some of the central arguments of Subaltern Studies, despite the denial of the Subalternists, mirror that of postcolonial theory. While postcolonial theory/Subaltern Studies seek to rectify the subjugation of the subaltern/non-metropolis, the cultural framing of the problem ignores the material inequalities which structure this subjugation. Thus: the contest of cultures with which postcolonial studies has been preoccupied, in other words, simply cannot be divorced from rigorous critique of the imbalances of global political economy, in which the scandalous fact . . . remains: 80 percent of the world’s wealth circulates among 20 percent of its people, with the use of resources similarly unbalanced.146 Thus, what is problematic is that postcolonial theory dispenses with what are arguably the greatest strengths of Marxism, like the analysis of capitalism.147 To seek the relinking of culture with materiality is not to go back to valorizing political economy but to understand the relationship in novel ways which are relevant for the present.148 The denial of causal effectivity to capitalism by Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory is a critical drawback.149 Modernity is mainly seen as a cultural phenomenon, not as “capitalist modernity.” Like post-developmentalist arguments that speak of the “strawman of capitalocentrism,”150 postcolonial theory sees capitalism as “nothing more than a potentially disposable fiction, held in place by our acceptance of its cognitive categories and values” which can be “refused” in favor of “marginal histories, of multiple and heterogeneous identities.”151 We saw how Subaltern Studies contends that capitalism is stunted and fails in its universalizing mission when it travels to the colonized societies. This ignores that without paying attention to totality and structure, it would be impossible to make a coherent response to exploitation under a globalized world. Postcolonial theory’s focus on Eurocentrism as a cultural incursion does not take into account that:

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[w]ithout capitalism as the foundation for European power and the motive force of its globalization, Eurocentrism would have been just another ethnocentrism . . . [It] fails to explain why this particular ethnocentrism was able to define modern global history, and itself as the universal aspiration and the end of that history, in contrast to the regionalism or localism of other ethnocentrisms.152 Capitalism might not be the master narrative that Marxism paints it to be, yet, it is “necessary to study capitalism and its effects around the worldin all their complexity, contingency and limitations.”153 How do we make sense of the transnationalization of capital and the “transnationalization of the class structures associated with capitalist domination”?154 One of the biggest failures of postcolonial theory was in explaining how American capitalism, the core capitalist state, molded and shaping other capitalisms in its image.155 Crucially, postcolonial theory failed to explain developments such as the remarkable and emphatic consensus from the 1980s on the adoption of neoliberalism in political economy by diverse nations ranging from the First World to the Third World.156 As Harvey points out, “transformations of this depth and scope do not occur by accident.”157 It presents weak evidence as a rebuttal to the arguments of Chibber about the universalization of capital. For Chibber, it means “the subordination of economic agents to the competitive pressures of the market. Capitalism universalizes market dependence.”158 Of course, Chibber’s universalization of capital’s thesis itself has come under criticism for being insensitive to cultural differences and for not making a distinction between formal and real subsumption. In reality, capital universalizes in an uneven fashion and is always confronted by limits.159 Further, Chibber’s “universalizing tendency” of capital is “too generic”160 and not focused on how capital works in a concrete case.161 While this is true, what we will see is that how in societies like that of Kerala, there is a transition from formal subsumption to real subsumption. Here, the socialities in formally subsumed societies that “are defective for capitalism” and act as resistance to it162 melt away. Chibber does argue that the universalization of capital does not require a universalization of cultural forms. Capital “might be able to meet its basic needs by relying on the very cultural forms . . . [that] are inimical to it—those typical of traditional political economies, suffused with outdated forms of social hierarchy and subordination.”163 The postcolonial position on capitalism is vague; if it had posited capitalism as not important, it also saw the “homogenization of the . . . world by capitalism.”164 This confusion has not been solved even with the latest theoretical excursions where it is argued that capitalism is indeed becoming hegemonic. Chatterjee, for example, states that corporate capital has been

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gaining “unprecedented legitimacy .  .  . displacing the status once enjoyed by the postcolonial developmental state.”165 However, he does not prescribe any program to counter this phenomenon. Chakrabarty also acknowledges the role of industrial capitalism in affecting climate change but still argues that the crisis should not be reduced to capitalism.166

The flight to the past Thus, from a commitment to recovering and documenting subaltern voices initially, later the Subalternist project’s central focus was on the (cultural) critique of Western Enlightenment and Eurocentrism. The task of “provincializing Europe” and uncovering the externality of modernity became paramount. However, as Vinay Bahl put it, “one wonders if non-European countries, by simply being less Eurocentric, could enjoy a happier state of affairs despite economic globalization and increased global communication.”167 If Eurocentrism has to be understood, it cannot be understood without the structures of power it has produced economically, socially, politically and culturally.168 At the same time, modernity cannot be onesidedly seen as a European product only. As Dirlik points out, no longer one can separate Europe from others. Thus, “legacies of EuroAmerica are everywhere, from global structures to daily economic practices, from state formations to household practices, from ideologies of development to cultures of consumption, from feminism to the centering in politics of race and ethnicity.” Besides, now the previously colonized peoples themselves are migrating to old colonial centers in large numbers. Paradoxically, “As a EuroAmerican modernity long has been internalized in the rest of the world, the rest of the world has now entered the interior of EuroAmerica physically and intellectually.”169 Modernity cannot be simply negated by a negation of Eurocentrism, and that too culturally. I will argue that this obsession with Eurocentrism and colonialism leads to an evasion of the present, despite providing a critique of modernization theories. As Dhareshwar points out, “politically relevant, and intellectually challenging questions about even Eurocentricity are to be encountered in our relationship to the post-colonial present. Without the thematisation of that relationship, the attempt to provincialise Europe may, paradoxically, simply trap us in that province.”170 The ambivalences and aporias produced by modernity in the colonized societies are resolved in the Subalternist writings by a rejection of modernity. The attempt to reclaim subjecthood by charting out “our” own modernities tends to regress into relativism. This leads to the elision of the present and a constant harking back to the past, the “pre-modern.” This way of looking at modernity reinforces the modernization paradigm. For in both, the “inbetweenness” is not overcome; in the first, the past becomes the ideal,

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and in the second, the future. This is not to deny the contributions, as we have seen, of the Subalternists in “shedding light on the geopolitics of the production of” Eurocentric norms,171 but only to point to the incompleteness of the project. The answer to the Eurocentric versus Third World nativism has to lie in going beyond these binaries, and to move from, as Grosfugel argues, “those who read subalternity as a postmodern critique (Eurocentric critique of Eurocentrism)” to “those who read subalternity as a decolonial critique (which represents a critique of Eurocentrism from subalternized and silenced knowledges).” This is what Walter Mignolo calls as “critical border thinking.” Here modernity is not rejected to withdraw into a fundamentalist nativism, but engaged with to redefine citizenship, democracy, human rights, etc., beyond Eurocentric definitions.172 We will see some of these articulations in the Kerala case, which were nevertheless incomplete.

The redeeming of nationalism Even though Subaltern Studies arose as a counter to the elitist colonial, nationalist and Marxist historiographies, and celebrated the “fragment” as we saw, it ultimately ended up as a Third Worldist—nationalist discourse uncritically upholding tradition, religion, community, etc., ignoring in the process questions like that of internal hierarchies and oppression.173 This is because of the series of dichotomies that characterize its enterprise (especially in the later phase): tradition/modernity, colonizer/colonized, West/ East,174 and so on. If in the beginning Subalternists critiqued the complicity of the nationalist elite in silencing the voice of the subaltern and the “failure of the Indian bourgeoisie to speak for the nation,”175 and also saw nationalism in the political domain as deeply complicit in the project of modernity and its forms of disciplinary power,176 now they partially redeemed the nationalist elite. Gandhi became the mascot of this turn in Subaltern Studies.177 Therefore, Spivak is only partially right when she argues, as late as 2014, that one of the research agendas was to “point at Gandhi’s separation from peasant movements.”178 She crucially ignores the fact that after the initial critique of Gandhi and other nationalist leaders, later, there is their recuperation when Subaltern Studies slides into a nativist discourse which also participates in the Gandhian abandonment of a radical resolution to the question of caste discrimination. On the other hand, Vivek Chibber notes the contradiction in Chatterjee that he lauds Gandhi for escaping the problematic and thematic of nationalism and its Enlightenment-inspired rationalism and scientism, but simultaneously rejects him because Gandhian nationalism is both politically and economically impractical.179 At the same time, Chibber ignores the redeeming of Gandhi and nationalism later.

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Nationalism in the material domain is still imitative of Western models, but in the cultural and spiritual domain it is seen as launching the: most powerful, creative, and historically significant project: to fashion a “modern” national culture that is nevertheless not Western. If the nation is an imagined community, then this is where it is brought into being. In this true and essential domain, the nation is already sovereign, even when the state is in the hands of the colonial power.180 The culturalist assumption is seen here in the positing of the cultural domain as “true and essential domain.” Sarkar sees this shift from the earlier critique of nationalism as a “derivative discourse” as a possible response to lack of autonomy/agency in the colonized subject in the argument before. Thus, in culture, nationalists created an independent domain of literature, art, religion, domesticity, etc. However, paradoxically, in politics and economics, resisting colonialism was on the latter’s terms and thus was a sign of surrender.181 As a result, in the Subaltern critique: [a]ll local social relations of difference and their cultures are erased, retaining the one between essentialized and unified versions of colonial and national discourse . . . This ideological position converts the question of social reform for women, for example into a colonial imposition, thus disallowing critiques of patriarchy and women’s oppression conducted by the national community. This is how the critique travels, intentionally or unintentionally, to illiberal forms of [cultural] nationalism.182 Timothy Brennan argues that the later writings of Chakrabarty, Guha and Chatterjee are characterized by “the positively inflected allusion to the soil rooted absoluteness of national being” and that there is an “elision of social function in favour of racialized being.”183 Ironically, as Kaiwar points out, both nationalism and the celebration of fragments thus coexist.184

Valorizing community The positing of the West versus East framework means that the argument veers to one which argues for “an Indian history of peasant struggles” which takes into account that Indian peasants’ “consciousness has its own paradigmatic form . . . [which is] in fact the very other” of Western “bourgeois consciousness.” Here the peasants’ political activity is governed by primordial affiliations and communal solidarities which are held together by “the necessary duty of groups bound together through kinship.”185 However, surprisingly, “the peasant-communal ideology” was incapable of acting as a “perceptual guide for the identification of friends and enemies,” or “identifying ‘inside’ exploiters . . . or the linkages between the ‘external’ bureaucratic 42

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state apparatus and its agents within the putative community.” Peasants will be only to break free of this only if they have an “alternative ideological system” in the form of “bourgeois consciousness.”186 Such a consciousness, which is based on individual and material interests, is alien to them. Religion and community consciousness envelope the worker’s consciousness. Even Dipesh Chakrabarty draws a similar picture by reifying and essentializing culture: “distinctions based on birth—religion, language, kinship— were central to the jute-mill workers’ sense of identity” and “religion was . . . perhaps the strongest source of a notion of ‘community’, and therefore, of a sense of identity and honor as well.”187 Thus, for a worker, “the incipient awareness of belonging to a class remained a prisoner of his precapitalist culture, the class identity could never be distilled out of his precapitalist identities that arose from the relationship that he had been born into.”188 As Chitra Joshi argues, there does not seem to be any scope for the transformation of culture: “the subjects .  .  . appear eternally entrapped in culturally given relationships of power.”189 Yet, “there was a singular failure among Subaltern Studies scholars to address the issue of caste domination in shaping the everyday experience of the subalterns in India.”190 Vasant Kaiwar argues that when Subaltern Studies resorts to affirming tradition and the “organic societal doctrine of Hinduism,” it refers to Brahminic Hindu tradition thus, ironically, privileging elite thought as the “legitimate ground of peasant nationalism” and ignoring its “anti-Untouchable sentiments.”191 Despite the categorical positing of individual interests as bourgeois consciousness, Chatterjee recently, inexplicably, argued that he never denied individual self-interests before. Thus, he states: The sense of individual property was well developed in agrarian Bengal even before the colonial land settlements. The latter introduced stricter and more codified definitions of the respective rights of different grades of proprietors and tenants, almost always defined as individual persons . . . It would have been absurd for Chatterjee to deny that individual self-interest was indeed functional, even prominent, among Bengal peasants.192 This is contradictory to what he has argued before. He, further, and more curiously, goes on to argue that this identification of self-interests in the economic sphere does not translate into the political sphere where community identity and kinship bonds triumph over economic self-interest. Thus, “there was a discontinuity between the everyday and the extraordinary, the economic and the political, the domain of self-interest and that of community solidarity.”193 It is not clear as to how this break occurs and why the critical ability in one sphere is not translated into another. Of course, there are many occasions when community solidarity trumps internal inequalities and individual interests; the example of conflict between 43

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Hindu and Muslim communities is an obvious one. Caste identity is also another example, and the development of class consciousness in the economic sphere might not still eliminate caste divisions in the social sphere. This will be evident in the next chapters. Chatterjee does accept that “a fifth or more of the population, belonging to the lowest castes, have never had any recognized rights in land.” Yet, he argues that “the unity of the peasant community is established by recognizing the rights of subsistence of all sections of the population, albeit a differential right entailing differential duties and privileges.”194 What I am contesting is the inability of subjects to overcome their community identity to forge new identities based on horizontal solidarities like class. On the other hand, Chibber is only partially right when he argues that community identities are constructed upon common material interests. Thus, according to him, individual identity, rationality, and interest are not counterposed to community identity, obligation and duty.195 Sometimes, communities are indeed built on common material interests, but not always, and sometimes community identity and interest are counterposed to each other. When Chibber argues that actors are motivated by their own physical wellbeing and interests across cultures, East and West,196 it indeed falls in the rational choice tradition as critics allege,197 and, as we will see, does not actualize itself always. It ignores how ideologies and moral economies shape various communities, which, despite their internal hierarchies characterized by oppressions based on caste, race, gender, etc., operate as a community bound by obligation, duty and kinship. Further, Chibber does not acknowledge that even in Marxist scholarship, there is reference to modern working-class struggles which have been mediated by older community notions of religion, language, race and so on.198 Chibber’s entire framework is built on a theory of individual interests when there is “no theory of individual action derivable from Marx’s texts.” In fact, “the interests that Marx discusses are always class interests.”199 What is needed is to avoid the two poles of the primacy of community and individual interest represented by Chatterjee and Chibber. Spivak argues that the communal mode of power, “based largely on kin and clan,” “is an important sustaining argument for the enterprise of Subaltern Studies” and is “shown to embrace far-flung parts of the capitalist world.”200 One of Chatterjee’s central arguments is different “modes of power” and community as the framework of action within each mode of power. He does accept that community “consisted of contradictory and ambiguous aspects.”201 Sarkar too had noted the essentialist and teleological tendencies long ago, which he correctly argued are not just associated with class analysis but can equally be a part of analysis based on “subaltern” and “community” as well. The tendency to reify categories like “community” and “subaltern” and see them out of their socioeconomic contexts is especially strengthened when the urge to avoid economic reductionism is paramount. Community also assumes religious undertones.202 44

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Given the culturalist positions and the binaries like material/spiritual, East/West that Subaltern Studies adopts, it is not surprising that it would be subject to criticisms of being Orientalist. Thus, in these binaries, “East [is seen] as a culture in which actors are essentially other-oriented, lacking any notion of individuality, unmoved by their material interests. The West is the site of the bounded individual, while the East is repository of Community.” The West is also associated with reason, objectivity, rationality, logic and science which are alien to the East.203 Even phenomenon like religious communalism in India is seen as a product of rationalism and secularism: It is possible also that the need felt by the “secular” nationalisms to forge a different kind of (“secular”) historical tradition for the Indian citizen . . . contributed substantially to the counter construction of the Indian past in more dogmatically community (specifically, religious community) terms.204 While there are elements of fact in this, it does not entirely explain the origins of communalism. Subalternists claim that “the political consciousness of peasants, and of industrial workers who had still not ceased to be peasants, was different from that of the bearer of abstract rights in civil society and the abstract citizen-subject of the bourgeois state.”205 While the differences between the culture of an industrial society and a peasant society have to be accounted for,206 what is problematic in this assertion is the stark binary drawn between the two, ignoring the struggles for rights and citizenship even among peasants and agricultural labor ground down by both caste and class oppression. This is the fulcrum of what I will argue in the rest of the book. While the Subalternists might defend their position in the present by arguing that it is not Orientalist or romantic and they always locate communities in “specific, empirically described, historical contexts of space and time,”207 the evidence available of their past arguments does not support it. What is more curious in the defense is that they are merely following Marx on the “Jewish Question”208 on the centrality of religion and community can only be termed puzzling. The criticism of Orientalism that Chibber makes is not a new one and has been made by Sarkar (who was a member of the Subalternist collective) before.209 The Subalternist adoption of the notion of “governmentality” to argue for the blindness of modern liberal state to communitarian identities and its inherent coerciveness210 lead to what Akeel Bilgrami has called the “normative communitarian” position.211 Thus, the governing logic here is “that all really dangerous or meaningful forms of power are located uniquely in the modern state, whereas power within communities matters very much less.”212 What is missed here is that “one should not assume the innocence or autonomy of community or ‘civil society’ any more than that of the nation [or the nation-state].”213 It will be seen in the course of this book that the 45

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one-sided understanding of modern state as merely characterized by governmentality is an erroneous one. The state (and capital) has to be understood in a more “nuanced” and “interactive” fashion than the attacks on modernity by Subalternists would allow.214 The critique of modernity as Western, the stand against universal rights, and the occlusion of material aspects in favor of cultural ones lead to the reinforcement of the Weberian tradition–modernity dichotomy (that it initially sought to overcome) with India placed at the tradition end of the spectrum.215 Subaltern Studies/postcolonial theory fail to explain the attraction of modernity for the masses and their appropriation of the languages of modernity. After all, it was through the very institutions of “alien provenance”216 that the masses began to announce their presence in India. Even though Indian democracy is still a formal one, the increasing assertion of the disadvantaged classes is an irrevocable reality in the present too.217 Postcolonial theory’s aim of the writing of “post-foundational” histories against foundational ones, which are based on the “assumption that history is ultimately founded in and representable through some identity—individual, class or structure—which resists further decomposition into heterogeneity,”218 is a welcome one; at the same time, it becomes one-sided to acknowledge the presence of some universal foundations.219

The universal and the particular Nevertheless, postcolonial theory’s understanding of universalism cannot be critiqued in the fashion that Chibber does. Chibber posits two universals, one based on capital and the other based on labor: the modern epoch is driven by the twin forces of, on the one side, capital’s unrelenting drive to expand, to conquer new markets, and to impose its domination on the laboring classes and, on the other side, the unceasing struggle by these classes to defend themselves, their well-being, against this onslaught.220 The problem is that, as Taylor argues, “if postcolonial theorists want to hold onto the particularity of the particular, and engage the universal through it, Chibber uses these ‘two universalisms’ to denude the particular, to remove the peculiarity of the particular in order to reduce it to the universal.”221 He does not see “the tension between the universal and the particular,” both exist “side by side in a lifeless unity” and an antinomic relation is posited between them.222 The universal is “too generic,” “abstract,” and “vague.” It does not explicate as to how the universalizing capital is “matched by subjective experiences and struggles of exploited labour.”223 Chibber’s contention that the “simple need for physical well-being” can be the basis for universalism and a materialist class struggle is problematic. 46

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However, as we will see, the communist project is marked by a dialectical relation as well as tension between the particular and the universal. Chibber argues that “it is entirely possible to assimilate the history of Indian peasants into a universal history of the peasantry.”224 He also points out that “political struggles of laboring classes in East and West [are] part of one . . . universal history.”225 Of course, Chibber does clarify that the acknowledgment of universal interests in social actors does not mean that culture has no meaning for them, only that they are not “cultural automata” and that socialization “entirely constitutes their practical reasoning.”226 Nevertheless, he posits that if there is one need that can be termed as a universal, it is the “need for physical well-being” which is the “need to ward off direct bodily harm by others and the need for a livelihood.”227 Spivak critiques Chibber’s use of concepts like “physical well-being” as a universal phenomenon as a “grand narrative” which is “race-free,” “gender-free,” and “class-free.” When one moves “from physical well-being to fighting for physical wellbeing, there is language, history and ‘permissible narratives’.”228 Spivak does accept there is universality in certain aspects (which she calls as “general”) but this has to be fixed to a particular place to make sense.229 (Chakrabarty, prompted by the climate crisis, but without letting go of the “postcolonial suspicion of the universal,” proposes another kind of a universal: one based on humankind’s “shared sense of a catastrophe.”230) Similarly, Chatterjee argues that the positing of one single basic universal need which is beyond culture is arbitrary and expansive and in fact leads Chibber to the camp of the “contractarian school of liberal political thought.”231 Although Chibber denies any teleology, there is a certain automatism when he argues that: insofar as laborers in the East mobilize to defend their physical wellbeing, they have the same interest in demanding political liberties as did workers in the West. They cannot avoid fighting for their political enfranchisement and for the broadening of their basic freedoms, as preconditions to securing their economic and physical necessities.232 Even while drawing out the universal elements of political struggles across the world, Chibber has a tendency to reduce the cultural differences across vast geographical spaces to unitary motivations. Thus, it assumes a transhistorical quality. Political action is based on individual “need” and “physical well-being.”233 Political resistance is triggered by the violation of physical well-being which is freedom from “dangerous working conditions, povertylevel wages, high mortality, ill health, environmental hazards, and so on.”234 This is where Chibber assumes that there is an imperative to struggle for political rights, an argument that is not borne out by the facts on the ground. Even in Kerala, as we will see, the transition from the fight for economic 47

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rights to political rights has not happened automatically or completely. Or lower caste groups which have won economic and political freedoms might resist the expansion of such rights to castes below them. Chibber also ignores cases where cultures create hierarchical systems in which the exploited sections are taught to ignore their basic needs and physical well-being. That is why one sees political quiescence even when there is the grossest violation of physical well-being. However, Chibber correctly makes a point about the Subalternist contention that peasants in India are not motivated by individual interests as they are immersed in pre-bourgeois culture. If this is indeed the case, in the West where the working classes who were the real force behind the inauguration of bourgeois rights were equally steeped in a pre-bourgeois culture. Now this puts the Subalternists in a peculiar bind. If they accept this, that will mean attributing the struggle for basic liberties to the “genius of Western culture,” a position which is at odds with postcolonial theory’s critique of the West as the fount of reason. On the other hand, if we go with the Subalternists’ culturalist reasoning, freedoms cannot be explained outside culture. This is where Chibber takes recourse to the argument that the pursuit of liberty is a universal endeavor motivated by some universal needs.235

Curious case of the missing working class The Subalternists see the failure of democracy as a failure of the bourgeoisie to speak for the nation. The working class is seen as “fragmented,” “sectional,” and “local” incapable of becoming a “national liberation movement.”236 Thus, “the working-class was still not sufficiently mature in the objective conditions of its social being and in the consciousness as a classfor-itself, nor was it firmly allied yet with the peasantry.”237 Here, Chibber is on the mark when he points out that Guha and other Subalternists do not give a reason for this assessment or explore it further in terms of organization and structural capacity and so on. After stating that the working-class movement failed to become a national liberation movement (and this is the only time when they conceive of this possibility), they focus only on the capitalist class: “its nature, preferences, political strategy, and failings.”238 Thus, the Indian National Congress becomes the central actor in understanding anti-colonial nationalism and the postcolonial state. This is what leads to the misplaced hopes on the bourgeoisie to bring about a democracy while ignoring the role of the popular classes. The investiture of hopes in the bourgeoisie was seen in statements such as these: the liberalism they [Indian bourgeoisie] professed was never strong enough to exceed the limitations of the half-hearted initiatives for reform which issued from the colonial administration. This mediocre liberalism, a caricature of the vigorous democratic culture of the 48

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epoch of the rise of the bourgeoisie of the West, operated throughout the colonial period in a symbolic relationship with the still active and vigorous forces of the semi-feudal culture of India.239 Further, “Their [the colonial bourgeoisie’s] opposite numbers, the indigenous bourgeoisie, spawned and nurtured by colonialism itself, adopted a role that was distinguished by its failure to measure up to the heroism of the European bourgeoisie in its period of ascendancy.”240 Spivak argues that by bourgeoisie the Subalternists do not mean capitalists, but “the politico/ ideological, the juridico/legal, the intellectual/rentier” and that only “a section of the bourgeoisie may be capitalists.”241 This is an argument made by Chatterjee as well. However, this does not stand up to scrutiny. Chibber demonstrates through various passages from Guha that he does indeed mean capitalist when he refers to bourgeoisie.242 The breakout of class conflict in the 1970s India was seen as a “pathological development, sign of a failed bourgeois revolution.”243 On the other hand, the role of the subaltern/popular classes in bringing about a democratic transformation is the fundamental argument/pivot around which this book revolves. It was not the laboring classes alone that were responsible for this. Like the experiences elsewhere in Europe,244 it was the peasantry and working classes in coalition with other classes, including the urban middle classes.245 The greatest contribution of Subaltern Studies has been to bring the focus on the subaltern. This focus has never lost its relevance and has in fact become all the more important under neoliberalism and late capitalism. However, a major lacuna has been the culturalism that governs the Subaltern Studies. Thus, there is a need to study the subaltern under the present condition by bringing back a class analysis in relation to other axes of oppression like caste, gender, etc., and within new “non-determinist traditions of historical materialism.” There is a need for a “critical theory of subalternity within historical materialism.”246 It should be possible to talk about class while giving up the base-structure analogy but without sliding into culturalism.247 Here, crucially, the Subalternists do not follow the injunctions of Gramsci with which they started with in the beginning. Among them, one of the most important ones is “the objective formation of the subaltern social groups, by the developments and transformations occurring in the sphere of economic production.”248 As Chitra Joshi argues, politics takes a backseat in Subalternists like Chakrabarty’s arguments about the working class and the latter are almost devoid of agency in influencing their culture. Traditional hierarchical consciousness seems to overwhelm their actions.249 I will seek to show here how this is a flawed understanding. New identities of class were the distinctive contribution of the communist movement. As Joshi also argues, communities are not just primordial, but are constantly being created and infused with new understandings. If community consciousness was a part of the 49

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workers’ culture, it was also often, under class struggle, surpassed to forge solidarities across communities, and these experiences become ensconced in working-class memory which is reactivated in future struggles.250 This is what is missing in the Subalternist narrative. This does not mean, as we will see, that this is a linear transition from community to class as valorized in orthodox Marxist understanding. And this understanding was not absent from the communist movement either. There was a tendency to conceive social and economic change in linear terms, as “progress,” and in terms of developmentalism, albeit an “egalitarian developmentalism.”251 What this meant was seeing sections like Dalits and Adivasis, despite seeking their liberation, as “backward” which led to an ignorance of the “possibilities of their existing dispositions and skills.”252 Thus, as we will see, there were serious breaks, and silences as well in the new forms of class consciousness forged. The national-popular that emerged was a truncated one. As examples from other places show, the new identity and consciousness sought can fail to consolidate itself and be displaced by other identities.253 Further, the privileging of work and labor has led to damaging positions on nature and the environment and cavalier dismissals of the risks to humans and nature from atomic energy plants, hydroelectric projects and so on. These also gloss over Marx’s own formulations on alienation from nature. These severe limitations, nevertheless, should not obfuscate the transformation that was heralded, but should point to the imperative of completing the transformation. They should also not mask the elements that went against developmentalism and modernism like not seeing the peasant and the agricultural labor as incapable of being a citizen, or having a Luddite view toward technology.254 Despite the glaring lack of focus on the role that the subaltern classes have played in an inaugurating an alternative egalitarian/socialist imagination, it is surprising to see Spivak’s argument that “when Chatterjee is criticizing Nehru and Gandhi. . . . Chatterjee may be thinking of the possibility of socialism.”255 I argue, on the contrary, that it is the rise of postcolonial theory /Subaltern Studies that has complemented the other discourses which have contributed to the displacement of socialism as an imaginary. It has also to be remembered that Marxism was the central focus of the critique launched by the Subaltern Studies.256

An epistemological critique? The other fundamental problem with Subaltern Studies/postcolonial theory is the lack of ethical and political questions, as argued by David Scott. There is a distinct lack of focus on what kind of political projects that should be built in the postcolonial future. As Scott puts it,“postcolonial criticism . . . has privileged ‘the responsibility to otherness’ over the ‘responsibility to act’—the opening up of cognitive space for the play of difference over the institutional 50

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frameworks that embody normative political value and objectives.”257 Thus, there is a need to move away from cultural and epistemological questions to the terrain of the political and to shifting relations of hegemony and counterhegemony.258 Thus, this “fundamentally theoretical” nature of the Subaltern Studies project is what is particularly limiting.259 As Chibber argues, “Many of the ideas associated with progressive movements of the past century—of universal emancipation, egalitarianism, class organizing, internationalism— now seem quaint to them, if not odious.”260 Thus, there is “a refusal of struggle-based models of politics.”261 Unlike before, in the wake of the end of colonialism, postcolonialism abandoned hopes of revolution and had made peace with the capitalist world-system.262 As Rosalind O’Hanlon and David Washbrook commented before about postcolonialism’s solutions: methodological individualism, the depoliticising insulation of social from material domains, a view of social relations that is in practice extremely voluntaristic, the refusal of any kind of programmatic politics—do not seem to us radical, subversive or emancipatory. They are, on the contrary, conservative and implicitly authoritarian.263 The book will demonstrate the intense nature of the political struggles characterizing the communist movement and that how social and political movements cannot, of course, just remain at the level of an epistemological critique. Further, there is the question of “problem-space,” a “context of language” that is ignored by postcolonialism. While postcolonial theorists criticize anti-colonial nationalism for its essentialism with regard to nation, history, race and identity, Scott argues that they unwittingly fall to their own version of essentialism. This is because they tend to think that the questions that the anti-colonials had with regard to their own present and future are the same as the questions that animate the postcolonials. Therefore, “an adequate interrogation of the present (postcolonial or otherwise) depends upon identifying the difference between the questions that animated former presents and those that animate our own.”264 This is something that will be at the back of the analysis here of the communist history.

Communism and social transformation The inadequacies that characterize the Subalternist and postcolonial framework come into a sharp relief when we seek to study the communist project in Kerala. The lack of attention to culture is something that Subalternists like Chakrabarty have pointed out as a major lacuna of existing Marxist historiography. Cultural and ideological factors, and the larger theoretical question of communism as a part of postcolonial transformation will be, as noted 51

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before, a focus here.265 Similarly, it is important to approach communism not from the top-down, from the point of view of the leadership or changing political line of the communist parties, alone. It is necessary to address the question from the bottom-up, in terms of the meaning of communism for the peasants and workers and the others in society. Dilip Menon’s book,266 a rich and pioneering social history of the very early phase of communism (until 1948) in one part of what is now Kerala, Malabar, is important in breaking the linear narrative and tracing contradictions as well. It makes the crucial point that communism in Kerala was not “just a political movement organizing the proletariat and peasantry into militant entities pressing for exigent economic concessions,” it also invoked “euphoric visions of a new order and a rampant rejection of past hierarchies.”267 However, the “intimations of equality offered by caste movements, nationalism and communism were thwarted by the fractures within society—of caste, kinship, religion and locality.”268 Thus, he contends that even if briefly, “local attempts to construct community became enmeshed in the wider conceptions of nationalism, and communism but, inevitably, wider imaginings of community gave way to local resolutions”269 in this early period. While acknowledging the importance of the local, I will argue the period till 1948 laid the basis for a national-popular and that the community engendered by communism eventually brought about an imagination, the fundamental quality of which was the transcending of the local. This did not mean that the latter was ignored or inconsequential in the communist movement, or that there were no breaks or interruptions in the new identity imagined.270 However, the emergence of class as a distinct concept and identity and its role in the construction of the communist national-popular meant that the local was transcended in many new ways.271 Subaltern as well as non-subaltern accounts which are a part of this research strongly embody this imagination as well as an attraction to a new ideology of communism. This realm of ideology has to be factored in as well (see Chapter 8). Menon does not focus on the aspect of ideology in the book, and when he does later, tends to see it only in instrumental terms, like Marxism becoming a tool for the upper castes to reassert their fast eroding traditional authority.272 The major “material” achievements of the communist project, the land reforms and the agricultural labor legislation, were to be achieved only by the late 1960s and early 1970s, and were made possible by the transcendence of the local and the creation of wider networks through parliamentary and extra-parliamentary struggles albeit in a period in which the limitations of electoral communism were showing up. Even in this period, large numbers of the propertyless, across caste and religion, had come around to the view that the class contradictions could only be solved in “a Communist-governed nation which would expropriate the landlords and mudalalis (capitalists).”273 And the number of industrial disputes which had resulted in work stoppages had reached the highest number of 1,322 between 1970 and 52

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1974 affecting nearly a million workers.274 For sure, these processes and the national-popular—when we look at them internally and from the perspective of what could have been, in terms of substantive caste and class equality— were to ultimately remain incomplete. At the same time, they should not occlude the significance of the national-popular externally in comparative national and global terms, especially the inauguration of the discourse of class and materiality. Further, when parliamentary communism itself has become a de-radicalized and conservative force in the present in Kerala (as well as nationally), it is also important to recognize the unintended consequences of communist project, the struggles for equality which are extending its language and going beyond its imaginaries in various spheres like caste, Indigenous rights, gender, sexuality and ecology, etc. As J. Devika argues: The local adaptation of the liberal rights-discourse is an interesting aspect of the history of left politics .  .  . Even when suspicious of liberalism, the left in Kerala in the mid-twentieth century sought to use the call for rights in utterly subversive ways—for example, projecting entitlements as rights and keeping the horizon of the rights discourse open to specific claims by more and more groups.275 As noted before, contrary to the view held by the Subalternists, the “derivative” nature of Marxist categories had not one-sidedly over-determined communist politics, even when that tendency was definitely present. Subalternist and postcolonial theory argue that modernity is vernacularized in its travel from the European center. While as noted before, this locates the whole imaginary of modernity as European only, we can agree with the argument regarding those aspects of modernity which originated elsewhere. Thus, it is necessary to understand the translation of Marxism into the vernacular and its appropriation by different cultural traditions and regions,276 but it is also necessary to understand the universal elements in the communist project as well as the universal element in what is being vernacularized. Some have argued that communism’s appeal is only explicable in terms of “regional sentiments rather than the evocation of its universal message.”277 Similarly, Prerna Singh, as seen previously, contends that the communist success was in its strong espousal of Malayali subnationalism, and even approvingly quotes Selig Harrison’s argument that communist Party’s victory in the first state elections in 1957 was due to its “ability to manipulate the regional patriotism of all Kerala.”278 Other scholars have reduced the strength of communism to caste appeal and “the peculiar pattern of communal rivalries which cut to the quick of Kerala society.”279 On the other hand, the dominant tendency (like Chibber’s, as we have seen), privileges the universal over the particular. It will be argued here that one cannot be viewed in isolation from the other. It is in the relationship between the two that the communist project has been different, compared to other projects 53

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of liberation like bourgeois nationalism. Further, the particular itself can be composed of many categories, rather than being one monolithic whole. While initially the message of communism was translated into caste equality, especially in terms of recognition, simultaneously it expanded itself to class, to incorporate material redistribution and a structural understanding of ownership of economic resources. This is not a simple linear transition of class displacing caste, but a complex transformation in which the new category of class interacts in diverse ways with caste and other categories. In pre-colonial India, the Brahminical scriptural view of a four-fold caste system was constantly challenged throughout leading to multiple hierarchies and regional differences on the ground.280 Colonialism “simplified and rationalized the complexity” of caste through enumeration and ranking exercises leading to new forms of caste-cluster consciousness as well as contestations.281 Colonial policies, on the one hand, privileged the Brahminical narratives in caste rankings, and on the other hand, made pathways for lower-caste resistance.282 Further, groups like the British missionaries questioned the “creedal bedrock of caste” and “initiated and abetted caste rebellions” besides providing English education to some sections of the Dalits and lower castes.283 At the same time, many Dalit social movements, including religious ones, went beyond the framework inaugurated by the missionaries. For example, “Prathyaksha Raksha Daiva Sabha in Kerala tried to carry forward the agenda of colonial modernity . . . without the support of missionaries by creating alternative structures.”284 While noting the substantial shaping of modern caste identities through colonialism, it is important not to see contemporary state discourse of caste as a “complicated and messy product of the secular and modern”285 only or argue that “India’s postcolonial condition is not its precolonial fault.”286 This, like the Subaltern Studies, can reduce problems of caste oppression to the operation of a (Western) modernity. It is possible to understand caste only by moving beyond the tradition–modernity dichotomy in Subaltern Studies. The communist project, like other liberation movements, tried to negotiate dualisms like tradition/modernity and the universal/particular, with some success. Unlike many nationalist projects of the colonized world which emphasized cultural difference, the communist project’s attempt was to link cultural difference with the universal project of emancipation. Nationalist projects, as explicated by postcolonial theory, were “posited not on identity but rather on a difference with the ‘modular’ forms of the national society propagated by the modern West.”287 Of course, communist universalism had to be complemented by a strong national, regional and local consciousness too. However, the communist nationalism, in the initial phases, was in tension with bourgeois nationalism. It was also willing to go beyond national concerns and identify with communist internationalism.288 Thus, as Parry argued before, liberation movements seek to construct “original and indigenous projects of modernity” which are not simply gifts of colonialism. 54

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The de-radicalization of the communist movement later meant that communist internationalism progressively whittled down to be appropriated by the nationalist ideology and the ideology of the nation-state from the 1980s. Thus, from adopting positions like the Leninist “right of national self-determination” it moved to “condemn secessionist movements as .  .  . [ironically] ‘anti-national’.”289 The communist movement sought in Kerala to create wider political unities by linking the countryside and the city, the peasantry and the proletariat, class and caste.290 The Communists seemed to recognize what Gramsci was arguing (without reading him): “any formation of a national-popular collective will is impossible, unless the great mass of peasant farmers bursts simultaneously into political life.”291 The cultural was one dimension of the construction of the national-popular. Without the transformations in popular culture, the construction of the national-popular could not be attempted. By bringing to the fore the material dimension of human existence, the communist project sought to question the separation between the cultural and material dimensions that had characterized the national movement. The feature of the communist project’s negotiation of the cultural was that it did not look to the West only (or the Soviet Union), as in modernization projects, or to the indigenist past, as in traditionalism. Subaltern Studies in its endeavor to construct a new form of historywriting has problematically conflated Marxism with elitism. It has to be understood that the Subaltern Studies arose in a context in which there was disenchantment with organized Left politics and “actually existing socialism” and specifically in India, with (a section of) parliamentary communism which had even supported the imposition of an authoritarian regime for a brief period in the 1970s.292 While this disillusionment with the “betrayal of the Indian Communist Parties”293 is understandable, where Subaltern Studies falls short is in understanding communism in India, especially its early history. More importantly, it fails in making sense of the significant failures of communism. Here it can be argued that the latter cannot be explained only by the framework proposed by Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory. Sudipta Kaviraj argued that Marxism in India was characterized by modernism.294 It believed that European modernity could be re-enacted in India and that socialism was universalizable. According to him, Leftists’ thinking showed “theoretical imitativeness” and “their major undertaking was not the invention of a social theory” but merely an “application” of borrowed doctrines.295 While, ultimately, the Indian communist movement, nationally, not only failed to bring about a revolution, but also is becoming a marginal force in the present, such characterizations also miss the important differences within the communist movement in different parts of India, the ways in which theory was applied, and why it became a force in certain regions. They ignore tendencies of pragmatism over theory296 or how supposedly an alien ideology became interwoven with local and regional traditions and 55

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culture.297 Thus, the study of communism cannot be focused only on the national level.298 It can be argued that communism in Kerala, while showing signs of theoretical imitativeness, was not completely immersed in high modernism which can be characterized as to bring a particular history to nullity and construct society up from scratch. While it believed that socialism was universalizable and the path of change was linear, it did not always have the naïve belief in the modernist position that the European past lets us know in advance the script of modernity.299 There were tendencies in the Communist Party and movement which critiqued high modernism and developmentalism and displayed contradictions also. However, the idea of peasant as citizen and the revolutionary subject also overcame determinism and stagism which privileged the industrial proletariat. Narratives from this research which are critical of the communist movement, ironically, are marked by characterizations of communism as an “anti-modern” force which stands against economic development and progress. This is because, among other factors, of the intense struggles waged by the laboring classes against mechanization and the resultant flight of capital. Such voices emerge also within the movement itself and term communism as not moving with the times and not possessing a “vision” for modernization and development.300 Here, even politicians of “backward” states have better “vision” than Communist politicians301 and the fundamental problem is seen as stemming from a “lack of technocratic/technical expertise in politics.”302 The angst about development, especially from middle and upper classes stems in these narratives because of the inability of communism to move from a securing of labor rights to force of economic development. Further, in the Leftist discourse, there is a muddled approach to globalization in which corporate globalization takes center stage over “everyday manifestations of globalization in the form of an expanding commodity culture.”303 On the other hand, subaltern Communist narratives respond to the charge that communism is responsible for the lack of development with the argument that development cannot be seen as mere economic development and that it should include other aspects like the enhancement of “creative ability” of humans.304 The kinds of criticisms about a “lack of modernity,” even not entirely from a technological perspective, are made from within the movement in other parts of India as well.305 Communism in Kerala, as we will see, avoided, in a much more consequential way, the two main weaknesses that characterized the Nehruvian state in the national sphere: the “excessively economistic conception of the idea of development” and “the total ignorance of civil society.”306 This is despite its colossal failures with regard to the project of elimination of caste or the liberation of the Adivasis even after the initial translation of communism into struggle against caste oppression. However, these failures stemmed only partly from tendencies, as is commonly argued, of economism and class reductionism (stemming also from the political imperative of keeping 56

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disparate and differently ranked castes within the working classes and a broad peasant coalition united). Within the overall framework of what Aditya Nigam calls as the “logic of failed revolution” of the Indian communist movement, nationally, which privileged the capture of state power at the expense of “hegemonic struggles” in society and questions of caste, gender oppression and so on,307 it is important to recognize how hegemony was achieved in some regions and why that hegemony is being challenged in the present. Theoretically, in the Kerala communist movement, despite the common criticism of class reductionism, there were also some clear understandings of how caste worked. Therefore, the failures have to be located more in practice, in the inadequate struggles against caste because of the inability or the unwillingness to break out of the socialization of caste by the dominant upper castes, and the inability of the communist movement to challenge dominant regressive traditions beyond a point for pragmatic, electoral reasons. For, the lower castes, especially the Dalits, were willing to question caste hierarchies and adopt ideologies beyond caste. Thus, there is a “highly ambiguous caste erasure that is negotiated differently by upper and lower castes.”308 The differential impact of communism on different lower castes also has to be understood. Further, the failures have to be located, ironically, for a communist project, in the incomplete attainment of class and economic goals for the most exploited castes as well as Indigenous groups. This is something that is routinely ignored in a culturalist understanding of caste, devoid of its material dimensions. Luisa Steur shows the rise of Indigenist movements of the Adivasis in the later decades in Kerala was the decline of communism because of the ideological as well as practical crisis in it. However, the “first trigger” for the Adivasi Communists to leave the communist movement was the corruption of Communist leaders “rather than their ideological dogmatism.”309 Similarly, the Communist project created extensive links with the grassroots of civil society. However, the problem was it wanted to control it and was antagonistic to oppositional spaces in civil society. Thus, the contradictions of the communist project have to be understood. It is precisely in the incomplete realization of—what postcolonial theory and Subaltern Studies consider as “modern” and “Western”—democracy (including the vocabulary of liberal rights) as well as the pre-existing “traditional” aspirations of equality of the oppressed where the Communists failed more substantially. Of course, it should not be forgotten that Indian communism, like many others in the world, came into existence and grew in an atmosphere of world communism dominated by Stalinism.310 However, the Stalinist allegiance of the movement in India and the usually alleged feature of Indian communism as only being totally servile to Soviet diktats311 (which is also a Cold War construction)312 can miss the ways in which it managed in practice, as noted, to also adapt a foreign theory to local conditions, and contribute to its elaboration, for example, in aspects like parliamentary communism.313 57

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Therefore, the lack of adequate theoretical schooling in Marxism314 and the dependence on the Stalinist machinery did not prevent effective practice at times.315 Also, the commitment to a class ideology did not prevent pragmatic electoral alliances, even with religious/caste organizations/parties across different religious communities. While such alliance with marginalized non-class identities could alleviate the misrecognition they suffer, and was a positive sign,316 pragmatism could also turn instrumental and degenerate into branding of political parties as “bourgeois/proletarian” and “communal/secular” depending upon whether they belonged to the Left electoral alliance or not317 or the abandonment of the project of bringing about class consciousness within religious/caste communities under electoralism. Ramachandra Guha argues that “The paradox of Indian Marxism is that its practice has always been more appealing than its theory.”318 It is important to understand the level of political praxis to understand the transformation brought about by communism in Kerala and also the collapse of hierarchies in one of the most iniquitous regions in India. Similarly, “it was not the theoretical debates . . . but rather the cultural movements and militant streetbased action that made the communists into a powerful, visible, and viable political force in Bengal.”319 However, practice is precisely where it failed as well with regard to caste in Kerala. Ronald Herring contends that since most of the Communist leaders derived their understanding of society from practice and not from texts, “they were not harm-strung by rigid adherence to any European theory of revolution.”320 While this lack of theoretical knowledge led to more flexibility in practice, Herring does not pay attention to the fact how exposure to the larger corpus of Marxist writings would have helped practice. Thus, it was not the usual criticism of theoretical imitativeness alone which was the problem, but also the lack of access to diverse theoretical frameworks. For instance, E. M. S. Namboodiripad, Kerala communism’s pre-eminent leader as well as its almost sole theoretician,321 had not read thoroughly The Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci until the mid-1990s, after almost 60 years as a Communist and until the last years of his life; the work immediately had a great impact on him.322 It is interesting to note that Namboodiripad, without reading Gramsci, was tentatively articulating some ideas on culture that were similar to the latter. However, the severe limitation of working within the ideological unfreedom of a Communist Party framework,323 the centralized control over the mass organizations in civil society associated with the party324 and the focus on electoralism prevented these ideas from being democratically implemented and becoming common sense. Nevertheless, the structural and conflictual view of power and society, as Herring argues was held by the Communists, was definitely derived from (basic) Marxist texts. While all the Subalternist arguments are generally directed at Marxist theory, they are also implicitly referring to its practice which allegedly 58

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has replicated theory. For example, while Chakrabarty accepts that Marx is indispensable (despite his argument that “the problem of universalism / Eurocentrism . . . was inherent in Marxist . . . thought”) to understanding modernity, according to him, this “relationship to Marx cannot any longer be the straightforward one that the Indian communist parties once encouraged, where the scripting of our histories on the lines of some already-told European drama posed no intellectual problems for self-understanding.”325 The emphasis, again, is on the imitativeness, and modernism of Indian Marxism which merely follows models constructed elsewhere while ignoring its adaptations of, and contributions to, modernity as well as its deleterious side of the imbrication in traditional categories like caste. If Chakrabarty accepts the use of Marxian tools to a certain extent, other Subalternists have generally seen it as a part of a modernity that is alien to India. For Chatterjee, caste is an internal structure while class is external, introduced in India by colonial rule.326 Here, Subaltern Studies complements many post-developmentalist discourses which see Marxism as a “borrowed” philosophy, which is ineffective in “understanding the complex realities of the other, fundamentally, different cultures and contexts.”327 This underplays the reality of capitalism in these cultures, the materiality of caste, and the yearning for substantive equality among the oppressed castes and classes which leads to the attraction to Marxism as a liberatory force. In Kerala, Marxism inaugurated the imaginary of substantive equality because of the category of class and the promise of material redistribution, something which did not happen in the national space, where even the transition to bourgeois democracy and a formal equality was brought about by a “passive revolution” with significant compromises with feudalism. This results in a bourgeois democracy which is greatly hobbled by pre-capitalist forms of exploitation. It will be seen that the important success of the communist movement was the overcoming of passive revolution and the elimination of feudal landlordism. The new imaginary of substantive equality involved the “definition of new possible spaces hitherto outside the repertory of our forebears and beyond the limits of their social imaginary.”328 At the same time, substantive equality, which emerged as a new social imaginary in Kerala, was still built on earlier forms of critique, especially, the immediately preceding anti-caste and caste-reform organizations. This linkage is crucial when understanding the communist national-popular. Thus, this quest for substantial equality was shaped by the dialectic of the universal and the particular—of being inspired by anti-imperialist and socialist struggles elsewhere, at the same time, inflecting it by local considerations. In this light, it may be seen as postcolonial theory’s “our modernity,” but the primary endeavor of the Marxist project was not establishing cultural “difference” but seeking material solutions to the problems of inequality. The new concept of rights—political, economic and social—was fashioned by extending the existing vocabulary and by activation of the “latent resources” 59

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of the culture. The language of Marxism is appropriated and becomes a part of the common sense that it loses its “alien provenance.” This book will seek to demonstrate that “postcolonial misery” is not an inexorable feature of postcolonial modernity, as implied by postcolonial theory. Instead, as the communist movement in Kerala has shown, it can be substantially mitigated by the nature of social transformation and the agency of the actors involved. As Chibber argues, “it was not the heroism of capital that liberated the subaltern classes, but their own political struggles.”329 Postcolonial theory’s dismissal of Marxism as “hyper-rationalism,” which supposedly renders it unfit for “traditional’ societies,” does not provide a convincing explanation as to why the language of Marxism and modernity has been appropriated by the marginalized classes in such societies. Communism’s entrenchment in society was only possible because the new forms of substantive equality, which were aimed at by the movement, were no alien imposition, extraneous to traditional forms of consciousness as argued by postcolonial scholars. Instead, they correspond to the latter’s pre-existing (unrealized) aspirations to equality. Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory’s positing of modernity as merely a Western phenomenon and their subscription to dualisms like elite/subaltern, material/symbolic and class/caste binary, and a series of related binaries like capital/community, individual/ community, civil society/political society, state/community, all stemming from the fundamental binary of tradition/ modernity with the privileging of the second half of the binary makes it difficult to map social reality in the South. The positing of the autonomy of culture and the denial of trans-local and global structures and the structure of capitalism negated also postcolonial theory’s attempt to provide an understanding of culture itself. It will be argued that communism overcame the binaries to some extent, and this was one of the main reasons for its success. The complex bricolage that emerges in colonies330 is ignored by Subaltern Studies despite its original aim to understand it. While there was indeed formulaic transposition of models developed elsewhere onto a “traditional setting,” there were also important attempts by communism to dialectically mediate between a universal conception of justice and a particular cultural context. Spivak argues that she sees Marxism “as an international movement” which has “to be interpreted in different contexts [and] in different ways.”331 This was already realized in some sense by the communist movement in Kerala. Even as the communist movement was one of the major appropriators of the institutions originating in Western modernity, it was not just pure Enlightenment rationality at work.332 Instead, there were elements of a “fusion of horizons” in which the critical potential of modernity met with that of tradition. However, the failure was not in engaging with the most radical or utopian aspects, especially of the latter. It is the failure of actually realized communism to fulfill the promise of substantial equality that drives the present struggles of the Dalits, Adivasis and other marginalized groups beyond communism, or to 60

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separate the idea of communism itself from its existing party form, taking a life on its own. While postcolonial theory’s call to “provincialize” Europe and its history of masquerading as the universal is itself not problematic, what is problematic is “treating modernity, liberalism, citizenship or bourgeois equality as if they were fixed and self-contained doctrines unaffected by the appropriations and reformulations given to them by processes of political mobilization in Asia, Africa or Europe itself.”333

Notes 1 Alf Gunvald Nilsen, “Passages from Marxism to Postcolonialism: A Comment on Vivek Chibber’s Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital,” Critical Sociology 43, nos. 4–5 (2017); Nikita Dhawan, “Marxist Critique of PostColonialism,” Krisis, no. 2 (2018): 106. 2 Neil Lazarus, “Vivek Chibber and the Specter of Postcolonial Theory,” Race & Class 57, no. 3 (2016): 92. 3 Within a decade or so, the project enjoyed so much international prestige that it inspired founding of a Latin America Subaltern Studies group in 1993. By this time, the project’s contributors were also simultaneously the major proponents of postcolonial theory and had broadened its horizon from the study of the subaltern to an understanding of the “postcolonial condition” and cultural criticism of modernity in the Global South. Postcolonial theory went beyond the Subaltern Studies to become a major influence in literary theory as well. 4 Ranajit Guha, “On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India,” in Subaltern Studies I: Writings on South Asian History and Society, ed. Ranajit Guha (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982), 1–3. 5 See Dipesh Chakrabarty, “Radical Histories and the Question of Enlightenment Rationalism: Some Recent Critiques of Subaltern Studies,” Economic and Political Weekly 30, no. 14 (April 1995): 751–759. What is interesting is that every form of historiography is implicated here: all of it has “conformed faithfully to the rational concepts and the ground rules of narrative and analytic procedure introduced in the subcontinent by official and non-official British statements on the South Asian past” (Ranajit Guha quoted in Aijaz Ahmad, “On Post Modernism,” The Marxist 27, no. 1 (January–March 2011): 34). 6 Gyan Prakash, “Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World: Perspectives from Indian Historiography,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 32, no. 2 (1990): 395. 7 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, In Other Worlds (New York: Methuen, 1987), 197. 8 Pranav Jani, “Marxism and the Future of Postcolonial Theory,” review of Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital, by Vivek Chibber, International Socialist Review, no. 92 (Spring 2014): 12. 9 Gyanendra Pandey, “The Subaltern as a Subaltern Citizen,” Economic and Political Weekly 41, no. 46 (November 2006): 4735, 4738. 10 Guha, “On Some Aspects,” 8. 11 Pandey, “Subaltern,” 4738. 12 Ahmad, “Post Modernism,” 32. 13 Ibid., 33. 14 Ryan Rafaty, “Gayatri Spivak on Recent Criticisms of Postcolonial Theory,” Cambridge Review of International Affairs (blog), May 29, 2014, www.cria. polis.cam.ac.uk/blog/?p=97-.

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15 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital,” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 27, no. 1 (2014): 189. 16 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Theory in the Margin: Coetzee’s Foe Reading Defoe’s Crusoe/Roxana,” in Consequences of Theory: Selected Papers of the English Institute, 1987–1988, ed. Jonathan Arac and Barbara Johnson (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991). 17 Since tenancy and tenure under the landlordism that was prevalent in Kerala was complex and differentiated, there were vastly different outcomes in life chances even within the category of something like tenants with various kinds of inferior and superior tenants with different land holdings. Thus, even as I use the term “subaltern”, I am cognizant of the “highly differentiated character of subaltern groups and their politics, without losing sight of the un-doubted facts of immiserisation, oppression or marginalisation” (Pandey, “Subaltern,” 4739). The untouchable labor, located at the bottom of the hierarchy faced the worst of the arbitrariness like being ousted from their homesteads and other kinds of oppression from the oppressed tenant farmers themselves (see K. Satyanarayana and S. Tharu, “C. Ayyappan,” in No Alphabet in Sight: New Dalit Writing from South India, ed. K. Satyanarayana and S. Tharu (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2011), 348). Thus, the lower castes, who are the oppressed groups in the hierarchical caste system, could be in a conflictual relationship with each other on the basis of class as well as caste hierarchy. When I allude to subaltern vs. elite, and popular culture vs. elite culture or lower-caste vs. upper-caste distinctions, it has to borne in mind that these are not simple dichotomies or each of them is not an autonomous domain. All cultures are contradictory, containing different elements that intersect and overlap, and there is also constant contestation among them. Culture, thus, is a process rather than a finished form. And subalternity is “relational, intersectional, [and] dynamic” (Dhritiman Chakraborty, “Gramci Is Alive! Hegemony and Subaltern Politics in Contemporary India,” Postcolonial Studies 20, no. 2 (2017): 265). As Cooper argues, the subaltern engagement under colonialism was complex and contradictory, and did not just follow simple binaries like resistor/oppressor (Frederick Cooper, “Conflict and Connection: Rethinking Colonial African History,” The American Historical Review 99, no. 5 (December 1994): 1533–1534). These complexities of subalternity would acquire new shapes under different material conditions in the postcolonial period. 18 A.P. Sreeraj and Vamsi Vakulabharanam, “High Growth and Rising Inequality in Kerala since the 1980s,” Oxford Development Studies 44, no. 4 (2016): 369. 19 See David Ludden, “A Brief History of Subalternity,” in Reading Subaltern Studies: Critical History, Contesting Meaning, and the Globalization of South Asia, ed. David Ludden (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001), 4. 20 Dipesh Chakrabarty, Habitations of Modernity: Essays in the Wake of Subaltern Studies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 8. 21 Ibid., 9. 22 Ibid., 11. 23 Ibid., 19. 24 Gyanendra Pandey, “Subaltern Citizens and Their Histories,” Interventions 10, no. 3 (2008): 273. 25 Partha Chatterjee, “Subaltern Studies and Capital,” Economic and Political Weekly 48, no. 37 (September 2013): 75 (69–75). 26 Spivak, In Other Worlds, 206. 27 Chakrabarty, Habitations of Modernity, 19. 28 Ibid., xxii.

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29 Alexander Anievas and Kerem Nişancıoğlu, “Limits of the Universal: The Promises and Pitfalls of Postcolonial Theory and Its Critique,” Historical Materialism 25, no. 3 (2017): 59. 30 Leon Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, vol. 1, 1932–33, trans. Max Eastman (London: Sphere Books, 1967), 432. 31 Achin Vanaik, “Powerful Critique of Postcolonial Theory,” Economic and Political Weekly 48, no. 28 (July 2013): 29. 32 Chakrabarty, Habitations of Modernity, 284. 33 Partha Chatterjee, Our Modernity (Rotterdam: SEPHIS, 1997), 19. 34 Ibid., 13–14. 35 Ibid., 18. 36 Ibid., 20. 37 Quoted in Himani Bannerji, “Projects of Hegemony: Towards a Critique of Subaltern Studies’ ‘Resolution of the Women’s Question’,” Economic and Political Weekly 35, no. 11 (March 2000): 909. 38 Partha Chatterjee, “Beyond the Nation? Or Within?,” Social Text 56 16, no. 3 (Fall 1998): 57–69. 39 Sudipta Kaviraj, “On State, Society and Discourse in India,” in Rethinking Third World Politics, ed. James Manor (London: Longman, 1991), 78. 40 Ibid., 79. 41 Ibid., 84. 42 Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought in the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse? (London: Zed Books, 1986). 43 Ramón Grosfugel, “Decolonizing Post-Colonial Studies and Paradigms of Political-Economy: Transmodernity, Decolonial Thinking, and Global Coloniality,” Transmodernity: Journal of the Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World 1, no. 1 (2011): 25–26. It is useful to distinguish, as Lazarus does, between “insurrectionary Third Worldism” (1945–1975) and “postcolonialist Third Worldism” (post-1975) (Lazarus, “Vivek Chibber,” 103). 44 Dipesh Chakrabarty, “The Climate of History: Four Theses,” Critical Inquiry 35, no. 2 (Winter 2009): 197–222. 45 Arif Dirlik, “Is There History after Eurocentrism? Globalism, Postcolonialism, and the Disavowal of History,” Cultural Critique, no. 42 (Spring 1999): 2. 46 Sanjay Subrahmanyam, From the Tagusto the Ganges (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005), 4. 47 Nilsen, “Passages from Marxism,” 565. 48 Importantly, they do not note that not all strands of Marxism subscribe to this. They ignore a wider array of Marxist theorists who have argued about the autonomy of the political (Chibber, Specter of Capital, 107). Also, it is not that the Subalternists were the first to voice this critique. Jayant Lele, for example, had noted that the tradition–modernity dichotomy operates in Marx when he fails to recognize that the traditional symbols of legitimation continued to be effective under capitalism. But unlike the Subalternists, Lele, argues that, nevertheless, the essential Marxian insight that the rulers’ quest for legitimacy is a feature of all class-societies, capitalist or non-capitalist, remains valid (Jayant Lele, Elite Pluralism and Class Rule: Political Development in Maharashtra (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981), 14–15). 49 Chakrabarty, Habitations of Modernity, 13. 50 Ibid. 51 Partha Chatterjee, “Peasants, Politics and Historiography: A Response,” Social Scientist 11, no. 5 (1983): 64–65.

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52 See Michael Levien, “Subalternists Scrutinized,” review of Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital, by Vivek Chibber, European Journal of Sociology 54, no. 3 (December 2013): 485–497, for an example. 53 Gyan Prakash, “Can the ‘Subaltern’ Ride? A Reply to O’ Hanlon and Washbrook,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 34, no. 1 (January 1992): 168. 54 Ibid., 184. 55 Dipesh Chakrabarty quoted in Vinay Bahl, “Situating and Rethinking Subaltern Studies for Writing Working Class History,” in History after the Three Worlds: Post-Eurocentric Historiographies, ed. Arif Dirlik, Vinay Bahland, Peter Gran (Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000),112. 56 Dipesh Chakrabarty, “Class Consciousness and the Indian Working Class: Dilemmas of Marxist Historiography,” Journal of Asian and African Studies 23, nos. 1–2 (1988): 29. 57 Chakrabarty, “Radical Histories,” 752. 58 Dipesh Chakrabarty, Rethinking Working-Class History: Bengal, 1890–1940 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), xii. 59 Lazarus, “Vivek Chibber.” 60 Vivek Chibber, Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital (London: Verso, 2013), 291–292. 61 Anievas and Nişancıoglu, ̆ “Limits of the Universal,” 60. 62 Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 142. 63 Ahmad, “Post Modernism,” 37. 64 See, for example, Chatterjee, Nation and Its Fragments; Shahid Amin, Event, Memory, Metaphor: Chauri Chaura, 1922–1992 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Gyanendra Pandey, The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990), and Gyanendra Pandey, “In Defense of the Fragment: Writing about Hindu-Muslim Riots in India Today,” in A Subaltern Studies Reader, ed. Ranajit Guha (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 1–33. 65 Chibber, Specter of Capital, 19. 66 Dipesh Chakrabarty, “Radical Histories and the Question of Enlightenment Rationalism: Some Recent Critiques of Subaltern Studies,” Economic and Political Weekly 30, no. 14 (April 1995): 757. 67 Pandey, Construction of Communalism, 559. 68 Dirlik, “Is There History?,” 28. 69 Sumit Sarkar, Writing Social History (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), 94, 104. 70 Indrajit Roy, “Utopia in Crisis? Subaltern Imaginations in Contemporary Bihar,” Journal of Contemporary Asia 45, no. 4 (2015):643. 71 Chakrabarty, Habitations of Modernity, 18. 72 Dirlik, “Is There History?,” 23. 73 Christopher Taylor, “Postcolonial Studies and the Specter of Misplaced Polemics against Postcolonial Theory: A Review of the Chibber Debate,” Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry 5, no. 2 (April 2018): 243. 74 Taylor, “Postcolonial Studies,” 244. 75 Benita Parry, Postcolonial Studies: A Materialist Critique (London: Routledge, 2004), 9–10. 76 Samuel P. Huntington, “Political Development and Political Decay,” World Politics 17, no. 3 (1968): 386–430. 77 David A. Wilson, “Nation-Building and Revolutionary War,” in Nation Building, ed. Karl Deutsch and W. J. Foltz (New York: Atherton Press, 1966).

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78 Lucian W. Pye, “The Non-Western Political Process,” Journal of Politics 20, no. 3 (August 1958): 468–486. 79 Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1965). This valorization of Western institutions in pluralist and liberal democratic theory, nevertheless, ignores what critical theorists have pointed out: “that formal democratic institutions and procedures permit administrative decisions to be made largely independently of reflection on the practical life-world of the citizens. The legitimation processes elicit only generalized motives and diffuse mass loyalty but forbid participation” (Lele, Elite Pluralism, 9). 80 See Gilbert Rist, The History of Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith, trans. Patrick Camiller (London: Zed Books, 1997). 81 See Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983). 82 Jonathan Crush, “Introduction: Imagining Development,” in Power of Development, ed. Jonathan Crush (New York: Routledge, 1995), 11. 83 Arturo Escobar quoted in ibid., 20. 84 For a critique of the functionalist and teleological tendencies of such theories, see David Booth, “Rethinking Social Development: An Overview,” in Rethinking Social Development: Theory, Practice and Research (London: Longman, 1994), 5–6. 85 On this see Rist, History, 121. It is not that such concerns were totally absent from the dependency critique. Lele notes how the contributions of Andre Gunder Frank towards “a culture—critique of the roots of modernization theory . . . have been overshadowed by the debates generated through his economic generalizations” (Jayant Lele, “Orientalism and the Social Sciences,” in Orientalism and the Post-Colonial Predicament: Perspectives on South Asia, ed. Carol Breckenbridge and Peter van der Veer (Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), 61). 86 Uday Chandra, “The Case for a Postcolonial Approach to the Study of Politics,” New Political Science 35, no. 3 (2013): 479–491. 87 Satish Deshpande, “Mapping a Distinctive Modernity: ‘Modernization’ as a Theme in Indian Sociology,” Occasional Papers in Sociology 13, no. 1 (New Delhi: Institute of Economic Growth, 1999): 13 At the same time, we should not be oblivious to the increasing tendency in societies of the Global South to internalize many of the central assumptions of modernization theory, especially in the material realm. 88 Cooper, “Conflict,” 1516. 89 Here peasant responses to devastation and dispossession through acts like suicides, which have been common in India in the last three decades and need to be understood in their cultural complexity. 90 See the work by Annales school of historians. See also, J. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990). 91 Jayant Lele, Hindutva: The Emergence of the Right (Madras: Earthworm Books, 1995), 85. 92 Quoted in Javeed Alam, “Peasantry, Politics and Historiography: Critique of the New Trend in Relation to Marxism,” Social Scientist 11, no. 2 (February 1983): 45. 93 Ranajit Guha, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983), 28. For a study of the centurylong rebellions by the Muslim peasantry in Kerala, see K. N. Panikkar, Against

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94 95

96 97 98

99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107

Lord and State: Religion and Peasant Uprisings in Malabar 1836–1921 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989). Sandro Mezzadra, “Essay,” review of Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital, by Vivek Chibber, Interventions 16, no. 6 (2014): 924; Levien, “Subalternists Scrutinized,” 491. Taylor, “Not Even Marxist: On Vivek Chibber’s Polemic against Postcolonial Theory,” Of C. L. R. James (blog), April 29, 2013, http://clrjames.blogspot. ca/2013/04/not-even-marxist-on-vivek-chibbers.html; see also Nissim Mannathukkaren, The Rupture with Memory: Derrida and the Specters That Haunt Marxism (Pondicherry: Navayana, 2006) for a critique of positivist Marxism and an exposition of cultural Marxism. George Steinmetz, “On the Articulation of Marxist and Non-Marxist Theory in Colonial Historiography,” Journal of World-Systems Research 20, no. 2 (2014): 282–288 and William H. Sewell, Jr., “On Vivek Chibber’s Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital,” Journal of World-Systems Research 20, no. 2 (2014): 300–303 also criticize Chibber for this. Chibber, Specter of Capital, 145. Vivek Chibber, “Confronting Postcolonial Theory: A Response to Critics,” Journal of World-Systems Research 20, no. 2 (2014): 311. This is not surprising as Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory borrow from theoretical traditions like poststructuralism and Lacanianism which are vehemently against Marxism (Crystal Bartolovich, “Introduction: Marxism, Modernity and Postcolonial Studies,” in Marxism, Modernity and Postcolonial Studies, ed. Crystal Bartolovich and Neil Lazarus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 10). But this hostility also ignores the heterogeneity of Marxist theorizing and how it has dealt with problems like imperialism, racism, subalternity and so on. Thus, there is vast legacy of Marxism which is neither hardly Eurocentric nor the “possession” of Europe (Bartolovich, “Introduction,” 3, 10; see also Mannathukkaren, Rupture with Memory). At the same time, there is also a tendency by postcolonial theory to claim direct lineage to Marxist theory and “also it being as the only sustainable version of Marxism,” which is patently wrong (Vivek Chibber, “Making Sense of Postcolonial Theory: A Response to Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak,” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 27, no. 3 (2014): 623. Bartolovich, “Introduction,” 1. Ibid., 11; Scott, “Aftermaths,” 8. David Scott, “The Aftermaths of Sovereignty: Postcolonial Criticism and the Claims of Political Modernity,” Social Text48 14, no. 3 (Fall 1996): 2. Taylor, “Postcolonial Studies,” 236. Nilsen, “Passages from Marxism,” 560. Grosfugel, “Decolonizing Post-Colonial Studies,”18. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?,” in The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, ed. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin (London: Routledge, 1995). Ibid., 26. Alam, “Peasantry,” 49. As we saw above, it is only now that Chatterjee acknowledges that the “heavily structuralist depiction” of the rebel peasant consciousness and “the portrayal of the subaltern rebel as the new sovereign subject of history” is something that is applicable only to colonial India and thus incapable of understanding Indian peasant in the present (Partha Chatterjee, “After Subaltern Studies,” Economic and Political Weekly 47, no. 35 (September 2012): 45). But he does not acknowledge the fact that it was inadequate even to understand peasant consciousness in colonial India.

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108 David Ludden, “A Brief History of Subalternity,” in Reading Subaltern Studies: Critical History, Contesting Meaning, and the Globalization of South Asia, ed. David Ludden (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001), 21. 109 Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, ed. and trans. Quentin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International, 1971), 419. 110 Ludden, “Brief History,” 13. 111 K. Balagopal, “Drought and TADA in Adilabad,” in Reading Subaltern Studies: Critical History, Contested Meaning and the Globalisation of South Asia, ed. David Ludden (New York: Anthem Press, 2002), 343–357. 112 Subir Sinha, “On the Edge of Civil Society in Contemporary India,” in Reconceptualising Subaltern Politics in India, ed. Alf Nilsen and Srila Roy (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2015). 113 Chatterjee, Nation and Its Fragments, 13. It is with this that the shift of later Subaltern Studies to studying elite practices takes place. As a consequence, the subaltern itself loses focus. Instead, the focus begins to be on subjects like Bengali middle class, colonial prisons, the nation, the community, Indian religion and language etc., (Bahl, “Subaltern Studies,” 91). As Ramachandra Guha noted in a review of Volume 8 of Subaltern Studies: “Over the years, most members of its editorial collective have moved from documenting subaltern dissent to dissecting elite discourse, from writing with (Socialist) passion to following the (postmodernist) fashion” (Ramachandra Guha, “Subaltern and Bhadralok Studies,” Economic and Political Weekly 30, no. 33 (August 1995): 2057). The later Subaltern Studies has argued that this shift has been deliberate, a way to “undertake inquiries into subalternity beyond conventional boundaries.” The focus was expanded “to include elite texts and practices”. Thus, “the presence and pressure of subalternity  .  .  . extend[s] beyond subaltern groups; nothing—not elite practices, state policies, academic disciplines, literary texts, archival sources, language—was exempt from effects of subalternity” (quoted in Vinayak Chaturvedi, “A Critical Theory of Subalternity: Rethinking Class in Indian Historiography,” Left History 12, no. 1 (2007): 23. 114 Homi Bhabha quoted in E. San Juan, Jr., “The National Democratic Revolution: A Gramscian Perspective,” The Philippines Matrix Project, March 13, 2010, https://philcsc.wordpress.com/2010/03/13/the-national-democratic-revolutionand-gramscis-national-popular-strategy/ 115 San Juan, Jr., “The National Democratic Revolution.” 116 See Chitra Joshi, Lost Worlds: Indian Labour and Its Forgotten Histories (London: Anthem Press, 2005). 117 John Roosa, “Passive Revolution Meets Peasant Revolution: Indian Revolution and the Telangana Revolt,” Journal of Peasant Studies 28, no. 4 (2001): 57–94. 118 Cooper, “Conflict and Connection,” 1536. 119 Chibber, Specter of Capital, 83. 120 San Juan, Jr., “The National Democratic Revolution.” 121 A similar overcoming of stagism, of course, is seen with the Russian Revolution when transition to socialism takes place without the stage of industrial capitalism (San Juan, Jr., “The National Democratic Revolution”). 122 Sarkar, Writing Social History, 90. 123 Cooper, “Conflict and Connection,” 1517. 124 Alam, “Peasantry,” 46. 125 Arif Dirlik, The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1997), 20.

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126 Donald Moore, “Subaltern Struggles and the Politics of Place: Remapping Resistance in Zimbabwe’s Eastern Highlands,” Cultural Anthropology 13, no. 3 (1998): 344–381. 127 Cooper, “Conflict and Connection,” 1518. 128 Chaturvedi, “A Critical Theory,” 15. Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhabha played an important role in bringing Foucault, Derrida, and Lacan to the heart of postcolonial studies (Jani, “Marxism”). 129 Spivak, “Postcolonial Theory,” 185. 130 Peter Dews, The Logic of Disintegration: Post-Structuralist Thought and the Claims of Critical Theory (London: Verso, 1987), 35. 131 Dirlik, Postcolonial Aura, 5, 79; See also Parry, Postcolonial Studies, 4. 132 Dirlik, Postcolonial Aura, 20; Vasant Kaiwar, The Postcolonial Orient: The Politics of Difference and the Project of Provincialising Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 15. 133 Taylor, “Postcolonial Studies,” 237, 242. 134 Ludden, “Brief History,” 13. Kaiwar characterizes postcolonial studies as “the less-than-chance encounter between Third World anti-colonialism and American cultural studies under the protective umbrella of German phenomenological existentialism reworked by French poststructuralism and thereby given its detotalised form, all taking place within the sanitised precincts of the US university campuses” (Kaiwar, Postcolonial Orient, 27). 135 Bannerji, “Projects of Hegemony,” 903. 136 Bahl, “Subaltern Studies,” 99. 137 Arif Dirlik, “Place-Based Imagination: Globalism and the Politics of Place,” in Places and Politics in an Age of Globalization, ed. Roxann Prazniak and Arif Dirlik (Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001), 15–51. 138 Chaturvedi, “A Critical Theory,” 17. 139 Here Bartolovich makes an important point about location. Despite the critique of Eurocentrism, postcolonial studies have been as susceptible to it as Marxism because of its “constitutive metropolitanism” (Bartolovich, “Introduction,” 11). Similarly, Grosfugel argues that the two thinkers that Subaltern Studies privileges are Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, both of the postmodernist/ poststructuralist Western canon (“Decolonizing Post-Colonial Studies,” 3). 140 Chakrabarty, Habitations of Modernity, 12. 141 Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization (New York: Vintage, 1973), 68. For Foucault, the “supervision of, and intervention in, the social domain by agencies of welfare and control is more fundamental characteristic of modern societies than an economy released from directly political relations of domination”. This follows Weber for whom “the social forms engendered by purposive or instrumental rationality, with their indifference to personal ties, and their crushing of idiosyncrasy and spontaneity, which represent a profounder threat to human freedom than the class oppression specific to capitalist society” (Dews, Logic of Disintegration, 147, 151). 142 Among the Subalternists, Dipesh Chakrabarty sought to rethink many of the postcolonial positions in light of Marxist criticisms (see Dipesh Chakrabarty, “Invitation to a Dialogue,” in Subaltern Studies IV: Writings on South Asian History and Society, ed. Ranajit Guha (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985), 364–376; Dipesh Chakrabarty, “Marx after Marxism: A Subaltern Historian’s Perspective,” Economic and Political Weekly 28, no. 22 (May 1993): 1094–1096. He accepts that “Marx’s critique of capital and commodity will be indispensable for any critical understanding . . . a critique of modernity in India [cannot] ignore the history of commodification in that society” (Chakrabarty, “Marx after Marxism,” 1094).

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143 Ravi K. Raman, Global Capital and Peripheral Labour: The History and Political Economy of Plantation Workers in India (London: Routledge, 2010), 2. 144 Chakraborty, “Gramci Is Alive!” 266. 145 (Hall quoted in Bartolovich, “Introduction,” 3). 146 Bartolovich, “Introduction,” 12. These inequalities have acquired a more drastic character in the 2010s. 147 Chibber, “Making Sense,” 623. 148 Dirlik, “Is There History?,” 1. 149 Arif Dirlik persuasively argued that postcolonial theory’s emergence itself was linked to a phase of capitalism—the emergence of Third World capitalism, and the arrival of the Third World intellectuals in First World academe. But then he goes onto dismiss postcolonial theory: “rather than a description of anything, [it] is a discourse that seeks to constitute the world in the self-image of intellectuals who view themselves as postcolonial intellectuals” (Dirlik, Postcolonial Aura, 53, 62). This ignores some of the important issues raised by it, as we saw before. 150 See Arturo Escobar, “Place, Economy, and Culture in a Postdevelopment Era,” in Places and Politics in an Age of Globalization, ed. Roxann Prazniak and Arif Dirlik (Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001), 193–217. 151 Rosalind O’ Hanlon and David Washbrook, “After Orientalism: Culture, Criticism, and Politics in the Third World,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 34, no. 1 (January 1992): 147. 152 Dirlik, Postcolonial Aura, 68. 153 Cooper, “Conflict,” 1518. 154 Dirlik, “Is There History?,” 24. 155 Ibid., 33. 156 For a summation of these processes, see D. Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). 157 Ibid., 1. 158 Chibber, Specter of Capital, 100. 159 Taylor, “Not Even Marxist,” already cited. 160 Mezzadra, “Essay,” 924. 161 Taylor, “Postcolonial Studies,” 241. 162 Taylor, “Not Even Marxist.” 163 Chibber, Specter of Capital, 52. 164 Prakash, “Post-Orientalist,” 398. 165 Chatterjee, “After Subaltern Studies,” 45. 166 Chakrabarty, “Climate of History,” 212, 220–1. 167 Bahl, “Subaltern Studies,” 94. 168 Dirlik, “Is There History?,” 1, 12, 8. 169 Ibid.,10. 170 Vivek Dhareshwar, “‘Our Time’: History, Sovereignty and Politics,” Economic and Political Weekly 30, no. 6 (February 1995): 322. 171 Mezzadra, “Essay,” 921. 172 “Decolonizing Post-Colonial Studies 3, 26. Lazarus is not entirely right when he places Mignolo in the Third Worldist camp (Lazarus, “Vivek Chibber,”103). 173 For a Marxist feminist critique of the Subaltern school, see Bannerji, “Projects of Hegemony.” 174 Therefore, Levien is not right when he criticizes Chibber for using these dichotomies (Levien, “Subalternists Scrutinized,” 491). 175 Guha, “On Some Aspects,” 5. 176 Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought in the Colonial World. 177 Sarkar, Writing Social History, 92.

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178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191

192 193 194 195 196 197

198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208

Spivak, “Postcolonial Theory,” 192. Chibber, Specter of Capital, 272–273. Chatterjee, Nation and Its Fragments, 6. Sarkar, Writing Social History, 96. Bannerji, “Projects of Hegemony,” 910, 904. Quoted in Benita Parry, “The Constraints of Chibber’s Criticism: A Review of Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital by Vivek Chibber,” Historical Materialism 25, no. 1 (2017): 198. Kaiwar, Postcolonial Orient, 10. Chatterjee, Nation and Its Fragments, 158–172. Partha Chatterjee, “Agrarian Relations and Communalism: 1926–35,” in Subaltern Studies I: Writings on South Asian History and Society, ed. Ranajit Guha (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982), 37. Chakrabarty, Rethinking Working Class History, 213. Ibid., 218. Joshi, Lost Worlds, 7. P. Sanal Mohan, review of Global Capital and Peripheral Labour: The History and Political Economy of Plantation Workers in India, by Ravi K. Raman, Journal of Agrarian Change 14, no. 1 (2013): 155–159. Vasant Kaiwar, review of Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, by Dipesh Chakrabarty, and Dominance without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India, by Ranajit Guha, Historical Materialism 12, no. 2 (2004): 209–210, 221–222. Chatterjee, “Subaltern Studies,” 73. Ibid. Quoted in Sarkar, Writing Social History, 97–98. Vivek Chibber, “Subaltern Studies Revisited: A Response to Partha Chatterjee,” www.sociology.fas.nyu.edu/docs/IO/225/SubalternStudies-Revisited.pdf (2014): 17. Chibber, “Subaltern Studies Revisited,” 19. Thus, for example, Taylor argues that Chibber articulates a rational choice theory “derivable from neoclassical economics” which is, by implication, positivist (Taylor, “Postcolonial Studies,” 241, 242). According to Anievas, Chibber’s framework is “a peculiar combination of liberal and Marxist elements drawing upon the Rational Choice Marxism of Jon Elster and Erik Olin Wright and the Political Marxism of Robert Brenner and Ellen Wood, dosed with a mix of Rawlsian social-contract theory” (Anievas and Niş ancıoğ l u, “Limits of the Universal,” 38). Crane, “On Vivek Chibber’s Critique.” Taylor, “Not Even Marxist.” Spivak, Other Worlds, 219. Partha Chatterjee, “More on the Modes of Power,” in Selected Subaltern Studies, ed. Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 352. Sarkar, Writing Social History, 88, 100. Chibber, Specter of Capital, 161, 250. Pandey, Construction of Communalism, 22. Chatterjee, “Subaltern Studies,” 73. Thus, it is important to draw out the differences between Europe and India (and even within these), which is something that Chibber glosses over (see Levien, “Subalternists Scrutinized,”488). Chatterjee, “Subaltern Studies,” 73. Ibid.

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209 See Sarkar, Writing Social History, 97. 210 Partha Chatterjee, “Secularism and Toleration,” Economic and Political Weekly 29, no. 28 (July 1994): 1768–1777. Chatterjee argues that Western notions of secularism are inapplicable to a multi-religious society like that of India. 211 Akeel Bilgrami, “Secular Liberalism and Moral Psychology of Identity,” Economic and Political Weekly 32, no. 40 (October 1997): 2533. 212 Sarkar, Writing Social History, 101. 213 Cooper, “Conflict,” 1542–1543. 214 Ibid., 1518. 215 Bannerji, “Projects of Hegemony,” 908. Dipesh Chakrabarty grapples with this problem (even though he does not provide an answer). He asks: “Can we . . . build democratic, communitarian institutions on the basis of the nonindividualistic, but hierarchical and illiberal, precapitalist bonds that have survived and sometimes resisted—or even flourished under- the onslaught of capital?” (Chakrabarty, Rethinking Working Class History, xiv). 216 Sudipta Kaviraj, Introduction to Politics in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002), 28. 217 Nilsen, “‘Real, Practical Emancipation’?” 218 Prakash, “Post-Orientalist,” 397. 219 For an elaboration, see Nissim Mannathukkaren, “Postcolonialism and Modernity: A Critical Realist Critique,” Journal of Critical Realism 9, no. 3 (2010): 299–327. 220 Chibber, Specter of Capital, 208. 221 Taylor, “Not Even Marxist.” 222 Ibid. 223 Mezzadra, “Essay,”924. 224 Chibber, Specter of Capital, 176. 225 Ibid., 197. 226 Ibid., 179; original emphasis. He does provide a lengthy theoretical exposition of how culture and a universal rationality are not mutually exclusive (see Chibber, Specter of Capital, Chapter 8. He argues that the affirmation of rationality does not amount to it existing outside of a meaning universe. It only means that basic needs (and a rationality based on it) are “such a powerful motivational force, cultures have to create codes and conventions that respect and acknowledge them” (Chibber, “Confronting Postcolonial Theory,” 315). 227 Chibber, Specter of Capital, 197. This, Chibber clarifies, is not to be confused with the maximization of economic or self-interests. Being interest-sensitive is not being interest-maximizing, an elision that the Subalternists make according to him (Chibber, Specter of Capital, 198). 228 Spivak, “Postcolonial Theory,” 189. 229 Rafaty, “Gayatri Spivak.” 230 Chakrabarty, “Climate of History,” 220, 222. 231 Chatterjee, “Subaltern Studies,” 74. This is parallel to the critique of Chibber’s positivism and tenor of rational choice theory made by other critics. 232 Chibber, Specter of Capital, 202. 233 Ibid. 234 Ibid., 203. 235 Ibid., 205. 236 Guha, “On Some Aspects,” 6–7. 237 Ibid. Spivak had criticized this analysis, which, for her, in seeking to “avoid a vulgar Marxist glorification of the peasant,” had ended up as “evolutionism” (Spivak, In Other Worlds, 189.) 238 Chibber, Specter of Capital, 33, 34.

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239 Guha quoted in ibid., 49. 240 Ranajit Guha, Dominance without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India (London: Harvard University Press, 1997), 5. 241 Spivak, “Postcolonial Theory,” 191. 242 Chibber, “Postcolonial Studies.” Thus, for example, Guha argues that the failure of Indian National Congress is its “failure to assimilate the class interests of peasants and workers into a bourgeois hegemony” (Guha, Dominance, 133). 243 Chibber, Specter of Capital, 98. See chapters 3 and 4 in Chibber, Specter of Capital for a detailed exposition of the French and English cases as a critique of the Subalternists’ understanding of democracy. 244 Chibber, Specter of Capital, 147. 245 This, of course, should not lead to a position which is seen in Chibber that subaltern classes are alone responsible for the transformation to democracy which would ignore the role of other factors. In India, on the other hand, the transition to a formal democracy was accompanied by Gramsci’s passive revolution. Here, Indian bourgeoisie incorporated “subaltern classes into a democratic developmentalist regime, without ever sacrificing its ability to use coercive methods” (Crane, “On Vivek Chibber’s Critique”). Of course, passive revolution itself cannot become a single blanket term to understand widely varied societies. As Levien argues, “In trying to argue that capitalism in India looks ‘fundamentally’ or ‘basically’ the same as anywhere else, Chibber gives the impression of flattening out the differences between what Barrington Moore . . . called the various ‘routes to modernity’” (Levien, “Subalternists Scrutinized,” 488). 246 Chaturvedi, “A Critical Theory,” 24. 247 Sarkar, Writing Social History, 89. 248 Quoted in Sarkar, Writing Social History, 89. 249 Joshi, Lost Worlds, 8. 250 Ibid., 11. 251 J. Devika, “Egalitarian Developmentalism, Communist Mobilization and the Question of Caste in Kerala State, India,” Journal of Asian Studies 69, no. 3 (2010): 803. 252 Ibid., 803–804. 253 Thus, in the Philippines, the inability of the Communist Party to articulate the material demands of the peasantry and its focus on the questions of national independence led it to be marginalized by elite politics (San Juan, Jr., “The National Democratic Revolution”). 254 T. T. Sreekumar argues that the Luddite view of the Communists against computerization and adoption of mechanization in traditional industries, as it has happened in Kerala, was itself a product of economism (T. T. Sreekumar, Civil Samoohavum, Idathupakshavum [Civil Society and the Left] (Kozhikode: Olive Publications, 2007), 49). But there have been tendencies which have gone against developmentalism as well like opposition to the displacement of people from big dams. 255 Spivak, “Postcolonial Theory,” 191. 256 Chibber, Specter of Capital, 10. 257 Scott, “Aftermaths,” 4. 258 Ibid., 8. 259 Chibber, Specter of Capital, 9. 260 Chibber, “Confronting Postcolonial Theory,” 317. 261 Kaiwar, Postcolonial Orient. 262 Dirlik, “Is There History?,” 23. 263 O’ Hanlon and Washbrook, “After Orientalism,” 145.

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264 David Scott, Conscripts of Modernity: The Tragedy of Colonial Enlightenment (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), 3. 265 The works, written from various theoretical perspectives, by Robin Jeffrey, T. J. Nossiter, Ronald Herring, K. K. N. Kurup, P. Radhakrishnan, Olle Tornquist, Dilip Menon, Patrick Heller, Manali Desai, J. Devika, T. T. Sreekumar, Sunny Kappikad, Luisa Steur, and referenced here, have been particularly useful in understanding different aspects of the communist movement in Kerala. 266 Menon, Communism in South India. 267 Ibid., x. 268 Ibid., 2. 269 Ibid., 4. 270 Sanal Mohan, “Narrativizing Oppression and Suffering: Theorizing Slavery,” South Asia Research 26, no. 1 (2006): 34. 271 The local was never a completely closeted space especially in a region which has been a part of global trade networks for centuries. 272 Dilip Menon, “Being a Brahmin the Marxist Way: E.M.S Namboodiripad and the Pasts of Kerala,” in Invoking the Past: The Uses of History in South Asia, ed. Daud Ali (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), 40–66. 273 Kathleen Gough, “Kerala Politics and the 1965 Elections,” International Journal of Comparative Sociology 8, no.1 (1967): 63. 274 Sreeraj and Vakulabharanam, “High Growth,” 378. 275 Devika, “Kerala: People’s Planning Once Again,” Kafila, May 20, 2020, https:// kafila.online/2020/05/20/kerala-peoples-planning-once-again-please/. 276 Menon, Communism in South India; Rajarshi Dasgupta, “Rhyming Revolution: Marxism and Culture in Colonial Bengal,” Studies in History 21, no. 1 (2005): 80; Shalini Sharma, Radical Politics in Colonial Punjab: Governance and Sedition (Oxford: Routledge, 2009). 277 Subrata Mitra, “Flawed Paradigms: Some ‘Western’ Representations of Indian Politics,” in State and Nation in the Context of Social Change, ed. T. V. Sathyamurthy (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), 237. 278 Singh, “We-ness and Welfare,” 286. 279 Robert Hardgrave quoted in Gough, “Kerala Politics,” 64. 280 Dipankar Gupta, Interrogating Caste: Understanding Hierarchy and Difference (New Delhi: Penguin, 2002), 1, 8. 281 Lucy Caroll, “Colonial Perceptions of Indian Society and the Emergence of Caste(s) Association,” The Journal of Asian Studies 37, no. 2 (1978): 235–248. 282 Nicholas Dirks, “Castes of Mind,” Representations 37 (1992): 67, 73. 283 Singh, “We-ness and Welfare,” 290. 284 Mohan, “Narrativizing Oppression,” 8. 285 Ritty Lukose, “Re (Casting) the Secular,” Social Analysis 50, no. 3 (2006): 40. 286 Dirks, “Castes of Mind,” 76. 287 Chatterjee, Nation and Its Fragments, 5. 288 As we will see in the following, the most prominent example of this was the “People’s War” line when the Communists decided to go against the very strong national current and support the British and the Allied forces when Hitler attacked Russia in 1941. Thus, the national-popular was not conceived only based on national concerns. This does not mean that anti-colonial nationalisms, even if of the bourgeois variety, were incapable of adopting cosmopolitan values. As Pheng Cheah has argued, some of the progressive values that informed cosmopolitanism also informed nationalism (see Pheng Cheah, “Interview with Pheng Cheah on Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism and Human Rights,” interview by Yuk Hui, Theory, Culture and Society, March 17, 2011, www.

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289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298

299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310

theoryculturesociety.org/interview-with-pheng-cheah-on-cosmopolitanismnationalism-and-human-rights). This was seen in the post-independence Indian state under Nehru which professed values of Third Worldism. But, here in the period that we are looking at, Communists were also branded anti-national for not agreeing with the “official” nationalist position on occasions. This was observed in the position adopted by the Left faction within the CPI in the 1962 India-China War (Subho Basu and Auritro Majumder, “Dilemmas of Parliamentary Communism: The Rise and Fall of the Left in West Bengal,” Critical Asian Studies 45, no. 2 (2013): 180). Basu and Majumder, “Parliamentary Communism,” 192. As Terence Ranger shows with regard to Southern Rhodesia, the resistance to colonial rule in the early days involved a going beyond kinship units and tribes to create a “wider network of affiliation” (Cooper, “Conflict,” 1520). Gramsci, Selections from Cultural Writings, 132. Sarkar, Writing Social History, 83. Jani, “Marxism.” Sudipta Kaviraj does not completely adopt the philosophical assumptions of postcolonial theory even while showing some theoretical affinities with Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory. Sudipta Kaviraj, “On the Structure of Nationalist Discourse,” in State and Nation in the Context of Social Change, ed. T. V. Sathyamurthy (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), 326. Menon, Communism in South India, 194. Sharma, Radical Politics in Colonial Punjab. Ibid., 3. For an early comparative study of different regions, Paul Brass and Marcus Franda, eds., Radical Politics in South Asia (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1973). It is beyond the scope of this book to undertake such a comparative excursus. See Kaviraj, “Nationalist Discourse,” 333. Annie, municipality-level Communist activist, interview, August 2017. Ramesh, senior journalist, interview, November 2012. Vijayan, a professional and Communist sympathizer, interview, December 2011. Ritty Lukose, Liberalization’s Children: Gender, Youth, and Consumer Citizenship in Globalizing India (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009), 50. Guruprakash,* lower-level Communist activist, interview, May 2003. Aditya Nigam, “Logic of Failed Revolution,” Economic and Political Weekly 35, no. 5 (January 2000): 265. Kaviraj, “Nationalist Discourse,” 327. Nigam, “Logic of Failed Revolution,” 264. Lukose, “Re (Casting) the Secular,” 50. Luisa Steur, “Indigenist Mobilization: ‘Identity’ versus ‘Class’ after the Kerala Model of Development?,” (Ph.D. Thesis, Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, Central European University, Budapest, 2011), 141. As Damodaran notes: “We were told that Stalin was the ‘great teacher’, the ‘guiding star’, who was building socialism in the USSR and the leader of world socialism (K. Damodaran, “Memoir of an Indian Communist,” New Left Review 93 (1975): 36. And as the most important Communist leader in the early period of communism in Kerala, P. Krishna Pillai, argued in 1946 that Stalin is wrongly referred to as the “Russian dictator” (Krishna Pillai, Sakhakkele Munnottu [March on, Comrades]: The Collected Works of Krishna Pillai, ed. Andalat (Thiruvananthapauram: Chintha, 1998), 431).

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311 See some of the works like G. D. Overstreet and M. Windmiller, Communism in India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959); John H. Kautsky, Moscow and the Communist Party of India (New York: John Wiley, 1956) and Victor M. Fic, Peaceful Transition to Communism in India (Bombay: Nachiketa, 1967). 312 Sharma, Radical Politics in Colonial Punjab, 3. 313 As early as 1951 the Communist Party of India (CPI) inaugurated a new program which talked of an Indian revolutionary path which rejected both the Chinese and Russian paths and which was based on “our own specific conditions”; “a path of Leninism applied to Indian conditions” Commenting on the Chinese path, it said, we cannot make their “necessity into a binding principle for us” (Communist Party of India, Statement of Policy (New Delhi, 1951), 2, 7, 6). Javeed Alam has persuasively argued that the fraternal relations of collaboration and advice that existed did not mean that Indian communism was controlled by Moscow. He also does not deny that this advice often hindered independent thinking (Javeed Alam, “Communist Politics in Search of Hegemony,” in Wages of Freedom: Fifty Years of the Indian Nation-State, ed. Partha Chatterjee (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 190–191). The communist movement’s efficacy declined in the periods when it accepted diktats from the Comintern (Basu and Majumder, “Parliamentary Communism,” 174). After Stalin’s death and CPSU’s 20th Congress, the Communist Party in India had decided to toe an independent line (see Bhabani Sengupta, Communism in Indian Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), 46. One of the contributions of Indian communism has been the use of parliamentary methods in the struggle for socialism. As Nossiter writes, it is in this aspect that it has “made a creative contribution to the pool of applied communism” in the world (T. J. Nossiter, Communism in Kerala: A Study in Political Adaptation (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982), 106). 314 As Damodaran notes, “Lenin’s theses on the colonial question were not known to Indian Communists till the end of the fifties” (Damodaran, “Memoir,” 38). 315 Desai argues that “parliamentary left in India is Stalinist in rhetoric, but ever flexible . . . in politics (Manali Desai, State Formation and Radical Democracy in India, 1860–1990 (London: Routledge, 2006), 8). Yet, the most catastrophic event in parliamentary communism was the split of the Communist Party of India (CPI) on ideological grounds, including that of positions which were in favor or critical of the ideological line of the Soviet Union (Basu and Majumder, “Parliamentary Communism,” 180). The original CPI turned to the right and later aligned with the Congress for a period while the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM) constituted itself as the real and radical Left and was to become the dominant and popular Communist Party. This was despite the fact a “galaxy of top leadership” went with the CPI in Kerala (P. Govinda Pillai,* prominent Marxist ideologue, interview, July 2010). From 1980, the CPI and CPM are a part of the Left Democratic Front in Kerala (henceforth, unless stated, references to the “party” are about an undivided CPI, or the CPM after the split). It should also be remembered that the flexibility did not allow the CPM at the national level to lead the Indian government—through a coalition of Left and non-Left parties—when the unprecedented opportunity arose in 1996, thus displaying tendencies of theoretical dogmatism. This is known as the “historic blunder (Nigam, “Logic of Failed Revolution,” 264). One of the interesting features of Indian communism (not just in Kerala), and despite its emergence in a “traditional” agrarian society, was generally its avoidance of personalized leadership, the dominant feature of Indian politics. Collective

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316

317 318

319 320

321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328

329 330 331 332 333

leadership has generally been the norm albeit with the strict policing of democratic dissent within the party and at great cost to further democratization. Thus, the alliance of the CPM with the Muslim League in 1967, as writer Paul Zacharia argues, brought Muslims to the mainstream of Kerala as equal participants in politics (Paul Zacharia, “Avasanathe Chinthakan” [The Last Thinker], in E. M. S.: Vakkum Samoohavum [EMS: Word and Society], ed. K. Gopinathan (Thrissur: Current Books, 1998), 501). B. R. P. Bhaskar, “Vargamenna Mithyayum, Jathiyenna Yatharthyavum” [The Myth of Class and the Reality of Caste], in Lal Salaam [Red Salute], ed. C. Anoop (Kottayam: DC Books, 2001), 218. Ramachandra Guha, An Anthropologist among the Marxists and Other Essays (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001), 211. Of course, unlike the theorist, the political activist has to contend with the popular. Therefore, there will be more flexibility in the latter’s position (Stephen Cullenberg, personal communication, November 2003). In the communist movement, the acknowledgement of the popular was not only instrumental as it can be in mass politics. Basu and Majumder, “Parliamentary Communism,” 181. Ronald J. Herring, “Stealing Congress’s Thunder: The Rise to Power of a Communist Movement in South India,” in When Parties Fail: Emerging Alternative Organizations, ed. Kay Lawson and Peter H. Merkl (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), 397. The fact that communist theorizing was limited to one individual was a major lacuna. Govinda Pillai, interview. Govinda Pillai co-authored a book with E. M. S. Namboodiripad called Gramscian Vichara Viplavam [Gramscian Revolution in Thought] (Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha Publishers, 1996). Zacharia, “Avasanathe Chinthakan,”501–502. K. Venu, “EMS: Dharshanika Rashtriya Vilayiruthalinu Oru Aamukham” [EMS: A Foreword to a Philosophico-Political Evaluation], in Lal Salaam [Red Salute], ed. C. Anoop (Kottayam: DC Books, 2001), 141. Chakrabarty, “Marx after Marxism,” 1094. Anjan Chakrabarty and Stephen Cullenberg, Transition and Development in India (New York: Routledge, 2003), 17. Ponna Wignaraja, “Rethinking Democracy and Development,” in New Social Movements in the South: Empowering the People, ed. Ponna Wignaraja (New Delhi: Vistaar, 1993), 4–35. Charles Taylor, “Two Theories of Modernity,” in Alternative Modernities, ed. Dilip Parmeshwar Gaonkar (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 189. But Taylor uses social imaginary from a different perspective. For him, modernity is a radically new dispensation, which did not have moorings in the past. But modernity, while radically new in many ways, is, at the same time, the accumulation of many micro-moments of critique, “the localized accretions to a tradition of critique” (Lele, “Orientalism,” 70). Chibber, Specter of Capital, 131. Cooper, “Conflict,” 1528. Rafaty, “Gayatri Spivak.” This appropriation of institutions of European origins like trade unions, industrial relations boards will be explored in later chapters. Such appropriation is seen in the African context as well (see Cooper, “Conflict,” 1542). Cooper, “Conflict,” 1545.

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If our students are allowed to pursue their studies in the right atmosphere with all that a well-equipped school stands for, the danger of communism is as remote as is the danger of any other “ism” unless of course these “isms” are able to establish themselves on the basis of their inherent truth of substance . . . [next paragraph] good education will undoubtedly combat communism because it is incompatible with any kind of “ism”. An “ism” is a symptom of individual and social imbalance.1

The sheer hubris of the administrators of the newly formed nation-state in their ability to “mold” citizens through one of modernity’s greatest tools, education, has proved, in retrospect, to be nothing but Panglossian optimism and a refusal to understand the “great transformation” that was happening in their midst: a transformation that culminated in the democratic election of a communist government in 1957. This transformation was brought about by the peasants and the working class. This and the next chapter will show that what is more important here is that the transformations were not the result of a spontaneous movement of the peasantry, as valorized in the “history from below” of the Subaltern Studies, but occurred on a terrain where spontaneity met conscious leadership of the Communist Party and its precursor, the Congress Socialist Party. They will also demonstrate the overcoming of a fragmentary perspective prominent in Subaltern Studies. If the modernity/tradition dichotomy had to be overcome, then the modern project inspired by Marxism had to penetrate the worldview and common sense of the peasants and agricultural workers. Many of the modernity projects in the colonized societies failed because of the fact that a huge gap separated the modernizing elite from the common people.2 In the absence of a “sentimental connection between intellectuals and people-nation . . . the reactions between [them] are reduced to, relationships of a purely bureaucratic and formal order.”3 This is when instrumental rationality becomes pervasive. The important characteristic of the negotiation of modernity by the Communists in Kerala was that there were attempts to formulate theory 77

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in accordance with the spontaneous feelings of the masses.4 The reciprocal relationship between the two was the main reason for the success of the Communists. This, of course, did not rule out tendencies which mechanically applied theory or that there could be divergences, and the peasantry and the working classes could go beyond the initiatives of the leadership or the party. Communists managed to construct a national-popular will by overcoming the separation between the intellectuals and people—a prominent feature in other societies too, but accentuated here because of severe caste hierarchies. Yet, eventually, it was to remain incomplete by not including all the people in equal measure, and its significance was to be in comparative terms. The process of building even a semblance of national-popular was a difficult one characterized by fault lines and divisions and could only be achieved through “long ideological and political preparation, organically devised in advance to reawaken popular passions and enable them to be concentrated and brought simultaneously to detonation point”5 and not through mere economistic struggles or adventurism of armed voluntarism. At the same time, the communist project’s promise of overcoming the material/cultural split and bringing about both caste and class equality is what drew the masses away from the Gandhian bourgeois nationalist project. This demonstrates the inadequacy of a merely culturalist understanding of society which is prominent in Subaltern Studies. The processes that entrenched communism in society run counter to the theoretical propositions of the Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory. They do not account for the complex ways in which large-scale mobilizations are constructed and the ways in which newer consciousness arises by intermingling with existing ones.6 While it’s true that many orthodox Marxists have looked at peasant radicalism with contempt and suspicion, the construction of communist hegemony in Kerala was not premised on the “death of the peasant,” but achieved through the peasantry and the agricultural labor. What the Subaltern Studies claims as the theoretically novel project of inaugurating a democratic project with the peasant as the citizen finds a pre-emptive resonance a few decades before in the communist movement. As a Communist Party document from 1943 puts it: Kerala’s peasant movement is the heart of our party. It consists of activists who have politically grown by working among peasants in the inner regions. . . . Since Kerala has not developed industrially, and does not have many industrial centres, the masses are peasants dependent on agriculture. . . . The political and economic achievements of the party have been made possible through the peasant movement. Therefore, the main front of the party is the peasant movement. Building the peasant movement is thus equivalent to building the party.7 78

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However, unlike in the Subalternist project, the peasant is not essentialized and valorized in an ahistorical fashion. Also, unlike the elitist modernization projects, and despite linear and stagist tendencies, democracy is not postponed until a modern industrial working class is constructed.

The economy Without understanding the material context, it would be impossible to make sense of the social transformation. This context acts as its enabling as well as limiting condition. Here is a brief and very broad outline of the economy in the period in which socialism and communism began to take hold. The state of Kerala was formed in 1956 joining together three regions: Malabar, Travancore and Cochin. Under the colonial rule, Malabar was directly administered by the British whereas the latter two were princely states ruled by kings but indirectly under the control of the British. The land tenure system of Kerala has been considered as one of the most complex and bewildering systems in India with a “maze of intermediary rights, esoteric usufructuary mortgage tenures [and] complex subinfeudation.”8 However, to simplify it, we could characterize it broadly, following Daniel Thorner, as a “many-tiered edifice of interests in land—janmies [land-lords], kanamadars [kanakkars, superior or supervising tenants], verumpattadars [verumpattakkars, cultivating tenants or tenants-at-will]—rests on a mass of landless laborers known as Cherumas, Pulayas, or Poliyars [Dalit untouchable castes].”9 The janmi with janmam rights (birthright) over land also enjoyed social and ritual status and privileges. This class looked down cultivation as “degrading work.”10 Namboodiripad called the system jati–janmi–naduvazhi medhavitvam (caste–landlord–chieftain hegemony).11 Legitimacy for agrestic slavery of the Dalit labor came, as P. Sanal Mohan points out, from “moral and religious codes articulated through the ideology and practice of Hinduism and caste.”12 In the 1850s, 12% of the Malabar population and in the early decades of the 19th century, around 10% and 15% of the population of Travancore and Cochin were slaves.13 Slaves could be bought, sold and transferred either on their own or together with the land.14 I have already noted the close caste–class correspondence in land rights and that Namboodiris and Nairs controlled most of the land. However, it should be noted that these are “typologies [that] represent central tendencies .  .  . not all janmis were Nambudiris and Nayars.”15 And Muslims [and Christians] could be janmis as well.16 In Malabar, under the British rule from the late 18th century, the tharavad (the matrilineal joint family household of the Nairs),17 which was a unit of land control as well as administrative functions, was conferred with absolute proprietary rights unlike the pre-colonial era.18 Even wastelands and forest lands were a part of janmam land.19 Before the British colonization, the product of janmam holding was shared according to customary law. Each 79

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sharer could transfer his rights on land without hindrance. The hereditary janmam land could be bought and sold but the janmi had to adhere to the customary law and the inferior rights of the kanakkar, verumpattakar and agrestic slaves on the land remained the same.20 This strengthening of the landlord class by the colonial state at the expense of the traditional rights of the peasantry21 and labor led to serious agrarian discontent in the 19th century and series of peasant rebellions, mainly by the Mapillas (Malabar Muslims) against their upper-caste Hindu landlords.22 This agrarian situation is what led historians to characterize Malabar peasantry as having “lived and worked in conditions of extreme penury entailed by the twin exactions of lord and state.”23 An oft-cited statement has been the assessment by a colonial officer who concluded that Malabar had “the unenviable reputation of being the most rack-rented place on the face of the earth.”24 Similarly, another state official in 1915 was of the opinion that the “lot of cultivating tenants in Malabar was deplorable.”25 It was not just the land revenue that the cultivators had to contend with. The monopolies of trade that the colonial government had on items like salt, tobacco and timber really affected the peasantry and agricultural laborers. Taxes were imposed on carpenters, ironsmiths, goldsmiths/silversmiths, boatmen, etc.26 The colonial state taxed the most important necessities of daily life including “houses, shops, cattle, looms, ferries, fishing-nets, tapping knives, toddy and arrack [local forms of alcohol]. In fact, nothing fell outside the exacting grasp of the state.” All these additional taxes amounted to 25% of the land revenue in the latter half of the 19th century.27 Thus, the dominant characterization of Malabar has focused on features like rack renting, insecurity of tenure, lack of incentives to cultivating tenants to make improvements, evictions by landlords, colossal land and other tax burdens leading to the immiserization of the peasantry and a stagnant agricultural, especially wetland economy. In contrast to this, there have been studies which looked at the economic changes as well as placed Malabar in the context of the world economy and as an exporter of agricultural products to the outside world.28 Thus, Shea argues that a “commercial society” coexisted along with a “feudal” and “rural” society for 2,000 years.29 Prakash points out, under the British in the first half of the 19th-century, commercial crops like pepper, coconut, coconut products, cardamom and timber were the main exports and then later plantation crops like coffee, rubber and tea expanded (under European planters).30 By the 20th century, industries had begun as well: weaving, saw mill, match, brick and tile, etc.31 However, despite this, and the expansion of cultivation, especially of commercial crops, change in crop patterns and economic positions of various agrarian classes, both authors see the economy as very backward and stagnant.32 This is because of a variety of factors, including the feudal land tenure system, caste and family structure, growing population pressure on land and extractive policies of the colonial state which could not be overcome by the slow growth of industry and commerce.33 80

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However, against this view of backwardness, Dilip Menon put forth the thesis of “fragile affluence” in the first three decades of the 20th century. He argues, rather than focus, unlike much of the stagnation argument, only on the wetland region and South Malabar, it is important also to look at dryland, forest and North Malabar and place them in the context of the world economy. Based on trends like the tremendous growth of crops like pepper and coconut, he sees small cultivators as responding to the demands of “commercialized agriculture, fuelled by international demand” and participating in it “willingly, to their profit.”34 Thus, he argues, what emerges is not “a tale of consistent poverty within a subsistence economy, but a picture of fragile affluence created by a cash crop economy.”35 Even as this is the case, he notes that the “degree of integration into the market did not necessarily mean the undermining of patronal, reciprocal relations between large tharavadus and dependent laborers and cultivators.”36 However, with the onset of the Depression, the boom in the world prices of cash crops that was witnessed in the 1920s came to an end. The prices of crops like pepper and coconut fell drastically.37 Despite the fragile affluence in which small cultivators benefited, the percentage of agricultural laborers rose in the period between 1921 and 1931 from 58% to 68%, a very high number.38 Kerala as a whole had the second-highest rate of proletarianization in India (after Bengal) between 1910 and 1950 which was also a result of growing commercialization and trade.39 The economic downturn caused by the Depression contributed to this as well.40 With the effects of the Depression, the small cultivators were again forced to depend on the large landowning feudal lords for subsistence; the large landowners who controlled the production of paddy exercised real dominance in the countryside considering also the food grain deficiency of the region.41 Even though there were some landlords (as well as kannakkar) with small holdings, large swathes of land were under the control of a few landlords, especially in South Malabar.42 The colonial impact on the economy and further integration with the world market had led to the overemphasis on the cultivation of commercial cash crops. If Malabar was an exporter of paddy in the early part of the 19th century, by 1870, rice and grains constituted a big part of its imports.43 And by 1937–1938 Malabar had nearly 50% of total land under cultivation for cash crops. The exploitation of the colony by the metropolis through the extraction of raw materials from it and the export of finished goods to it was starkly evident in Travancore. In 1937–1938, 59.2% of the imports consisted of essential consumption goods (mainly food grains) whereas 65.1% of exports consisted of raw materials and semi-manufactured goods.44 The export orientation of the economy can be gauged from the fact that in Travancore, the index of export trade rose from 100 in 1854–1855 to 5,019 in 1936–1937.45 The British takeover of Malabar introduced substantial changes in its social structure. The introduction of the notion of private property in land and the vesting of the rights of 81

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the land in the landlord, as noted, radically altered agrarian relations. The traditional rights of the peasant tenants were eroded. To this extent, the Subalternists are right in emphasizing that colonialism changed the colonized’s material condition. This should not mean that this is one-sided phenomenon where only the colonizer had agency.46 Compared to Malabar, Travancore, ruled indirectly by the British, had a very quiescent peasant history due to some distinguishing characteristics. The royalty, which owned almost all the land in the state, conferred ownership rights on the tenants of the state in 1865 in the hope of boosting commercial agriculture. The royalty also pursued these policies with the intention of strengthening the monarchy and curbing the power of the landlords.47 Slavery was also formally abolished in 1855 even though agricultural laborers continued to be in a semi-slave status. However, Ronald Herring has argued that the less oppressive landlordism in Travancore did not mean that it had a healthy agrarian structure.48 Despite the comparative security enjoyed by the peasantry (but not necessarily at the lower levels of the hierarchy) in Travancore, the rate of proletarianization increased between 1901 and 1931 and also immiserization at times of crisis like the Depression of the 1930s could not be prevented.49 The agrarian structure of the tiny Cochin princely state50 fell in between Malabar and Travancore and had brought about land reforms similar to that of Travancore.51 The pattern of landholding shows the differences between the regions as well as that of Kerala with India. The agitation for tenancy reforms had begun with the formation of the Malabar Kudiyan Sangham (Malabar Tenants Union) in 1922, an organization of the rich and middle peasantry. Even though land in Malabar was owned by the great landowners, the disdain for cultivation meant they never cultivated the land directly. From the 1900s town-based professional class took on tenancies to cultivate cash crops for profit. This class too was not a directly cultivating one; but leased out the land on sub-tenancies.52 The struggle was carried out by lawyers, intellectuals, and journalists of prominent kanakkar families and the methods were totally constitutional. The government stood stolidly by the landlords over a century of peasant uprisings. As F. B. Evans, a colonial officer argued, it would be a “grave political blunder to weaken the janmi [landlord] class which was admittedly Table 2.1 Agrarian Class Structure in Colonial Kerala, 1931 Region Travancore Cochin Malabar All India

Non-cultivating Owners

OwnerCultivators

Tenants

Agricultural Laborers

2.18 1.8

61 19 6 67.8

6 21 23 12.6

31 56 68 17.9

Source: Desai, “Party Formation,” 43.

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a political force on the side of the government.” Similarly, the government was also sure “It would be unwise to raise [the] question [of conferring occupancy rights on tenants] now because . . . it is really a part of socialism.”53 It should be noted that this is much before the arrival of socialism in Malabar. However, with the entry of the educated and articulate members of the rich peasantry (mainly belonging to the upper-caste Nairs), it was forced to concede to some of their demands in less than a decade.54 The Malabar Tenancy Act was passed in 1930 which granted fixity of tenure, fixation of fair rent, ban on arbitrary evictions, etc. However, the Act did nothing for the verumpattakar, or the tenants-at-will. The attitude of the kanakkar toward the verumpattakar changed and what the Act did was while “curbing the rights of traditional janmis [it] created a new class of janmis.”55 The kanakkar continued to exploit the verumpattakar in the same fashion as the janmis. Besides, the legislation favored the wetland cultivators in South Malabar and ignored garden and shifting cultivation in the North.56 The demands of the tenants-at-will were to constitute an important part of the socialist/communist movement in the future.57 In 1931, the British government went ahead to increase the land revenue by 18.75%. This affected the peasantry which was already reeling under the price crash. The lords, to overcome the increased exactions by the state, began to impose feudal levies on their tenants other than increasing the rent.58 The condition of the cultivators began to worsen with many being forced to sell their interests in land.59 The serious condition of the peasantry forced the government to suspend the collection of the enhanced land revenue.60 The special officer appointed by the Madras Government to look into the indebtedness of agriculturists observed: The agriculturist has hardly anything left after paying his dues (debt, rent, tax) etc. and his condition becomes embarrassing. What is applicable to the smaller ryots [farmer] is applicable on a larger scale to the bigger ones. . . . In short, agricultural indebtedness has become . . . the bane of village life.61 The 1939 Malabar Tenancy Committee, which was constituted to go into the unresolved question of the inferior tenants, noted that almost 50% of the agricultural produce went out of the peasants’ hands to the landlords and the government.62 However, the main demands of the inferior tenants like reduction in rent rates and abolition of one year’s rent as deposit were rejected. The condition of the agricultural laborers was even worse with the wages they earned needed to be trebled to make them a living wage.63 The ineffectiveness of the clauses of the Tenancy Act of 1930 was proved when there were more than 20,000 evictions ordered in the period 1940–1946 in Malabar District.64 The Second World War and its aftermath were characterized by severe shortages of food grains.65 The prices of basic commodities 83

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had increased manifold. Landlords, capitalists and black marketers ruled the roost. Demobilized soldiers swelled the ranks of the unemployed.66 The people who made money out of black marketing invested it in buying land.67 As the government itself put it: “To sum up, the present situation in Malabar, the condition of the people is deplorable and they are sunk in indebtedness, poverty and misery.”68 Even after India’s independence, the condition of the peasantry was not ameliorated. The measures taken like shifting cultivation charter of 1948 which prohibited the denial of cultivation of wastelands by landlords and also decreed low rates of rent for them remained only on paper. The demand for the cultivation of wasteland was the fulcrum around which the struggles of the Communist Party and the peasant unions were to be launched. The amendments to the Tenancy Act of 1930 brought about in 1951 perpetuated its lacunae. It did not contain any provisions for the substantial amelioration of the condition of the inferior tenants. The relative security through tenancy reforms in Travancore led to the emergence of capitalist entrepreneurs from among peasantry who pioneered the cultivation of plantation crops in the hilly regions as well as a capitalintensive process of reclaiming of backwaters for rice cultivation in a region called Kuttanad.69 Here, a small class of large landowners and capitalist farmers emerged with huge numbers of agricultural labor. This was unlike the rest of Travancore where it was predominantly a class of small-holding owner cultivators.70 In Travancore despite the phenomenal growth of banking,71 a majority of the agricultural loans were sought for the cultivation of cash crops, which benefited mainly the Christian community because of its family structure.72 It is not that the class and caste structure was completely immutable. The break-up of the joint family structure of the Nairs allowed communities with relatively less land traditionally to acquire land. Thus, in the period 1926–1940, Christians and Ezhavas were net buyers and Nairs, net sellers of land.73 Yet, the position of the tenants-at-will and small ownercultivators were scarcely better than before. By 1930 on an average, the rural family was indebted to the extent of Rs. 380.74 Travancore, which had 25% of the total cultivated area under coconut cultivation, suffered badly (mainly, the predominant small holders) because of the fall in the price of coconut (which throughout the 1930s was lower than the average price of the later 19th century). In 1934, the state witnessed an alarming number of sales of land because of the failure to pay land revenue.75 Along with these developments was the persistence of the other characteristics of a colonial economy like the predominance of foreign capital and de-industrialization.76 In the 1930s, 5/6th of the total plantation economy and 60% of the coir industry was under British control.77 This forced the indigenous bourgeoisie to invest in land.78 This, “in turn, led to a gigantic transformation in the character of landed property itself, i.e., it became a commodity that can be bought and sold like any other commodity.”79 The effect of this growing transfer and concentration of land came to be noticed in the 1941 census.80 The 84

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process of pauperization was not confined to the peasantry, as Namboodiripad points out, but affected a section of the landlords too.81 The condition of the urban working classes too was quite fragile as it was acknowledged in the Travancore Legislative Assembly.82 The outbreak of the Second World War provided another opportunity for the export economy of Kerala. The price of coconut had increased more than fivefold by the end of the war and by 1950 it had shot up to sevenfold. However, what was phenomenal was the growth in rubber exports (mainly a result of the Japanese conquest of Malaya, which cut off one of the main sources of natural rubber): by 1945, Travancore’s rubber exports had shown an increase of a phenomenal 750 times since the base it touched during the Depression. The boom was such that it benefited some smallholders too.83 The growth of banking which suffered from the mid-1930s recovered, if not in terms of new units, but in terms of branches of the existing ones. In the period between 1941 and 1947, 235 branches were opened in Travancore.84 However, this prosperity again was accompanied by a simultaneous concentration in landholding and wealth. Jeffrey estimates that only 4% to 5% of the population in Kerala may have “successfully navigated the Depression and prospered during the war and its aftermath.”85 This was evident during the war when severe food shortages were the reality of the masses.86 Major industries of Kerala like coir manufacture87 were to suffer badly from the 1940s because of the development of alternative products like synthetic floor covering and rising standards of living in the West.88 In the Ambalapuzha-Cherthala Taluk region (in Travancore) where the coir industry was mainly located, there were reports of severe poverty and unemployment.89 The coir industry workers would be one of the main fulcrums of the communist working-class struggles. The Report of the Second Enquiry on Agricultural Labour in India concluded that the deterioration of the condition of laborers was worse than elsewhere in India.90 As we can see, Kerala was very much imbricated in global capitalist relations and subject to their depredations as well as the periodic cycles of boom. At the same time, the processes of deepening capitalism were simultaneously occurring in a socioeconomic structure suffused with feudal relations and values. However, it was also the colonial state which invested the landlord class with unprecedented powers breaking the Subalternist modernity/ tradition binary as well as its culturalist focus that falls short in analyzing how the colonial state, global capital and native social structure interact to produce new forms of accumulation.91 It would be impossible to make sense of the subaltern without understanding this structure. The structure evokes Trotsky’s “uneven and combined development” in a stark manner where, as we have seen already, there is an “amalgam of archaic with more contemporary forms” and peasants are “thrown into the factory cauldron snatched directly from the plow.” These structural conditions provide the context in which political agency takes place. The large numbers of agricultural laborers 85

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through the three regions, and the low numbers of owner-cultivators in Malabar and Cochin, compared to the rest of India, are factors which set the stage for socialism/communism. However, they do not mechanically produce an outcome; nor do these material factors, as Chibber implies, automatically translate into a fight for political/economic rights or the abolition of feudalism. On the contrary, the nature and quality of political practice determines the final outcome from among the range of possible ones.

The failure of Gandhian nationalism The early 1930s were a period of great hope for the Indian national movement. After a decade and more of Gandhi’s entry into the independence struggle, there were signs of the masses coming to the fore of the movement. However, what was to follow was a continuation of the elite-control of the earlier period because of the class content of Gandhian nationalism. The Gandhian united front strategy of landlords and princes with peasants and others prevented any radical change in the social setup.92 As noted before, Subaltern Studies in the early stages had made scathing criticisms of Gandhi. Ranajit Guha had argued that Gandhi’s ideology helped preserve landlordism.93 The united front strategy was to later culminate in the achievement of independence, albeit through a process of “passive revolution” in which the Indian bourgeoisie had to make significant compromises with the feudal land-owning classes.94 Passive revolution, as Gramsci has defined it is when the “thesis alone in fact develops to the full its potential for struggle, up to the point where it absorbs even the so-called representatives of the antithesis” rather than transcend it in a dialectical opposition.95 In the Kerala context too, passive revolution had all the chances of realizing itself but ultimately was thwarted, as the worker-peasant classes ascended to gain hegemony of the anti-imperialist struggle and shape the task of democratic transformation. Thus, Kerala alone, among the Indian states, and because of the inauguration of the imaginary of class, could come close to achieving “national liberation” in the Fanonian sense, although within a subnational context96 and with the limitations noted. However, in the Kerala of early 1930s, nationalism, leave alone national liberation, seemed distant despite the ripples that it had created among a section of the middle classes through the Khilafat-Non-Cooperation Movement of 1921 and the Civil Disobedience Movement of 1930. The primary reason, as Namboodiripad wrote in 1946, was that the nationalist struggle led by the Congress was riven by caste and religious inequalities and the fear of the “lower castes” that independence from colonial rule might bring back upper-caste Hindu rule back.97 After 1921, the Congress in Malabar was divided into two main groups, largely on the basis of religion, that of Hindus and Muslims. However, within this, the lower-caste Thiyyas saw the Hindu wing of the Congress as essentially an instrument of Nair domination. The 86

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Congress showed great reluctance in bringing the lower castes to its fold.98 An abstract and homogenous nationalism failed to incorporate the fragments like caste, locality, class and religion and their concerns. Even when the lower castes participated in nationalist activities like liquor picketing and propagation of khadi,99 they did so, as Menon points out, out of considerations which were hardly national.100 The disconnect of these Gandhian programs with the quotidian lives of the laboring masses could not be more stark. As A. K. Gopalan, one of the most popular leaders among Communists, notes in his memoirs about the response of the poor: We suffer only because of these landlords’ boys who make speeches and picket and not because of the government. After a day’s hard work, a little toddy is a relief. They don’t allow us even that. The white man’s fabrics are very cheap. They don’t allow us to buy these.  .  .  . We don’t get the time to spin on the charkha [handcranked spinning wheel]. In Gopalan’s view, even though sections of the middle class came forward, it was not possible to mobilize the poverty-stricken masses.101 The alienation of the peasants from the Congress program is confirmed by another incident recounted by Communist leader, E. K. Nayanar, in his memoirs. An elderly peasant who was asked by the Congress activists not to drink responded: You sons of rich landlords need no liquor. Those like me who work hard from morning to evening do need it. Only then can we prepare ourselves for work the next day. What we earn by such hard work, you drain from us as rent and other payments. . . . Even after this perpetual hard work we are poor. Our only enjoyment is toddy. Won’t you let us enjoy this humble refreshment? We don’t want your Congress. Will you let us draw drinking water from your well? No . . . You will not let us live on this earth.102 Congress tried to push the issue of caste under the carpet for the sake of “national unity.” It looked at the Harijan (untouchable Dalit castes) movement against caste oppression as a “communal” one (in a contradictory relationship with the nationalist cause).103 The Communists, as we will see later, similarly saw caste-based mobilizations as identity politics which acted as barrier to the growth of class-based identities. However, the crucial distinction was that the Communists went much further than the Congress in directly confronting caste oppression, especially overt and personalized forms of oppression and incorporating “fragments” like religion, besides inaugurating class-based struggles. Even later, in the 1940s, when the Congress started organizations for labor, farmers and students, its attitude to them was not different from what it was earlier, that is, hostility. These 87

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interests had to strictly conform to the “nationalist” line, or the national flag.104 Instead of seeking to bring about structural changes within the caste system, the goal was to reform within it by emphasizing programs like temple entry, cleanliness and purity. However, this did not mean that temple entry could not have generated a wider appeal. In fact, the Guruvayur satyagraha of 1932 for temple entry showed signs of overcoming caste barriers.105 The Congress leader K. Kelappan’s fast unto death pledge attracted attention from outside India too. The orthodox sections of upper-caste Hindus who had earlier shown virulent opposition to Congress interfering in religious matters now seemed like capitulating to the liberal wave sweeping across the region. An upper-caste Hindu meeting was held at Guruvayur in which upper-caste Hindu leaders of Kerala pledged their support for the temple entry program.106 The government was worried about the revolutionary potential of Kelappan’s death. However, the fast was forced to be abandoned under the insistence of Gandhi who did not want to exacerbate matters just after the signing of the Poona Pact with the pre-eminent activist for Dalit rights and the abolition of caste, and prominent leader of the Indian independence movement, B. R. Ambedkar (who himself was forced to withdraw his agitation for a separate electorate for Dalits at Gandhi’s insistence). There was immense disappointment at this move by Gandhi. For Gandhi, caste-reform was a moral and religious act of self-awareness on the part of the upper castes, not a political and structural one.107 Thus, the Guruvayur satyagraha was “successfully ‘nationalised’ and made to conform to the necessities of national politics.”108 It was the inability to bring about genuine changes in the caste system that provoked responses such as these from the lower-caste poor on the hollowness of the claims of nationalism: The whites should be driven out you say. How good they are! Do they have untouchability? They can be touched; one can go near them—it is not possible to approach your [upper-caste Congressmen] house. Yet you ask us to help you to free this country. What will that avail us? We will not listen to you.109 This showed the limits of anti-colonialism and nationalism. If the lower castes felt that nationalist activity was a continuation of the exercise of authority by the landed upper-caste elites, Muslims too were wary of Congress becoming strong for fear of Hindu domination.110 The situation was almost similar to Gramsci’s description of Italy during the 1930s when the national did not coincide with the popular and intellectuals were separate from the people as we saw. Thus, there is a need to deconstruct the myth of nationalism. Nationalism cannot be mythologized or privileged. The oppressed castes like Dalits also built a narrative of resistance outside/against the nationalist framework.111 88

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Dalit groups would find the British useful in their struggle against upper-caste domination, and Ezhava reformers like Sree Narayana Guru were cognizant that it was British colonialism which opened up avenues for the Ezhava challenge to Brahmin domination.112 As Cooper argues with regard to Africa, nation was not the only unit imagined. There were also other imaginations like Pan-Africanism which were eventually defeated.113 At the same time, nationalism is also Janus-faced.114 Nationalism not only is a “justification for a regime of hierarchy and domination,” but also appeals “to the sense of community in which exploitation, generation of surplus and its appropriation is not divided in terms of those who produce and those who appropriate but is a projected communal activity.”115 It is therefore, as Parry argues, to distinguish between different kinds of nationalisms, “moderate nationalist movements for independence within the status quo . . . directed at entrenching the hegemony of the native bourgeoisie, and revolutionary anti-capitalist nationalisms.”116 If nationalism till mid-1930s had not fulfilled the idea of equality, it laid the foundation for a more inclusive idea of nationalism under socialism/communism. Namboodiripad argued that Gandhian nationalism was the first movement in Kerala that tried to organize itself on a pan-caste basis117 but had failed in practice as we saw. Early Subaltern Studies focuses on the fragments alone without looking at the simultaneous process of the emergence of nationalism. The ineffectiveness of the nationalist imaginary was not only due to the reasons outlined earlier; it was also due to the organizational weaknesses of the Congress Party till then. Most of the leaders were professional lawyers and spent all the weekdays in court. Thus, Congress used to essentially function only on Sundays thus earning the nickname “Sunday Congress” for itself. This caused a discord between the dedicated full-time ordinary workers and the part-time leaders. More important were the serious differences of opinion emerging because of the “incongruity between the Gandhian ideas that were the guiding influence of the leadership, and the revolutionary ideas that spread fast among the rank and file.”118 This contradiction set the stage for the next stage of struggle, for a more inclusive nationalism. If nationalism was wracked by many divisions, it also simultaneously provoked the disenchantment of the fragments. However, the fragment does not always exist in a perpetual state of negation vis- à- vis the totality, as some Subalternists have argued,119 it also seeks to enter into a dialectical relationship with the latter. Caste, class, religion, gender and other particularities are at a perpetual struggle to reconstitute the definition of nation with different outcomes. Therefore, there is no simple universalism like what is outlined by Chibber. The very same Gandhian programs such as civil disobedience, khadi propagation, temperance, Harijan uplift, etc., which did not attract the laboring classes, created a stir among the middle and upper echelons. An instrumental and cynical attitude toward nationalism was not the only response in a 89

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fast-disappearing segmented society. The other face of nationalism, as community, as the promise of equality, also attracted people. Almost the entire first generation of the Communist leadership in Kerala came into politics inspired by the Gandhian nationalist struggle. Namboodiripad notes that he cannot describe in words the “emotional upsurge” he felt when Gandhi broke the Salt Law. The Guruvayur satyagraha too “thrilled thousands of young men” like him and “gave inspiration to a vast majority of the people to fight for their legitimate rights with self-respect, rights that were denied to them for ages.” It should be noted that despite Namboodiripad’s later characterization of Gandhi as the “all-pervading creator, sustainer and destroyer of Civil Disobedience Movement,” he had “actively participated” in the latter’s movement for uplift of the untouchable castes.120 Similarly, the pre-eminent Communist Party organizer in the initial period, P. Krishna Pillai (1906–1948), says: “I joined the Congress during the Civil Disobedience Movement in 1930. My main aim was to secure India’s independence. Since Congress had this aim, I joined it.”121 Other Communist leaders like A. K. Gopalan, Puthupally Raghavan, P. T. Mary and so on were also captivated by the benevolent face of nationalism (the thrill of the struggle of “unarmed Indian people” against the “mightiest of all the Empires in the world”)122 and initiated into political activity through the Gandhian programs.123 As M. M. Lawrence, born in an upper-middle-class Christian family in the Cochin princely state, and who would later go onto become an important leader of the Communist Party, recounts how he participated in political rallies as a student shouting nationalist slogans.124 It was the nonfulfillment of the promise of nationalism (of every caste and class grouping having an equal place in the nationalist imaginary) that drove these people beyond the confines of Gandhian politics.

The stirrings of socialism The move to the Left in the form of the Congress Socialist Party (CSP) in 1934 at the national level was the culmination of the disenchantment with the Gandhian program. In Kerala, the formation of the CSP was of added significance, for it was to transform into the Communist Party later. The leading members who were instrumental in the formation of the CSP in Kerala had only a rudimentary knowledge of Marxism, as I noted before. Marxism as a theoretical and practical aid came only later. As Krishna Pillai put it: “there was hardly anybody who had scientific knowledge of Marxism or a clear understanding of the duties to be performed by a socialist party.”125 Nevertheless, they were unanimous in rejecting the “Gandhian notion that societal transformation can take place without economic structural change, class conflict and violence.”126 It was the search for equality that led them to Marxism rather than the other way round. Krishna Pillai had already recognized in the early 1930s that peasantry was to be the fulcrum of any 90

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anti-imperialist struggle and that without the participation of the masses it would be meaningless.127 He argued that the rich and elite Congressmen saw Congress Party activism as mere “side business” while they were immersed in their own occupations.128 He made the distinction between the “Congress of the rich” and “Congress of the poor,”129 and he obviously did not leave any ambiguities as to what the Congress should be. CSP worked within the fold of the Congress and soon, the left-wing in the form of CSP captured a majority within the Congress organization. The right-wing continued with its emphasis on social reform programs; also, the distinction that Krishna Pillai had made was becoming a truism with the wealthy classes supporting the right-wingers while the left-wingers were strapped for cash.130 As we will see in the following, one significant and crucial development with the formation of the CSP was the widening of nationalist and socialist activity into the princely states of Travancore and Cochin reversing the Gandhian policy of laissez-faire or non-interference in the internal politics of princely states and the identification of the British alone as the adversary.131 And it was one of the first steps toward moving away from bourgeois nationalism and inflecting the nationalist imaginary with class: a move away from the “idea of ‘trusteeship’—the landlords and princes acting as trustees in the economic sphere, Gandhi and company in the political.”132 However, from this legitimate critique of Gandhi as a part of hegemonic nationalism, Subaltern Studies moves onto a position that, as we have seen, partially redeems the nationalist elite. This is occasioned by the culturalist turn and the critique of modernity. Here the figure of Gandhi and his “antimodernist, antindividualist” rhetoric of “love, kinship, austerity, sacrifice” becomes the symbol of the struggle for the sovereignty of the “inner” cultural domain.133 This valorization of Gandhi does not allow us to understand the transformations in Kerala which were to move away from the Gandhian passive revolution. The formation of CSP groups in the princely states also had another significance: the laying of the foundation of the unification of Kerala, for the emergence of a linguistic entity became easier with the stronger contacts established between the different regions. This was the basis of the national-popular. Manali Desai argues that the CSP in Kerala could become the dominant force in Congress because it faced “less resistance from the dominant peasants and landlords within the Congress Party than they did elsewhere [in India].”134 This is not an entirely accurate argument. While the rightwing was “an ideological rather than class-based opposition,”135 it did not mean that class-based support was not available to it. The landlord and the (emerging) bourgeoisie support for the right-wingers was a characteristic feature of the politics of the time. Namboodiripad explains how the right-wing had turned the wealthy Gujarati community in Calicut against the Left-controlled KPCC (Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee) in order to financially weaken it. Similarly, the right-wing enjoyed the support of the 91

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powerful newspaper Mathrubhumi (Motherland, founded 1923),136 while the newspaper begun by the Socialists, Prabhatham (Dawn), not only suffered severe financial difficulties but also incurred the hostility of the British government which banned it soon after it started functioning in 1935. It took another three years for it to start publication again.137 The right-wing was also resolutely opposed to any radical agrarian program which favored the tenants.138 Moreover, Desai argued that “there were no concerted efforts by politically organized landlords . . . to block the activities of the Congress.”139 However, the biggest opposition to the Socialists (and the Communists later)140 came from the landed classes acting in collusion with the state. There were many instances of the police stations being located as a part of the houses of the dominant lords. In many instances, peasants did not even know that the British were ruling because all state functions were performed by the landlords.141 The police often colluded with the landlords and their caretakers and henchmen for suppressing the struggles of peasants and workers by physical intimidation or implicating them in false cases.142 It was not unusual for cases to be filed with 40–50 accused of various fraudulent charges like occupying forest lands, cutting trees, mocking the landlord and so on.143

Moral economy The disenchantment with Gandhian reformism took the Socialists to mass mobilization, especially in the countryside. The most important of the activities of the Socialists in Malabar was the organization of karshaka sanghams (peasant unions). The Socialists were not the only groups challenging the feudal and colonial socioeconomic system. The radical Abhinav Bharat Yuvak Sangh (ABYS), influenced by the thought of the revolutionary Bhagat Singh, was formed in 1934 and sought to achieve India’s freedom through militant methods as well as constructive civil society work, showing the many kinds of extra-local ideological influences at work. Many leaders of the sanghams were members of ABYS too.144 The karshaka sanghams were to change the face of the countryside in a manner unimaginable a few years ago. In the initial period, the unions focused on marching to the landlords’ house and submitting petitions145 and local issues like a landlord taking away pepper from a tenant by force.146 However, these very activities were to later acquire a systematic character questioning the framework of feudalism itself. One of the crucial factors that contributed to the strength of the peasant unions was that the majority of the Socialist leaders themselves hailed from elite feudal families, especially Nair tharavadus.147 This gave the unions a legitimacy and stature which they otherwise would not have secured so easily in a hierarchical society.148 When the sanghams included activists from the prominent landlord families, it gave the peasants both relief and courage.149 92

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The unions at first operated within the moral economy framework. They were not so much for the abolition of landlordism as they were for preventing its excesses.150 As Pandey points out with regard to the peasant revolt in the United Provinces (UP): The idea of a just, or moral struggle appears fundamental to the peasants’ acceptance of the necessity of revolt. Exploitation as such was not unjust. It was inevitable that some ruled and some conducted prayers and some owned the land and some laboured, and all lived off the fruits of that labour. But it was important that everyone in the society made a living out of the resources that were available.151 Similar to UP, in Malabar, it was when the lords started imposing excess levies, in addition to rent, in a period of hardship that the peasants started to resist. It is important to note that moral economy had changed its character under colonialism. In the pre-colonial period, as Namboodiripad describes, there were no formal laws governing the relationship between the lord and the tenant, it was governed by customs and mores. However, with the arrival of the colonial rule and its strengthening of landlordism for its own interests, the relationship became one based on laws and was reduced to an economic relationship only. As a result, the scope for arbitrariness increased manifold and the system turned more oppressive. The landlords, who would have been reined in by social mores before about using devastating tactics like excessive rent or evictions become less constrained under colonialism.152 The main grouse of the tenants and farmers was against a slew of extrarental feudal levies which were collected on various occasions like marriage, funerals and festivals.153 Other demands were for fair rents, security of tenure by preventing evictions, cancellation of rent arrears, increasing of wages for agricultural laborers and to reinstate customary privileges like collecting firewood and manure from forests owned by the landlords, access to shifting cultivation on them, cultivation of wastelands, etc.154 Demands like redistribution of land and abolition of landlordism or refusal to pay rent were not yet part of the socialist peasant union framework.155 Refusal by the janmis to give forest lands for shifting cultivation was seen as a main form of oppression.156 Care was taken to state that the unions would not indulge in “revolutionary activities” or that they do not want to break the law. Yet, there were also allusions to a different mode of activity when it was stated that farmers could not wait patiently for ever157 or demonstrations of assertiveness.158 Almost every peasant union and peasant account focused on the oppressive nature of the extra-rental levies and the need to reinstate customary rights. The importance of the material dimension is clearly visible in the demands put forth. Even when Subaltern Studies posits the subaltern as autonomous subject, it merely sees it as a cultural being. The basic form 93

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of protest and making demands was undertaking jathas (processions) to the landlords’ houses. By reading the memoirs of Communist leaders, one gets a sense of how quickly the jatha idea captured the imagination of the masses.159 The CSP jathas covered an average of 10–15 miles daily and did hundreds of meetings.160 Some of the peasant unions which initially worked within the confines of the agenda set by the CSP leadership later went beyond it to make more radical demands electrified by the “experience of collective strength built up by the jathas.”161 This goes against one-sided understandings that peasantry is an inchoate, backward-looking class waiting to be liberated by the “modern” party and the industrial working class. At the same time, as we will see, this “spontaneity” had to meet with the organized leadership of the party for it to produce tectonic changes. “Organization” and “unity” began to key words among the peasantry: It is because we are convinced that it is due to lack of unity in our midst and because we do not collectively bring our disabilities to the notice of the authorities that they remain unredressed that we have recently taken to organized efforts.162 In a 2005 study, M. S. Priyamol did an oral survey of 388 old-time Communist activists and party members, 25% of whom were attracted toward communism because of jathas, meetings and campaigns.163

A new language Thus, in the first few years since the formation of the CSP, the socialist peasant unions had operated mainly within a moral economy framework of demanding the restitution of customary and traditional rights. The CSP leadership was still hobbled by the fact that it had to operate within the Gandhian Congress thus forcing it to moderate many of its demands.164 However, simultaneously there was another language emerging—the language of defiance which would become hegemonic later. As early as 1934, Krishna Pillai was pointing out that wealth created by one section of society was being enjoyed by another. However, the biggest problem was that people believed that this was a creation of God. However, contrary to this “natural fact” workers are the real owners of the wealth created, and the lord–serf and capitalist–laborer relation was not a permanent one.165 In 1935, Namboodiripad was talking of the need for karshaka raksha sena (farmers’ protection army) to protect themselves from the excesses of the state and the lords. He also stressed the need for farmers to have economic and political power.166 K. Damodaran, future Communist leader, was telling peasants that class war, between the peasant and the lord and the capitalist and the laborer was becoming a reality. He exhorted them to a new political and economic 94

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program with the unity of peasants and laborers cutting across caste lines.167 The CSP slogans like “death to landlordism” and “death to capitalism” also began to be mouthed by the peasants and laborers (and even their children!). However, what was more important was that it began to shake the edifice of the feudal society in which servility of the subalterns was the norm so far.168 What peasant activity achieved in this period was more in the social sphere than in the economic sphere. Extra-economic, caste-based oppression by the landlords is something that united the masses across caste and class differences.169 The lower castes faced severe social restrictions like being not able to wear shirts (upper garments for women) or sport moustaches. The women of the poor tenant and agricultural labor households were often sexually exploited by the landlord.170 It was considered offensive to the landlord for even kanakkar to tile their houses.171 The peasants could not use the same language as the lords, they were forced to use a different language altogether which was highly humiliating.172 The untouchable Dalit castes, of course, bore the brunt of the hierarchies of the caste system. As E. K. Nayanar recounts: When a Dalit or person of the oppressed castes stood in front of a landlord, he did so with his back bent forward and hands clasped in front of him, or else he would be punished severely. A Dalit was not permitted to wear a lower garment (mundu) that extended beyond the knee. He had no right to wear slippers or to wrap a towelcloth around his head. Dalits in Kalliasseri and Morazha were not allowed to attend schools.173 As Charles Taylor has argued: Nonrecognition or misrecognition . . . can be a form of oppression, imprisoning someone in a false, distorted, reduced mode of being. Beyond simple lack of respect, it can inflict a grievous wound, saddling people with crippling self-hatred. Due recognition is not just a courtesy but a vital human need.174 Nancy Fraser theorized about “bivalent modes of collectivity” which are collectivities that “suffer both socio-economic maldistribution and cultural misrecognition in forms where neither of these injustices is an indirect effect of the other, but where both are primary and co-original.”175 With the formation of the unions, feudal oppression became difficult. Peasants demanded receipts for the rents paid.176 Even while operating within the moral economy framework, peasants were simultaneously moving toward a rational-legal framework of modernity. Rather than being prisoners of traditional forms of community or religious consciousness, as implied by Subaltern Studies, they began to break out of them as well. 95

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Extra-rental levies were vigorously contested and stopped in some places. By 1938, the landlords could not easily oppress tenants as before. Even when the courts ruled in favor of the landlords, it was sometimes not possible to implement the order. After a point, the landlords would stop going to the courts and instead settle the disputes with the peasant unions.177 There were even instances of janmis publicly apologizing for their misdemeanors after the peasant union held a protest meeting.178 The practice of the landlords taking the donations offered to the shrines by devotees was challenged.179 The struggle for recognition was as much a part of the peasant struggle as material amelioration.180 One of the resolutions passed at the third Valluvanad Taluk Karshaka Sangham conference in 1938 included the call to start resistance against language (sanctified by tradition), which denied “selfrespect.”181 The social position and prestige of the lords, which was what they valued the most suffered irrevocably.182 Peasants began to address the landlords by name and refused to step aside in deference when they passed by. The lower castes and untouchables began to flout the rules of attire and behavior.183 Later on, the struggle for establishing democratic impersonal systems of legality and administration would gain prominence, putting question marks on postcolonial theory’s one-sided understanding of modern governmentality. More importantly, they began to resort to traditional methods of punishment like social boycott, which were imposed on them. Only that, now, the landlords were subject to them. On the one hand, these actions evoked a sense of community, and on the other hand, they signified the questioning of the community centered on the feudal tharavadu.184 Even other peasants who refused to join the unions were subject to social strictures.185 Here, by reversing the roles of social customs, the critical potential of tradition meets the critical potential of modernity. However, crucially, the peasant unions later, under the influence of the socialist leadership, also sought to go beyond practices like social boycott. The peasants initially felt that if the landlords could use it for centuries, they could very well do so. However, later, social boycott was also seen as a vestige of the feudal past that the peasants are trying to destroy. Therefore, it was argued by the party that they should adopt new means of agitation and not rely on an “old, useless instrument.”186 What is important here is the interaction between leadership and the subalterns, the introduction of new ideas—social and political.

Beyond the local Critically, rather than focusing only on the local or the village, the Socialists had tried to integrate the activities of the various unions that had come up first at the village level and then at the taluk level. The advances in resisting feudal oppression were made possible to a great extent by this integration. The first taluk-level meeting of Chirakkal Taluk Karshaka Sangham took 96

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place in 1936.187 According to the state, the peasants began to organize themselves on a “militant socialist basis” because of the propaganda carried out by Namboodiripad and other Socialist leaders.188 Through 1936 and 1937, taluk peasant unions, and village unions below them came up in all taluks of Malabar and Kasaragod Taluk of S. Kanara. To coordinate the activities of these unions under one common program, the All-Malabar Peasants Union (AMPU)/All Malabar Karshaka Sangham (AMKS) was constituted.189 It became a three-tier body with the taluk and village level units below it. There was fast-paced growth in unions and their membership with the agitation for the amendment of the Malabar Tenancy Act of 1930 gaining strength. By December 1938 there were over 150 village peasant unions.190 According to the government, the unions and “revolutionary appeals” of the Socialist leaders were attractive because of the “primitive dictatorial ways” of the landlords who collected illegal levies.191 With the agitation for the tenancy amendment and the reports that tenants were refusing rent-payments caused immense worries to the government both on the land revenue collection front and also about the undermining of its authority.192 The Socialists had clearly recognized what their contemporary Gramsci was arguing elsewhere: “any formation of a national-popular collective will is impossible, unless the great mass of peasant farmers bursts simultaneously into political life.”193 CSP was active not only among the peasantry but also among the urban working classes in the major towns of Malabar like Calicut, Cannanore and in industries like tile, textile, tin, weaving, etc., which later expanded into all kinds of occupations. Many future Communist leaders like A. K. Gopalan got the training in the “practical application of Marxism” from spending time among the union workers in these towns.194 P. Narayanan Nair argues that the continuous strikes in late 1934 and early 1935 laid the foundation of the modern trade-union movement in Malabar.195 These were mainly led by the Socialists. The worker protests were against the physical violence against them, the denial of toilet breaks, the increase of work hours, wages and unnecessary dismissals and so on.196 Some of the industry owners and their contractors were the big landlords and any activity by workers to improve their condition was met not only with dismissals but also evictions of their families from their huts back in the villages.197 The linkages between feudalism and capitalism and not just the breaks are evident here. Unlike in the Subalternist and postcolonial narrative, the sources of oppression are not seen as originating in modernity alone. Instead, they are located in both the feudal and capitalist modes of production. In 1937, there was the landmark beedi (indigenous form of cigarette) laborers’ strike. The idea of labor unions and strikes was becoming systematic.198 The linking of the economic with the political was already being put forth by the socialist leadership. With the founding of CSP, a labor union office and a night school was begun in the office for workers in Kozhikode, 97

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one of the main towns in Malabar. Along with trade-union lessons, Socialist leaders began to impart the basics of socialism as well as anti-imperialist struggles.199 New political ideas and imaginaries existing beyond the local were being introduced by the external intervention. At the same time, just like the peasant unions going beyond the party to start no-rent campaigns on their own, there were instances of workers in companies striking without the knowledge or the encouragement of the party.200 However, the Socialists were aware that the critical consciousness of the peasantry or the workers alone was not enough that it has to be coupled with modern proletarian ideologies.201 K. Damodaran, addressing a union meet, spoke of class war being an inalienable part of the political struggle and how every small strike for economic concessions was also a strike against imperialism.202 However, the main problem facing the Socialists was that the industrial working classes were not pronounced in Malabar. Further, they stared at the biggest reality in front of them: caste. As A. K. Gopalan writes: There is a specific quality to the workers of Kerala. A large majority of them belongs to lower castes. They are not oppressed not only economically, but also on the basis of community. [Lower-caste] community leaders propagated that the Congress struggle was for the maintenance of upper-caste-Hindu rule. Joining the struggle would be detrimental to their (lower-caste) future. They proclaimed that it was in the perseverance of British rule that their future was secure. Workers who belonged to lower castes hated even meeting Congress activists. It was difficult to organize workers in these circumstances.203 The breaks in anti-colonialism are again evident here. The whole process of organizing workers was thus fraught with severe hurdles. Krishna Pillai used to often deliver speeches at the entrances of various factories. There was hardly anybody to listen to them,204 an experience described by others too. Workers were afraid to meet the Socialist activists. In the initial period, there would be as few as 15 workers in meetings.205 The company owners would use other tactics like preventing Socialist leaders from speaking at public places by using influence with the government, disrupting meetings, threatening or dismissing workers who struck work, etc.206 Caste and religion were also used as to break up worker solidarity.207 Nevertheless, the socialist activity was creating worries for the government which observed in 1937 that the Socialists were “very active in organizing unions among all sorts of workers.”208 The building blocks of the national-popular will were being placed. In Travancore (and Cochin), nationalist struggle had still not taken deep roots in the early 1930s because of the Indian National Congress’ non-interference policy and despite the participation of some sections of 98

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the people in the Non-Cooperation and Civil Disobedience movements of 1921 and 1930. Nationalism could not take deep roots, again, because the constituents were riven by huge social and economic inequalities. Politics moved along lines of caste and religion in a state ruled and dominated by upper castes. Religious minorities, and lower castes—Christians, Muslims and Ezhavas (the middle classes in these communities) joined together to fight the overwhelming Nair and upper-caste domination of the Travancore Legislature (made possible by property qualification) and the public services. The agitation that was launched called the Abstention Movement in 1933 acquired significant proportions and succeeded by 1935 in achieving its demands of fair representation for different communities in the public services as well as the Legislature. The aim of CSP was to work with the movement for responsible government in the princely state for which the Travancore State Congress (TSC) had been formed in 1938 (Nairs too joined this).209 In 1938, a massive struggle was launched against the government headed by the autocratic Dewan (Prime Minister) Sir C. P. Ramaswamy Aiyar. As we will see, the socialists from Malabar provided organizational support to the struggle. The most significant aspect of it was the role that the working class of Alleppey town and surrounding areas played. Around 50,000 coir workers struck work not only for their economic demands but also in solidarity with the TSC demand for responsible government.210 The strike lasted 25 days demonstrating the workers’ ability to respond to demands beyond the local and the economistic.211 Importantly, even when some of the leaders of the coir workers’ union were wooed by offers of concessions by the government, the majority of workers refused to bend.212 Here again is a demonstration of spontaneity of the “subaltern classes” meeting “conscious leadership”213 going beyond the celebration of spontaneous action of subaltern groups. From a “‘generic’ hatred that is ‘semi-feudal’ rather than modern in character”214 and a negative consciousness of opposition without an understanding of any alternative, here, the working classes move to a clearer perception of the enemy and its relationship with the state. The totality itself now comes into the cognitive map of the subalterns. The early work of Subaltern Studies had recognized the fragmentary nature and the limitations of the consciousness of the peasantry and thus had closely followed Gramsci. Guha had noted that the peasant rebellions (in the 19th century) were mainly motivated not by larger concerns of nationalism, but by the ideas of “territoriality that is, co-residential solidarity and primordial loyalty.” However, he rightly asserts that these rebellions “made the broader and more generalized struggles of the Indian people possible in the twentieth century.”215 The 1938 strike was the first political strike by the workers of Kerala bringing about momentous changes in their views on politics, organization, etc. However, the withdrawal of the struggle when it was acquiring a wider 99

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character under the influence of the national leadership of the Congress again, led to division on Left–Right lines in TSC. A left group called Radical Conference was formed under the initiative of the Socialist leaders, tradeunion workers and the Youth League.216 While the middle-class leadership of TSC had contempt for the workers, many younger activists, who saw the revolutionary potential of the working class moved toward communism.217 Most of the future Communist and Socialist leaders of Travancore like K. C. George, M. N. Govindan Nair, T. V. Thomas, P. T. Punnoose and Sreekantan Nair came out of TSC, and later, Radical Conference background. In the Muvattupuzha region, future Communist leaders like K. T. Jacob came to the fore in 1939–1940 through the struggles for responsible government in the Travancore princely state. However, these were fused with the struggles for just wages, for the rights of the workers and small farmers.218 With the increasing challenge to the landlordism and the radicalism shown by peasant unions, the confrontation began to acquire violent overtones in Malabar. The peasants who had gone on processions before to landlord houses with petitions were now enthused by the strength of the sanghams and the collectivity. Now the sanghams put forth a new slogan, “those who sow the seeds will reap the harvest.”219 After the Second World War began in 1939, the state noted how karshaka sanghams under the instruction of the party leadership were setting up trained militant organizations: “Each Sangha has it trained militant volunteer organisations.”220 These volunteer squads came into existence in almost all the villages of N. Malabar. They began to attack the police, attack the courts where unions members were tried, prevent evictions, etc.221 The socialist transformation into communism was also becoming complete. The government noted that the “CSP is a Marxist Party strongly believing in class organisation and class war.”222 While the disenchantment with the Gandhian program gave rise to CSP, it was severely restrained by the fact that it continued to function within the Congress framework. Despite organizing peasants and workers, the Socialists were ultimately, as Namboodiripad self-critically points out, “circumscribed by the anxiety to preserve the internal unity of the Congress as an organisation that they failed to carry on determined ideological struggle against Gandhism.” While the working class and peasantry were increasingly brought into the anti-imperialist struggle, their organizations were still “looked upon not as mass political organisations operating independently of, and if necessary in opposition to, the bourgeois leadership of the national movement, but as vehicles through which the workers and peasants are mobilized behind that leadership.”223 Here, the Socialists are seeking to go beyond the Gandhian united front strategy in which the internal conflicts and struggles for class, caste and justice were postponed till such time the freedom of the nation was attained, which Sathyamurthy has termed as “a particularly odious feature of the more developed nationalism.”224 Subaltern Studies’ cultural turn and the uncritical redemption of Gandhi led to 100

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its affirmation of this form of nationalism. At the same time, as noted, the Communists while going beyond Gandhian nationalism in substantial ways with regard to class and confronting caste indignities, subsumed the specificity of caste oppression itself under class struggle. The transformation of the Socialists into Communists was not surprising with the kind of views the leadership held. Namboodiripad has stated that it was “pure chance” that they became part of CSP first. If they had been exposed to the Communists first, they would have converted much before.225 Moreover, the Socialists were in constant touch with the Communist Party of India (CPI) at least since 1935 and the leadership had some kind of exposure to communist literature. And a Communist group consisting of four members had already started functioning within CSP by 1937.226 Besides, as we have seen, the subalterns and peasant unions were becoming more radicalized and willing go beyond the CSP leadership. The outbreak of the Second World War exacerbated the tensions between the Left- and Rightwings with the former thoroughly opposed to India being dragged into an imperialist war. The karshaka sanghams took to anti-war propaganda under the “direction of the Malabar Communists.”227 Finally, the Communist Party formally came into being in Kerala on January 26, 1940. Almost the entire CSP joined the CPI. Even after this, for some time the Communists were in a peculiar dilemma for the CPI was under a ban by the British government. Therefore, they retained their primary membership of the Congress.

A more inclusive nationalism In an analysis of the activities of the CSP, Dilip Menon has argued that: Congress Socialism’ represented a local reaction against nationalism, in view of the subordination of local politics to the exigencies of the national party . . . From 1935, the socialists in Malabar worked within the confines of the locality, and their highly successful rural mobilisation made little attempt to ally itself with wider concerns of province and nation, or indeed of the Congress.228 Socialism was indeed a reaction against the exclusion of the local, but the local is not simply pitted against nationalism but is seeking a place in the nationalist imaginary or to reconstitute the nation.229 Congress Socialism represented a turn toward “national liberation.” What it sought was for a more democratic negotiation of nationalism. Thus, the wider linkages established in this period by socialist activity have to be understood. The most prominent example of this is the participation of the Malabar Socialists in the struggle for the establishment of responsible government in princely states and their role in the defining 1938 workers’ strike. From the early 1930s communist/socialist ideas were circulating in Travancore among 101

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small groups of activists which were unconnected to the national communist movement. With formation of the CSP, A. K. Gopalan and P. Krishna Pillai visited Travancore to spread the party’s activities there and made some inroads.230 As we saw some of the important future leaders of the communist movement in Travancore came out of the TSC/Radical Conference background; some joined the CSP at this stage itself.231 The attempts to integrate the urban working classes were begun in 1935 itself when unions from all over Kerala met under the initiative of CSP and exchanged ideas and experiences. The First All Kerala Labour Conference was held in May 1935. It was the first time when labor activists from Travancore established contacts with the Malabar Socialists.232 N. E. Balaram, ideologue and one of the founding leaders of the communist movement, points out that it was only with the emergence of the CSP that activists on the Left from the princely states and Malabar began to connect and unite.233 The first group of CSP was set up in Alleppey in Travancore in 1936, and by 1938, CSP groups had come up also in Koothattukulam, Ernakulam and Thrissur.234 The explicit recognition of the need for organization on the basis of class led the CSP to establish contact with labor unions and also convert these from their moderate aims to more radical ones. According to coir factory workers’ union activist, K. K. Kunjan, the party began to hold study classes among the laborers on issues like scientific socialism, trade unionism, etc.235 The first members of the CSP group in Alleppey were coir workers or union activists.236 It was not surprising therefore that CSP and socialist/ communist ideas were to have a much bigger impact on the working classes in the Alleppey region. When the TSC launched the Civil Disobedience Movement in Travancore in 1938, the Socialists declared their support and set up an Aid Committee for the striking workers in Ernakulam (Cochin princely state), consisting of Krishna Pillai, Namboodiripad, etc.237 Besides, the CSP decided to send jathas of volunteers to Travancore with A. K. Gopalan as the convener. Gopalan terms the huge crowds consisting of Congressmen and others, workers and students as “a model of the united front against imperialism.” There were big receptions throughout the way especially from peasant unions in Malabar. He called the Muslim support also significant. What impressed him most was that people were hardly deterred by the massive deployment of police and the military and the threat of loss of lives. The courage shown by the people, in Gopalan’s account, was so striking that he himself yearned for the opportunity to die as a victim in the police firing.238 The Resident of Madras States warned the Dewan of Travancore of the attempts by Malabar Socialists to aid the striking workers through jathas from outside Travancore.239 Namboodiripad wrote a letter to the national leadership of the Congress denying allegations that the Kerala CSP is sending jathas in support to Travancore [which went against the Congress’ policy of non-interference in the princely states] and that the CSP members are taking part only in their 102

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individual capacities.240 Krishna Pillai calls the role that the CSP played in the struggle commendable as its workers who traveled to Travancore were subjected to police violence. He asserted that the participation of the Socialists in the struggle for responsible government in the princely states was based on the clear understanding that it would strengthen the struggle for national independence.241 The socialist newspaper Prabhatham regularly covered the struggle including suggestions for tactics to be adopted.242 When the TSC and the Radical Conference were divided on the course of action of the struggle on Right–Left lines, it was veering to a split. The emergence of the left-wing, the Radical Conference, within TSC itself was influenced by the CSP.243 Again, CSP and Krishna Pillai had a critical role in preventing the split in the struggle and re-uniting the movement.244 The latter argued that it would be “suicidal” to conduct the struggle outside the Travancore State Congress.245 Considering the inroads that were made into the working class, a big role was played by CSP and Krishna Pillai in the workers’ strike in support of the movement and was in a leadership position of the strike and its course.246 The linking of the economic and the political in the workers’ strike, as we saw, was made possible to a large extent by the sustained work that the CSP did amongst them.247 The articulation of the local with that of a wider region is also visible in the agitation by the peasants of Kasaragod Taluk for the separation of the taluk from the South Kanara district and its amalgamation with Malabar (72% of the population in Kasaragod was Malayalam-speaking while South Kanara had a predominance of Kannada speakers).248 While this demonstrated the emergence of the ties across the differently administered Malayalam-speaking areas, the emergence of a new nationalist consciousness was also visible. Gopalan who had earlier described the scorn with which the nationalist activists were received in the rural areas had a different story to tell now. The same peasants, who had attacked him in 1931, were receiving him in 1938 with the slogans “Let imperialism be damned,” “Let landlordism be damned,” and “Victory to Congress.”249 Yet, the accounts by Gopalan, of the jatha to Travancore and the present ones, seem to be valoristic and romanticized with regard to people being completely united against imperialism without any breaks or contradictions. However, they are also indications of changes that occurred with the emergence of new political identities and consciousness.250 Namboodiripad points out the substantial increase in the number of Congress members in Kerala between 1934 and 1938–1939. He attributes much of this success and the resounding victory for the Congress in Malabar in the Provincial Elections of 1937 to the energetic national leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru and the election program of the Congress Party which was nevertheless brought to the people by the Socialist and Communist activists within Congress.251 The ability to go beyond class was demonstrated by the socialists’ mobilization of a linguistic identity. However, the latter is also a bivalent collectivity 103

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located in both political-economic and cultural-valuational structures. Subaltern Studies ignores the structural features that provide the conditions for the emergence of nationalism. A. R. Desai, describing the emergence of new classes under the British rule, argues: one striking characteristic of the new social classes was their national character. This was due to the fact that they were integral parts of a single national economy of India and further, they lived under a single state regime. This engendered community of economic, political and other interests of the members of each of the new classes on an all-India national basis . . . they felt an urge to organize themselves on all-India scale and start movement to advance their common interests on a national basis.252 Thus, linguistic and national identities emerged as wider imaginings. Here the linkages established beyond the local were also crucial to the emergence of class as a category, but which was rudimentary at this stage. We already noted how peasants had realized their strength lay in “organization” and “unity,” something which was not confined to the local. The challenge to feudal overlords was possible because of these extra-local linkages. One significant feature of the activities of the peasant unions was the fact that they used to intervene in and support conflicts outside their jurisdiction.253 The formation of the taluk and district-level peasant unions further emboldened the unions at the village level.254 The reason why the government was so intimidated by the peasant union activity was because of its realization of their connections to a wider network which was extra-local.255 There was some degree of integration achieved by the Socialists of both the peasant and working-class unions. Unions affiliated to the AMPU or AMKS functioned under the agenda set by the latter.256 Government called it “as completely under Communist control.”257 Many Socialist leaders were simultaneously the office bearers of unions as well. As Namboodiripad notes: it was the combination in one and the same person of the officebearer of the village Congress Committee, the leader of the teacher’s union and the organiser of the kisan sangham that made the antiimperialist movement strike deep roots in the countryside.258 While features like these are what led to the national-popular character, the politics of the period cannot be seen as a simplistic linear narrative of rising class-consciousness without breaks. Menon argues that the formation of “unions had as much to do with ties of region, kinship and caste as the presence of any particular class interest” and that terming all union activities as “militant anti-imperialist and anti-feudal agitations” as confusing “socialist rhetoric with actual rural political activity.”259 This, like the 104

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Sublaternists, rightly questions a reductionist approach. Yet, what has to be recognized is the emergence of a new political language, consciousness and ideology among peasants and workers, which was differently realized in different locations. Thus, amongst the Alleppey coir workers, for example, there were tectonic shifts in a short period of time. By the end of the general strike, workers were expressing their anger at moderate leaders of the union and publicly heckling them. Many workers and union leaders, like R. Sugathan, converted from their moderate position to adopt radical stances.260 Pachu Ashan, reminiscing after 70 years, felt that anti-feudalist agitations and overcoming the power of the janmis and their goons were the greatest achievement of the party.261 The participation in jathas too created a consciousness which was different from anything that was experienced before. A new kind of community is created. There is a qualitative difference between community of the old, which is underwritten by hierarchy, and community of the new, in which the participants are deemed equal. It would lay the basis of what can be termed as a “communist kinship.”262 As Communist leader K. A. Keraleeyan notes, jathas had people from different castes and classes, from the Namboodiri to the untouchable, from the middle peasant to the agricultural laborer.263 As Andalat puts it, the “wave of protest” against feudal oppression cannot be understood unless we recognize its pan-class and pan-regional character and this was evident only when one talked to the actual participants of such struggles.264 Of course, the idea of equality is incomplete in practice and the relationship between the upper-caste Communist leader and the lower-caste (especially the Dalit) cadre would be marked by paternalism even if it was different from that of the Congress leadership. Yet, this community is still markedly different from the one that existed before in its implications of the promise and that later it would break the boundaries of paternalism. Moreover, the jathas took the peasants to places where they had not been before. They congregated from different villages to go to the taluk or district headquarters, places which existed only in their cognitive map before.265 The perception of what constitutes the local is altered with such experiences, new political discourses and intellectual circulations. Activities toward the construction of a peasant–worker alliance were also taking place. Toward the end of the 1930s, peasant unions began to give moral and physical support to striking factory workers in towns.266 Prabhatham carried in each issue a column called “labor world” in which news about the peasant and worker struggles not only from Malabar and Kerala but also from all over India were carried. It had become a common practice for the national-level Socialist (later Communist) leaders to preside over and address peasant and workers at union meetings.267 Moreover the paper consistently gave equal, if not more importance to national issues. There was also significant coverage and discussion of international developments including articles by foreign authors (mainly Russian and Chinese) 105

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translated into Malayalam. Keraleeyan notes that Krishna Pillai was good at studying independence struggles in other countries and conveying their essence in his speeches.268 All of this contributed to going beyond the immediate face-to-face community to an “imagined community” of workers and peasants spread across linguistic and cultural barriers and the beginning of the comprehension of the larger structures of exploitation. The workers who traveled to Travancore for the responsible government agitation came back with new ideas of solidarity.269 Even the imagination of a linguistic identity hardly resembled Anderson’s nationalist community. For, even though European nations were imagined as communities (“a deep horizontal comradeship”), they were characterized by actual inequalities and exploitation.270 Here, the socialist linguistic imagination was different for it was simultaneously attempting to eliminate actual inequality and exploitation.

Conclusion In this initial period of socialist activity from 1934 until the formal foundation of the Communist Party in Kerala in 1940, certain important structural changes took place in politics and society which laid the foundation for the national-popular and the next phase. The signs of going beyond the moral economy, the challenge to caste-sanctioned feudal oppression, political activity that sought to fuse together regions, localities, peasants and workers, and, for the first time, explicitly organize them on the basis of material interests were seen. By no means these changes were of a linear nature, and their impact, of the same quality across locations, or without contradictions. There were instances of peasants, despite the support of peasant unions, running away, scared of confronting the landlords.271 In a Party report it was noted that the weakness of the organization was that “only educated men join our various party units.”272 There were also instances of the party trying to control the peasant unions by getting their members elected as office bearers.273 The gaps between party, leadership, program and their addressees on the ground need to be understood. Subalternist historian Shahid Amin’s study of the reception of Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement amongst peasants in Gorakhpur district in 1921 shows how it was appropriated by the peasants to violent causes: There was thus no single authorized version of the Mahatma to which peasants of eastern UP and north Bihar may be said to have subscribed in 1921. Indeed their ideas about Gandhi’s ‘orders’ and ‘powers’ were often at variance with those of the local Congress-Khilafat leadership and clashes with basic tenets of Gandhism itself.274 Contrary to Gopalan’s accounts, Krishna Pillai was clinical in his analysis of the situation in Travancore. According to him, the goal of responsible 106

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government in Travancore itself was not achieved because of violent repression, the surrender by the Gandhian leadership and the lack of organized activity amongst the people. On the other hand, he notes of the new political consciousness beyond community identity, the realization of the repressive nature of the much-revered kingship and the emergence of new political activists. The fundamental problem confronting the movement in Travancore, according to him, was the absence of mass organizations among the farmers and workers and the failure of the TSC and even the Radical Conference in building them. Therefore, there was not a clear-cut political movement linked with the immediate demands of the people, rather a movement built on inchoate demands and anger of the people. Critically, the masses had not fully grasped that the struggle for responsible government in Travancore was linked with the freedom struggle in the whole of India.275 However, the strike by the Alleppey coir workers, while succeeding in only delivering immediate economic benefits, was more impactful in establishing the right of the workers to organize and bargain, bringing them to the fore of the national independence struggle276 and the development of class consciousness. How even the introduction of new symbols by the workers (without real strength on the ground) is seen as threatening to the ruling order is seen in the case of the red flag which was unveiled for the first time by the coir workers in 1937 and had become the symbol of struggle and resistance.277 The Dewan banned the red flag and the slogan Inquilab Zindabad (Victory to the Revolution) after the outbreak of the war.278 The coir workers of Alleppey were influenced by different streams of ideas from outside their immediate world in the form of TSC, Youth League and CSP-communism. Finally, communism influenced them the most.279 Thus, the beginnings of a new order were visible. Subaltern Studies in focusing on the fragmentary and denying the anti-colonialist content of the peasant struggles, unintentionally replicates the hegemonic nationalist ideology which it criticizes as “disallow[ing] any opposition to colonialism other than itself, any dissent organized on other lines the title to oppositional glory.”280 It views the peasants as the prisoners of “territoriality that is, coresidential solidarity and primordial loyalty.”281 While there is the need for resisting nationalist and Marxist historiography which sees every peasant resistance as either as “nationalist” struggle or “class” struggle and acknowledging that “fragments” like low castes and Dalits resist a monolithic anticolonial nationalism in which they are not equal constituents, there is also the need for recognizing peasant and worker struggles which have been able to go beyond a fragmented consciousness and the universality they embody in the new larger identities sought to be constructed. The fragments are not static or essentialist. It could be argued that the substantially different trajectory that social transformation in Kerala has taken is primarily because of its early success in building extra-local linkages.282 These led to what Desai calls as “placing the CSP at the heart of the anti-colonial movement in Kerala, a 107

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feat not achieved anywhere else in India.”283 The period under consideration in which socialism and nationalism emerged in the imaginary of a primarily peasant society demonstrates the inadequacies of Subaltern Studies/postcolonial theory. The yearning for substantive equality is what drew peasants and workers to socialism.284 The extreme misrecognition and exploitation that the laboring classes and lower castes suffered under feudalism had no solution under Gandhian nationalism which operated on the material/symbolic split. If the peasant unions initially operated under a moral economy of feudalism, very soon, they were seeking to go beyond it. The beginning of a class imagery is an example of this. A merely culturalist reading as in the Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory does not acknowledge this development. It tends to gloss over, as Gandhian nationalism does, the need for material/structural transformation for symbolic recognition to have any effectivity. A deeper national-popular will was only possible if this dimension is recognized, and the Socialists took the first steps in this direction.

Notes 1 Office of the Director of Public Instruction to Secretary, Education Department, September 26, 1950, Madras Govt. Secret Files, Under-Secretary’s Safe (henceforth USS) no. 51/51, 19 June 1951 (Tamil Nadu Archives (TNA)). 2 See Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century (London: Michael Joseph, 1995), 199–224. 3 Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, ed. and trans. Quentin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International, 1971), 418. 4 “Spontaneous” is defined by Gramsci as “not the result of any systematic educational activity on the part of an already conscious leading group, but have been formed through everyday experience illuminated by ‘common sense’, i.e. by the traditional popular conception of the world—what is unimaginatively called ‘instinct’, although it too is in fact a primitive and elementary historical acquisition” (Ibid., 198–199). 5 Ibid., 110. 6 See Javeed Alam, “Peasantry, Politics and Historiography: Critique of the New Trend in Relation to Marxism,” Social Scientist 11, no. 2 (February 1983): 49. 7 Draft Peasant Report, Kerala State Committee, Communist Party of India (February 1943) reproduced in Andalat, ed., Vegam Pora [Not Fast Enough], vol. 1, Collected Works of C. H. Kanaran (Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha Publishers, 1978), 10. 8 Ronald Herring, Land to the Tiller: The Political Economy of Agrarian Reform in South Asia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983), 157. 9 Quoted in ibid. 10 Thomas W. Shea, Jr., “Barriers to Economic Development in Traditional Societies: Malabar, a Case Study,” Journal of Economic History 19, no. 4 (December 1959): 509. 11 E. M. S. Namboodiripad, Sampoorna Kritikal [Complete Works], vol. 9, 1948 (Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha Publishers, 2007). 12 Quoted in C. R. Yadu and C. K. Vijayasuryan, “Triple Exclusion of Dalits in Land Ownership in Kerala,” Social Change 46, no. 3 (2016): 396.

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13 B. A. Prakash, “Agricultural Backwardness of Malabar during the Colonial Period: An Analysis of Economic Causes,” Social Scientist 16, nos. 6/7 (1988): 57. The legal abolition of slavery in the latter half of the 19th century did not fully stop its practice. 14 Shea, “Barriers,” 510. Shashi, an activist for the Kerala Pulaya Maha Sabha (KPMS–an important Dalit organization set up in 1970) as well as a Rashtriya Swayam Sevak—RSS (the parent organization of Hindu nationalism) member and in his 40s, recounts how his parents were attached to a Nair household in Muvattupuzha (interview, December 2018). The great-grandfather of Mani, a Dalit daily wage labor in his late 40s, was bought by a landed Christian family in Muvattupuzha (field notes, August 2017). 15 Shea, “Barriers,” 516. Besides, there are some differences in tenures within regions like North and South Malabar (Report of the Special Officer for the Investigation of Land Tenures on the Recommendation of the Malabar Tenancy Committee, May 1947 (Government of Madras, 1950), 24. 16 P. K. Yasser Arafath,“The Nadapuram Enigma: A History of Violence and Communalism in North Malabar (1957–2015),” Economic and Political Weekly 51, no. 15 (2016): 49. 17 The Namboodiri (patrilineal) family was known as the illam. 18 P. Radhakrishnan, “Logan’s Legacy,” Economic and Political Weekly 16, nos. 28/29 (July 1981): 1187. 19 Prakash, “Agricultural Backwardness,” 59. 20 B. A. Prakash, “Agricultural Backwardness,” 56; Radhakrishnan, “Logan’s Legacy,”1187. Nevertheless, the social prestige attached to janmam titles, the lack of janmi interest in cultivation, the difficulty in dividing joint family property of the Namboodiris and Nairs until the 1930s, etc. led to leasing of the lands to tenants as the easy option and the prevention of the emergence of a land market in janmam titles (Prakash, “Agricultural Backwardness,” 57, 68; Shea, “Barriers,” 517; Report of the Special Officer for the Investigation of Land Tenures, 123). 21 For example, since the colonial courts favored the proprietary rights of the janmis, all the inferior leases which had poor documentation or were with unspecified terms were reduced to status of tenants-at-will. Because of the loss of revenue following British rule, janmis began to exploit the tenants with increased rents and practices like evictions (Shea, “Barriers,” 515). 22 K. N. Panikkar, Against Lord and State: Religion and Peasant Uprisings in Malabar 1836–1921 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989), 48. 23 Ibid. 24 Ronald Herring, “‘Fanaticism,’ Jacquerie, Movement, Party: Ratchet Politics and Peasant Mobilization in South India, 1836–1956,” (paper presented at the Power, Agrarian Structure and Peasant Mobilization in Modern India Symposium, Charlottesville, May 25, 1997, 6). 25 Author of the note unknown (Law (General) Department G. O. 2731, November 13, 1923 (TNA)). 26 Prakash, “Agricultural Backwardness,” 66. 27 Panikkar, Lord and State, 17. 28 Shea, “Barriers” and Prakash, “Agricultural Backwardness.” 29 Shea, “Barriers,” 509. 30 Prakash, “Agricultural Backwardness,” 53. 31 Ibid., 65. 32 By the word “stagnant”, Shea meant the absence of growth in per capita income and wealth, not the absence of economic change (Shea, “Barriers,” 509). 33 Shea, “Barriers” and Prakash, “Agricultural Backwardness.”

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34 Dilip Menon, Caste, Nationalism and Communism in South India: Malabar, 1900–1948 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 22. 35 Menon, Communism in South India, 22. 36 Ibid., 9. 37 Revenue Department G. O. 493, March 4, 1931 (Kerala State Archives (KSA)). 38 Manali Desai, “Party Formation, Political Power, and the Capacity for Reform: Comparing Left Parties in Kerala and West Bengal, India,” Social Forces 80, no. 1 (September 2001): 43. Many cultivators are forced to look for agricultural labor in others’ lands because of their small holdings (Shea, “Barriers,” 519). 39 Desai, “Party Formation,” 10. 40 K. N. Raj and Michael Tharakan, “Agrarian Reform in Kerala and Its Impact on the Rural Economy: A Preliminary Assessment,” in Agrarian Reform in Contemporary Developing Countries, ed. A. K. Ghose (London: Croom Helm Heler, 1983), 35. 41 Menon, Communism in South India, 9. 42 Report of the Special Officer for the Investigation of Land Tenures on the Recommendation of the Malabar Tenancy Committee, May 1947 (Government of Madras, 1950), 123. There were big landholders like Nileshwaram Raja, Karakattitam Nayanar, Chirakkal Thampuran, Kandakkayyil and Govindan Nambiar (A. K. Gopalan, Manninu Vendi in Andalat, Vegam Pora, 138). 43 Prakash, “Agricultural Backwardness,” 54. 44 E. M. S. Namboodiripad, Kerala: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow, 2nd ed. (Calcutta: National Book Agency, 1968), 83–85. 45 M. A. Oommen, Essays on Kerala Economy (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993), 74. 46 As Cooper shows, with regard to Africa, cash cropping was not simply a colonial imposition (Frederick Cooper, “Conflict and Connection: Rethinking Colonial African History,” The American Historical Review 99, no. 5 (December 1994): 1530). 47 A. V. Jose, “The Origin of Trade Unionism among the Agricultural Labourers in Kerala,” Social Scientist 5, no. 12 (July 1977): 30. 48 See his Land to the Tiller. 49 Anil Varughese, “Democracy and the Politics of Social Citizenship in India,” (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Toronto, 2013), 170; Herring, “Fanaticism.” 50 Cochin was almost 15 and 11 times less in area than Travancore and Malabar respectively. 51 Varughese, “Democracy,” 170. 52 Robin Jeffrey, Politics, Women and Well-Being: How Kerala Became a Model (Hampshire: Macmillan Press, 1992), 164. 53 Author of the note unknown (Law (General) Department G. O. 2731, November 13, 1923 (TNA)). 54 P. Radhakrishnan, Peasant Struggles, Land Reforms and Social Change: Malabar 1836–1982 (New Delhi: Sage, 1989), 78–79, 87–88. 55 Ibid., 88. 56 Menon, Communism in South India, 127. 57 Varughese, “Democracy,” 187. 58 A. K. Gopalan describes stories narrated by his grandmother from the 19th century about the oppression perpetrated by landlords on tenants including feudal levies (A. K. Gopalan, “Ente Jeevithakatha,” [My Life Story] in Andalat, Vegam Pora, 137). 59 K. K. N. Kurup, Kayyur Riot: A Terrorist Episode in the Nationalist Movement in Kerala (Calicut: Sandhya Publications, 1978), 8.

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60 Revenue Department, G. O. 272, February 9, 1934 (KSA). 61 Even the janmis and kanakkar who leased their lands on rent faced difficulties in getting their rents (Revenue DR 617/35, April 4, 1935 (Kozhikode Regional Archives (KRA))). 62 Namboodiripad, Kerala, 95. He adds that this could be an underestimate as it was based on the rent rates mentioned in the Tenancy Act which were lower than the real rates prevailing then. The constitution of the committee itself shows the nature of power structure in the society. It had four representatives from the landlord class, 12 from the superior tenants and only three representing the inferior tenants who constituted the majority (A. V. Anilkumar, Thiraskritha Charithrathinu Oru Aamukham [Foreword to A Discarded History] (Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha Publishers, 2000), 47). 63 Evidence of M. Gopala Kurup, Report of the Malabar Tenancy Committee, 1940, vol. 1 (Madras, 1940), 223. 64 Revenue (Ms.) Department G. O.1935, August 12, 1947 (KSA). 65 Public (General A) Misc. G. O. 630 (Confdntl.), March 12, 1948 (TNA). 66 K. K. N. Kurup, Agrarian Struggles in Kerala (Trivandrum: CBH, 1989), 11. 67 Deshabhimani, August 5, 1945. 68 Report of the Special Officer for the Investigation of Land Tenures on the Recommendation of the Malabar Tenancy Committee, May 1947, 26. It noted every agricultural class, including the janmis, as leading a “precarious existence.” 69 Jose, “Origin of Trade Unionism,” 32. 70 Varughese, “Democracy,” 164. 71 In 1935–1936, out of the 390 registered joint-stock companies in Travancore, 271 were in the field of money-lending and other financial transactions whereas only 53 were engaged in industrial production proper (Namboodiripad, Kerala, 89–90). In 1932–1933, Travancore had 20 per cent of the total banks in India. In Cochin too, there was a tremendous growth of banking with the number rising from 5 in 1917–1918 to 167 in 1932–1933, an increase by almost 34 times (Oommen, Kerala Economy, 59). 72 The Christian law of inheritance provided more secure proprietary rights on land making it a more acceptable security for the banks (Oommen, Kerala Economy, 63). On the other hand, the Nair matrilineal joint family system of the tharavad prevented a partition of the property as well as a rational utilization of the extensive amounts of land. The legislations legalizing the partition of tharavad properties were passed only in 1925 in Travancore and in 1933 in Malabar (Varughese, “Democracy,” 160, Prakash, “Agricultural Backwardness,” 68). 73 Yadu and Vijayasuryan, “Triple Exclusion,” 401–402. 74 T. J. Nossiter, Communism in Kerala: A Study in Political Adaptation (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982), 53. 75 Jeffrey, Women and Well-Being, 77. 76 While population doubled between 1881 and 1931, industry employment only grew by around 22%. The “absence of a corresponding growth in the number of people employed by the industrial sector is ample proof of the semicolonial nature of the economy developed by the British” (R. K. Suresh Kumar, “Socio-Economic Basis of Political Evolution in the Erstwhile Travancore State, 1859–1938,” (Ph.D. Thesis, Kerala University, Trivandrum, 1989), 62–63. 77 Capitalism in agriculture was mainly confined to the plantation sector and also to rice growing areas in Kuttanad. 78 This assertion is validated by the fact that a very high proportion of the bank advances were towards agriculture, a unique phenomenon when compared to other parts of India (Oommen, Kerala Economy, 71).

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79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89

90 91 92

93 94

95 96

97 98 99 100

Namboodiripad, Kerala, 91. Jeffrey, Women and Well-Being, 78. Namboodiripad, Kerala, 98, 104. See T. K. Velu Pillai’s statement (Proceedings of the Travancore Sri Mulam Assembly, vol. 7, part I (1938), 27). Jeffrey, Women and Well-Being, 80–81. Oommen, Kerala Economy, 67. Jeffrey, Women and Well-Being, 81, 83. Revenue (Ms.) Department, G. O. 1911, June 17, 1943 (KSA). By 1953, 200,000 workers were directly engaged in coir work. The industry flourished in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century because of the demand for cheap floor covering from the West (Nossiter, Communism, 58). Ibid., 58. Taluk is an administrative subdivision. In some places, it was found that per capita income per day was as low as two annas and seven paisas [denominations of a Rupee] (Puthupally Raghavan, Sakhavu R. Sugathan [Comrade R. Sugathan] (Kottayam: Current Books, 1999), 237–238). Nossiter, Communism, 52. Ravi K. Raman, Global Capital and Peripheral Labour: The History and Political Economy of Plantation Workers in India (London: Routledge, 2010), 2. Gyanendra Pandey, “Peasant Revolt and Indian Nationalism: The Peasant Movement in Awadh, 1919–1922,” in Subaltern Studies I: Writings on South Asian History and Society, ed. Ranajit Guha (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982), 187–188. Ranajit Guha, Dominance without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India (London: Harvard University Press, 1997), 35–39. According to Sudipta Kaviraj,“the Indian capitalist class [did not] exercise its control over society through a moral-cultural hegemony of the Gramscian type . . . [p] olitically too, as in the field of economic relations, the Indian bourgeoisie cannot be accorded an unproblematic primacy, because of the undeniable prevalence of precapitalist political forms in our governance” (Sudipta Kaviraj, “A Critique of the Passive Revolution,” Economic and Political Weekly 23, nos. 45–47 (1988): 2431). In India, radical political struggles were unsuccessful in part due to “strategies of isolation on the part of left leaders, but also because of persistent repression by the British.” Passive revolution was to a great extent result of the changes brought about by the British in “Indian political expression and representation” (Manali Desai, State Formation and Radical Democracy in India, 1860–1990 (London: Routledge, 2006), 10). Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, 110. See Frantz Fanon, “National Culture,” in The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, ed. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin (London: Routledge, 1995), 156. For a discussion on the failure to achieve national liberation in the Indian national context, see Guha, “Some Aspects”. Subaltern Studies has rightly recognized passive revolution as the main feature of the Indian transition, but then it goes onto generalize it as a common condition of all postcolonial societies without examining the exceptions and the conditions required for the same. See Chapter 6 for a detailed discussion. E. M. S. Namboodiripad, Sampoorna Kritikal [Complete Works], vol. 6, 1945– 46, (Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha Publishers, 1999), 322–323. Ibid., 323. Home-spun cotton cloth. Menon, Communism in South India, 98–100. Thus, the Thiyyas, among whom many traditionally practiced toddy tapping, were attracted to temperance for

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101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126

reasons of “economy and status,” while the Chaliyas, a weaving community whose economic well-being was threatened by factories and cheap foreign imports, saw in the propagation of khadi a scope for revival of their condition. Even for the upper-caste Nairs, nationalist activity provided an opportunity to fashion a new sense of community identity in the face of their declining dominance (Ibid., 106). A merely culturalist reading as in the Subaltern Studies writings cannot account for the diverse motives demonstrated by different caste groupings here. A. K. Gopalan, In the Cause of the People: Reminiscences (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1973), 25. E. K. Nayanar, My Struggles: An Autobiography (New Delhi: Vikas, 1982), 7. On the other hand, the Communists also contradictorily accommodated alliances with caste and religious groups under electoral politics as we noted. Namboodiripad, Sampoorna Kritikal, vol. 6, 325. Gopalan, Cause of the People, 44. See also E.M.S. Namboodiripad, How I Became a Communist, trans. P.K. Nair (Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha Publishers, 1976), 136. Satyagraha is a Gandhian non-violent method of struggle. Gopalan, Cause of the People, 44. Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, 3rd ed. (Abingdon: Routledge, 2015). Menon, Communism in South India, 115. For a comparative look into other instances of such ‘nationalization’, see Pandey, “Peasant Revolt.” Quoted in Gopalan, Cause of the People, 22. Gopalan, Cause of the People, 26. P. Sanal Mohan, “Narrativizing Oppression and Suffering: Theorizing Slavery,” South Asia Research 26, no.1 (2006): 34. T. T. Sreekumar, Charithravum Adhunikathayum [History and Modernity] (Kottayam: Current Books, 2001), 106. Cooper, “Conflict and Connection,” 1537. See Anthony Giddens, The Nation-State and Violence, vol. 2, A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism (Hampshire: MacMillan Press, 1995). Jayant Lele, “The Two Faces of Nationalism: On the Revolutionary Potential of Tradition,” in National and Ethnic Movements, ed. Jacques Dofny and Akinsola Akiwowo (London: Sage, 1980), 213–214. Benita Parry, Postcolonial Studies: A Materialist Critique (London: Routledge, 2004), 10. Namboodiripad, Sampoorna Kritikal, vol. 6, 312. Namboodiripad, How I Became a Communist, 121. See Gyanendra Pandey, “In Defense of the Fragment: Writing about HinduMuslim Riots in India Today,” in A Subaltern Studies Reader, ed. Ranajit Guha (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 1–33. Namboodiripad, How I Became a Communist, 112, 123, 151. Quoted in Andalat, ed., Sakhavu Krishna Pillai [Comrade Krishna Pillai] (Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha Publishers, 1978), 71. Namboodiripad, How I Became a Communist, 112. See Jeffrey, Women and Well-Being, 120; Karimbana, Rakthasakshikal. MediaoneTV Live, “View Point 19 2, CPM State Committee Member M M Lawrence in Talks with Gopi Krishnan,” YouTube, June 13, 2013, www. youtube.com/watch?v=5ituaSe5quU. P. Krishna Pillai, “Kerala Congress Socialist Party, Prabhatham, April 10, 1939,” in Sakhakkele Munnottu [March on, Comrades], The Collected Works of Krishna Pillai, ed. Andalat (Thiruvananthapauram: Chintha, 1998), 40. Herring, “Communist Movement,” 397.

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127 T. V. Krishnan, T. V. Thomas: Jeevithakatha [Life History] (Kozhikode: Pranavam Books, 1998), 33. 128 K. A. Keraleeyan, Navayugam Varika, August 7, 1955, in Andalat, Sakhavu, 103–104. 129 Nossiter, Communism, 70. 130 Calendar Case No. 29 of 1938, May 16, 1938, Stationary Second-Class Magistrate of Cannanore, Madras Home Dept., G. O. No. 1265 (Confdntl.), March 24, 1942 (TNA); see also Namboodiripad, How I Became, 172. 131 Namboodiripad, How I Became a Communist, 176. A pan-Kerala identity had begun to shape up by late 19th century itself and the Aikya Kerala movement to unite all Malayalam-speaking regions had begun in the 1920s (Prerna Singh, “We-ness and Welfare: A Longitudinal Analysis of Social Development in Kerala, India,” World Development 39, no. 2 (2011): 286). A host of newspapers articulating a linguistic identity began to be published from the late 19th century. The first Kerala Provincial Congress Committee Conference was held in Ottapaplam in Malabar in 1921 attended by delegates from Malabar, Travancore and Cochin. There were resolutions passed for a United Kerala in various conferences held by the Congress in the 1920s (P. Muhammed, “Cinema, Politics and Historical Consciousness: The Left and the Production of a Modern Subjectivity in Kerala, 1950s–1980s,” (Ph. D Thesis, Department of Cultural Studies, English and Foreign Languages University Hyderabad, 2017), 65). But the Congress was basically confined to Malabar. 132 Pandey, “Peasant Revolt,” 187. 133 Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993). As Himani Bannerji points about the shift, though the Subaltern Studies “began in a critical and historiographical and political impetus, it travelled a circuitous epistemological path to social conservatism and cultural nationalism . . . its initial stance of reduction and rejection of all nationalisms eventually gave place to an ambiguity and produced a qualified support for a certain kind of nationalism that shuns modernity. Thus, Subaltern Studies, intentionally or unintentionally, offers a historiographical and epistemological basis for illiberal forms of nationalism where Fanon’s class analysis and characterization of petty bourgeois political consciousness as ‘false decolonisation’ is bypassed in .  .  . favour of cultural nationalism and [an] ethnicised religio-communitarian state” (Himani Bannerji, “Projects of Hegemony: Towards a Critique of Subaltern Studies’ ‘Resolution of the Women’s Question’,” Economic and Political Weekly 35, no. 11 (March 2000): 904). 134 Desai, “Party Formation,” 49. 135 Ibid. 136 Namboodiripad, How I Became a Communist, 172–173. 137 Gopalan, Cause of the People, 114. 138 Kurup, Kayyur Riot, 31. 139 Desai, “Party Formation,” 56, f.n.22. 140 Krishna Pillai notes in 1946 how big business interests acquired so much more influence in the Congress compared to the past (Deshabhimani, May 29, 1946 in Krishna Pillai, Sakhakkale, 475). 141 Prabhatham, March 6, 1939. 142 K. C. George, “Vayalar Samaram, 1948,” [Vayalar Struggle] in Andalat, Vegam Pora, 146; Prabhatham, January 30, 1939 and Deshabhimani, April 18, 1946 in Krishna Pillai, Sakhakkale, 518, 561; Kurup, Agrarian Struggles, 31. 143 P. Narayanan, Aranoottandiloode, cited in Andalat, Vegam Pora, 195.

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144 Andalat, Rekhayillatha Charitram [History without Documents] (Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha Publishers, 1987), 55–58. 145 Ibid., 17. 146 Andalat, Vegam Pora, 181. 147 Ibid., 71; P. Govinda Pillai,* prominent Marxist ideologue, interview, April 1999; K. G. Nair,* a professional and Communist sympathizer, interview, July 2003. 148 Govinda Pillai, interview. 149 Andalat, Rekhayillatha, 71. 150 Peasant’s Memorial, Kasaragod Taluk, December 8, 1938, Court Records, S. C. 44/1941 reproduced in Kurup, Kayyur Riot, 88–93. 151 Pandey, “Peasant Revolt,” 171. 152 Namboodiripad, Sampoorna Kritikal, vol. 9, 183, 189, 191. 153 Submissions of Subramanian Thirumumpu, V. M. Vishnu Bharatheeyan and K. Kunhiraman, Report of the Malabar Tenancy Committee, 1940, vol. 1 (Madras, 1940), 316–317, 258, 249; for details of the various feudal levies, see Andalat, Rekhayillatha, 20–40. 154 Submissions of Subramanian Thirumumpu, M. Gopala Kurup and C. V. Kunhappa Nambiar, Report of the Malabar Tenancy Committee, 1940, 316–319, 223, 246; Radhakrishnan, Peasant Struggles, 94. 155 Memorandum of All Malabar Karshaka Sangham to Revenue Minister, Madras Government, reproduced in Prabhatham, January 2, 1939; submission of Subramanian Thirumumpu, Report of the Malabar Tenancy Committee, 1940, 316). 156 Memorandum of All Malabar Karshaka Sangham to Revenue Minister. 157 Prabhatham, January 2, 1939. 158 Resolution passed by the Chirakkal TalukKarshaka Sangham, Mathrubhumi, August 19, 1938. 159 See especially, Gopalan, Cause of the People. They also constituted a significant break from earlier activities like petitions and requests made to the state (see K. K. Kunjan, “Thiru Kayar Factory Workers Kanaka Jubilee Souvenir, 1972,” in Andalat, Sakhavu,17. 160 The Hindu, August 23, 1935 in M. S. Priyamol, “Communication Strategy and Propaganda Techniques of Communist Movement in Kerala (1930–1957),” (Thesis, Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Calicut, Kerala, 2005), 62. 161 Menon, Communism in South India, 139. In one instance in Chirakkal Taluk, peasants decided to not pay rent along with the slogans to end extra-rental exactions (account of Azhikkodan, Andalat, Sakhavu, 138). 162 Peasant’s Memorial, Kasaragod Taluk, December 8, 1938. 163 The activists were aged between 65 and 100 years, many of whom were part of Communist Party activities right from its founding. Two-thirds of them were farmers, agricultural workers, factory and other workers. Three-fourths had only primary and secondary education (Priyamol, “Communication Strategy,” 115). 164 Memorandum of All Malabar Karshaka Sangham to Revenue Minister. 165 Mathrubhumi, February 9, 1934. 166 Mathrubhumi, October 13, 1935. 167 Mathrubhumi, May 26, 1937. 168 Gopalan, Cause of the People, 74–75. Gopalan recounts the incident when one landlord tells him that while he had no objection to peasants holding meetings and raising slogans, he was pained by the fact that they would shout these slogans in front of him and whenever they would pass by his house. It

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169 170 171 172

173

174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182

183

184 185

was unbearable for the lord to lose the recognition associated with the title (Andalat,* Communist activist, interview, July 2003). Menon, Communism in South India, 141. Prabhatham, January 9, March 6, 1939; K. M. Kunjikannan’s account, Andalat, Rekhayillatha, 25. Saju,* lower-level CPM activist, interview, August 2004. Submission of K. T. Kammaran Nambiyar, Report of the Malabar Tenancy Committee, 1927, vol. 2 (Madras, 1928), 299. Andalat, Rekhayillatha, 29; Kurup, Kayyur Riot, 11. Different castes within the hierarchy had a different way of addressing the lord (see Thoppil Bhasi, Olivile Ormakal [Memories in Hiding], 5th ed. (Thiruvananthapuram: Prabhath Book House, 1999), 66. They had different degrees of access to the upper-caste households. While untouchable castes could not enter at all, Christians could enter the verandah or the portico (Devaki, Ezhava, daily-wage laborer, 68, interview, August 2017; Ousep, shop-keeper, Communist sympathizer, 60, interview, August 2017). R. Ramakumar, “Aspects of the Peasant Movement in Malabar: An Interview with E. K. Nayanar,” Review of Agrarian Studies 4, no. 2 (July–December 2014): 112. Around 1933, Krishna Pillai went to Kannur for anti-untouchability work where he was tied up and beaten by conservatives (Andalat, Sakhavu, 50). Quoted in Nancy Fraser, “From Redistribution to Recognition? Dilemmas of Justice in a ‘Post-Socialist’ Age,” New Left Review 212 (July–August 1995): 68. Fraser, “From Redistribution,” 71, 78. Andalat, Rekhayillatha, 76. K. M. Kunjikannan’s account, ibid., 77. Andalat, Rekhayillatha, 78. V. V. Kunhambu, Kayyur Samara Charithram [History of Kayyur Resistance], 2nd ed. (Trivandrum: Chintha Publishers, 1984), 115–116. See Chapter 6 for a detailed discussion. Mathrubhumi, April 16, 1938. In one kanakkaran’s account from before in 1927, he did not face any trouble from the janmis so long as he avoided “impudent and insulting behaviour . . . avoided acting against the interest of the janmi in other respects, showing due regard for his position and prestige” (written evidence of T. A. Kalyana Krishna Ayyar, High Court Vakil, Calicut, Report of the Malabar Tenancy Committee, 1927, vol. 2, 416). One janmi argued that “The slogans like ‘down with landlordism’ must stop. .  .  . The slogan is obnoxious to me . . . It is against Dharma to be so ungrateful to the landlord who has been of use to the tenant” (Submission of Poravankara Kunhambu Nair, Report of the Malabar Tenancy Committee, 1940, vol. 1, 325). Vishnu Bharatheeyan, Socialist leader, noted in 1940, “By the preachings of the socialists there has been an awakening amongst the tenants as regards their rights. .  .  . Till yesterday if a tenant saw a janmi’s karyasthan [manager], he bowed to him. Today it is not exactly like that. He stands a little erect because of our propaganda. Now rent is given only after obtaining the receipt” (Report of the Malabar Tenancy Committee, 1940, vol. 1 (Madras, 1940), 261. Menon, Communism in South India, 139. There were many such cases reported during 1939 (see Mathrubhumi Weekly, April 16, 1939). According to the state, by the end of 1938, as the sangham grew more organized, “the behaviour of its members became more arrogant and militant” and showed a “defiant attitude towards organisations” which opposed them. “Social boycott, intimidation, personal violence, a no-rent campaign against the jenmies, etc. were introduced (Confidential Report from

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186

187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195

196 197 198

199 200 201 202 203 204 205

206 207

Superintendent of Police (SP), Special Branch, Central Intelligence Department (CID) to Under-Secretary, Public Department, Madras, April 13, 1941, Public (General), G. O. No. 811–12 (Confdntl.), April 24, 1941 (KSA); see also Intelligence Bureau Report (secret), Home Department Political (I) 1941, September 9, 1941, National Archives of India (NAI)). Prabhatham, January 2, 1939. Also, social boycott was dividing the peasant community causing problems in building unity. Krishna Pillai intervened in one instance to tell the peasants that no peasant should forcibly be made a member of the peasant union (Andalat, Rekhayillatha, 80). Gopalan, Manninu Vendi, in Andalat, Vegam Pora, 185. Intelligence Bureau Report (secret), Home Department Political (I) 1941, September 7, 1941 (NAI). Ibid. C. Unniraja, Kerala Charithram, in Andalat, Vegam Pora, 197. Home Department Political (I) 1941, September 7, 1941 (NAI). Madras Government Fortnightly Report (FR), first half of November 1938, cited in Radhakrishnan, Peasant Struggles, 96–97. Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, 132. Gopalan, Cause of the People, 61. Aranoottandilude, in Krishna Pillai, Sakhakkale, 388. It has to be understood that the trade union movement had begun before the Socialists in 1928. From 1931 to 1933, a few unions came up and also there were some strikes (K. Damodaran, Keralathile Swathanthrya Samaram, cited in ibid., 384). Most of them had moderate demands and were not connected to a distinct political program. Aranoottandilude, in Krishna Pillai, Sakhakkale, 388. P. Krishna Pillai, Mathrubhumi, March 31, 1935, in Sakhakkale, 366. In January 1937, for example, Krishna Pillai and C. H. Kanaran took the lead in setting up the Thalassery Weaving Workers Union, which had a membership of 400 within two months. A strike was called in May which lasted for 17 days and ended with the increase in wages by 50% (Account of A. P. Kumaran, Andalat, Sakhavu, 146). P. Narayanan Nair,“Aranoottandilude,” in Krishna Pillai, Sakhakkele, 388–389. A. K. Gopalan, Mathrubhumi, April 28, 1935, in Krishna Pillai, Sakhakkale, 378. See Alam, “Peasantry,” 50. Quoted in A. V Anilkumar, C (Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha Publishers, 2002), 35. A. K. Gopalan, “Ente Jeevithakatha, 1975,” in Krishna Pillai, Sakhakkale, 386. Marx Kannan Nambiar, “Janayugam, August 19, 1978,” in Andalat, Vegam Pora, 116. Gopalan, Jeevithakatha, in Krishna Pillai, Sakhakkale, 386. This was the case later too in places where union activity began in second half of the 1940s. Pachu Ashan,* an 86-year-old, Communist activist for 70 years and from a Dalit caste, recounts how only 21 workers of the 65 workers came to the first meeting of the beedi company union started in Pampakuda near Muvattupuzha (Travancore). Ashan worked for 13 years as a Communist Party activist in Muvattupuzha from the late 1940s to the early 1960s (interview, August 2017). P. Krishna Pillai, Mathrubhumi, March 31, 1935, April 9, 1935, Sakhakkale, 367–370. In a worker meeting held near a temple, a priest came and objected saying that the untouchables would defile the temple, and the Muslims would enter it (P. Krishna Pillai, Mathrubhumi, April 9, 1935, Sakhakkale, 370). In another

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208 209 210

211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220

221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230

instance, the opponents of labor ran a campaign amongst poor Muslims that the Socialists do not have any religion or god and that they would destroy the mosques or shoot the Muslims like they did in Russia (A. K. Gopalan, Mathrubhumi, April 28, 1935, Sakhakkale, 378). FR1, September 1937, Home Political, 18/9/37 cited in Jeffrey, Women and Well-Being, 252. In the Cochin princely state, Cochin Congress and Cochin State Congress were two political formations constituted to fight for responsible government (Namboodiripad, Sampoorna Kirtikal, vol. 6, 315, 317). The other political demands were for adult suffrage, revoking the ban on TSC, release of political prisoners etc. Both Krishna Pillai and Puthupalli Raghavan note that when the Coir Workers’ Union met to vote on the strike, the resolution on the political demand for responsible government drew the greatest support from the workers (Krishna Pillai, “Prabhatham, November 27, 1938,” November 27, 1938, in Sakhakkale; Raghavan, Sakhavu, 86–88; also, Nossiter, Communism, 81). Robin Jeffrey, “‘Destroy Capitalism!’ Growing Solidarity of Alleppey’s Coir Workers, 1930–40,” Economic and Political Weekly 19, no. 29 (July 1984): 1162. Ibid., 1163; Raghavan, Sakhavu, 104. But Gramsci presciently notes, “‘pure’ spontaneity does not exist in history” (Prison Notebooks, 196). Ibid., 273. Ranajit Guha, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983), 331–332. Raghavan, Sakhavu, 116; Namboodiripad, Kerala, 161–164. Daily Report, November 6, 1938, Travancore Government English Records, Confidential Section 981/1945 (KSA); New Age, April 7, 1957, 11 cited in Jeffrey, Politics, 253. Private Papers of Pachu Ashan. Andalat, Rekhayillatha, 108. The “volunteers are expected to be ready to lose their lives for the cause of their sangham. Karshaka Sangham members have been fed on revolutionary ideas” (Confidential Report from Superintendent of Police (SP), Special Branch, Central Intelligence Department (CID) to Under-Secretary, Public Department, Madras, April 13, 1941, Public (General), G. O. No. 811–12 (Confdntl.), April 24, 1941 (KSA). Menon, Communism in South India, 152. Public (General) Dept. G. O. 1351 (Confdtnl.), August 8, 1939 (TNA). Namboodiripad, Kerala, 167. T. V. Sathyamurthy, “Indian Peasant Historiography: A Critical Perspective on Ranajit Guha’s Work,” Journal of Peasant Studies 18, no. 1 (1990): 107. Namboodiripad, How I Became a Communist, 187. Fourth Party Congress Souvenir, Communist Party of India, April 1956 in Krishna Pillai, Sakhakkale, 272. Nossiter, Communism, 75. Public (General), G. O. No. 811–12 (Confdntl.), April 24, 1941 (KSA). Menon, Communism in South India, 120; original emphasis. The local is, of course, continually influenced by trans-local, trans-regional, pan-national and global ideas. N. E. Balaram, “Keralathile Communist Prasthanam, vol. 1, Aaadhyanalukalilude, ”in Sakhakkele Munnottu [March on, Comrades]: The Collected Works of Krishna Pillai, ed. Andalat (Thiruvananthapauram: Chintha, 1998), 213.

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231 According to Balaram, the role of K. K. Warier in building the party in Alleppey, Kochi and Trichur was important (Ibid.). 232 Mathrubhumi, June 9 in Andalat, Sakhavu, 19; Raghavan, Sakhavu, 62, 64. 233 Cited in Krishnan, T. V. Thomas, 45. 234 Raghavan, Sakhavu, 65; N. E. Balaram cited in Krishna Pillai, Sakhakkale, 213. In Koothattukulam, it was K. T. Jacob who was the main leader behind the CSP group (Pachu Ashan, interview, and Private Papers of Pachu Ashan). 235 Raghavan, Sakhavu, 61–65. CSP leaders began to write regular articles on socialism, etc. in the Travancore Labour Association (coir workers’ union) newspaper, Thozhilali (T. M. Thomas Isaac, “From Caste Consciousness to Class Consciousness Alleppey Coir Workers during Inter-War Period,” Economic and Political Weekly 20, no. 4 (January 1985): 12). 236 Raghavan, Sakhavu, 65. 237 N. E. Balaram cited in K. Chandran, “Working Class Movement in Travancore (1922–1949),” (Ph.D. Thesis, Goa University, Taleigão, 1989), 122. 238 Gopalan, Cause of the People, 101–103. 239 Skrine, C. P., Resident for Madras States, No. 84171, 6 December 1938, Secret Letter to C. P. Ramaswamy Aiyer, Dewan of Travancore, D.Dis.206/1938/CS cited in Chandran, “Working Class Movement,”123; Krishnan, Thomas, 43. 240 Letter of E. M. S. Namboodiripad, KPCC Secretary to General Secretary, AICC, September 12, 1938 (AICC Files, P-12, 1938-Part 1, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML)). 241 Prabhatham, annual issue, May 1939, cited in Krishnan, T. V. Thomas, 37–38. 242 See, for example, January 2, 9, March 6, 7, June 5, 12, 19, July 17, September 4, 1939. 243 Raghavan, Sakhavu, 116. 244 Krishnan, T. V. Thomas, 45. 245 Prabhatham, January 9, 1939, in Sakhakkale, 34. 246 Krishnan, T. V. Thomas, 45. Isaac, “Caste Consciousness.” Krishna Pillai also played a critical role in designating one of the most important future Communist leaders, T. V. Thomas, to work amongst the labor unions (K. K. Kunjan’s account, Krishnan, T. V. Thomas, 47–48). This also shows the stature and influence that Krishna Pillai had in the party. 247 As early as 1937, Krishna Pillai had called a meeting of CSP cadres in Cochin to deliberate upon the possibility of a general strike (Isaac, “Caste Consciousness.” 17). 248 Peasant’s Memorial, Kasaragod Taluk, December 8, 1938, Court Records, S.C.44/1941 reproduced in Kurup, Kayyur Riot, 88–93. 249 Gopalan, Cause of the People, 87. 250 In the same period, K. E. Varghese describes in his ethnography of a small village in Travancore, nationalist ideology was taking hold for the first time with only the upper-caste Nairs divided about it. The names of national leaders like Gandhi and Nehru, and other Malayali leaders “echoed all over Travancore”, which “had its effects even in this remote village” (Slow Flows the Pampa (New Delhi: Concept Publishing, 1981), 12). 251 Namboodiripad, Sampoorna Kritikal, vol. 9, 347. 252 Quoted in David Ludden, “Subalterns and Others in the Agrarian History of South Asia,” in Agrarian Studies: Synthetic Work at the Cutting Edge, ed. James C. Scott and Nina Bhatt (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), 210. 253 Andalat, Rekhayillatha, 76–77. 254 The idea of integrating working class unions continued since the first Keralawide meet in 1935. The Third All Kerala Labour Conference was supposed to

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255

256

257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265

266

be held in Travancore, but was banned by the government. Therefore, it shifted to Cochin in February 1939 (Prabhatham, February 20, 1939). It resolved to support the responsible government agitation by the princely states (Prabhatham, February 27, 1939). At this meet, it was decided to form a Kerala State Trade Union Council for the sake of which an organization committee consisting of Socialist leaders like A. K. Gopalan and P. Krishna Pillai was constituted (Ibid.; Raghavan, Sakhavu, 134). To integrate the activities of the dispersed unions, the All-Travancore Trade Union Congress was constituted in 1939. The government was of the opinion that the unity of the labor unions in Travancore was of the primary concern of the Malabar Socialists (The Resident for Madras States, 14 December 1939, Letter to Dewan of Travancore, D.Dis.507/1940/CS cited in Chandran, “Working Class Movement,” 211). Describing the karshaka sangham activities in S. Kanara district in 1939, the District Magistrate (DM) says, “They were organised by persons form Malabar who visited these areas periodically and who were helped by local persons. . . . The members and organisers of these Karshaka Sanghs were being guided by the rules framed by similar organisations in Malabar.” Because these Karshaka Sanghs are “included in the Kerala province in their scheme of organization,” they can be “said to form a part of the Karshaka organization of Malabar” (Letter to Chief Secretary, Madras Government (Confdntl.), April 11, 1941, Public General, G. O. No. 811–12 (Confdntl.), April 24, 1941, (KSA)). See, for example, resolution passed by the Chirakkal Taluk Karshaka Sangham on February 25, 1939 (Prabhatham, March 27, 1939) and Peasant’s Memorial, Kasaragod Taluk, December 8, 1938 (Court Records, S. C. 44/1941 reproduced in Kurup, Kayyur, 88–93). A. Kunhikannan, secretary of the Kodakkad Peasant’s Union, presenting his evidence before the Tenancy Committee states: “We accept the rate of fair rent proposed by the All-Malabar [Karshaka] Sangham” (Report of the Malabar Tenancy Committee, 1940, vol. 1, 321). The membership of the unions also entailed the payment of fees of 2 annas per head. Of this 1 anna was retained by the local union, 6 pies each were paid to the taluk union and AMKS, respectively (Subramanian Thirumumpu, Report of the Malabar Tenancy Committee, 1940, vol. 1, 320). Home Department Political (I) 1941, September 7, 1941 (NAI). Namboodiripad, Kerala, 156. Menon, Communism in South India, 137, 158. Thomas Isaac, “Caste Consciousness,” 14. Private Papers of Pachu Ashan. I thank Yasser Arafath for this point. Andalat, Rekhayillatha, 69. Andalat, interview. Such an exercise was undertaken for his work as noted. Gopalan notes that fact that the in the jatha undertaken to Calicut in December 1938, many peasant activists were traveling there for the first time (Cause of the People, 96). Even the peasant union representing a small village like Kayyur sent 8 delegates to the jatha undertaken to Mangalore, the headquarters of South Kanara District demanding the inclusion of Kasaragod in Malabar District (Kurup, Kayyur Riot, 40). The Kasaragod Taluk Peasant Conference held in 1938 was claimed to be a success and V. V. Kunhambu, CSP activist, claims that there was an “ocean of people” (V. V. Kunhambu, “Deshabhimani Krishna Pillai Memorial Souvenir, 1955,” in Andalat, Sakhavu,133). In February 1939 the Chirakkal Taluk Karshaka Sangham passed a resolution stating their support to the striking Commonwealth Factory workers in Cannanore and declared that the worker-peasant class interests are one. The Kakkattu

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267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282

283 284

Karshaka Sangham donated six bags of rice to the Commonwealth workers (see Prabhatham, March 6, March 27, 1939). The Third Chirakkal Taluk Karshaka Sangham Conference Report states that “jenmies and the vested interests were terrified at the united work done to create class consciousness and unity among the peasants with the ultimate object of establishing a ‘Kisan-Mazdoor’ Raj” (Home Department Political (I) 1941, September 7, 1941 (NAI)). Earlier, in 1937 peasants similarly supported the striking beedi workers in Cannanore (Anilkumar, C, 37; See also Gopalan, In the Cause, 93). As Nayanar recounts, “an important feature of all these agitations was that there was close links between peasants, agricultural labourers, and the industrial working class. When the mill workers of Pappinisseri [1940] were on strike, our peasant comrades brought them food every day” (Ramakumar, “Interview with E. K. Nayanar,” 118). This was not a development that started with the Socialists but had originated before with the expansion of the field of politics to the nation. Andalat, Sakhavu, 104. Anilkumar, C, 41. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991), 7. Andalat, Rekhayillatha, 70. Home Department Political (I) 1941, September 7, 1941 (NAI). Ibid. Shahid Amin, “Gandhi as Mahatma: Gorakhpur District, Eastern UP, 1921–2,” in Selected Subaltern Studies, ed. Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 342. Prabhatham, September 4, June 5, 1939 in Krishna Pillai, Sakhakkale, 84–85, 59–60. Krishnan, T. V. Thomas, 63. Raghavan, Sakhavu, 92. Prabhatham, June 12, 1939. Jeffrey, “Destroy Capitalism,” 1162. Sudipta Kaviraj, “The Imaginary Institution of India,” in Subaltern Studies VII, ed. Partha Chatterjee and Gyanendra Pandey (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993), 10. Guha, Elementary Aspects, 331. Namboodiripad claims: “The national upsurge of the nineteen-thirties and the role played in it by the working class and socialist movements were thus on a really all-Kerala scale. For, though the form in which and the intensity with which they manifested themselves are different as between Malabar, Cochin and Travancore, they did not remain localised; the political national movement with a really all-Kerala leadership was slowly emerging. And it was the organized working class guided by socialist ideology that was standing at the head of this movement” (Namboodiripad, Kerala, 164–165). Desai, State Formation, 12. As Ailamma, a peasant leader of the later 1945–6 communist struggle against landlordism in Telangana reminisced, “I was so proud of the sangham [the organization]. Then they said that the sangham meant that the poor would be equal and their kingdom would come . . . How can the dream of a new order that the sangham spoke of ever leave us?” (Quoted in John Roosa, “Passive Revolution Meets Peasant Revolution: Indian Revolution and the Telangana Revolt,” Journal of Peasant Studies 28, no. 4 (2001): 77).

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3 TOWARDS COMMUNISM

If we saw the foundations of the national-popular being laid by the Socialists so far, this chapter will show the building upon these foundations by the Communists. The new tendencies seen were elaborated and began to acquire a systematic character, especially the consolidation of class consciousness and a linguistic identity. This complicates the Subaltern Studies’ positing of religious consciousness as the main framework of the peasants and workers. The transformation of the consciousness in less than a decade was substantial and the peasantry and working classes under the leadership of the Communist Party were now more than willing to indulge in a violent confrontation with the landlords and the state. Tradition–modernity dichotomies were bridged again when the so-called backward peasantry and labor play an active part in contributing to the building of a public sphere of the lower orders, albeit with many limitations. And an approximation of national liberation and a national-popular will appear on the horizon.

New directions The newly formed Communist Party immediately tried to generate a mass movement against the war even though it was under a ban. The government, fearing the threat of the Communists, wasted no time in arresting the top leadership of the Kerala Communist Party (still working within the fold of the Congress). The party, in turn, decided to hold an Anti-Repression Day on September 15, 1940, to which the right-wing Congressmen were thoroughly opposed. The protest evoked strong response from civil society showing the kind of support that the unions and the Socialists had been able to build. There were violent demonstrations and also clashes by the volunteer squads with the police in N. Malabar including one in which resulted in the death of a police officer. Prominent Communist leader K. P. R. Gopalan was accused of the murder and later sentenced to death.1 The conflict showed the interplay of local well as national dimensions.2 Namboodiripad calls it the first militant resistance which was “consciously organised by a political party as against the hitherto spontaneous resistance of the people.”3 After this there 122

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was a backlash by the state against the Communists as a result of which they had to finally come out of the Congress umbrella as an independent political party. The party had to face immense difficulties because of the ban. Its resources were thin, organization weak and the top leadership in jail. However, according to the Communist assessment later, it “was, in fact, during the period of illegality that the Communist Party, as a political party (and not merely as a group of good and hardworking Congressmen), became the leader of the anti-imperialist movement.”4 With the formation of the Communist Party, there was increasing militancy in the countryside.5 The most significant of the incidents was the Kayyur episode, which was to enter into the “mythology” of communism. Again, anti-war protest was the context in which the peasant unions took the police head-on in a place called Kayyur on March 28, 1941. Three processions of around 200 karshaka sangham members shouting communist slogans forced a police constable to carry the red flag. After a while, he resisted and tried to escape by jumping into the river but was stoned to death by the crowd.6 Later, four of the arrested were sentenced to death. The event “marked a watershed in agrarian political activity. Primarily, it showed how the local dread of the police had been replaced by an open defiance and confrontation.”7 The Communists began to sense a change in the attitude of the police.8 Again, like the September 1940 incident, there are local issues which underwrite the conflict. However, it is not that the peasants are incapable of thinking beyond the local. In actuality, nationalist and anti-imperialist sentiments too had a role to play in their consciousness, which are also a result of political and ideological education.9 When P. C. Joshi, General Secretary of the Communist Party, went to the prison to meet the four Communists sentenced to death, one of them, Madathil Appu, said, “We joined the party to fight and die for the freedom of the country.” Chirukandan, another, said, “We are four kisan [peasant] sons. But India’s millions are kisans [peasants]. We can be hanged but they can’t be destroyed.”10 The essence of “national liberation” in which it was not just the nation, but a nation which was defined through class, is seen in the statement of these peasant activists with little education. Earlier, they had written to Joshi: We are only proud to die for our country’s independence. . . . We are inspired by the martyrdom of nationalists like Bhagat Singh and we remember the immense hardships that Lenin had to face before the victorious revolution over the Czarist regime. . . . National unity has to be achieved at any cost.11 Nationalism here shows the potential of becoming a part of universal emancipation with the references to the Russian Revolution also. Despite the elements of rhetoric in these statements of the peasants on death row, what the localist reading discounts is the fact that peasants and workers can 123

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become bearers of, and are receptive to new political consciousness. The historian K. K. N. Kurup recognizes the nationalist character of Kayyur. He points out the tendency among Communists to portray it only as a class struggle. He also rightly notes the shades of influence of the ideology of revolutionary violence on some of the peasant activists and Communist leaders.12 With the Kayyur episode, there was a massive repression undertaken by the government against the party and the peasant unions. On April 25, 1941, the government declared as unlawful the All Malabar Karshaka Sangham and all village sanghams affiliated to the main body as unlawful associations.13 After the ban on the peasant unions, the strength of the peasantry and agricultural laborers diminished. However, they found innovative ways of overcoming the ban. The karshaka sanghams changed their names to kisan sanghams.14 With Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union, the character of the war changed for the Communist Party, with the “imperialist war” becoming the “people’s war.” The party now began to focus on anti-Japanese propaganda. The threat of Japanese fascism was one of the most important concerns of the Communist Party with which it linked local, national and international issues. As Joshi emphasized: We take a positive attitude towards war efforts because it is our war, and declare that we want to build a real people’s war effort. To tolerate the present position is a stab in the back of the peoples of the world, to lose our own country and await the onslaught of Fascism.15 The party relentlessly tried to educate the masses about the dangers of Japanese fascism. Similarly, an analysis of the songs and slogans coined by the Communist Party shows that they had tried to make a link between the local and the extra-local, of why Japan constituted a threat to the country.16 Of course, in practice, political ideologies do not work as intended by the party.17 Yet, it was also not something that did not make any impact on local politics.18 The focus was also on concerns which were national as well as international, liberation of the nation and the colonized world.19 Yet, the anti-imperialist struggle suffered a setback with the Communist Party now supporting the British.20 For the first time, working-class and other mass organizations split. By the end of 1944, Congress began to set up organizations of students, peasants and workers to rival the Communists: “Anticommunism became not only the hallmark of the right-wing but sections of the left also. A new generation of anti-imperialists grew who genuinely believed that the Communist Party was a paid agent of British imperialism.”21 This is echoed by K. Damodaran as well.22 This also shows, contra, the localist reading, how anti-imperialist and nationalist ideas had increasing popular support. 124

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Nevertheless, the greatest advantage for the party was that the ban on it was lifted and it could function legally. This period from 1942 to 1945 saw the fast-paced growth of the party despite the “anti-nationalist” position that it took. This was possible because of the substantial level of penetration into civil society that it was able to achieve during the period: “though its slogans on the national-political plane ran counter to the sentiments of a majority of anti-imperialists, its practical day-to-day activity was eminently fitted to the needs of the people.”23 The other important move by the party was the formulation of the United Kerala slogan, the logical culmination of the process of integration started by the Socialists. Between 1935 and 1939, Prabhatham, and after 1942, Deshabhimani, the Communist Party newspaper, equally covered the news of political developments of Malabar as well as the princely states of Cochin and Travancore. The same was the case of the CSP till 1940 and the Communist Party afterwards, in terms of formulating political strategies.24 As noted earlier, the linguistic identity was sought to be formulated not by papering over class differences but by thinking through them. However, with the People’s War line and the severe economic crisis due to the war, the party had to reformulate its program in the countryside. Confrontation with the landed elite had to be given up for reconciliation.25 Severe food shortages and famine-like conditions meant that the help of landlords was needed without which it would have been impossible to expand local cultivation under its “grow more food” program.26 The temporary truce between the Communists and the landlords and moneylenders etc., on the one hand, gave fillip to food production and thus ameliorated the condition of the poor, and on the other, it resuscitated the declining power of the landed classes. Feudal levies, for example, were back in some places.27 Nevertheless, the Communists were able to become a mass party through its food program. The peasant unions began agitations for price control and rationing. They took census of the needs of villagers.28 The focus was on the creation of food committees which involved all parties and sections and the organization of food conferences in cities and districts. And the emphasis was on fair prices for peasants, public control of food stocks and effective implementation of rationing and against black marketing and hoarding.29 Jathas were taken out to the Collector for the “opening” of government stores to feed the poor. Volunteer patrols conducted inspections of ration shops for irregularities.30 In Travancore, the struggle against black marketing, hoarding and price rises was taken up by the Communists31 and unions like the Coir Factory Workers’ Union under their aegis. Like in Malabar, the attempt was to bring about rationing through popular participation.32 In 1943, there was a significant spurt in the formation of unions and also the revival of non-functional unions especially through the leadership of trade unionists and Communists, T. V. Thomas and R. Sugathan.33 125

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In a self-critical account later, which is different from that of Namboodiripad’s assessment, K. Damodaran argued that the period of collaboration with the British caused damage to the party more than it benefitted by the increased membership of the party as well as trade-union strength. He sees most of the new members as having no role in political struggles. He does not deny the benefits of the civil society and social welfare activities by the party in alleviating famine-like condition as well providing medical help in the severely pandemic disease-affected areas, especially in other parts of the country like in Bengal. However, Damodaran sees this period as the party going back on the fundamental task of forging class struggles and explaining to the people the root causes of their misery.34 Subaltern Studies, premised as it is on the critical consciousness alone of the subalterns, tends to ignore factors like manipulation of, and confusion among them, and consequently the need for political education and training.35 Organization became the watchword among the workers and peasants. Again, the spontaneity and “moral outrage” against feudalism, as Gramsci would put it, was “educated, directed, purged of extraneous contaminations, the aim was to bring it into line with modern theory [Marxism].”36 The party slogan was “Men into Kisan Sangham, women into the Mahila [women’s] Sangham, and children into Bala [children’s] Sangham.”37 According to the party, there were more than 180 Bala Sanghams with almost 6,300 children in Malabar. These children, ever alert and vigilant, pass resolutions on every event of importance. .  .  . If a kerosene trader treats a customer rudely, the little children assemble, pass a resolution condemning the action and warn the merchant to correct his ways.38 What is striking is the significant change in attitudes which occurred in less than a decade.39 The imbrication in civil society was further achieved by the communist influence on culture (see Chapters 4 and 5). They understood the need to engage with the quotidian lives of the people. There were elements of creating new critical modes of interaction and also making critical what already existed.

Confronting the state The period of truce between the Communists and the landlords was not to last long. With the end of the war there was a new dispensation. There was return to the militancy of the earlier period. Government had declared an exemption from revenue assessment on punam (shifting cultivation) practiced on unsurveyed jungle lands during the period of the war.40 Such leeways came to an end. Landlords too began to exercise their authority 126

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with impunity again. They became the main food hoarders and the controllers of black marketing in food grains. There were instances of landlords leaving their fields fallow compounding the problem of food shortage.41 As noted before, there were a high number of evictions as the landlords began to regain ownership of leased lands. However, the Communists too were willing to go further than before. The new policy explicitly brought back the issue of the end of feudal landlordism and the conferring of ownership on the cultivator.42 They also trained the volunteer squads for their future confrontations with the police. The struggle for the cultivation of wastelands assumed urgency. The karshaka sanghams demanded that wastelands be assigned to cultivators the failure of which will lead to the encroachment and the cultivation of such lands.43 One of the significant conflicts took place in a place called Karivellur toward the end of December 1946. The Raja [king] of Chirakkal, one of the prominent absentee landlords of the area, wanted to transport 10,000 seers of paddy procured from his tenants and stored in the granary. The peasant unions had demanded that the paddy be distributed to the villagers at a fair price since there was terrible food scarcity in the village. The Raja refused (his intention being to sell the same in the black market) and secured police protection to transport the paddy. This was resisted by a crowd led by Communists who attacked the police shouting,“Inquilab Zindabad [victory to the revolution],”“Kill the police,” etc.44 First, there was lathi [baton] charge by the police and later there was firing, including the use of machine guns. Two peasants died. There was massive repression after the incident with the police adopting the usual tactic of arresting Communists and peasant activists from the surrounding villages who were not involved. What was noteworthy was that the united front that the villagers had put up against the Raja showing the penetration of communist ideology. The laborers in the village refused to help him in transporting the paddy and he was forced to take help from outside.45 There were many other incidents resembling Karivellur. Also, there were instances like forcible occupation of wastelands and fight for customary privileges like the right to collect firewood, thatching grass and against the forcible appropriation of paddy being taken as rent for the landlord and intense violent reprisal by the police. Many cases were filed in these offences.46 There were also attempts to confront caste-based restrictions when in one case, 10 accused trespassed into a private temple tank and bathing therein.47 In the 1946 Kavumbayi struggle by the small peasants for the possession of punam land owned by a big landlord, the Malabar Special Police was summoned by the landlord, and in the ensuing confrontation four peasants were shot dead.48 There was another major confrontation near Irikkur. A crowd numbering more than a thousand demonstrated against arrest of peasants who were getting military training as part of the volunteer squads. The authorities were to later call it an “agrarian revolution.” There 127

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was an immediate ban on all meetings in the area. However, the peasant activists decided to violate it and hold a secret meeting. The police got to know of it and surrounded them. Again, there was an encounter in which slogans like “Down with imperialism” were raised. Five peasants were killed in the police firing. The cycle of arrests and repression followed.49 The militancy of the party and the peasants only strengthened the support of the repressive apparatus in favor of the landlords. Meanwhile, Travancore witnessed one of the most important workingclass struggles in Punnapra and Vayalar in October 1946, which would also enter the mythology of communism. The struggle for responsible government had acquired further urgency with the Dewan making his moves for an independent Travancore and proposing an American-style constitution in which his position would be akin to that of the President. With the end of the war, the economic crisis deepened with the situation of the lower classes deteriorating. Black-marketing and hoarding exacerbated food scarcity. “Not a morsel of rice you get/ Even if you pay in gold/ And wait before the shop all day/ Till all your hairs turn gray” was a popular song in the jathas.50 Like in Malabar, there was an increasing number of incidents in which the unions clashed with the police. The Dewan had begun to repress the working-class and peasant resistance and there were a number of police atrocities. The ATTUC—All Travancore Trade Union Congress (which included unions of non-communist socialist persuasion too) under which there were 55 unions called for a symbolic strike on September 15, 1946, and a general strike on October 22, 1946. On the one hand, the Dewan tried to mollify the tradeunion leadership and isolate it from the Communist Party by granting all the economic demands. On the other hand, repression hardened with the military being called in. CPI, Coir Workers’ Union, etc., were banned. The Communist Party was preparing for any eventuality by opening camps in which political and physical training were given to workers. On October 18, there were almost 2,500 workers in camps.51 After the strike had begun, there were processions with red flags and wooden spears to the house of a prominent factory owner of the area, Applon Arouge, where the police had set up their camp. In the bloody (mismatched) clash that followed, 4 policemen and 35 workers died. Some of the rifles fell into the hands of the workers who retreated to the island of Vayalar. Martial law was declared. On October 27, armed troops crossed over to the island and in the ensuing clash, around 300 peasants and workers were shot dead.52 The most significant aspect of the resistance was the willingness showed by the subaltern classes in taking on the state. Not only they put up with the tremendous atrocities committed by the police before and after the strike, but they were also willing to take on the latter head-on. The other notable feature highlighting the political consciousness of the workers is that the Dewan could not prevent the workers from going on a general strike despite the granting of each and every economic demand of theirs.53 These 128

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were signs of an emerging hegemonic moment when the working classes go beyond the political-economic moment (in which economic class interests are expressed) to a transcending of “corporate limits of the purely economic class.”54 In Malabar militancy continued even after India’s independence (August 1947) with the Communist Party making deep inroads into the rural areas.55 The food situation did not show any sign of improvement with the government removing statutory rationing. The Communists used this to counter the government. The party newspaper Deshabhimani unleashed a vigorous campaign against black-marketing and corruption. And the struggle for cultivation of wastelands further strengthened.56 Rather than allow the peasantry some respite by giving access to wasteland cultivation, the Congress ministry of Madras passed a law, making void, with retrospective effect, all alienation of private lands since 1945. Moreover, it continued the severe repression through the MSP (Malabar Special Police).57 Jathas were banned by the authorities. By strengthening the power of the landed classes, Congress proved how far-removed it was from the pressing problems of the masses and showed the limitations of the bourgeois nationalist imagination.58 Here, we can also see in actuality the Subaltern Studies’ misplaced diagnosis of the bourgeoisie and the Indian National Congress as the central actor to bring about democracy. The militancy of the CPI in the countryside now acquired a different tone in the new conjuncture in which the central committee of the party decided to follow the “revolutionary line” which called for the violent overthrow of landlordism and the national government in April 1948. The faminelike conditions prevailing in Malabar gave a fillip to the implementation of the new line. The character of slogans too changed. New ones appeared like “Telangana way, our way” and “land to the tiller and power to the people.”59 Attacks on police guarding paddy, obstructing movement of food grains or removing food grains from the storehouses of landlords, snatching of firearms, threatening landlords with violence for paddy were some of the activities reported during this period.60 The Munayankunnu struggle of 1948 sought the distribution of the excess amount of paddy hoarded in landlordowned godowns to the peasants experiencing severe food shortages. In the police retaliation, six party activists were killed.61 In April–May 1948 alone, nearly 40 peasants were killed, either in police firing or in lock-ups due to torture. Scores of Communists were accused in these incidents and sentenced to rigorous imprisonment (RI). Communist leaders K. P. R. Gopalan and Kanthalot Kunhambu also were sentenced to three years RI in one of the cases. Even minor offences attracted RI of 18 months. There was a virtual “reign of terror” by the police. There were instances of police burning the houses of peasants and shooting without the order of higher authorities.62 The government as a part of its repression tried to raid the study classes held by the CPI which were used by it as a ploy to conduct propaganda and plan 129

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strategies.63 In Travancore, within 11 days of the Congress ministry taking charge, on April 3, 1948, there were arrests of Communist Party leaders and leaders of peasant and workers’ unions and student organizations.64 More teeth were added to the repressive apparatus of the state which feared the replication of Telangana in Malabar. In September 1948, the Public Safety Ordinance was passed on the lines of Defence of India Act of 1939 mainly to curb communist activities.65 Force was also supplemented with attempts to generate consent among the populace against communism with propaganda work.66 However, the reason for the failure of the government to stop the spread of communism was not hard to fathom. The former treated the latter as either a law-and-order problem or a social/psychological malaise which could be treated with appropriate preventive measures.67 None of the structural/ideological causes were addressed by the government. Only repression hardened with the Communist Party declared unlawful by the Madras Government in September 1949 through the Criminal Law Amendment Act. Later the government justified it by stating that the activities of the party had assumed “such alarming proportions and the situation had grown so menacing and so many cases of murder, looting, arson and sabotage have occurred” that it was forced to ban it.68 Preventive detention was also widely employed against Communist leaders. However, the influence of communism in civil society could not be easily countered.69 On January 1, 1950, there was a conflict between peasants and policemen in a place called Shooranad. One inspector and some policemen died. This prompted the ban of CPI in Travancore too.70 In Pachu Ashan’s account, a reign of terror was unleashed by the Prime Minister of Travancore, T. K. Narayana Pillai, who vowed to eliminate communism from the region. A police camp was set up specifically for torture. According to him, Congress Party goons had joined the police in beating up Communist beedi workers. The main Communist leader from Muvattupuzha, P. P. Esthose, and others were arrested. A Communist worker from Pampakuda village near Muvattupuzha, Ayyappan, was killed by the police to become a “martyr” for communism.71 The coming into being of the new republic gave the Communists another opportunity to emphasize the necessity of national liberation against what in their view was the myth of independence fostered by the Congress. They observed January 26, 1950, as “Anti-Constitution day.”72 On February 11, 1950, just 15 days after the republic came into existence, there was the Salem jail massacre in which 22 Communist prisoners from Malabar were shot dead after an altercation with prison wardens over the deplorable conditions in jail. Communist leaders C. Kannan and Kanthalot Kunhambu escaped with injuries.73 Further reinforcements of the police force were undertaken with 2 subdivisions, 8 additional circles and 55 police stations newly opened.74 However, with the new Constitution in place, the Communists, ironically, appealed to fundamental rights guaranteed under it and sought protection against preventive detention and other “anti-constitutional” acts of the 130

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government.75 The peculiar position of the new nation state which had chosen liberal democracy was demonstrated when the High Court of Madras declared the Indian Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1908 (which was used extensively against the Communists) ultra vires of the Constitution.76

The parliamentary path The revolutionary line of violent overthrow of the Indian state did not last long with the latter proving its might in unambiguous terms. With the first parliamentary elections around the corner, the party realized: To continue our present negative attitude to the issue of election would mean to isolate ourselves even from our supporters, to doom ourselves to a state of political impotence, to hand over the masses to socialist, Congress factions and other reformists. It would mean losing a great opportunity to popularize our programme, to reforge our links with the people, to build the unity of the left parties and to develop a mass movement against the present government.77 Therefore, the new program was put in place which did not abandon revolution, but put it off to a more opportune time in the future. Though the party lost a number of cadres as martyrs and was defeated by the repressive apparatus of the state, even critical Communist accounts argue that it is during the period between 1948 and 1951 that it really matured and transformed itself into a “revolutionary” party.78 This was the crucial period in which elements of national liberation—where independence is conceived not merely as decolonization, but a postcolonial state with peasants and working classes at the helm—appeared. On the one hand, despite the ill-advised line of “violent overthrow of the state,” it provided an opportunity to the Communists to demonstrate their sincerity to the cause. On the other hand, it exposed in a stark manner the bourgeois-feudal character of the Congress regime, a process that was to take much longer in other parts of the country.79 During the period from 1948, 3,000 Communist Party members and sympathizers were imprisoned in Kerala, besides the number of deaths due to police action. Nevertheless, the party and the movement were only strengthened by the repression, not weakened.80 The brutality of the Congress regime was what drew a lot of people to the communist fold and its argument that independence was illusionary as the character of the state remained the same.81 What in people’s eyes seemed to be the immense suffering which the Communists endured played a role in the spread of communism. Communist Party members from the top leadership to the ordinary workers were subject to numerous jail terms and severe torture in jail.82 In Communist—especially subaltern—activists’ accounts this notion of suffering and sacrifice plays a very critical part.83 131

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The disenchantment with the Gandhian program and bourgeois nationalism which led to the formation of CSP in mid-1930s now comes a full circle. There was widespread shock and anger at the fact that the enemies of the people and British collaborators like the feudal lords had turned now into “Congressmen” and adorned high positions in the party.84 The class character of the Congress provincial governments was already evident in the period before independence. A stubborn refusal to incorporate agrarian reform was its main feature. This hardened after 1947.85 Moreover, the Congress in Kerala was torn apart by conflicts among the elite representing various caste/ religious configurations. Between 1948 and 1952, there were five different governments in Travancore and four in Cochin. The wrangling for office and unbridled corruption soon deflated the aura of the legacy of anti-colonial struggle. As Namboodiripad notes, even sections of the working class and the peasantry too thought that Congress should be allowed a chance to rule.86 As Fic argues, “The door to the Communist rule was opened . . . by the gradual but steady decline of the ethical, moral and political standards of the Congress.”87 After 1952, there was a significant shift in people’s support for the Communists, especially in Travancore.88 Thoppil Bhasi recounts the transformation in the attitude of the police toward the Communist prisoners because of the emerging groundswell of mass support. After his arrest, there were big demonstrations by agricultural laborers in many villages of Central Travancore.89 After the police station attack in Edappally (Cochin) that killed two policemen, there was intense and violent targeting of anyone who was associated with the accused Communist activists. The incident entered the political and cultural lore of Kerala. According to a local historian, “the direct consequence of the incident was that it helped draw the middle class toward the Communist Party. It was the middle-class families, irrespective of caste and religion that faced the brunt of police atrocities.”90 The radical difference was reflected in the results of the 1952 elections. In Travancore– Cochin, the Communists secured 29 seats (26.6% of votes) and emerged the second largest party.91 It had won no seat in 1948. In Malabar, it got 16% of votes and 6 seats (its ally Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party got 7 seats and 13% votes).92 In 1954, in its stronghold of Malabar, the Communist Party won 38.3% of votes and 50% of the seats in the District Board elections.93 The party continued the struggles it launched in the past decade. The demands were for the halving of cash payment for garden land, fixity of tenure for hut-dwellers, cancellation of rent arrears, cultivation of wasteland without rent, etc.94 The struggles had reached a new stage when the All-India Kisan Sabha conference held at Cannanore in 1953 called for, among other things, the abolition of landlordism without compensation and free distribution of lands acquired from the landlords among the poor peasants and agricultural laborers. In Muvattupuzha, after the Communist Party ban was over, there was very fast-paced activity in agrarian and other work worker 132

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agitations and the building of class organizations. After the first beedi union was formed in the town, hotel, weaving, headload and gold workers’ unions were formed by the party. In 1954, an All-Kerala transport workers’ agitation that took place under the aegis of the Communist Party lasted 3 days in Muvattupuzha and 300 people were arrested, most of whom were beedi workers.95 The importance of material factors observed before continues here. There was further inter-linking of these unions.96 The unificatory process initiated by the Socialists and Communists culminated in the formation of the Kerala Karshaka Sangham in 1956 by dissolving the regional units of Malabar, Travancore and Cochin.97 The party’s victory in the Malabar District Board elections was the first time in India when the Communists got to administer at the district level. The Board gave a good example of governance in the three years of its tenure according to even critical Communist accounts. Those divisions which elected opposition members were given special attention. The party did not interfere in the affairs of the Board. The Board laid a lot of importance on austerity.98 In an attempt to show that the Communists were better administrators than Congressmen, the party even invited leftist parties and progressive individuals to share power in the Board. The performance of the Board was acknowledged when some of its Communist Party members later received awards from the Nehru government at the center for model administration.99 The win and the performance could be seen as the precursor to the Communist win in the first elections to a United Kerala in 1957.100 This was a euphoric moment for the subaltern classes. As Damodaran puts it: Immediately after the victory the workers and poor peasants, in the main, were jubilant. They felt very deeply that the new government would satisfy their demands. There was a tremendous feeling of pride and strength in the working class. I remember hearing poor, illiterate workers telling policemen on the streets: “Now you daren’t attack us because our government is in power. Namboodiripad is our leader. We are ruling.”101

“People’s” public sphere The communist success in this period in Kerala can be understood by the comprehensive engagement it had with society and the consequent entry of the subalterns into a variety of civil society institutions. This process had severe limitations and contradictions as well, caused largely by the Stalinist party framework in a liberal democracy. Yet, this is contrary to the Subaltern Studies’ understanding of civil society as merely a domain of elites and the masses lacking the necessary endowments for membership in civil society leading them to be confined to community. The party sought to involve in all 133

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aspects of daily life, and beyond the economic in spheres like literature, arts, science, health, in the struggle for voting rights and so on.102 Rather than restricting itself to only economistic demands, the Communists sought wider changes in the structure of society. Describing K. P. R. Gopalan’ s activities, Krishna Pillai says that he was involved simultaneously in the organization of laborers, students, youth, children and the setting up of reading rooms.103 Uthaman, an 84-year-old Communist activist from a landed family, was active amongst peasants and agricultural labor as well as cooperative bank employees’ unions in Muvattupuzha.104 A militant resistance, as we saw until now, was supplemented by an approach that was based on developing a communicative rationality and going beyond land relations.105 Libraries and reading rooms became an important constituent of the communist movement.106 These developments were already there even before the emergence of socialism through processes initiated by the Renaissance and anti-caste and caste-reform organizations. The peasant unions had as one of their main agendas the setting up of night schools and libraries and reading rooms for the peasants.107 The network of reading rooms culminated in a movement and a Malabar Vayanasala (Reading Room) Conference took place in Kozhikode in 1937. The conference appointed a committee with Socialist leaders as members and K. Damodaran as the convener to advance the movement.108 Movements like these gave communism its popular character.109 Communists “also appropriated and used public spaces such as the village-squares and public grounds to reach out to the common masses” to create new social spaces.110 Further, new public spaces like tea shops emerged as ones where the working classes could challenge Brahminical caste hierarchies and through which communist ideas could gather strength. As one Communist activist of the early period records, the village tea shop was “‘the central office’ of political activism and political discussions.”111 Describing the union activity in a beedi union started in a company in the early 1950s, P. M. Ismail, CPM leader from Muvattupuzha, says that there would be one worker designated to read newspapers and he would be paid a day’s wages. The other workers listened while rolling beedis and they compared and contrasted news from various newspapers. He attributes the critical consciousness and political awareness to this education in the beedi unions.112 The other crucial intervention of the peasant unions was in the resolution of local disputes in the villages. Instead of the expensive and time-consuming procedure through the courts, the peasants settled their disputes with the help of the unions. Even family disputes were resolved by the unions.113 The government noted that unions were trying to set up a parallel government.114 This was a not a phenomenon that was confined to Malabar or to peasant unions. In Travancore too this was the scenario with the Coir Factory Workers’ union playing the same role. This was a fundamental shift from the hierarchical system (albeit under the guise of moral economy) that

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prevailed under feudalism. Earlier, for example, in the Christian-dominated areas of Alleppey and Shertallai taluks, it was the Church and the lords who were the mediators and arbitrators in the community disputes.115 Not only civil cases but criminal cases too came under the purview of the unions. In the period from 1943 to 1946 it was estimated that 90% of the cases were resolved by the unions.116 Traditional consensual modes of dispute resolution were transplanted onto the modern setting but without their hierarchical underpinnings. Again, the negotiation with modernity is conducted not through a complete denial of the past. If Subaltern Studies ignores the importance of civil society in non-Western societies, here, peasant unions are one of the main constituents of social transformation and they conform to the standards of modern associational life. They are characterized by equality, freedom of entry and exit, deliberative procedures of decision-making, recognized rights and duties of members and so on that Chatterjee posits as features of Western-derived civil society organizations.117 At the same time, they also seek to incorporate some of the features of traditional communities. The emphasis on only the rupture caused by modernity under postcolonial theory misses the continuities between tradition and modernity even when there is recognition of hybrid forms in some places. Unions introduced a new language of rights. When initially Krishna Pillai began to talk about concepts like bonus, unemployment wages and maternity benefits, he and other Communist activists were roundly mocked as seeking a portion of capitalist profits or for the ludicrousness of business establishments being responsible for women who deliver children.118 In the initial period, what was significant was that the party solely survived on the funds collected from the people and collections made from the members of the party.119 During the war, when an epidemic of cholera broke out in Malabar (which killed nearly 15,000 people), Communist activists were very active in the disease-alleviation programs and also other activities like burying of the dead in the most difficult of circumstances putting their own lives at grave risk.120 We saw that the period of “People’s War” was used by the Communists to agitate for price controls and rationing. The food committees set up by the party became the main mechanism for alleviating starvation. A Congress sympathizer, while disagreeing with the Communist Party policies, wrote that he has tremendous respect for the great difficulties and sufferings underwent by its activists in alleviating the scarcity of food, medicines and clothes, and in fighting communicable diseases.121 The persistent pressure mounted by the agitations forced the Travancore government to introduce state-wide rationing in 1943. Malabar too introduced rationing in the entire district by February 1945.122 Kerala, which produced only 50% of its rice requirement, avoided the calamity of a famine. As Robin Jeffrey argues, “The idea that the state ought to perform functions for the people and that such functions could be forced from the state gained

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currency.”123 The near-universal spread of the public distribution system in Kerala later is attributable to the early gains made, and shows, contra Subaltern Studies, the appropriation of the institutions of the state. Despite K. Damodaran’s critical account of the stalling of class struggles during “People’s War,” the contributions of civil society activism to the future building of a social welfare system cannot be ignored. As Nayanar puts it: [The peasant struggles for food grains] were not well-planned or organised programmes of struggle. The peasant movement in each of these areas was reacting spontaneously to conditions of hunger and distress. The public distribution system that emerged later was the appropriate institutional mechanism to achieve what the peasant movement did in earlier days.124 In the communist penetration into the countryside, one of the crucial factors was the role that teachers played in it. Teachers had emerged as the “organic intellectuals” of the communist movement. Local leadership to the peasantry was often provided by the teachers. This is a different trajectory from the one that Gramsci had posited. According to him, the peasantry lacks the capacity to “elaborate its own ‘organic’ intellectuals, nor does it ‘assimilate’ any stratum of ‘traditional’ intellectuals.”125 However, it is this new strata of intellectual organizers that Gramsci envisaged as the key actors in the forging of alliance between peasants and workers.126 Teachers unions proliferated from the 1930s. Malabar’s teachers were considered a great threat to the government. In 1948, a government enquiry found that teachers were involved in teaching students communist anti-government slogans.127 Rather than socialist and communist struggles resolving themselves into a fight for local issues alone, it was constituents like the teachers’ movement that gave socialism and communism later a national-popular character.128 The Malabar Aided Elementary Teachers’ Union formed in 1936 fought against the dictatorial ways of the management and also for issues like security of service and living wages. The teachers’ link to the peasantry was also due to the fact that many hailed from the same class and hence were in the know of their condition. It could be said that since they were subject to wage–labor exploitation, they could empathize with the industrial working class too.129 Later the unions also became a part of the anti-imperialist struggle130 melding the local and the extra-local. The communist influence on the teaching community negated one of the most important ideological state apparatuses. Communist Party workers had high levels of union membership. Three-fourths of the 388 old-time Communist activists surveyed had membership in labor and service unions. Besides, they were associated with various cooperative societies, voluntary organizations, social and cultural organizations, literary fora and so on131 showing the depth of penetration of socialism/communism in civil society. 136

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The Communists had created an extensive and disciplined network of locallevel cadres.132 This was despite the fact that transport and communication facilities were hardly developed. Some of the villages were only accessible by boat or by foot. Monsoons would render them completely isolated. The critical support that the Communists enjoyed from society was the sole reason for their ability to sustain themselves during periods when they were in hiding. The movement thus could not easily be suppressed despite government repression. From 1948, many of the top Communist leaders were able to avoid arrest by living in underground shelters. When in hiding, the bala sanghams were helpful in finding about police movements and also in bringing food.133 In the early 1930s, parallel to the rising consciousness of the workers and peasants and in an effort to channelize the same, journals and magazines began to spring up like Kesari (Lion) Thozhilali (Worker), Sahodaran (Brother) and Prabhatham (Dawn), some of which were before the founding of the CSP. In the early 1950s, the Communist Party published dailies like Janayugam, Navajeevan and Navalokam and dozens of periodicals and weeklies like Munnani, Theeppori, Janasabdam, Communist, Aikya Keralam, Pravaham, Viswakeralam, Republic and Navayugam. Besides, the front and mass organizations of the party had their own journals.134 Also, the genre of political pamphlets and leaflets emerged. There were a lot of these published regarding the need for peasant organizations, the problems that peasants face, the economy and so on. The founding of Prabhatham strengthened this tendency. The debates that took place in the pamphlets played a significant role in the amelioration of the agrarian situation and also the construction of tenant reform laws.135 These had worker and peasant-related news and radicalism. In 1948, the government noted that “Malabar district has admittedly the largest no. of political periodicals in the regional language.”136 In the 1952 Elections, the party published 214,000 leaflets and booklets, 21,128 daily copies of newspapers and 7,000 weeklies.137 Prabhatham of the Socialists, as we have seen, was the most radical one with extensive coverage of worker and peasant issues. However, all of these were not just accounts of real life struggles alone but also had fictionalized elements too. There were short stories and poems and they also borrowed extensively from folk culture which made it rather appealing to its targeted audience.138 The role that Prabhatham played can be compared to that of Ordine Nuovo initiated by Gramsci in Italy: [T] he articles in Ordine Nuovo were not of cold intellectual constructions but flowed out of our own discussions with the best workers and set forth the feelings, wishes, real passions of the Turin working class of which we had partaken and which we had stimulated . . . the articles in Ordine Nuovo were also “putting in action” of real events, seen as forces in a process of inner liberation and as the working class’ own expression of itself.139 137

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The importance of reading rooms to socialist organization was enormous. Socialist Party members also functioned as newspaper agents. Peasant unions sprang from peasants reading together newspapers like Prabhatham.140 In turn, as we saw, peasant unions began to set up night schools and libraries.141 Organizing study classes among workers became the main activity of leaders like Krishna Pillai and N. C. Shekhar.142 A new world was opened to the workers and peasants, a world of revolutions and the end of injustices. Peasant unions and study classes were rife with discussions of international, national and regional issues.143 For subaltern Communist activists, the education from study classes “was the only education” they had. “There was nothing else in a [formal] educational sense.”144 From the oral survey of 388 old-time Communist activists and party members, 75% of them mentioned that study classes were the main medium through which they learned about the communist ideology.145 Again, unlike in the Subaltern Studies narrative, a new imagination which is extending beyond the local and the “fragment” is being constructed. More importantly, the new imagination is starting to understand the connections between the various levels. As early as 1935, CSP decided to hold study classes every Sunday in Kozhikode. Topics like “American Independence and French Revolution,” were part of the classes.146 Night schools for workers stressed upon the basic principles of socialism, the importance of anti-imperialism and so on.147 The first summer school was organized by the party in May 1939 for almost a month. The fundamental aim was to train the largely uneducated party workers in the party program and help them disseminate it. The subjects covered were World and Indian Histories, Political Science, Economics and contemporary political developments.148 Of course, this process of building class consciousness was fraught with difficulties and characterized by breaks. Caste and religious identities do not just melt away but are in constant tension with a class identity. Krishna Pillai noted in 1939 that majority of CSP members were not fully knowledgeable about the political situation. He recognized that unless a Marxist party has solid knowledge about Marxism, and the party members the ability to see every issue from a Marxist perspective, the party will find it difficult to function.149 In 1946, in certain areas of Ernad Taluk, it was noted that peasant unions were the only solace for the farmers and while hatred against imperialism and feudalism was prominent, class consciousness had not become solid.150 Krishna Pillai lamented the low sales of English publications of the party, which in his view meant the need to increase the support of the party amongst the educated people. It also meant that people are not being exposed to more news from outside of Kerala which feature in these publications.151 Yet, as N. E. Balaram, puts it, initiatives like the Summer School helped in understanding the basic principles of Marxism and activists who went to the school were later very useful in disseminating Marxist ideology.152 The 138

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study classes, schools and study groups allowed activists to gain knowledge about scientific socialism, revolutionary ideology and practice, international socialist developments like the Dimitrov Thesis, Marxism–Leninism, dialectical materialism, etc.153 As Rayarappan put it, after attending the first study class, he felt like he had received a new weapon. Marxism–Leninism was explained in easily understandable terms and in the local idiom. “Who is a laborer, and who is a capitalist” was taught to the workers.154 The way the Communist Party was able to start publishing its weekly newspaper Deshabhimani from 1942 showed its deepening connections with society. To collect donations for the newspaper, the party held many melas (cultural gatherings) in the rural areas of Malabar. Peasants and agricultural laborers contributed in whatever possible way to the newspaper: rice, eggs, coconuts, gold and even calves. All these were auctioned in the melas. It was novel for a newspaper to be established almost entirely on the basis of public support, that too from the lower echelons of society. This is another example of the way in which the traditional order is an active contributor to the foundation of one of the main pillars of modern public sphere—the fourth estate. We see a different trajectory from that of print-capitalism identified by Anderson—the emergence of a new linguistic and socialist imaginary albeit significantly constituted by the people themselves as participants, not merely as recipients, and also outside the ken of market forces. Also, a different publisher–reader relationship emerges with the communist publication of anti-capitalist and anti-feudalist messages. In 1947, the paper was subjected to lot of difficulties by the government when almost all its editors and many correspondents were arrested and cases filed against the paper. A bail amount of Rs. 4,000 was demanded by the courts. Again, the newspaper could start functioning only because of the support from the public which collected a sum of Rs. 28,000 in a period of three weeks.155 The cumulative effect of the communist intervention in society was the emergence of what scholar T. K. Ramachandran terms as a public sphere constituted by the “people” unlike the bourgeois public sphere of the West.156 Habermas’ construction of the public sphere was linked to the emergence of bourgeois society under liberal capitalism and was separate from the state, market and the family. The subjectivity that was characteristic of the bourgeois public sphere: was articulated through the symbolic matrix of culture, especially writing, reading, and literary criticism—activities that challenged the interpretive monopoly of church and state authorities. The institutions of this reading public (salons, coffeehouses, book clubs, and the press) prepared the ground for a political public sphere, a forum of discursive interaction that was ostensibly open and accessible to all, where private citizens could discuss matters of public interest 139

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freely, rationally, and as equals. The bracketing of social and economic status, however, not only masked the persistence of power and interest; it also entailed the idealization of the nuclear family, as the source of a private autonomy.157 According to Oscar Negt and Alexander Kluge, what is problematic with the bourgeois public sphere is the fact that it claims to represent an abstract principle of generality and against all particularity, which meant the bracketing of social and economic status. Thus, its claim to represent the general will, in actuality performs as a mechanism of exclusion. It excluded not only social groups like women, workers, etc., but also social issues like “material conditions of production and reproduction, including sexuality and childrearing.”158 Of course, the subaltern public sphere in Kerala too was marked by exclusions, especially that of women and the lack of full equality for Dalits. Yet, the newly emergent public sphere was much different from the one that was extant before. As Harikrishnan rightly notes, the role of new social spaces like tea shops in the construction of political and class consciousness in Kerala remains under-studied.159 The appropriation of the institutions of civil society by the subaltern classes under the communist aegis puts a question mark on Partha Chatterjee’s postcolonialist characterization of these institutions as embodying the desires of the nationalist elites to “replicate in its own society the forms as well as the substance of Western modernity.” According to him, this also ensured that “civil society will long remain an exclusive domain of the elite . . . and that the function of civil-social institutions in relation to the public at large will be one of pedagogy rather than of free association.”160 He ignores the appropriation of institutions of civil society by the subaltern classes and only sees these institutions as “serious protagonists of a project of cultural modernization still to be completed.”161 The masses, on the other hand, act in the sphere of “political society”—a domain “lying between civil society and the state” and communities are their main agents of political practice.162 This draws a wedge between tradition and modernity instead of understanding the diverse ways in which the two are also mutually constituted. It also posits a binary between political and civil society ignoring the bridging of the two as well.163 On the other hand, the communist contribution to the inclusion of the subalterns in civil society had a deleterious side. This was besides the limitations of the people’s public sphere seen earlier. The major hindrance to further democratization was the lack of tolerance to those of aspects of civil society which were not in alliance with the communist movement. This tendency was to only harden with the shift to parliamentarism and the political objective of winning elections overriding other fundamental concerns. Thus, while the Communist Party unions bridged tradition and modernity in the mediatory role it played in various disputes during the colonial period, this could also 140

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degenerate in the postcolonial period into the party and unions arrogating to themselves the powers of the state under the guise of attacking a bourgeois state.164 This seriously jeopardizes the separation and balance between the state and civil society in a liberal democracy as well as negatively affects the political project of communism which was seeking to radicalize this liberal democracy. The party’s extensive involvement in the daily life could lead to, under conditions of winning state power, a “party-society” in which the party controlled access to a whole variety of services, which was seen most prominently in Bengal,165 where communist governments ruled for 34 years without a break. In another example, the welcome attempt to ensure people’s participation in administration by constituting people’s committees for food distribution during the first Communist Party–led government between 1957 and 1959 in Kerala became a tool for populating the committees with party members in an attempt to capture the bureaucracy.166 T. T. Sreekumar argues that acts like these destroy the independent spaces of civil society and make those sections which have not voted for the Communist Party lose their faith in the rule of law. According to him, this reflected Communist Party’s confusion and lack of clarity about working under a liberal democracy with a constitution which gives independence to civil society, and the goals it can possibly achieve with limited power under a system which guarantees private property. These confusions were to lead to the hostile approach to radical sections of civil society and the New Social Movements later.167 Civil society is mistakenly seen as a monolith, which it is not. Communists did not fully recognize what Gramsci had posited that the: “proper relation between State and civil society” suggests that the State should rest upon the support of an active, self-conscious and variegated civil society and should, in turn, sustain and promote the development of the constructive forces in that society.168 However, again, the issues stemming from this non-recognition cannot be subsumed under the binary of civil society/political society drawn by postcolonial theory.

The national-popular I have argued that the communist movement in Kerala sowed the seeds of national liberation. The construction of the national-popular was achieved by going beyond the tradition/modernity binary and through processes that are at variance with the arguments of Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory. It also puts question marks on Chibber’s belief in the Enlightenment as the only framework of action. Chatterjee argues that there are two different spheres—that of peasant-communal politics and organized politics.169 Unlike the Subalternist emphasis on the split in the domains of politics 141

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between elites and subalterns, the national-popular would not have been possible without the overcoming of this split. Subaltern Studies is right that many resistances that arise out of popular spontaneity do not rely on elite initiatives, but this does not mean that they always lead to desirable consequences (popular mobilization in communal riots is an example). It does not also demonstrate that autonomous peasant politics has developed a stable long-term concrete option for the oppressed classes.170 Thus, it is difficult to only privilege autonomous peasant resistance over the leadership of CSP/ Communists and see the latter as a conservative force which reins in the radicalism of the former.171 Rather than see this interaction in a one-sided and binary fashion, it is necessary to look at critical role the leadership played in channelizing or tempering the demands of the peasants/workers according to the political situation and the failures and successes in this. In fact, Ranajit Guha had also recognized that: the initiatives which originated from the domain of subaltern politics were not, on their part, powerful enough to develop the nationalist movement into a full-fledged struggle for national liberation . . . the numerous peasant uprisings of the period, some of them massive in scope and rich in anti-colonial consciousness, waited in vain for a leadership to raise them above localism and generalize them into a nationwide anti-imperialist campaign.172 It is precisely this localism that the Communists were able to overcome through leadership. Throughout the struggles that we have traced, the peasants and workers are constantly expanding the notion of the local and connecting to larger networks of politics. Leaders and activists from distant places were a part of this process. Even national leaders (as we have noted, and even before the origin of socialism) were a presence in town and village meetings. Subaltern Communist activists affirm the importance of the leadership in making them capable of becoming strong activists just as there would be criticisms of the leadership (see Chapter 8). As we have seen before, Communist Party leaders were also office bearers in the unions, and often, there was close connection between the unions and the party. In the meeting to constitute the first beedi union in Muvattupuzha Taluk, leaders P. P. Esthose and K. T. Jacob expounded on Marxian theory and stressed on the need for the beedi workers to unite under one umbrella.173 Even when Chatterjee admits that peasant-communal ideology may not be totally capable of identifying and resisting exploitation, and that it requires awareness brought in from outside—the sphere of organized politics, he does not see these two spheres having any commonalities. Organized politics is characterized by “centrality of the individual, the collective as the aggregation of individuals, sectional interests, alliances between sectional interests,” and so on, values which are totally alien to peasant-communal ideology.174 142

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This dichotomy follows the tradition–modernity one. Gramsci sees the relationship between leadership and spontaneity as a mutually interacting and interdependent one: The leaders themselves spoke of the “spontaneity” of the movement. .  .  . This assertion was a stimulus, a tonic, an element of unification in depth. . . . It gave the masses “theoretical” consciousness of being creators of historical and institutional values, of being founders of a state.175 Postcolonial theory has always questioned vanguardism. On the contrary, as Parry points out, liberation theorists like Amilcar Cabral and others argued for the necessity of vanguardism as well as popular participation. Here, “the political” is indispensable in transforming all the diverse and spontaneous resistances into a unified, participatory, revolutionary struggle.176 The success of the Communists in Kerala was in using the Marxian and Leninist idea of the trade unions going beyond economistic consciousness to foster a political and theoretical consciousness of class under the vanguard of the party. Analyzing the agricultural labor struggles in Kuttanad in Travancore, which were to strengthen greatly later in the 1960s, Joseph Tharamangalam argues that the most important factor was “the existence and the availability of a party with the appropriate ideology and strategy to organize the discontent of the labourers.”177 Of course, under a democratic centralist framework, and later with electoralism, the relation between vanguardism and popular participation would degenerate into a top-down control model. There have been a lot of misunderstandings regarding Gramsci’s concept of the national-popular. It was earlier thought to be merely a cultural concept which stood for progressive realist forms in art including literature and cinema. Later in the 1960s, the Italian New Left made a stringent criticism of the concept for its alleged idealism and for supplanting the original Marxist emphasis on revolution and the international with the national and popular. This represented a slide from revolution to reformism. The national-popular has also been used as a purely political concept.178 David Forgacs, instead, has argued that this division between the cultural and the political one is a false one and Gramsci, in fact, used it in an integral sense.179 If Gramsci posited that only one of the classes, bourgeoisie or the proletariat, could be the hegemonic class, in Kerala, the (class-differentiated) peasantry and agrarian labor assumed the role of the hegemonic class. While the Communist Party had few resources to launch a frontal attack (war of maneuver) against the might of the Indian state, it did take it on for a brief period unsuccessfully, as we saw. Therefore, the construction of hegemony (war of position) was the natural option: “It involved the formation of a collective will through the building of a mass party, where a number of social classes and class-fractions are successfully hegemonized by the party 143

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and the proletariat” [in the Kerala case, the peasantry as well].180 However, the war of position has not turned out to be a transitional stage on the way to the dictatorship of proletariat or a socialist democracy. This was because of the regional nature of the communist movement in India and its inability to mount a serious challenge at the national level. This was tragically confirmed with the failure of the sectarian line of 1948. Communism’s relationship with nationalism needs to be better understood. It was different from postcolonial theory’s nationalism which “is solely constituted by ‘the experience of colonialism and imperialism’ [and is therefore] suspended outside the modern systems of production (capitalism and socialism).”181 Communism in Kerala tried to mediate between the national, the regional and the local.182 This nationalism of the Communists, following the line of the all-India party, was something that allowed the incorporation of an internationalist line, as was witnessed during the Second World War. However, it was evident that the colonial government understood the nationalist character of communism more than anyone else: CPI is “primarily a nationalist party working for Indian independence not withstanding its lip service to internationalism; and a large proportion of its members are attracted to its fold because it stands for the overthrow of the British rule.”183 As Krishna Pillai stated in 1939: Since Congress is an organisation that exists for the ending of British imperial rule, strengthening it means it is the first step of establishing socialist rule in India, that is the possibility of the liberation from foreign rule. What is clear from this is that the struggle for total independence is a part of the struggle for socialism.184 And as K. Damodaran put it: “It was our mass work coupled with the fact that we were identified with the nationalist aspirations of the people which undoubtedly played a significant role in ensuring that Kerala became the important stronghold of post-independence communism.”185 This was similar to the Telangana communist revolt. As John Roosa argues against existing studies which ignored nationalist politics: This was most definitely a revolt over land and grain, but it was, to be more precise, a nationalist revolt over land and grain. . . . The insurgents believed that their struggle over land and food was a nationalist struggle, that their liberation from the oppressions of the Nizam’s government and its collaborating landlords was coterminous with the liberation of the Indian nation from colonial rule.186 The nationalism of the Communists was different from that of the bourgeoisie who used it as a legitimizing ideology. The fundamental difference between Kerala and Bengal has been that communism in the former was part 144

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and parcel of the nationalist and other popular movements, whereas it was largely independent of them in the latter where it tried to plough a lonely furrow rather than forge broader fronts against colonialism.187 This has led to, as Desai argues, different “party formations”—differences in organizational strength and membership. Communism in Kerala was a far more popular movement with more extensive ties in civil society. This enabled the Communists later to implement more substantive reforms in Kerala than in Bengal,188 despite the inauguration of class, as we noted, and the long-uninterrupted tenure in Bengal. Of course, in Bengal as well, the anti-colonial nationalism that the Communists articulated was one which tried to base itself on “class alliances in contradistinction to those of both the Congress and the Muslim League that foregrounded tradition, community, and religious identity.”189 The “anti-nationalist” line of the Communists during the People’s War, did, of course, cause damage to the movement. Despite the fact that the Communists’ anti-colonialism was far more comprehensive than that of the Congress, the People’s War line was ultimately born from the mistake of the: underestimation of the national factor in working out of the tactics of the revolution, in the failure to realize that Communists in a colonial country can fulfill their class tasks only if they take proper account of the national aspirations of the people.190 The Communists lost many nationalist-minded Socialists and towering tradeunion leaders to parties like the Kerala Socialist Party and Revolutionary Socialist Party formed later. The trade unions also split.191 This also led to problems like the Communist Party trying to take the ownership of strikes and political struggles at the expense of other socialist parties and unions, etc.192 This demonstrated the incomplete nature of the national-popular. Despite this, and Damodaran’s critique that the party put a hold on class struggles, the party, as we saw, made rapid strides during the 1942–1945 period because of the substantial role in popular movements based on the concrete daily needs of the people. The party weekly newspaper Deshabahimani started in 1942 was soon to become the best circulated weekly. Donations and collections from people totaled Rs. 300,000.193 This does not mean that the emerging nationalist sentiment was of no consequence to the people. Communists had already proved their nationalist and anti-imperialist credentials in the difficult period (when they were underground) between 1939 and 1942. Moreover, as we noted before, even in the period of truce with the British, the Communists’ support was not an uncritical one. As the government noted, the “Malabar comrades were 10 percent anti-Nazi and 90 percent anti-British Government. . . . Collectors generally find them intolerable friends of the Government.”194 From another perspective, Communists could be accused of privileging the anti-imperialist struggle at the expense of the liberation from caste 145

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oppression. Namboodiripad contended that British imperialism is the “real enemy” without defeating which real liberation was for any community was not possible. Thus, he criticized the elite leaders of religious minorities and lower castes for focusing only on the critique of caste oppression and seeking jobs and political office for lower castes without paying attention to feudalcapitalist structures and imperialism. At the same time, he recognized that the Brahmins and Nairs, along with the selfish interests of their communities, used nationalism as a tool to deny the struggle for equality of the lower castes and religious minorities. They too did not question the structures of oppression. He argued for a wide coalition of forces, of all political parties and caste organizations to join together against British imperialism.195 The more inclusive nationalism that the Communists were aiming at could be achieved only by a substantial commitment to regional and linguistic sentiments. If the reading rooms, libraries and newspapers led the peasants to a new world of revolution and democracy, this raising of political consciousness was also fostering linguistic competence and also laying the foundation of a linguistic unity. In 1946, Namboodiripad argued that there should be a Kerala-wide newspaper read by every person in the linguistic region.196 In the early 1950s, the movement started by them in the late 1930s intensified. A. K. Gopalan emphasized in 1951 that “India’s most important problem, the Communists’ No. 1 goal” was the establishment of linguistic provinces.197 In Communist publications alone, 2,000 poems and 200 short stories were published about the struggle for a United Kerala.198 Some have argued that the communist success in Kerala was due to its “manipulation of regional patriotism.”199 As we have seen, Prerna Singh had approvingly quoted this contention. While the imagination of a Malayali nation, and the Communists’ role in shaping that imagination has been particularly important, this argument focuses on one element alone without taking into account the interaction and integration among the different levels brought about by the communist movement.200 It ignores the fact that, here, the linguistic identity, even while strong, was interacting positively with other identities beyond that of subnationalism, with that of nationalism, with internationalism, and crucially, with class. Even critics of parliamentary communism recognize its critical role in melding the democratic essence of the caste-reform movements before communism, working-class and peasant struggles, anti-colonial and anti-monarchical resistances into a United Kerala movement.201

The class imagery The most significant transformation that took place in these two decades of socialist and communist activity is the emergence of class-consciousness. Many academic studies as well as Communist Party mythology have viewed this transformation as a linear process with class completely subsuming caste and other ethnic identities. What this ignores is, more than the persistence of 146

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“traditional” allegiances, the formation of new communities under modernity. Politics in Kerala in this period and later too has been marked by strong caste and communal orientations. Caste and community as a tool of political mobilization have always had an impact, especially among the middle and upper classes of higher castes.202 While this is true, what cannot be questioned is the new imagery of class arising out of the communist movement. Dipesh Chakrabarty, in his study of the working class in colonial Bengal, had argued that the workers’ “sense of identity as ‘workers’ or ‘poor people’ was always enmeshed in other narrower and conflicting identities such as those deriving from religion, language and ethnicity.” The class identity of the workers was “remarkably fragile.”203 And, as noted before, he had argued that the nascent consciousness of class was “a prisoner” of “precapitalist culture” and this “class identity could never be distilled out” of this culture.204 The substantial assertion of the working classes and the peasantry in Kerala has been precisely due to the fact that class identities were able, of course, in a comparative sense, to form out of other pre-existing identities and also overcome this fragility. As early as 1934, Krishna Pillai was exhorting workers to develop the consciousness of being an agricultural worker or a mill worker instead of being a Thiyya, Nair, Muslim, Brahmin or Christian. He contends that religion is indeed the opiate of the masses.205 In 1935, he wrote: As a consequence of the degraded system called capitalism, two classes called capitalists and workers were born in the world. All the instruments of wealth production became concentrated in a few capitalists. The workers who are in a majority were forced to live in poverty amidst plenty. The two classes cannot reconcile themselves under any circumstance.206 Within a decade of socialist and communist activity, the new language was already visible. As a Travancore Coir Factory Workers Union pamphlet in 1944 stated: The Government and capitalists will always be allied against the workers in as much as they have vested interests, and until the workers are in a position to change their order of things to their favor, they will have to encounter many difficulties in their struggle for establishing just rights. It also goes on to assert: “a group of capitalists who have themselves made a long history of breach of promise . . . has badly interfered with the industrial progress of this state.”207 Even though union activity had begun as early as 1922 in the coir industry in Alleppey with the setting up of the Travancore Labour Association, 147

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deconstructing it would help us understand the nature of its activity. The Association was actually formed by a “jobber” or labor-contractor (known as moopan in Malayalam), who went on to acquire so much wealth as to start his own factory.208 In the early years of the association’s functioning, the people who presided over its meetings and led them were not workers or labor activists, but capitalists, community elites and office-bearers of caste organizations. They mainly played the role of mediators between the government, the capitalists and the workers. Social reforms like alcohol ban and education were their main concerns.209 Even though it had set up a newspaper and managed to provide some very limited benefits to the workers, it played no part in the few strikes that took place in the last years of the 1920s. This was to change with the onset of the 1930s as it came under small Communist fringe groups.210 In a strike held in 1934, the workers shouted, “Destroy the Nayar,” “Destroy Nayar dominance” and “Destroy Capitalism.”211 It is interesting to note here that class consciousness jostles for place with consciousness against caste hegemony. The word muthalali which meant “a proprietor, especially of land” had come to mean a “capitalist” and the world muthalalitvam (capitalism) gained wide currency.212 As I had noted earlier, the 1938 coir workers’ strike which meshed with the movement for responsible government displayed characteristics of Gramscian hegemony, where workers sought to go beyond economic corporatism. The most critical evidence of the emerging class-consciousness was the shifting of allegiance of the lower-caste Ezhava underclass from the Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam (SNDP) or Society for the Propagation of a Moral Order,213 and cultural reform, to a political and economic program under the Communist Party. The forums like Thiyya Mahayogam contributed to the educated Thiyyas and their demands for the entry into government jobs and the legislature, but ignored the vast majority of the Thiyyas, who were small peasants and agricultural labor, besides being opposed to the Dalit untouchables.214 As Desai correctly argues: rather than caste—class coincidence, it was the gradual class differentiation within castes that was key to the lower caste movements that emerged in Kerala. Moreover, the probability that lower caste movements would “translate” into class-based movements in the pre-1947 era, that is, raise class-specific demands regardless of caste differences among classes, depended on the regional specificity of the nationalist movement.215 Even among Christians and Muslims, whose religious establishments were virulently anti-communist, class formation took place in some places when beedi workers, small peasants and agricultural workers (in Travancore) joined unions and the Communist Party.216 From earlier forms of hierarchical sociabilities governed by caste, here, the beedi worker unions and the 148

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party activists consist of Muslims, Christians, Nairs, Ezhavas, Brahmins and Dalits217 even when there was no complete equality among them. It was definitely not an easy process because workers were very diffident and afraid of openly confronting the company owners and were not used to demanding any other benefits than wages.218 This line was crossed with external intervention in the form of Communist activists. P. M. Ismail describes the role played by the Muslim beedi workers, with only political education from union activity, in building the party in Kavumkara, a Muslim-dominated area in Muvattupuzha in the early 1950s.219 Aliyar Kunju, who was a member of the beedi trade union at the time, described the organizational strength and class consciousness that had developed by then. He also points out he did not experience any distinctions on the basis of religion and caste in the union.220 Kathleen Gough outlines, from her ethnographic work in central Kerala (in 1947 and 1964), the development of class consciousness amongst the poor in Christians and Muslims through the work of the Communists. And amongst the “propertyless classes of Hindus,” she finds in 1964, compared to 1947, “economic class consciousness nowadays regularly overrides caste solidarity.”221 The biggest change was that Communist supporters saw societal change in structural and class terms while Congress supporters saw it in individual and voluntary philanthropy terms.222 This signifies that the subaltern classes’ horizons cannot just be limited to a Scottian “moral economy” and “subsistence ethic.”223 However, as Scott himself recognized, the recourse to “weapons of the weak” is only due to the fact that a credible political project with land reform on the agenda is absent.224 The contradictory consciousness of workers is thus evident here: the radicalism of the critique of traditional forms of oppression is tempered by moral economy and the lack of an alternative order in the horizon; but it breaks out when such a possibility appears in the form of socialism and communism. Even though SNDP activists held leadership position in unions like the Travancore Labor Association, they were largely interested in cultural reform.225 This was despite the fact that almost 90% of the coir workers were Ezhavas. By the 1940s, the SNDP lost its progressive orientation and had become a thoroughly conservative organization under the control of the bourgeoisie and the middle-classes. In the decisive 1946 Punnapra rebellion, the SNDP was covertly backing the princely government.226 A majority of the Ezhavas, belonging to the laboring classes, were not to be taken in by the SNDP propaganda and went on to become the bedrock of the support for the communist movement. The career of R. Sugathan (1901–1970), a prominent Communist leader and trade unionist, is symptomatic of the journey many working-class Ezhavas undertook in their lives. Born into a poor Ezhava family, Sugathan joined as a factory worker after studying till the seventh grade (which was enough to get a white-collar government job then). Those were the heydays of the Kerala Renaissance with social and caste-reform organizations churning the social fabric (see next chapter). 149

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Sugathan plunged into them right way and was an active member of castereform organizations like Sahodara Sangham (The Brotherhood Association) and the SNDP. Later, he became involved with the Travancore Labour Association, and finally joined the Communist Party in 1942.227 However, this is not a linear transition from caste to class, rather, the emergence of class as a category to address the symbolic/material split. The struggles organized by the Communist Party mobilized the marginal peasantry and the agricultural laborers in large numbers.228 Where industries did not exist, small peasantry, toddy tappers and agricultural laborers became the mainstay of the movement.229 In the early phase of socialist and peasant union activity, the class distinction between the peasantry was not emphasized. Therefore, even rich and middle peasantry were part of it.230 The abolition and redistribution of the “rent fund” collected by the landlords became the mechanism to unify the landless laborers and inferior tenants with the superior tenants, even when their objective class interests were different.231 However, by the mid-1940s, the rich and middle peasantry had consolidated their position somewhat. During the food crisis, they kept out of the movement and they exploited the conditions by selling their produce in the black market.232 Therefore, the party redefined its policy to one focusing on agricultural laborers and poor peasants. In a 1949 pamphlet it said: That the peasant movement is a united movement of everyone other than the janmi in the countryside is a false notion. Peasants do not form a single class; among them there are the better off, the middling and the poor. Below them are the laborers even without land.233 If by the early 1940s, the coir factory workers succeeded in organizing the agricultural workers in Kuttanad, Travancore,234 in Malabar, the CPI began to organize the landless agricultural labor separately in 1952.235 The agricultural laborers were to become the backbone of the communist movement. The emergence of class consciousness is evident in first-person accounts of present-day Communist supporters and activists about their parents and grandparents. Ammini, a Dalit woman and a CPM activist, whose family has been staunch Communist supporters, says her grandfather joined the Communist Party because he is an agricultural laborer.236 Being an agricultural laborer and a Communist was seamless in her account. Further, this kind of formation of class consciousness becomes evident in other kinds of work like toddy-tapping, and headload carrying.237 The seamlessness was again evident when Devaki, the 68-year-old Ezhava worker, recounting the times of her father, who was a toddy-tapper, stated that then “All toddy tappers were Communists.” And, on the contrary, all toddy shop owners were mostly Congress supporters.238 As one Communist activist recounted his experience growing up in a poor peasant family in the 1950s: for the poor peasantry “paddy was God”; one works all day in the field and at the end of it when 150

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the harvest is taken away by the landlord, it was “heart wrenching.” This was when Marxism began to appear as “divine” and “godly.” It was Marxism that made them understand that what one produced through one’s hard labor belonged to him. Earlier it went to the lord: “Only communism can provide a solution to material problems in the world.”239 Subaltern Studies’ emphasis has been on a unified peasantry without its internal differences. For example, Guha’s category of “peasant” ignores real life variations thus making its basis ahistorical and astructural.240 Many in the agrarian structure also belonged to more than one class category.241 However, this was less true for those at the top and the bottom of the hierarchy, and even the majority of those who with multiple class positions and tenures in the middle tended to hold small amounts of land.242 Besides, classes can be discerned on the basis of whether a “household is a net buyer or seller of labour power.”243 Thus, despite the fact that class divisions are not precise mathematical categories, class is not irrelevant, and despite the emerging class differentiation within castes, the differential position of castes could be seen starkly.244 The organizing of agricultural labor brought the caste dimension also to the fore because of the preponderance of the Dalits among agricultural labor. Describing the situation in Cherthala Taluk in Travancore, K. C. George describes how after the organizing of agricultural laborers, the Nair Service Society (NSS) held a meeting and took the decision that the agricultural laborers should not be hired and, instead, the Nairs should learn agricultural work themselves. The intention was to break agricultural labor unions.245 The most significant factor was in the Communist Party making material issues and class critical to politics. Unlike the Subalternist emphasis on culture, the crucial nature of material factors is evident here.246 The emergence of class-consciousness, even if there were breaks and contradictions, could thus be said to be the most important feature of the period under consideration. In the agricultural labor movement, which would become entrenched in the 1960s and 1970s, “the greatest achievement” would be the “development of . . . class consciousness.”247 Menon, while rightly questioning the linear narrative of growing class consciousness or class reductionism, goes on to argue “the party [did not manage] to create ‘class consciousness’ and mount this steed past to victory.”248 While election victories are indeed governed by multiple factors and identities, this tends to ignore what has been the unique contribution of the communist movement, and what separates Kerala from the other Indian states: the strength of classbased movements and actions. Nationally, even as late as the mid-1980s, the CPM was pointing out that economism was the “dominant trend in the Indian trade union movement.”249 Here, it is very much possible to make sense of the salience of caste, religion and other identities, and, at the same time, understand the new category of class in the mix. Rather than see them as essentialist and “reified substance” outside of practices and structures,250 it “is always a question 151

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of analyzing, in specifiable historical contexts, the intersections and interarticulations, the tensions and conflicts of different identity formations.”251 Communist discourse of class and materialism, being ostensibly against communal identities, also did accommodate alliances and coalitions with caste and religious groups recognizing their misrecognition and legitimate communal demands as well as for instrumental reasons. This was seen in the alliance with Muslims in 1938 and with SNDP in 1945 for elections. The first one was dubbed as “Mecca-Moscow axis” by critics; but Namboodiripad argued that Socialists had nothing to be ashamed of, as Muslims were unfortunately condemned as communalists, and the Socialists also supported the Mappila schools which were sought to be shut by the Malabar District Board. The Socialists had before supported the Abstention Movement of the Ezhavas, Christians and Muslims in Travancore.252 SNDP and other community activists have been Communist Party leaders as well.253 Rather than hyper-rationalism, the consistent theme across narratives was the pragmatic accommodation by the communist movement of religion (at the cost of class consciousness), even in the initial phase when especially the Christian and Muslim religious authorities were staunchly against communism, and many Communist activists individually challenged religion and its customs in their personal lives.254 Class consciousness and other identity consciousness are not simple binaries also, especially when there is caste–class correlation, they interact in various ways. Thus, following the formation of the first communist government, the Thiyyas in Nadapuram (Malabar) “gained individual confidence” and resorted to physical violence with a Thiyya peasant killing an elite landholding Muslim. Similarly, with the rise of communism, lower-caste converts to Islam, who faced severe caste-like restrictions from elite Muslims, began to assert themselves.255 Just as there were instances of lower-caste peasants being scared of the curse that could destroy them by challenging the Brahmin landlord,256 class was undercut by caste identities, individual and pragmatic interests, etc., as well.257 Or there could be a return to religion from communism as in the case of leader Subramanian Thirumumpu, who played such a stellar role in the early part of the communist movement.258 However, what cannot be denied is that the development of a class-foritself from a class-in-itself, for example, among the Ezhava community, which demonstrates class formation in the period that we are looking at. As Ayinoor Vasu, prominent human rights and trade-union activist, who was once associated with the Communist Party, comments about the movement in the 1940s: It was the proletariat, organized in unions, who actually formed the Communist movement then. Petty-bourgeois intellectuals and white-collar workers used to consider them chetta [lower-caste ruffians]. They were the people who had been formed by the library 152

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movement. The factory unions were the bases of the Communist movement and Krishna Pillai himself was a coir worker in Alleppey. It was a Communist party by the proletariat itself—sure with some upper- caste elements—but with workers at the base.259 P. M. Ismail contends that in the early period workers came to the party, not because they were educated, but because they came to know about the party’s role in worker’s agitations and movements and that it stood for the subalterns. Interestingly, despite the early leadership of the party being largely from the feudal landed classes, the fundamental difference between the Communist Party and the Congress was that in the former, the working classes could aspire to become leaders whereas in the latter, “it was all about elite families, their ‘background’ and their ability to nominate people to leadership positions.”260 This was stated in many subaltern accounts as well. In the coming period of land-reform legislation, class action was to strengthen itself through militant struggles, albeit with the limitations that we will see in the following. Another vital effect of the language of class and the struggle for equal rights cannot be understood without making sense of its unintended consequences, its multiplier effect, and the language being carried over to nonclass locations and being taken up by other groups: “These groups could include contingent ones, for example, squatters on government land, women workers impregnated by factory managers or overseers, and even men who chose vasectomy but felt emasculated by it.”261 There were acts like the agricultural laborers asking the landlords directly for wages, unprecedented acts under moral economy. Defiance like this was met with violence and incredulity from the side of the landlords who could not believe that the serfs who lived on their benevolence for centuries could openly challenge them in this fashion.262 In Muvattupuzha, after the first toddy tapper union was formed to fight for just wages and against the fudging of measurements, the owners used their goons to beat up and threaten the workers. Yet, the owners had to concede their demands.263 There was a definite shift from a negative and limited consciousness to the beginning of an understanding of totality and the articulation of an alternative. Chatterjee argues that in pre-independent Bengal the ideology that shaped peasant consciousness was “fundamentally religious.” Religion “provides an ontology, an epistemology as well as a practical code of ethics, including political ethics.” When the peasantry “acts politically, the symbolic meaning of particular acts—their signification—must be found in religious terms.”264 The contrast of communist peasant resistance with this and also the Muslim peasant rebellions in Malabar in the 19th and early 20th centuries is important. In the latter, Islam offered “a new collective, almost familial, solidarity and mutual supportiveness. . . . Islam offered a language of redemption, a crude egalitarianism, an antipathy to landlords and foreigners, a kind of 153

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institutionalized inversion, of the everyday world of the peasants.”265 The communist movement transforms this consciousness into a different one by carrying forward the critical function of the rebellions, but by substituting the perception of landlords in individual terms with a systemic analysis. It continued and built on the tactics of Muslim rebellions like “targeting of the most reprehensible landlords to memorialization of martyrs.”266 Namboodiripad was one of the first to recognize the revolutionary content of the Mappila rebellion.267 Again, the tradition–modernity binary is broken here. More importantly, Communists, to a critical extent, overcame the collective action problems among the Hindu community which was plagued by caste hierarchies and lacked the solidarity of the Muslims.268 The Hindu peasantry, despite feudal oppression, was largely passive because of its ties to communitarian and religious ties to the upper-caste landlords.269 Gramsci had argued: “little understanding of the state means little class consciousness.”270 This was sought to be overcome by sustained mass campaigns undertaken by the Communists. It is with the development of class consciousness that, according to Gramsci, the subalterns overcome their subalternity.271 There were to be limitations as well in the future in the furthering of class-based struggles. And the major one was the transition of the communist movement to participating in the parliamentary system. Damodaran, who was also one of the founders of the Communist Party in Kerala (who remained with the CPI after the split), argued that with the adoption of electoral communism, class struggle was diluted for the cause of gaining electoral majorities, and “class” and “state” were substituted with “party” and “government” resulting in “parliamentary cretinism.”272 Pragmatic alliances with non-Communist parties for electoral victories were seen right from the beginning.273 The euphoria that Damodaran described was to soon dissipate into “disillusionment” with the realization that the state government is actually powerless when it came to bringing about radical changes as the central government in the Indian federal system was the final arbiter and even the police and the civil administration answered to the latter.274 However, this predicament should also not be theorized as a “reform” versus “revolution” dichotomy. The option for a militant struggle was ruled out as the disastrous armed revolution line of 1948, and the continued marginalization of the extreme Left by taking to arms (and militarily controlling some regions in India) at the expense of mass movements and struggles of the oppressed classes in civil society showed. Thus, the thesis of parliamentary cretinism should also contend with the structural limitations of the larger Indian nation-state framework. The question remained of what the Communist Party could do under a bourgeois liberal democratic system and we saw some of the confusions about civil society stemming from that. One of the fundamental problems was the kind of a “‘revolutionary’ mindset that refuses to accept the idea of functioning in a multi-party democracy.”275 154

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This was to result later in tendencies like the idea of violent resistance to the oppression of feudal landlordism turning into a violent enforcement of party domination. Basu and Majumder argue how communist vanguardism under electoral politics in Bengal also turned later into the peasant and working-class unions and other party-affiliated organizations losing their independence, and the development of a “corporatist culture” in which “central control superseded democracy.”276 These tendencies were not absent in Kerala either. The costs of the substitution of class and state with party and government and the split of the working classes and the trade unions movement were also soon seen when the Communist Party government’s police shot dead two workers belonging to a union under the Revolutionary Socialist Party and against a cashew factory owner in 1958.277 Worse followed when the Communist Party justified it and K. Damodaran was sent to speak in favor of the government, an act which was to cause revulsion in him later.278 A union functionary, who was also injured in the firing, said 50 years later it was the Stalinist tendencies of the government that led to the firing.279 Again, contra postcolonial theory and Subaltern Studies, the main issue is about holding the communist movement to higher democratic values which is the crux of the critique of the union worker here rather than the externality of modernity or democracy. After all, the Party in 1958 had declared that it would work toward achieving “full democracy and socialism by peaceful means.”280 As we will see in the following, the national-popular would be incomplete in the sphere of caste as well even though it would be a couple of decades before the Dalit challenge to the communist national-popular would emerge. Spivak had recently, quoting Teodor Shanin, posited a binary: “‘socialism is about justice, not development’ (.  .  . [whereas] our generation understood ‘development’ as ‘exploitation’).”281 However, the Communists were aware of the social dimensions of oppression and not just the economic aspects of it. In the communist analysis, landlordism, for example, “was a multifaceted institution inextricably intertwined with caste indignities . . . economic exploitation, political inequality, and imperialism: a social system which land tenure reform alone could not resolve.”282 Hence, there was the translation of communism into a struggle for caste equality, against castebased deferential obligations and the overt and violent atrocities perpetrated by the landlords,283 as we have seen. Krishna Pillai was exhorting the provincial governments that would be formed in 1946 to pass an ordinance to ban untouchability, and before the ordinance, the political parties to end untouchability in their mass organizations, open temples to untouchables, and build a big people’s front against untouchability.284 In this initial phase, as noted, many Communist activists individually shunned caste-determined customs and religion. Yet, the specificity of the caste system, or what Ambedkar called as not just a “division of labour but a division of laborers”285 155

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was not contended with and a revolutionary overthrow of the caste system, rather than just an ending of open oppressions, was never taken up. As we saw, David Scott argued that the questions that animated, and the problem-space of, the anti-colonial nationalists were different from that of the postcolonials and therefore the former cannot be criticized from the latter’s vantage point. Yet, even within the framework of the anti-imperialist and nationalist struggle, the Communists did not go further than they did in taking up the question of caste. Here, the contradictions also have to be understood. On the one hand, the modernist and developmentalist view that caste inequities would conclusively melt away with economic development was definitely a part of the communist theoretical framework.286 Ambedkar made vigorous criticisms of the Communists for seeing caste as a part of superstructure, rather than the structure.287 At the same time, Namboodiripad was also clearly articulating in the 1940s that with regard to education and jobs, the Dalit untouchable castes were completely marginalized under the colonial system. They were so far behind the upper castes in their material condition that it was simply impossible to compete.288 However, in his view, the caste system could not be dismantled only by the oppressed castes getting education or jobs, but also by the adoption of concrete programs to end untouchability and caste.289 While untouchability and explicit caste-based humiliations would end, the challenging of caste in the personal spheres would never reach a critical level. These gaps in practice were more crucial than any lack in the theoretical articulation of the problem.

Conclusion As we have seen in the last two chapters, it was through mass movements, which included confronting the state, that the Communists successfully constructed a national-popular will, albeit an incomplete one. The hegemonic moment was constituted in the fact that various class groups, despite their different material interests, were united in the struggle against landlordism. It was not merely the structural conditions that propelled the Communists to power in 1957. It was the result of a sustained ideological struggle which forged a unity between economic, political and cultural issues “placing all the questions around which the struggle rages on a ‘universal’, not a corporate level, thereby creating the hegemony of a fundamental social group over a series of subordinate ones.”290 This was the key in creating unity among the class-stratified peasantry. What has to be recognized is the fact that the communist movement was not a mere reflection of the class and caste forces in society, but was an active political force in making class and caste salient and decisive cleavages.291 Subaltern Studies, by positing social reality as two compartmentalized wholes, of peasant-communal and organized politics, tends to obfuscate the necessity and the actuality of interaction and commonalities between the two domains. 156

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Large-scale social transformation, like that in Kerala, comes about because of the aspiration for liberation among the peasantry and labor and the urge for radical change among sections of the elites. Subaltern Studies, like James Scott, valorizes autonomous peasant politics at the expense of organized and institutionalized politics. From the fact of sporadic upsurges of peasants, to infer that “the domain of politics underlying such revolts is autonomous is a highly questionable proposition.” Alam is right in arguing that in the context of landlord–bourgeois alliance that characterized societies like that of India, the class that was autonomous was not peasants but the landlords.292 Contrary to the Subalternist narrative, the changes in Kerala resemble what Joel Midgal has outlined in his study of 20th-century peasant revolutions which were not just “based on a sudden burst of violence,” but the participation of peasantry and labor in “long-drawn out revolutions in a variety of institutionalized ways—as political cadres, as disciplined soldiers, as loyal suppliers of food, money, and shelter, and as active and passive members . . . of revolutionary organizations and groups.”293 The peasant was not an anachronism, nor peasant consciousness backward, but the vehicle through which modernity and democracy were to be constructed paralleling what Subaltern Studies project was to posit later as peasant as citizen. As Krishna Pillai argued in 1944, the thought that the workers and peasants are some kind of degraded entities without intelligence and are a folk that could be led by anyone is something that arises because of the lack of experience of political work with the masses. He confesses that when he started political organizing in 1934, he started with the same mentality, and soon realized that peasants and workers do not accept any leadership unless there is a clear-cut program which incorporates their interests.294 Communists went beyond the particular stagist notion that “that a vigorous and independent class of town dwellers [is] an indispensable element in the growth of parliamentary democracy.”295 It recognized the contradictory consciousness of peasantry, its susceptibility to ideological mystification and inculcation as well. However, in Subaltern Studies, there is an exoticization of the peasant and the locating of the mainspring of spontaneity and subjectivity in pre-capitalist consciousness only.296 On the other hand, as we saw, the Subalternists termed the failure of Indian democracy as the failure of the bourgeoisie to speak for the nation. The working class, according to them, nationally could not become a national liberation movement and it was seen as “fragmented,” “sectional” and “local.” Further, it had not developed a consciousness as a “class-foritself” nor an alliance with the peasantry.297 The communist movement in Kerala was able to, in relative terms, overcome this localism, develop class consciousness, links between the peasantry and working class and approximate national liberation and a national-popular will. Thus, if Moore argues that Indian independence arrived, “partly under the impetus of peasant yearning for a return to an idealized village past,”298 the cumulative effect 157

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of the communist struggles was such that the peasants were no longer looking to the past, but had their eyes planted in the future.

Notes 1 Sessions Court, North Malabar Division, Saturday 16 August 1941: Sessions Case Nos. 6 and 11 of 1941, G. O. 1265, Home (Confdntl.), March 24, 1942 (TNA). 2 If one examines the depositions of the accused in the case, they are abound with references to local issues and conflicts. A majority of the accused cite their enmity with Samuel Aaron, powerful Malabar businessman and factory owner, as a reason for their implication in the case. Others include various kinds of rivalries with prosecution witnesses. But this also seems to be a ruse to avoid punishment by denying any links with the peasant unions or the Communist Party. As the prosecution itself notes: “Almost all the accused have adopted the stereotyped plea of enmity with Samuel Aaron and the influence of Aaron over the police” (G. O. 1265, Home (Confdntl.), March 24, 1942 (TNA)). Menon again focuses on the local and contends that the authorities were “more apprehensive about local conflicts than the nationalist implications of Protest Day” (Dilip Menon, Caste, Nationalism and Communism in South India: Malabar, 1900 –1948 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 168). But the state was also worried about the larger implications of the conflict. The Secretary of State, Leopold Amery, later replying to a question in the House of Commons on the commutation of the death sentence of K. P. R. Gopalan, says that he doubts “whether situation in India would be improved by the release of prisoners who have attempted by violent methods to oppose the war effort or . . . the overthrow of the existing basis of society” (G. O. 1265, Home (Confdntl.), March 24, 1942 (TNA)). 3 E. M. S. Namboodiripad, Kerala: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow, 2nd ed. (Calcutta: National Book Agency, 1968), 170. 4 Ibid., 171. 5 The speeches of the peasant union leaders were acquiring a tone of defiance. V. V. Kunhambu addressing a karshaka sangham meeting at Pilicode stated, “capitalists should be done away with” (Public (General) G. O. No. 811–12 (Confdntl.), April 24, 1941 (KSA)). There were incidents of peasant unions forcibly harvesting the crops without the landlord’s permission. Tactics like these were to become more prominent later (R. Ramakumar, “Aspects of the Peasant Movement in Malabar: An Interview with E. K. Nayanar,” Review of Agrarian Studies 4, no. 2 (July–December 2014): 115). 6 D. M., South Kanara to Chief Secretary, Madras, March 31, 1941, Public (General) G. O. 811–12 (Confdntl.), April 24, 1941 (KSA). 7 Menon, Communism in South India 168. 8 A communist circular noted, “Another benefit of the September 15th [1940] incident is the change in mentality that has arisen in the police force, from pride to fear, from official overbearance to submissive helplessness” (Circular no. 22, Home Department Political (I) 1941, September 7, 1941, (NAI)). As Lawrence describes a few years later in Ernakulam (Cochin princely state), in political speeches, of even students, challenging the police and mocking it was becoming common (Pravasi Bharathi YouTube Channel, “M. M. Lawrence Interview: Pravasi Bharathi 810 AM Radio, Abu Dhabi-UAE,” YouTube, May 1, 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CU9w2fY6UI). 9 On the day before the riot, the police who were camping in the area interrogated T. V. Kunhambu, the captain of the volunteer squad. He angrily retorted that

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imperialism would be decimated soon (Andalat, Rekhayillatha Charitram [History without Documents] (Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha Publishers, 1987), 96). We should also not discount the physical training and the study classes held by the Communist Party before the incident. Andhra Communist P. Sundarayya had also secretly visited Kayyur to explain party programs and exhort the peasants, which according to Communist leader, A. V. Kunhambu, had created lot of enthusiasm among them (V. V. Kunhambu, Kayyur Samara Charithram [History of Kayyur Resistance], 2nd ed. (Trivandrum: Chintha Publishers, 1984), 16). K. K. N. Kurup, “Kayyur Heroes,” New Age 23, no. 48 (1975) reproduced in K. K. N. Kurup, Kayyur Riot: A Terrorist Episode in the Nationalist Movement in Kerala (Calicut: Sandhya Publications, 1978), 107–113. Quoted in Andalat, Rekhayillatha, 105–106. See Kurup, Kayyur Riot, 79–80. Public (General) G.O. 811–12 (Confdntl.), April 24, 1941 (KSA). Andalat, Rekhayillatha, 133. Resolution of the Central Committee, Communist Party of India, September 12, 1942; P. C. Joshi, The Indian Communist Party: Its Policy and Work in the War of Liberation (London: Communist Party of Great Britain, 1942), File no. 462/103, L/I/1/1116, India Office Records, British Library, London. See Puthupally Raghavan, Sakhavu R. Sugathan [Comrade R. Sugathan] (Kottayam: Current Books, 1999), 155. The government’s own assessment in July 1942 was: “The communist’s pro-war campaign has lost much of its early drive and still fails to arouse enthusiasm among the public or to evoke any response from rival political parties other than active hostility. . . . Anti-Japanese propaganda has also suffered a decline (Communist Survey, July 1942, IOR/L/P&J/12/431, India Office Records, British Library, London). Krishna Pillai calls the “Unity Week” organized in November 1942 at the behest of the national leadership of the Communist Party of India and meant to sensitize people to the threat of Japanese fascism as the most effective program conducted by the party until then. He describes how workers, peasants and other sections went beyond expectations in organizing meetings, collecting funds and so on. He particularly claimed the enthusiastic participation of women who were angered at the atrocities committed by the Japanese. In a small village in Cochin, 11,600 people participated in meetings which included 4,634 women (Deshabhimani, November 22, 1942 in P. Krishna Pillai, Sakhakkele Munnottu [March on, Comrades]: The Collected Works of Krishna Pillai, ed. Andalat (Thiruvananthapauram: Chintha, 1998), 236). The biases involved in these accounts have to be factored in, although Krishna Pillai’s regular assessments of the party’s activities were not often marked by hyperbole. Krishna Pillai writes: “We should mark April 13 [1943] which is the last day of the National Week as a day to release Gandhiji and other Congress leaders. To release our leaders, to secure a national government, to make Japan flee from Burma, to end the War quickly, we need to join with the Chinese in our efforts. This will lead not only to our own independence, but the independence of the whole of Asia (Deshabhimani, April 11, 1943, in Krishna Pillai, Sakhakkale, 128). Although the party made it clear that it will oppose where it was needed, and supporting the war did not mean a surrender to the imperialist government (“Marching towards Independence,” Communist Party pamphlet cited in Raghavan, Sakhavu, 146). This was not entirely a rhetoric as was demonstrated later. While some of the top leaders like K. Damodaran continued to be in jail, many others had still warrants pending against them. Also, there were arrests

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21 22 23 24 25 26

27 28 29 30 31 32 33

34 35 36 37 38

for making provocative speeches (K. K. N. Kurup, Agrarian Struggles in Kerala (Trivandrum: CBH, 1989), 7–8). As the government put it, “communists have never a good word to say for the part Britain is playing in the ‘people’s war.’ P. C. Joshi concluded a public address on July 26 [1942], with the words, ‘Let the British government and the English go to hell’” Communist Survey, July 1942, IOR/L/P&J/12/431, India Office Records, British Library, London). Namboodiripad, Kerala, 172. K. Damodaran, “Memoir of an Indian Communist,” New Left Review 93 (1975): 36. Namboodiripad, Kerala, 175. Namboodiripad, Sampoorna Kritikal [Collected Works], vol. 9, 1948 (Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha Publishers, 2007), 355. Menon, Communism in South India, 170–171. The Collector of Malabar made enquiries about the Communist Party’s allegations that janmies are preventing the expansion of “Grow More Food” movement by denying tenants lands to cultivate to be unfounded (Letter from Collector, Malabar to Secretary to Board of Revenue, April 18, 1943, (Revenue (Ms.) Department G. O. 1911, June 17, 1943 (KSA). Kurup, Agrarian Struggles, 14; Menon, Communism in South India, 170–172. Andalat, Rekhayillatha, 134. Political Resolution, First Congress of the Communist Party of India, May 1943. Deshabhimani, June 10, 1945. Private Papers of Pachu Ashan. Deshabhimani Varikha, April 18, 1943, in Krishna Pillai, Sakhakkale, 131. Raghavan, Sakhavu, 159–162. The spread of inter-union and peasant-worker ties is demonstrated by the fact that the Travancore Coir Factory Workers’ Union played the crucial role in the revival of Punalur Paper Mill Workers’ Union. In 1942 it played a crucial role in the setting up of the Karshaka Thozhilali Sangham (agricultural laborers’ union) in Kuttanad, one of the main regions of capitalistic agriculture (Robin Jeffrey, Politics, Women and Well-Being: How Kerala Became a Model (Hampshire: Macmillan Press, 1992), 168). In Malabar the integration of unions continued. The Motor Transport Employees’ unions felt that the local unions were not enough and a coordinating organization at the district level was needed, which came into existence in 1944. This was something that the Socialists had pushed for since 1938 (A. V Anilkumar, C (Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha Publishers, 2002), 47–48). Damodaran, “Memoir,” 36. Javeed Alam, “Peasantry, Politics and Historiography: Critique of the New Trend in Relation to Marxism,” Social Scientist 11, no. 2 (February 1983): 46. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, ed. and trans. Quentin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International, 1971), 198. People’s War, January 24, 1943 quoted in Jeffrey, Women and Well-Being, 138. Ibid. Although this claim may involve exaggeration, it is not without basis. Earlier, the government itself had noted about the Bala Sanghams: “the children [were] being made useful instruments to belittle authority” (Confidential Report from Superintendent of Police (SP), Special Branch, Central Intelligence Department (CID) to Under-Secretary, Public Department, Madras, April 13, 1941, Public (General), G.O. 811–12 (Confdntl.), April 24, 1941 (KSA)). The Bala Sanghams took shape in children’s meetings like the one held right after the Kasaragod Taluk Peasant Conference in 1938 (V. V. Kunhambu,“Deshabhimani

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39 40 41 42

43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52

53 54 55

Krishna Pillai Memorial Souvenir, 1955,” in Sakhavu Krishna Pillai [Comrade Krishna Pillai], ed. Andalat (Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha Publishers, 1978), 131). The total number of party members in Malabar in 1943 stood around 2500, volunteers—10,000 and full-time party activists—300 (Andalat, Rekhayillatha, 91). In 1946, the number of members was 2700 (Party Sanghadakan, Number 1 January 1946, in Krishna Pillai, Sakhakkale, 318). In Travancore, there was the incident of paper mill workers with red flags infiltrating the Legislative Assembly and shouting slogans against the princely rule (Raghavan, Sakhavu, 162). Revenue (Ms.) Department G. O. 1911, June 17, 1943 (KSA). As we have seen, the monopoly over waste and forestlands by the janmis, was an especially pernicious feature of the agrarian system of Malabar. Deshabhimani, August 7, 1946, in Krishna Pillai, Sakhakkale, 565–567. Menon, Communism in South India, 180. In Telangana around the same time, the Communists were becoming the “local heroes” of the villagers for defending them against the corrupt and arbitrary practices of the state and landlords during the war effort (John Roosa, “Passive Revolution Meets Peasant Revolution: Indian Revolution and the Telangana Revolt,” Journal of Peasant Studies 28, no. 4 (2001): 63, 65). Kurup, Agrarian Struggles, 17. Public (General A) Department, G. O. 2773 (Confdntl.), November 9, 1948 (TNA). Kurup, Agrarian Struggles, 21. See Public (General A) Misc. G. O. 1712 (Confdntl.), July 14, 1948 (TNA) and also Andalat, Rekhayillatha 136–156. There were also many instances in which the peasants paid the landlord what they thought was a fair price for the paddy. Public (General A) Misc. G. O. 1712 (Confdntl.), July 14, 1948 (TNA). Ramakumar, “Aspects of the Peasant Movement,” 114. Andalat, Rekhayillatha, 31–33. K. C. George, Immortal Punnapra-Vayalar (New Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1975), 25. Ibid., 60. T. J. Nossiter, Communism in Kerala: A Study in Political Adaptation (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982), 91. The numbers killed vary in other sources. A. Sreedhara Menon, Punnapra Vaylarum, Kerala Charitharavum [Punnapra-Vayalar and Kerala History] (Kottayam: DC Books, 1999), 25, puts it at 1000. The reverberations of the resistance were felt in the Muvattupuzha region. Communist leader, K. T. Jacob was arrested and subject to severe torture (Private Papers of Pachu Ashan). T. M. Thomas Isaac, “Class Struggle and Structural Change: Coir Mat and Matting Industry in Kerala, 1950–80,” Economic and Political Weekly 17, no. 31 (July 1982): 15. Chantal Mouffe, “Ideology and Hegemony in Gramsci,” in Gramsci and Marxist Theory (London: Routledge, 1979), 180. As a government report put it, “A.K. Gopalan and K.P.R. Gopalan have been very active bolstering up morale in North Malabar. It is reported that the former, particularly, is becoming violent in his speeches, especially when referring to the police. . . . He is also alleged to have incited people to revolt, in a recent speech of his” (Report of the DSP, Malabar for the week ending December 12, 1947, Public (General A) Misc. G.O. 630 (Confdntl.), March12, 1948 (TNA). The tone of defiance of the Communist leadership was further evident in Namboodiripad’s letter to the Collector of Malabar in which he charges him for

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56 57 58

59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66

67

68 69

70 71

“gross negligence of [his] duty in the matter of non-release of political prisoners and the non-withdrawal of political cases. . . . It is this attitude of yours that is today the biggest hindrance to the restoration of normal condition in Malabar” (September 2, 1947, Public (General A) Misc. G. O. 1712 (Confdntl.), July 14, 1948 (TNA)). Report of DSP, for the week ending January 5, 1948, and District Magistrate, Malabar to Home Secretary, January 27, 1948, Public (General- A) Misc., G. O. 630 (Confdntl.), March 12, 1948 (TNA). Menon, Communism in South India, 183–184. In Telangana, the Congress denounced the Communists’ pushing of class struggle as contributing to the breaking of the nationalist unity needed in the anti-colonial struggle. And in a classic demonstration of the thesis of passive revolution, the Congress insisted that all serious questions arising from feudalism would be addressed after independence through constitutional methods (Roosa, “Passive Revolution,” 64). P. Radhakrishnan, Peasant Struggles, Land Reforms and Social Change: Malabar 1836–1982 (New Delhi: Sage, 1989), 103; see also Roosa, “Passive Revolution.” Madras Government FR for first and second halves of April1948 (TNA). Ramakumar, “Aspects of the Peasant Movement,” 115. Kurup, Agrarian Struggles, 57–71. Madras Government, FR, first and second halves of October 1948 (TNA). Raghavan, Sakhavu, 227. Madras Government Secret USS, 67, October 10, 1948 (TNA). Ministry of Home Affairs at the center decided to translate the pamphlet “Communist Violence in India” and distribute it free through District Collectors and Congress Committees in the Communist strongholds of Madras state (Madras Government Secret USS, 88, November 11, 1949) (TNA). The naivety could not be more evident than the authorities’ view that the youth could be prevented from being attracted to communism if they could divert them “by engaging them in extra-curricular activities”. National Cadet Corps “is by far the best anti-communist weapon that we have in our hands as it inculcates a sense of discipline”. Other measures include encouraging pupils to do more social work like assisting at festivals, cleanliness campaigns in slum areas etc.“Such organized activities will develop a spirit of cooperation, tolerance and understanding which would eventually prove a more effective deterrent to the spirit of communism and its intolerance.” The government also worried that the “authority of parents has been considerably undermined in recent years” (Director of Public Instruction to Secretary, Education Department, September 26, 1950 and April 11, 1951, Madras Govt. Secret USS 51/51, June 19, 1951 (TNA). Madras Government Secret USS, 49/50, June 6, 1950 (TNA). The Travancore government itself assessed that in 1949, 75% of the labor unions were under communist control. It also noted that “public were generally not inclined to support strong action against the Communists” (Madras Government Secret USS, 21/49 (TNA)). The Government of India was similarly apprehensive about the election of an underground Communist to the Cochin Legislative Assembly (Madras Government Secret USS, 74/49, October 6, 1949 (TNA)). Raghavan, Sakhavu, 241. Pachu Ashan,* an 86-year-old Communist activist for 70 years and from a Dalit caste, interview, August 2017; Private Papers of Pachu Ashan. Ayyappan’s death anniversary is marked until now (field notes, August 2017).

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72 A Communist Party circular noted: “the new constitution is condemned as one wherein the workers and kisans do not have any place or voice in the administration of the country, that the majority are left completely to the mercy of the capitalist rulers and that the Indian war-mongers have completely pawned the real sovereignty of India with Anglo-American power blocs which are in conspiracy against the Soviet Union” (Police Intelligence Report, Madras Government Secret USS, 10/50, January 20, 1950 (TNA)). 73 Anilkumar, C, 60–62. The carnage attracted criticism even from the Congress fold. J. B. Kripalani, an important national Congress leader, formed the Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party (KMPP). which attracted many from the Congress party in Kerala too. The Communists had started following the policy of resistance in jails too. Even in prisons, they established “Soviet Republics” and they had also started agitating for privileges associated with political prisoners. This had created tense situations in jails (Kurup, Agrarian Struggles, 89). 74 Four Dy. S.P.s, 13 Inspectors, 61 Sub-inspectors, 94 Head Constables and 920 Police Constables were also newly recruited to deal with the “communist problem” (Kurup, Agrarian Struggles, 90). 75 Madras Government Secret USS, 49/50, June 3, 1950 (TNA). 76 The High Court in its judgment ruled, “Apart from the valuable rights of freedom of expression, freedom of association, etc. guaranteed by the Constitution, you have also to bear in mind that the general elections are fast approaching. . . . if the freedom and independence that have recently been won are to have any meaning at all, it is up to you [the executive] to see that the public are able to enjoy and exercise their freedom as fully as possible” (Madras Government Secret USS, 9/51, February 2, 1951 (TNA)). 77 Cited in Kurup, Agrarian Struggles, 105. 78 T. V. Krishnan, T. V. Thomas: Jeevithakatha [Life History] (Kozhikode: Pranavam Books, 1998), 140–141. 79 As Kwame Nkrumah comments about Africa,“the African bourgeoisie, the class which thrived under colonialism, is the same class which is benefitting under the post-independence, neo-colonial period. Its basic interest lies in preserving capitalist social and economic structures” (quoted in Benita Parry, Postcolonial Studies: A Materialist Critique (London: Routledge, 2004), 84). 80 Namboodiripad, Kerala, 194. 81 Thoppil Bhasi (playwright and Communist activist, Bhasi was one of the most famous figures of the Malayalam literary world. His 1951 play Ningalenne Communist Aakki (You Made Me a Communist) virtually caused a storm in the public sphere; see next two chapters) recounts the incident in 1948 in which an untouchable agricultural laborer defied the landlord by resisting eviction from his homestead. The landlord filed false charges against him after which the police raided the village and rounded up as many untouchables they could find. All of them were tied up together and publicly flogged on their way to the police station (Thoppil Bhasi, Olivile Ormakal [Memories in Hiding], 5th ed. (Thiruvananthapuram: Prabhath Book House, 1999), 27–28). A. K. Gopalan was put under preventive detention and he filed a Habeas Corpus petition for the enforcement of the fundamental right of liberty guaranteed under the Constitution. The government itself was aware of the draconian nature of its measures: The Criminal Law Amendment Act is “very drastic and opposed to the fundamental rights declared and safeguarded by the Constitution” (Advocate General to Chief Secretary, April 21, 1950, Madras Government Secret USS, 49/50, June 3, 1950). 82 Barbaric acts were committed by the police. Some of the usual practices were, to put a person down on the back and pull the legs and arms sideways and tie

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83 84

85

86 87 88

89 90 91

92 93 94 95

them up fully stretched; pealing the skin below the knee by rolling a coconut stump on it with force; thrusting needles inside the nails of hands and feet, thrusting hot Cadjan stalks into the genitals and so on. Prisoners would be forced to drink urine if they asked for water. Making cuts on the body with a blade and then applying chili paste on them was another common practice (see George, Immortal, 103–104; Bhasi, Olivile, 59). Lawrence describes how he spent almost two years in jail (for the 1950 Edappally Police Station attack to free two jailed Communists) with hardly any food, terrible sanitation condition, and by enduring severe beating (Pravasi Bharathi YouTube Channel, “M. M. Lawrence Interview”). Pachu Ashan recounts the kind of torture that P. P. Esthose, the most important Communist leader of Muvattupuzha, had to undergo in jail. He had to undergo treatment for a year (interview). Novelist Govinda Pisharody Cherukad wrote a satire on this phenomenon, Shanidisha, which highlights the irony of the post-independence situation in which all those who opposed independence turned overnight into wearers of khadi and worshippers of Gandhi while those who dedicated their lives to it remained underground in hiding (see Kanthalayam Keshavan Nair, Kalapa Sahithyam: Cherukadinte Novalukal, Oru Patanam [Literature of Rebellion: A Study of Cherukad’s Novels] (Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala Granthasala Sahakarana Sanghom, 1978; 39–58). The Congress was also openly taking the sides of the landlords. Lawrence recounts an incident in Mulanthuruthy (Cochin) where a big Namboodiri landlord tried to evict a small peasant. Some prominent Congress leaders came to the support of the landlord and were even ready to confront the Communist Party workers who had resisted the eviction (M. M. Lawrence, “Dr. Abraham Chathuruthi,” Facebook, May 26, 2019, www.facebook.com/MMLawrenceCPIM/ posts/1017738265225058). Namboodiripad, Kerala, 192. Victor M. Fic, Kerala: Yenan of India (Bombay: Nachiketa Publications, 1970), 32. In Cochin, union work began to accelerate. The Ernakulam Municipal Workers’ Union was started in 1952. Since it was felt by the Communist Party that the office bearers should be workers themselves and not party activists from outside, the first president and secretary were workers. The union was to undertake various struggles for regularization of casual workers, uniforms and protective equipment, annual bonus, etc. (M. M. Lawrence, “Municipal Thozhilalikal,” (Municipal Workers), Facebook, January 18, 2019, www.facebook.com/ MMLawrenceCPIM/posts/1017738265225058). Bhasi, Olivile, 260. K. Pradeep, “One Night in the Edappally Police Station,” The Hindu, March 27, 2015, www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/one-night-in-the-edappallypolice-station/article7040142.ece. In the Muvattupuzha Panchayat election in 1954, a beedi worker was made the Communist Party candidate in one of the wards and the party undertook a one-month house-to-house campaign. His victory shocked the elites in the town because only the landed classes had won elections until then, and gave a great fillip to party and union activity (interview with, and Private Papers of, Pachu Ashan). Nossiter, Communism, 116–117. Fic, Yenan of India, 489–490. Kurup, Agrarian Struggles, 108. Interestingly, again demonstrating the connections that were being drawn between spheres of work, the first beedi union in Muvattupuzha Taluk was

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96 97 98

99 100 101 102 103 104 105

106 107 108 109

110 111 112 113

114 115 116

begun in Pampakuda village with the efforts of a local Communist who was a tailor by profession, and who constantly held secret meetings with workers (Private Papers of Pachu Ashan). After the first labor strike in Muvattupuzha by beedi workers, which was successful, they expressed solidarity with the striking motor workers (Private Papers of Pachu Ashan). V. Muraleedharan Nair, Dynamics of Agrarian Struggle (New Delhi: Anmol Publications, 1996), 90. Pavanan, Keralam Chuvannopol [When Kerala Turned Red] (Kottayam: National Book Stall, 1995), 19–20. To cut costs, the president and the members of the Board used to walk to the schools they had to inspect would put up there in the night instead of staying in guest houses. Fic, Yenan of India, 44, 51. Of the 125 Assembly seats, the Communist Party won 60 seats. Damodaran, “Memoir,” 40. E. M. S. Namboodiripad, Sampoorna Kirtikal [Collected Works], vol. 6 (Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha Publishers, 1999), 331. Deshabhimani, December 1942, in Krishna Pillai, Sakhakkele, 240. Uthaman,* interview, December 2018. Andalat,* Communist activist, interview, July 2003; Rekhayillatha, 63. The effects of this were carried over decades with a working class developing a political consciousness far beyond their formal education. Fifty-eight percent of the 388 Communist activists surveyed read more than 3 newspapers, other than their own, from party offices, reading rooms and libraries. Fifty percent read books (M. S. Priyamol, “Communication Strategy and Propaganda Techniques of Communist Movement in Kerala (1930–1957),” (Thesis, Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Calicut, Kerala, 2005, 117). The government warily noted in 1949 that communist-sponsored village libraries exist in all communist centers (Madras Government Secret USS, 21/49 (TNA)). Andalat, Rekhayillatha, 63. Priyamol, “Communication Strategy,” 65. K. Satchidanandan,“Keralathile Idathupaksham VardhakyathinumYauvanathinumidayil,” [Kerala’s Left between Youth and Senescence], in Communisathinte Bhavi Keralathil [The Future of Communism in Kerala], ed. Viju V. Nair (Kollam: Imprint Books, 1999), 112. S. Harikrishnan, “Communicating Communism: Social Spaces and the Creation of a ‘Progressive’ Public Sphere in Kerala, India,” Triple C 18, no. 1 (2020): 272. Ibid., 276. P. M. Ismail,* interview, December 2018. Andalat, Rekhayillatha, 63–66, 73. E. K. Nayanar, Communist leader, who later went on to become the longest serving chief minister of Kerala, recounts how the first peasant union in Kayyur came into being. After a dispute between peasants from Kayyur and the neighboring village was peacefully resolved by a union from another village, peasants in Kayyur demanded that a union be formed in their village too (E. K. Nayanar, Olivukala Smrithikal [Reminiscences of Life in Hiding], 2nd ed. (Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha Publishers, 1999), 21). Public (General) G O. 811–12 (Confdntl.), April 24, 1941 (KSA). Raghavan, Sakhavu, 177, 189. The emergence of the workers’ union was a blow to their power. So much so, they floated their own union. George, Immortal, 40.

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117 Partha Chatterjee, “Beyond the Nation? Or Within?,” Social Text 56 16, no. 3 (Fall 1998): 60. See for details, Chapters 6 and 7. 118 John Gilbert’s testimony, Deshabhimani Krishna Pillai Memorial Issue in Andalat, Sakhavu, 92. 119 Madras Government Secret USS, 21/49 (TNA). There were instances when people used to donate rice and coconut trees to the party (Andalat, Rekhayillatha, 94). The party brought into existence the rice dole system in which the peasants contributed rice: “The expenses of the whole organization should be met from this one item only and the peasants made to realize the importance of the system”. It was emphasized that local peasant organization should have an auxiliary voluntary organization. The goal was to enroll at least one member from a peasant family as a volunteer. He would be put in charge of 20 families and would visit them every twice a week to enquire about their welfare and also discuss matters relating to organization. “It is essential that in every village there should be a lady volunteer for a peasant’s group.” Voluntary workers were also instructed to do more humanitarian work like nursing the sick, etc. (Communist Party circulars no. 14 and 18, (Home Department Political (I) 1941, September 7, 1941 (NAI)). Interestingly, in the first elections of Travancore in 1948 the party did not have funds to contest, therefore, it asked the voters to not only vote for the party but also contribute 1 anna along with it (Raghavan, Sakhavu,129). 120 Krishnan, T. V. Thomas, 101; Andalat, Rekhayillatha, 133. 121 O. M. C. Namboodiripad, Deshabhimani, March 25, 1945. 122 Jeffrey, Women and Well-Being, 85. 123 Ibid., 86. 124 Ramakumar, “Aspects of the Peasant Movement,” 118. 125 Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, 6. 126 E. San Juan, Jr., “The National Democratic Revolution: A Gramscian Perspective,” The Philippines Matrix Project, March 13, 2010, https://philcsc. wordpress.com/2010/03/13/the-national-democratic-revolution-and-gramscisnational-popular-strategy/ Interestingly, the first beedi union formation exercises in Muvattupuzha town were undertaken by a progressive thinker and a practitioner of traditional medicine (Private Papers of Pachu Ashan). 127 Jeffrey, Women and Well-Being, 69; Kurup, Agrarian Struggles, 69. 128 The example of P.R. Nambiar, Communist leader, who came to the movement through the teachers’ movement (Pavanan, Keralam, 14), demonstrates how the particular, local concerns go onto acquire a structural and systemic character. People like Nambiar (who spoke English, Tamil and Hindi other than Malayalam) epitomized the Andersonian bi-lingual intellectual who was the catalyst of a new consciousness. Similarly, Krishna Pillai was a full-time activist of the Hindi Prachar Sabha before joining CSP. 129 Namboodiripad, Kerala, 155–156. 130 A. K. Gopalan, In the Cause of the People: Reminiscences (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1973), 92. 131 Priyamol, “Communicative Strategy,” 118. 132 Ronald J. Herring, “Stealing Congress’s Thunder: The Rise to Power of a Communist Movement in South India,” in When Parties Fail: Emerging Alternative Organizations, ed. Kay Lawson and Peter H. Merkl (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), 404. 133 Nayanar, Olivukala, 33. Reading the memoirs of activists like Nayanar and Thoppil Bhasi gives a sense of the extraordinary difficulties that subaltern classes endured in giving shelter to the Communists. But, as we will see later,

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134 135

136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152

153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163

the relationship between the leadership and the most marginalized of castes and classes was often patronizing. Priyamol, “Communication Strategy,” 51–52. K. K. N. Kurup, “Karshaka Samarangalum Malayalam Sahityavum” [Peasant Struggles and Malayalam Literature], in Nammude Sahityam, Nammude Samooham [Our Literature, Our Society], vol. 2, ed. M. N. Vijayan (Thrissur: Kerala Sahitya Akademi, 2000), 143. District Magistrate, Malabar, to the Secretary, Home Department, January 27, 1948, G. O. 630 (Confdl.), Public (General A) Department, March 12, 1948 (TNA). Priyamol, “Communication Strategy,” 53. M. S. Devadas, Therenjedutha Prabandhangal [Selected Essays] (Thrissur: Kerala Sahitya Akademi, 1991), 84. Gramsci quoted in Denzil Saldanha, “Antonio Gramsci and the Analysis of Class Consciousness: Some Methodological Considerations,” Economic and Political Weekly 23, no. 5 (January 1988): PE-13. Menon, Communism in South India, 150. Krishna Pillai, Sakhakkale, 389. Andalat, Sakhavu, 76. Andalat, Rekhayillatha, 64–65. Pachu Ashan, interview. He used to read the publications from Soviet Union translated into Malayalam. Priyamol, “Communication Strategy,” 115. Mathrubhumi, July 31, 1935 and August 18, 1935, in Krishna Pillai, Sakhakkale, 604–605. Krishna Pillai, Sakhakkale, 389. Prabhatham, June 19, 1939, in Krishna Pillai, Sakhakkale, 205–207. Prabhatham, June 26, 1939, in Krishna Pillai, Sakhakkale, 211–212. Deshabhimani, January 18, 1946. Krishna Pillai, Sakhakkale, 313–314. Ibid., 209. Even in the present, study classes are promoted extensively (Surjit Esthose,* local-level CPM activist, interviews, March and August 2017). Other than the regular study classes, there is a two-day study class every year covering topics from globalization to local issues (Annie, local-level CPM activist, interview, August 2017). But these have become mechanical and routine. Testimonies by Communist activists and leaders, K. K. Kunhan, P.P. Achuthan, A. V. Kunhambu, C. H. Kanaran, K. P. Rayarappan, V. V. Kunhambu in Andalat, Sakhavu, 18, 42, 83, 98, 145, 167. Pachu Ashan, interview. Pavanan, Keralam, 24. T. K. Ramachandran,* interview, May 1999; T. K. Ramachandran, Kazhchayude Koyma [The Hegemony of Seeing] (Kozhikode: Mathrubhumi Books, 2006), 14. Miriam Hansen, foreword to Public Sphere and Experience: Toward an Analysis of the Bourgeois and Proletarian Public Sphere, by Oscar Negt and Alexander Kluge (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), xxvii. Ibid., xxvii–viii. Harikrishnan, “Communicating Communism,” 276. Chatterjee, “Beyond the Nation,” 28. Ibid., 29. Ibid., 27; Partha Chatterjee, “Community in the East,” Economic and Political Weekly 33, no. 6 (February 1998): 281. A detailed discussion on postcolonial theory’s exposition of political society is found in Chapter 7.

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164 The party conducting internal investigations about party members who have been convicted by the state for crimes and exonerating them is an example. 165 Subho Basu and Auritro Majumder, “Dilemmas of Parliamentary Communism,” Critical Asian Studies 45, no. 2 (2013): 190. 166 T. T. Sreekumar, Civil Samoohavum, Idathupakshavum [Civil Society and the Left] (Kozhikode: Olive Publications, 2007), 91. 167 Ibid., 91, 89, 97. 168 Robert Cox, “Civil Society at the Turn of the Millennium: Prospects for an Alternative World Order,” Review of International Studies 25, no. 1 (1999): 7. 169 Partha Chatterjee, “Agrarian Relations and Communalism: 1926–35,” in Subaltern Studies I: Writings on South Asian History and Society, ed. Ranajit Guha (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982), 37. 170 Alam, “Peasantry,” 45–46. 171 Of course, there are many instances when this had happened. For example, in the early days of peasant activism in Chirakkal Taluk, peasants took the decision of rent refusal. The party agreed that it was a revolutionary demand; but decided that it was too early to make this demand for it might invite severe suppression by the state. The same was the case in the Kannur Commonwealth Company strike in 1937 and the beedi workers’ strike in 1939 when the party asked the strikes to be called off after a few small gains were secured when the workers were not willing to do so (Azhikodan’s testimony, in Andalat, Sakhavu, 137– 138). Similarly, in the Alleppey coir workers’ strike of 1938, even after 25 days, the majority of the workers were not willing to call off the strike (P. A. Solomon’s testimony, in Andalat, Sakhavu, 156). At the same time, there were instances of the CSP encouraging militancy (Andalat, interview). And the workers were trying to temper the leadership. This happened as well like the Kannur Commonwealth factory workers ending a strike after 29 days even when 8 workers were suspended, and the Kannur beedi workers refusing to prolong a strike in 1946 after a few days or Kannur postal workers’ diffidence in striking when the party leadership wanted it in 1946 (Azhikodan’s testimony, in Andalat, Sakhavu, 140–141). In the Commonwealth case, the workers even went against the decision of the strike committee, prompting Krishna Pillai to stress that this was due to lack of class consciousness and that class consciousness cannot be built without the discipline to follow the strike committee’s decisions and an understanding of the role of the party in bringing about a worker-peasant rule. Party, according to him, has the highest class consciousness and “scientific knowledge” (Prabhatham, April 3, 1939; Krishna Pillai, Sakhakkale, 431). 172 Ranajit Guha, “On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India,” in Selected Subaltern Studies, ed. Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 42. 173 Private Papers of Pachu Ashan. 174 Chatterjee, “Agrarian Relations,” 37. 175 Antonio Gramsci, “‘The Modern Prince’ (1933/1934),” in Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, ed. and trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1971), 198. 176 Parry, Postcolonial Studies, 86. 177 Joseph Tharamangalam, Agrarian Class Conflict (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1981), 92. 178 David Forgacs, “National-Popular: Genealogy of a Concept,” in The Cultural Studies Reader, ed. Simon During (London: Routledge, 1993), 179–180. 179 But, as San Juan, Jr., argues, while Forgacs is correct in analyzing Gramsci’s linking of the political and cultural, he removes the economic from the

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180 181 182

183 184

185 186 187 188 189 190 191

192 193 194 195 196 197 198

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national-popular. Gramsci’s notion of national-popular cannot be divested of its integration with material and socialist transformation. At the same time, it is against economism and positivism (San Juan, Jr., “The National Democratic Revolution.”). Ibid., 183. Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures (London: Verso, 1992), 107–108. Thus, Communist workers striking work in solidarity with workers elsewhere in the country like during the 1946 Bombay Naval Mutiny, or the party organizing a fund drive as well as other activities to join the national celebration of Gandhi’s 75th birthday are some of the many examples (Deshabhimani, March 3, 1946; Deshabhimani, October 1, 1944 in Krishna Pillai, Sakhakkale, 455, 154). Home Political, 7/5/44.1Pol (1), August 4, 1944 cited in Kurup, Agrarian, 8. Prabhatham, August 28, 1939, in Krishna Pillai, Sakhakkale, 224. The Communist Party’s national policy was to build a popular front uniting all national forces, in which it was content to play a secondary role (Roosa, “Passive Revolution,” 62). Damodaran, “Memoir,” 36. Roosa, “Passive Revolution,” 58, 87–88. As Roosa shows, Communists in Telangana (like in Kerala) emerged out of Congress activism, (but unlike in Kerala), the ties with the Congress lasted much longer. Bose and Majumder, “Parliamentary Communism,” 174. Manali Desai, “Party Formation, Political Power, and the Capacity for Reform: Comparing Left Parties in Kerala and West Bengal, India,” Social Forces 80, no. 1 (September 2001): 40. Bose and Majumder, “Parliamentary Communism,” 175. Namboodiripad, Kerala, 174. This was the case nationally as well. By 1947 the united trade union front had split into 4 different organizations, including that of the Congress and the Socialists. There were attempts to unite various trade unions under one organization the 1950s (Brij Mohan Toofan, “The Communists and Indian Labor,” Problems of Communism 8, no. 2 (1959): 40. The “sectarian mistakes in the Party’s political line” also contributed to these splits (B. T. Ranadive, “Marx and Trade Unions,” The Marxist 3, no. 4 (1985): 17). Krishnan, T. V. Thomas, 113. Ibid., 175. Madras Government Report, Political and Judicial, January–December 1942; FR, second half, September 1942 cited in Nossiter, Communism, 86. Namboodiripad, Sampoorna Kritikal, vol. 6, 333, 335. Ibid., 307. Quoted in ibid., 119. Five Communist beedi workers from Muvattupuzha participated in a rally for United Kerala and had to undergo beatings from the police (Private Papers of Pachu Ashan). P. Muhammed, “Cinema, Politics and Historical Consciousness: The Left and the Production of a Modern Subjectivity in Kerala, 1950s–1980s,” (Ph.D. Thesis, Department of Cultural Studies, English and Foreign Languages University Hyderabad, 2017), 69. Selig Harrison, India: The Most Dangerous Decades (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1960), 181. Kerala does not have one overarching regional party representing the state like many other states. As Paul Brass argues, Communist parties do not have a monopoly over regional symbols; they have had to contend with regional parties who use such symbols.

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Communist parties are not “simply parties of regional sentiment, but parties that have both a regional and class appeal and that relate effectively not only to symbols of regional nationalism but to the specific social structure of their region” (Paul Brass, “Political Parties of the Radical Left in South Asian Politics,” in Radical Politics in South Asia, ed. Paul Brass and Marcus Franda (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1973), 94, 112). K. Venu, “EMS: Dharshanika Rashtriya Vilayiruthalinu Oru Aamukham” [EMS: A Foreword to a Philosophico-Political Evaluation], in Lal Salaam, ed. C. Anoop (Kottayam: DC Books, 2001), 133, 134. Venu was once associated with the radical Left (Naxalite) movement. Criticizing the argument therefore that the Communists too mobilized on community lines, but that of the lower-caste Ezhavas, Nossiter writes, it “seriously underestimates the importance of the [communist] movement’s ideological and practical commitment to political mobilization along class lines” (Nossiter, Communism, 115). Dipesh Chakrabarty, Rethinking Working-Class History: Bengal, 1890–1940 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), 194–195, 198. Chakrabarty, Rethinking Working Class History, 218. Mathrubhumi, April 1, 1934, in Krishna Pillai, Sakhakkale, 174–175. Krishna Pillai, Sakhakkele, 368. Government of Travancore, Confidential Section (Secret), 4213/44, December 12, 1944 (KSA). Raghavan, Sakhavu, 46. Elsewhere, in Bengal, Chakarabarty describes the kind of power that managers wielded over jute workers, which was arbitrary, personal, and based on excessive force. And it drew from traditional notions of authority figures being parents to workers who could dispense “‘parental’ justice’” (Chakrabarty, Rethinking Working Class History, 170–177, 163). K. K. Kunhan, General Secretary of the Association for many years, quoted in Andalat, Keralathile Thozhilalivargathinte Piravi [The Birth of the Working Class in Kerala], 3rd ed. (Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha Publishers, 2000), 62. For a characteristic attitude of the leadership of the association, this speech by the president in 1932 is illuminating: “You [workers] should have respect and affection towards your capitalist bosses. You should always bear in mind that their progress is also your progress . . . capitalists and workers should live amicably . . . (quoted in Andalat, Keralathile, 63–64). Proceedings of the Travancore Sri Mulam Assembly, vol. 7, part I, 1938, 35. Robin Jeffrey, “‘Destroy Capitalism!’ Growing Solidarity of Alleppey’s Coir Workers, 1930–40,” Economic and Political Weekly 19, no. 29 (July 1984): 1162. SNDP was a social reform organization for the Ezhavas founded by Sree Narayana Guru, one of the most prominent figures of Kerala, in the early 1900s. Mathrubhumi, March 8, 1936. State Formation, 68. Pachu Ashan, interview; Jose Karimbana, Rakthasakshikalude Naadu [The Land of Martyrs] (Koothattukulam: Niyogam Books, 1996), 44. Private Papers of Pachu Ashan. After the formation of the first beedi union in Muvattupuzha Taluk (Pampakuda), it was announced through a poster put up by the workers, and the news spread like wildfire in the town because it was an audacious act. The owner came and decided that he will not open the company until he knew who the members of the union were. Then, the workers threatened to go on strike using

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219 220 221 222 223 224 225

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Gandhian methods if he did not allow all the workers back (Private Papers of Pachu Ashan). The intermingling of Gandhian language with communism is interesting here. Interview. Aliyar Kunju,* Muslim, Communist activist and retired worker, interview, August 2004. Kathleen Gough, “Kerala Politics and the 1965 Elections,” International Journal of Comparative Sociology 8, no.1 (1967): 65. Kathleen Gough, “Village Politics in Kerala—I,” Economic and Political Weekly 17, no. 7 (1965): 372. See James Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Subsistence and Rebellion in South East Asia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1976). Ibid., 81. The SNDP membership in 1928 was 50,000. But its gospel of self-help borrowed from the context of an industrializing Victorian England was out of place with the lives of the ordinary Ezhavas, even though they were stirred by the functioning of such an organization in a caste-ridden society. Without an economic program, SNDP could not make any material improvement to the Ezhavas (Nossiter, Communism, 30–31). But from 1917, Sree Narayana Guru laid great stress on education unlike the period before in which building of temples and purifying Hindu rites were the main activities (Jeffrey, Women and Well-Being, 107). The SNDP report of the enquiry committee set up by it on the Punnapra incident stated that workers should realize that no one could protect their interests better than the Dewan, Sir C. P. Ramaswamy Aiyar, and insulting such a person would be detrimental to their interests. It also asked the workers to surrender unconditionally by giving up their arms, promise that they will break all association with Communists and also desist from violent activities (Vivekodayam 44, no. 1 (December 1946) cited in Raghavan, Sakhavu, 206). See T. M. Thomas Isaac, “From Caste Consciousness to Class Consciousness Alleppey Coir Workers during Inter-War Period,” Economic and Political Weekly 20, no. 4 (1985): 5–18. Kurup, Agrarian Struggles, 117; Pachu Ashan, interview. The occupational profile of the accused persons in the Kayyur, Karivellur and Kavumbayi resistances shows the predominance of marginal peasantry and laborers (see Public (General A) Department G. O. 2773 (Confdntl.), November 9, 1948 (TNA)); Kunhambu, Kayyur, 148–149; Kurup, Kayyur Riot, 33. Karimbana, Rakthasakshikalude, 42, 79. Ismail, interview. Examination of the evidence of the members and office-bearers of the peasant unions before the Malabar Tenancy Commission gives an understanding of their class composition. The general pattern that emerges (even though there are differences between unions) is that the peasant unions drew membership from the petty janmis, kanakkars, verumpattam tenants and even agricultural laborers (see evidences of E. P. Gopalan, M. Gopala Kurup and K. Kunhiraman, Report of the Malabar Tenancy Committee, 1940, vol. 1 (Madras, 1940), 96, 223, 250). Andalat’s survey of 141 activists’ biographies shows that the vast majority of the activists came from the Thiyya caste, some from the Dalit castes, and the rest were from the upper castes and the Muslim community. They belonged mainly to the class of lower peasantry and agricultural labor. They had a similar trajectory of working in the peasant unions first and joining the Communist Party later. Another feature that united all of them was undergoing imprisonment or being put in jails on remand. Further, almost all of them of experienced various,

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and severe forms of torture. Some of the activists came from the background of the freedom struggle and working in the Congress Party. Some had participated in the activities of the radical Abhinav Bharat Sangh prior to them joining the Communist Party (Rekhayillatha Charithram, 187–270). Ronald Herring, “‘Fanaticism,’ Jacquerie, Movement, Party: Ratchet Politics and Peasant Mobilization in South India, 1836–1956” (paper presented at the Power, Agrarian Structure and Peasant Mobilization in Modern India Symposium, Charlottesville, May 25, 1997, 34). Kurup, Agrarian Struggles, 117. This does not have to be generalized into the classic Marxist position of the conservative character of the middle peasantry. As Teodor Shanin put it “the whole question of revolutionary potential of certain social class must be treated as historical, i.e., temporary, relative and changing”. The Telangana and Tebhaga movements saw considerable participation by the middle and rich peasantry (see Joseph Tharamangalam, “Indian Peasant Uprisings: Myth and Reality,” Journal of Peasant Studies 13, no. 3 (April 1986): 116–134). Similarly, Hardiman shows that middle peasants, not the rich peasants or elites, were the catalysts of the nationalist movement (Vinayak Chaturvedi, “A Critical Theory of Subalternity: Rethinking Class in Indian Historiography,” Left History 12, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 2007): 11). Communist Party pamphlet (January 1949) cited in Menon, Communism in South India, 186. A. V. Jose, “Wage Rates of Agricultural Labourers in Kerala,” Economic and Political Weekly 8, nos. 4/6 (February 1973); Tharamangalam, Agrarian Class Conflict. Kurup, Agrarian Struggles, 110. Ammini, interview, August 2017. Keshavan, Ezhava, Communist activist and retired toddy-tapper, interview, August 2017; Bindu, an Ezhava CPM activist, whose grandfather was a toddytapper, interview, August 2017; Subeida, Muslim, 56, whose father was a headload worker and Communist sympathizer, interview, June 2013. Interview, August 2017. Basheer,* Muslim, lower-level Communist activist, interview, August 2004. Vinay Bahl, “Situating and Rethinking Subaltern Studies for Writing Working Class History,” in History after the Three Worlds: Post-Eurocentric Historiographies, ed. Arif Dirlik, Vinay Bahl and Peter Gran (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), 93. Menon points to the lack of rigidity of class divisions (“a single person could be landlord, tenant and cultivator in different contexts”) and goes to the extent of arguing that “constructions of the allegiances of ‘middle’ and ‘poor’ peasants are not possible, since categories tend to be blurred” (Communism in South India, 158). The Malabar Tenancy Committee Report gives evidence of such multiple class positions. The general tendency was to hold land on different type of leases, like kanam, verumpattam, etc., and janmam right. There were petty janmis too. As Vishnu Bharatheeyan notes: ‘There are many poor janmis in North Malabar, but most of the lands here are in the hands of the big janmis” (Report of the Malabar Tenancy Committee, 1940, vol. 1 (Madras, 1940, 260). There were also instances in North Malabar when rich janmis held “lands under kanam tenure from people who occupy low position both socially and materially” (see the written statement of K. T. Kammaran Nambiyar, Report of the Malabar Tenancy Committee, 1927, vol. 2 (Madras, 1928), 299). Similarly, A. R. MacEwen, author of the report on the second resettlement of Malabar, noted that the classification of cultivating and non-cultivating and landowners and tenants

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243 244

245 246

247 248

249

was “doubtful”. Many had a “dual position:” some held janmam right and also held some kanam rights. But, at the same time, this did not preclude the large numbers of agricultural labor or tenants at will. As MacEwen himself notes, the “poor Ryot . . . holds a small plot of paddy land, not large enough to support him and his family, on a year-to-year lease” sustained “by his daily labour.” Most of them happened to be Ezhavas/Thiyyas and Muslims (Revenue R. Dis. 12-A/1930, March 5, 1930 (KRA)). Lower castes holding land under janmam right was a rarity. For example, it was difficult for an Ezhava or an untouchable to be holding janmam lands (Rajan Gurukkal,* historian, interview, June 2003). Even janmis who have kanam lands still identify as a janmi and fall back upon religious legends to justify the hereditary right of the janmis to land (Submission of Poravankara Kunhambu Nair, Report of the Malabar Tenancy Committee, 1940, vol. 1, 325). Besides, there are still considerable differences between tenants and small janmis even when the latter cultivate the lands. As M. Gopala Kurup, the secretary of Kurumbranad Taluk Peasants’ Union, who held eight acres of land of which six were under janmam, points out: the janmi has “to pay only his revenue to the government. He has none of the disabilities of the tenant” (Report of the Malabar Tenancy Committee, 1940, vol. 1, 223). A.P. Sreeraj and Vamsi Vakulabharanam, “High Growth and Rising Inequality in Kerala since the 1980s,” Oxford Development Studies 44, no. 4 (2016): 369. This was seen not only in land ownership but also in government services. Thus, in Travancore in 1933, Nairs (17% of the population) had 13,384 posts, Brahmins (1.1%) had 2926 posts whereas Ezhavas (17.1%) had only 912 posts (R. K. Suresh Kumar, “Socio-Economic Basis of Political Evolution in the Erstwhile Travancore State, 1859–1938,” (Ph. D Thesis, Kerala University, Trivandrum, 1989), 259). K. C. George, “Vayalar Samaram,” in Vegam Pora, ed. Andalat (Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha Publishers, 1978), 143. One common feature that runs across small peasantry to middle peasantry is the state of indebtedness. C. V. Kunhappa Nambiar records that this is generally the condition in his village and surrounding areas. K. Kunhiraman, whose family holds 45 acres of land, states, “Holding land is not profitable, but people stick to it in the hope that someday they will get relief.” The general refrain is that cultivation expenses are more than the yield. The grievances of the peasants, as we noted, were lack of fixity of tenure, excessive rents, indefiniteness about rent and feudal levies and unjust evictions. The verumpattakars were the mostly badly affected. According to Narayanan Nayar, in British Malabar, “99 per cent of the verumpattamdars have not been able to maintain themselves” and “my conviction is that cent percent are indebted” (see evidences of Subramaniam Thirumumpu, E. P. Gopalan, P. Narayanan Nayar, V. M. Vishnu Bharateeyan, M. Gopala Kurup, C. V. Kunhappa Nambiar, K. Kunhiraman and A. Kunjikannan, Report of the Malabar Tenancy Committee, 1940, vol. 1, 323, 95, 186–187, 259, 221, 246, 250). Tharamangalam, Agrarian Class Conflict, 94. Menon, Communism in South India, 193. Jens Lerche argues that Menon focuses in his book on the Thiyya peasant community and not on the Dalit agricultural labor. This, he contends, is because of the chosen theoretical angle of “competing community identities” (“Book Review,” Dilip Menon, “Caste, Nationalism and Communism in South India,” Journal of Peasant Studies 23, no. 1 (1995): 153–154). But it has to be noted: according to Menon, the “idea of community” is not static and essentialist, as in Subaltern Studies, but one which is “an aspiration and not an achieved entity” (Communism in South India, 3–4). Ranadive, “Marx,” 19.

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250 Ritty Lukose, “Re (Casting) the Secular,” Social Analysis 50, no. 3 (2006): 42. 251 Vivek Dhareshwar quoted in ibid. 252 Namboodiripad, Sampoorna Kirtikal, vol. 6, 329; Prabhatham, January 1939; Deshabhimani, August 5, 1945. 253 Namboodiripad, Sampoorna Kirtikal, vol. 9, 363, 375. 254 As Lawrence describes, the Church created sentiments of communism as atheists and anti-God. When the Catholic Church rejected permission to Lawrence to marry in the church (in the last 1950s), the party insisted that he conducts the marriage in a non-Catholic church despite the fact that he was not a believer (Pravasi Bharathi YouTube Channel, “M. M. Lawrence Interview”). Similarly, Aliyar Kunju points out that despite that many Communists were not believers, the party did not make any demands on denying religion (interview). Gough found in her ethnography that many of the Catholic supporters of Communists were church-goers (Gough, “Kerala Politics,” 71). 255 P. K. Yasser Arafath,“The Nadapuram Enigma: A History of Violence and Communalism in North Malabar (1957–2015),” Economic and Political Weekly 51, no. 15 (2016): 50, 51. 256 Andalat, Rekhayillatha, 140. 257 When there was talk within the Communist Party to remove K. P. Gopalan from the first communist ministry of 1957, a newspaper in support of the latter argued that it was the machination of the upper-caste leadership against him because he was a Thiyya. But, ironically, the leader of the group that wanted Gopalan out was another Thiyya leader, C. H. Kanaran (K.P.R. Gopalan’s account, Krishnan, T. V. Thomas, 224). 258 Andalat, Rekhayillatha, 206. 259 Quoted in Luisa Steur, “Indigenist Mobilization: ‘Identity’ versus ‘Class’ after the Kerala Model of Development?,” (Ph. D Thesis, Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, Central European University, Budapest, 2011), 118. 260 Interview. 261 J. Devika,“Kerala: People’s Planning Once Again, Please,” Kafila, May 20, 2020, https://kafila.online/2020/05/20/kerala-peoples-planning-once-again-please/. 262 Andalat, Vegam Pora, 143. 263 Private Papers of Pachu Ashan; Devaki, interview. 264 Chatterjee, “Agrarian Relations,” 31. This tends to be a one-sided view of religion, it does not take into account religion as ideology, and also that it can become a tool for manipulation in communalist mobilization (Alam, “Peasantry,” 50). 265 David Arnold quoted in Herring, “Ratchet Politics,” 11. 266 Herring, “Ratchet Politics,” 33. 267 See K. N. Panikkar, “Charitharakaranaya E. M. S” [E. M. S., The Historian], in Vaakkum Samoohavum, ed. K. Gopinath (Thrissur: Current Books, 1998), 384–389. 268 Herring, “Ratchet Politics,” 12. 269 P. K. Michael Tharakan, “Multi-Dimensional Explanation of Mappila Militancy in Malabar,” Economic and Political Weekly 25, no. 1 (1990): 36. 270 Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, 275. 271 Parry, Postcolonial Studies, 86. 272 Damodaran, “Memoir,” 42. 273 Krishnan, T. V. Thomas, 129, 159, 178. 274 Damodaran, “Memoir,” 46. 275 Aditya Nigam, “Logic of Failed Revolution,” Economic and Political Weekly 35, no. 5 (January 2000): 263. 276 Basu and Majumder, “Parliamentary Communism,” 186.

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277 Ignatius Pereira, “Remembering Martyrs of Chandanathope Firing,” The Hindu, July 25, 2008, www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-kerala/ Remembering-martyrs-of-Chandanathope-firing/article15265490.ece. 278 Damodaran, “Memoir,” 47. 279 Pereira, “Remembering Martyrs.” The RSP, ironically, was to join the antiCommunist coalition soon. 280 Toofan, “Communists,” 42. 281 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital,” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 27, no. 1 (2014): 192. Spivak is quoting Teodor Shanin here. 282 Herring, “Communist Movement,” 395. Vishnu Bharatheeyan argued in 1938 that the aim of peasant unions is to end forever the exploitation perpetrated by the imperialist power which hides behind the daily atrocities of feudal lords and the excesses of bureaucracy (Mathrubhumi, April 22, 1938 in Krishna Pillai, Sakhakkale, 515). 283 One important example of this is the peasant movement confronting slavery in parts of Malabar like in Wayanad which continued into the 20th century. E. K. Nayanar notes: “After our peasant movement emerged in Wayanad, we smashed this barbarian system, we finished it off” (Ramakumar, “Aspects of the Peasant Movement,” 117). Addressing the first peasant conference in Kasaragod Taluk, Vishnu Bharatheeyan referred to the practice of selling women and men in lieu of unpaid agrarian rent (April 22, 1938, Mathrubhumi in Krishna Pillai, Sakkhakkale, 515). 284 He points out that the Communist Party had held an anti-untouchability meeting in February 1946 (August 7, 1946, Deshabhimani in Krishna Pillai, Sakhakkale, 569). 285 Bhalchandra Mungekar, “Annihilating Caste,” Frontline, July 29, 2011, https:// frontline.thehindu.com/social-issues/article30176329.ece. 286 Namboodiripad writes that with the growth of industry, science and modern knowledge systems, caste systems and other superstitions would melt away (Sampoorna Kirtikal, vol. 6, 346). 287 Mungekar, “Annihilating Caste.” 288 Namboodiripad, Sampoorna Kirtikal, vol. 9, 175. 289 Ibid., 183. 290 Gramsci quoted in Mouffe, “Ideology and Hegemony,” 180. 291 See Manali Desai, “The Relative Autonomy of Party Practices: A Counterfactual Analysis of Left Party Ascendancy in Kerala, India, 1934–40,” American Journal of Sociology 108, no. 3 (November 2002): 616–657. 292 Alam, “Peasantry,” 45, 48. 293 Quoted in Theda Skocpol, “What Makes Peasants Revolutionary?,” Comparative Politics 14, no. 3 (April 1982): 362. 294 Krishna Pillai, Sakhakkale, 291–292. 295 Barrington Moore, Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1967), 418. The implications of this statement are, as Varshney points out, “Yes peasants, no democracy” (Ashutosh Varshney, “Why Democracy Survives,” Journal of Democracy 9, no. 3 (1998): 41). 296 Alam, “Peasantry,” 47. 297 Guha, “On Some Aspects,” 6–7. 298 Moore, Social Origins, 430.

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4 QUESTIONING AUTONOMY Relinking art and society

The establishment of communist hegemony in Kerala society came about due to a multi-faceted approach to social transformation. Therefore, culture and the aesthetic formed an important object of focus of the Communists. In this, and the next chapter, we will look at the communist negotiation of the cultural in the period till it won power in 1957. This chapter will specifically focus on the literary and theoretical domain. It will be argued that the movement’s engagement in the cultural domain should be seen as another facet of the construction of the national-popular will.1 However, even when it contributed to the democratization of culture, there were significant failures as well. Unlike the Subaltern Studies’ narrative, the subaltern and elite spheres interact constructively and as a result are able to overcome to a substantial extent the exclusion and marginalization suffered by the former for centuries. Subalterns and the elites were, of course, bound together before, but in a hierarchical relationship of a moral economy. Now, there is a new mode of interaction. If postcolonial theory posits anti-colonial nationalism as having desired to fashion an aesthetic that was both national and modern and yet different from the Western,2 the communist project went beyond this to incorporate the crucial dimension of the need to communicate with the masses, and for them to express themselves both in a material and cultural sense. In this, it was similar to revolutionary anti-colonial projects elsewhere in Asia, Africa and Latin and Central America which adapted “classical Marxist theory to their own particular conditions with a strong sense of international class solidarity.”3 Postcolonial theory’s nationalism, even when it seeks to speak for the subaltern, ignores the dimension of the need to communicate with the masses; instead it valorizes the nationalist assertion of autonomy and difference in the “inner domain”4 despite the fact that it was detached from the concerns of the subalterns. The nature of the inner domain constituted is not gone into here. In its account, the nationalist elite, the bilingual intelligentsia: came to think of its own language as belonging to that inner domain of cultural identity, from which the colonial intruder had to be kept 176

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out; language therefore became a zone over which the nation first had to declare its sovereignty and then had to transform in order to make it adequate for the modern world.5 Of course, Chatterjee is referring to the initial phase of resistance to colonial rule. However, what is ignored is the fact that the language fashioned by the intelligentsia was still a hierarchical one which hardly resonated with the aspirations of the “people.” Moreover, without a program for transformation of the material condition of the masses, the cultural autonomy sought remains without a foundation. Thus, decolonization, even at a later stage, remains only at a cultural level demonstrating again the material-symbolic split. Of course, as Chibber points out, no bourgeois nationalism in the postcolonial societies only focused on the “inner” domain, or culture, and ignored the “outer” domain, the material aspects. Instead, it went ahead with modernization in both the domains, of course, with compromises and conflicts in the former.6 On the other hand, Chibber, as we have seen, tends to ignore the cultural aspects of social transformation. It will be seen that the communist project in Kerala differed from the nationalist one in many important respects. The communist project wanted to create a new aesthetic by shaking its feudalistic bases of caste-based exclusivism and also put question marks on the bourgeois aesthetic which had become dominant since colonial modernity. Western modernity had seen the disintegration of the unified world views of religion and metaphysics and their substitution by the specialized and autonomous spheres of science, morality and art with their own independent rationalities. The most serious outcome of this was the emergence of the culture of expertise with its total separation from the life of the masses and the hermeneutics of everyday communication.7 In keeping with this trend, despite significant mutations, and despite the fact that capitalism had not fully entrenched itself, cultural modernity too under colonialism in Kerala had also tendencies of the aestheticist conception of art for art’s sake. This combined with the hitherto existing feudal mythical mode of the aesthetic which was also focused on art as pleasure for the upper-caste elite. The communist project tried to break open the specialized autarchic domains and reconcile art and society, so to speak. In Habermasian terms, it could be termed as the relinking of beauty with truth and justice, the aesthetic with material and social reality. Here, it aimed at what could be termed as “a differentiated relinking of modern culture with an everyday praxis that still depends on vital heritages, but would be impoverished through mere traditionalism.”8 The creation of a new linguistic identity fused with class is an example of this. Thus, the communist project, ostensibly based on a class agenda, was not premised on an essentialist primordialism. Despite the lack of adequate theoretical acumen and tendencies of economism, it viewed “cultural identity as a project that was very much part of the struggle for 177

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liberation that it informed.”9 Therefore, it was different from the culturalism characteristic of nationalist movements or the theoretical framework of Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory. There were some distinctive breaks in literature. We will examine the contours of the failures of the communist engagement with culture as well.

The Renaissance Even before the emergence of communism, already there were substantial changes in society inaugurated by the hardening of colonial modernity in Kerala in the latter half of the 19th century. There were variety of developments like the spread of print media, the formation of rudimentary legislative bodies, Christian missionary activity, the foundation of colleges for English education, the emergence of an educated middle class, the beginning of political activism, the origins of nationalism and industrialization. Here the emergence of a print culture was crucial in laying the foundations of a linguistic based ethnic identity and the modernization of the Malayalam language.10 The first wave of cultural renaissance11 occasioned by the contact with the modernizing power of colonialism saw the birth of social reform movements operating within the structure of caste, which aimed at the removal of oppressive customs and superstitions. Although the movements began as early the 1830s, they really gained strength only by the 1880s. As early as 1836, Vaikuntam Swamikal, a “lower” caste reformer had founded “Samatha Samajam” (Society of Equals).12 For almost four decades in the first half of the 19th century, there was the very significant agitation by the women of the lower-caste Channar/Nadar for the right to cover their breasts (which was prohibited by the upper castes).13 Formally, the cultural renaissance begins in 1888 with Sree Narayana Guru, of the Ezhavas, striking at priestly orthodoxy by an avarna consecrating an idol of the Hindu deity of Siva. After the SNDP was founded in 1902, Sadhujana Paripalana Sangham (Association for the Welfare of the Poor) was established by the social radical and Dalit icon Ayyankali, of the untouchable Pulaya caste in 1907.14 Then, caste-reform organizations came up in the upper castes.15 There were different strands in the Renaissance, some which negated hierarchies, while others which reworked existing hierarchies thus establishing its heterogeneous character. The material context in which the Renaissance happened was full of contradictions. Even as Kerala was linked more intensely with global markets, feudal and caste hierarchies got a new lease with the colonial powers shoring them up in the sphere of land ownership. At the same time, colonialism triggered a lower-caste challenge to upper-caste domination. Thus, the Renaissance in Kerala attempted to grapple with these contradictions. This was a classic demonstration of the uneven and combined nature of capitalist development, especially under colonialism. While the Renaissance made significant contributions to the 178

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democratization of society, a valorization of the Renaissance would prevent its proper understanding. Thus, the lower caste movements substantially affected caste hierarchies but the reform movements of the lowest of castes like the Dalit untouchables were marginalized and never became a part of the mainstream. Sadhujana Paripalana Sangham established by Ayyankali is a stark example of this marginalization. Dalit critics have rightly argued that dominant readings of the Renaissance have “expunged and rendered invisible diverse mappings of the history of the Kerala region, by completely obscuring or misrepresenting initiatives and movements that emerged from subaltern-dalit sections.”16 Figures like Ayyankali never became “universal citizens” but remained merely as Dalit leaders.17 Namboodiripad points out there were only a few Dalit writers in the Renaissance compared to the other castes and thus it was a big shortcoming. He argues it was because of the structural system of the colonial rule which produced a small educated middle class from lower castes like Ezhavas, much more in the upper castes— consequently writers and litterateurs from them, while the lowest of the castes did not see any significant economic or educational improvement.18 The Sree Narayana movement’s appropriation of upper-caste deities and rituals, while being a deliberate method of questioning Brahminism and also threatening hierarchy, was still within the framework of Hindu religion.19 There were only few within the reform movement, figures like K. Ayyappan (an Ezhava, who set up the Sahodara Sangham) known also as Sahodaran Ayyappan and who completely negated caste by a negation of religion itself20 or Ayyankali, who sought a radical destruction of caste.21 This does not mean that Kerala Renaissance was a replica of renaissance elsewhere in India like Bengal where it was predominantly upper caste-led.22 In Kerala, the Renaissance was begun by the critique of lower castes and later it spread to internal reform within upper castes as well by the early years of the 20th century, as we saw, by the founding of the caste-reform organizations Namboodiri Yogakshema Sabha and NSS of the Nairs.23 However, the categories of “upper castes” and “lower castes” have to be dissembled as well. The major lacuna of the Renaissance was that while the highest caste, the Brahmin Namboodiris, and the hegemony of Brahminical Hinduism was challenged by the Nairs, selectively taking on aspects of modernity, it simultaneously did not accommodate the challenge of the lower castes and Dalits. This is what Sreekumar calls as the selective critique of caste by the savarna Shudras (because of the Shudra origin of the upper-caste Nairs) and the contradictions among the upper castes.24 One of the biggest constraints in the early 1900s for revolutionaries like Ayyankali belonging to a slave caste was also that there was no option but to work within the confines of power set by the government in legislative assemblies with limited people’s participation and desist from an active confrontation with the state.25 Further, there was disunity among the different Dalit castes,26 some of whom had converted to Christianity. There were different caste-reform 179

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organizations including among Dalit Christians.27 A common front of the various Dalit castes with the Ezhavas, who also faced untouchability, could not emerge either because of the differences in ritual and socioeconomic status.28 Therefore, the Renaissance still largely preserved the hegemony of upper-caste values even when some lower castes like Ezhavas had achieved substantial rectification of their misrecognition. Nevertheless, the deeply entrenched nature of the struggles for democracy and mass movements by the Communists has been a result of the groundwork laid by the Renaissance, especially by figures like Sree Narayana Guru and Ayyankali. As early as the 1890s, Ayyankali challenged the caste restrictions which prevented the untouchables from access to public roads. This had led the upper-caste Nairs and others to retaliate.29 Ayyankali established a community court and its offices in all branches of the Sangham to settle disputes of his caste-members and to avoid the regular courts peopled by upper castes.30 The Communist attempts to end caste-based indignities of landlordism that we saw before had their antecedents in Ayyankali and followers who challenged a variety of humiliating practices imposed on the untouchables.31 There was also in the Renaissance groups like the Rationalist Association, which, although not popular among the masses, expounded radical ideas. The communist/Left movement was irrigated by personnel who belonged to the social reform/Renaissance stream. Namboodiri reformers who were banned from their community and faced hostility from within joined the communist movement recognizing that such practices were a part of the order of feudalism and kingship and could not be abolished by the nationalist movement of the Congress.32 Even ideas of socialism, the Soviet Union and the October Revolution were in the cultural public sphere before the emergence of the communist movement and propagated by people like Sahodaran Ayyappan.33 There were significant continuities between Renaissance and the period following it when the Communists were on the ascendancy. Namboodiripad remarked that he became familiar with rationalism and atheism through Ayyappan, and it was unlikely that there could have not been a more important figure than Ayyappan in revolutionizing the minds of a generation.34 The first labor strike was conducted under the leadership of Ayyankali decades before the communist movement, and he also proclaimed the right of the tiller to land as early as 1911.35 Untouchable agricultural labor refused to work for their upper-caste landlords until their children were allowed to attend schools. In one instance, Ayyankali’s attempts to admit a Pulaya girl in a school led the Nairs to burn the school and provoked riots.36 Higher wages, right to permanent occupancy rights, and allocation of newly enclosed land were also a part of Ayyankali and Sangham’s demands.37 Similarly, Guru and the SNDP established the idea of the worker in place of traditional caste occupation and encouraged the founding of factories and libraries.38 Therefore, contra Subaltern Studies, materiality and class were already part of subaltern 180

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critique of caste hierarchy since upper-caste rule was built on the foundation of control of property. However, some of the contradictions and failures that animated the Renaissance, especially about the silencing of the Dalit movements, were to characterize the communist project as well. The reform movements in the Muslim and Christian communities were also never given their due recognition and they never became a part of the dominant discourse on the Renaissance in Kerala.39 The Communists failed to completely engage with these critical currents too.

A new sensibility The spread of print-capitalism in the second half on 19th century had a significant impact in the cultural arena. New forms of literary communication originated. Material conditions in India and Kerala were akin to those in Europe of the 17th and 18th centuries giving rise to new forms of writing like the novel.40 It is interesting to note the influence of modular literary forms imported from Europe, seen most palpably in the first significant Malayalam novel Indulekha (1889) written by O. Chandu Menon which had its subtitle called English Novel Mathiriyilulla Oru Katha (A Story in the Manner of the English Novel).41 The new forms of consciousness took a drastic break from the existing feudal modes of cultural expression. For centuries, the mythical mode and almost exclusively poetry had dominated the literary sphere. Much of the literary production was devoted to the veneration of the upper-caste Hindu pantheon. The material reality of real people hardly featured in the writings of the orthodox literati tied to the ruling classes. Only by the 19th century the satirical mode began to re-enter the literary domain along with new forms like prose.42 With the emergence of the socio-reform movements, the aesthetic sphere began to break existing literary conventions by focusing its attention on the hitherto marginalized like the untouchable castes from the end of the 19th century even though with the limitations seen earlier. Potheri Kunhambu’s Saraswati Vijayam (1892) and Pandit Karuppan’s Jathikummi (1911) were some of the pioneering works in this regard. The Great Trio of poets, the mahakavitrayam, consisting of Kumaran Asan (1871–1924), Ulloor Parameswara Iyer (1877–1949) and Vallathol Narayana Menon (1878–1958) were in the forefront of creating a new secular sensibility that went beyond the dependence on the Brahminical-based culture of the great Hindu epics Ramayana and Mahabharata. “Their work provided Malayalam with a truly native tradition in literature, nationalist in spirit, Romantic in style, and modernist in outlook. They freed the language from having to depend upon the Sanskrit heritage.”43 They wrote works which brought the lives of the oppressed lower castes to the forefront44 and embodied an “anti-caste poetic discourse.”45 Then there were plays like that of Mahakavi Kuttamath which critiqued caste.46 Asan’s contribution, especially was even more significant, considering that he belonged to the 181

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oppressed Ezhava caste. He was actively involved in the SNDP movement and though he was considered a “poet of romantic love,” his poems on the caste problem provided one of the earliest critiques of hegemonic nationalism from a fragmentary perspective47 that we saw in the political sphere as well before: Why shouldst thou wail, Then, O Bharat [India]? Thy slavery is thy destiny, O Mother! Thy sons, blinded by caste, clash among themselves And get killed. What for is freedom, then?48 In Duravastha (Tragic Plight), Asan goes even further in shaking the foundations of the Brahminical orthodoxy. What has been called as a classic example of revolutionary romanticism,49 it is set against the backdrop of the Mappila rebellion and portrays the trials and tribulations of a Brahmin woman who marries an untouchable, virtually unthinkable in those days of strict caste segregation. It resonates with the universalist philosophy of Sree Narayana Guru: “one caste, one religion, one god.” In critiquing caste injustices and seeking to usher in a casteless society, Asan borrowed not only from modern sources but also from tradition in the form of Buddhist philosophy.50 This is seen in his works like Chandalabhikshuki (Beggar Woman) and Karuna (Compassion). Asan was the most important figure of the counterculture that emerged during the cultural renaissance of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He symbolized perfectly the Renaissance’s break with the Sanskrit-dominated mythical culture of feudalism, especially in the content of literature—a task which was only partially achieved with the Bhakti movement in the medieval period.51 (The Bhakti movement in Kerala, unlike elsewhere, did not deal with equality or the question of caste.)52 The break itself was made possible by the changes in material conditions brought about by the encounter with colonialism, the most important being the rise of an English-educated middle class among the oppressed castes. Nevertheless, even Asan was constrained by the ruling ideology of Brahminism and could not fully put into practice his beliefs.53 The limitations of the Renaissance that we saw earlier operated here too. Marxists have been accused of downplaying the importance of Asan by calling him a social reformer without any interest in political revolution. This allegedly is a result of the communist tendency to valorize the political struggles from the 1930s at the expense of the cultural renaissance from the 1880s.54 This critique is like the one that Partha Chatterjee has made regarding the fallacy of seeing nationalism as a political movement alone. Instead, 182

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he argues that nationalism begins much earlier than thought, in the cultural domain, where it declares its sovereignty first.55 Communists, as critics allege, did many a time draw a tight distinction between revolution and reform, and culture and politics. However, the Communists also did raise an important question about the efficacy of the pursuit of social reform alone without an understanding of the need for a complete transformation of the power and property structure of society. Yet, they noted the importance of Asan’s contribution. In 1947, Namboodiripad had argued that it would be anachronistic to have expected Asan, living in a princely state and far away from the winds of a nascent nationalism, to expound nationalism in his poems. For him, Asan’s progressiveness lies in the fact that he constantly challenged the orthodoxy.56 However, he also notes that Asan was still only a representative of the bourgeois class, even though the Ezhavas were only a recent entrant into it.57 Even when Asan resolutely fought against the feudal order, according to Namboodiripad, he was not willing to take the next step toward a revolution by the masses. Also, he showed a lot of diffidence toward struggles in the political sphere. When Asan sets Duravastha against the backdrop of Mappila rebellion, he was seen not as going into the political aspects of it whereas the Communists had placed prime importance on political struggles, seeing them as the base on which struggles in other spheres of society could take place.58 Individual subjectivity, individual love and romance were the focus of many of his poems, mirroring a society that was moving from a traditional joint family system to a nuclear family. Also, Asan, as a member the Sree Narayana movement, according to the Communists, was mired in excessive spiritualism even when he fought resolutely against the existing Brahminical orthodoxy. Namboodiripad observes that the most important feature that differentiated the rising bourgeois class in Europe and that in India was the latter’s compromises with reactionary religious ideologies and spiritualism.59 In the final analysis, for the Communists, Asan did not go far enough for the latter was shackled by his own bourgeois liberalism and the belief in the efficacy of piecemeal changes. The former, on the other hand, stressed the need for a total revolution which encompassed social, economic and political spheres.60 As a result, the Communists credit Asan with inaugurating only one revolution—the romantic one.61 The humanism of the bourgeois liberal was also clearly visible in another of the Great Trio, Vallathol Narayana Menon. Though an upper-caste Hindu, Menon is credited with inaugurating Christian symbolism through his popular epic on Mary Magdalene.62 Despite the fact that Menon was an ardent nationalist and took up political issues more explicitly than Asan, the Communists had the same criticism against him too. If Asan represented bourgeois liberal democracy in the cultural sphere, Menon did so in the political sphere. However, he was lauded for trying to fashion a sensibility that married ancient Hindu culture with a modern worldview.63 Here, the 183

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Communists tried to see modernity not as a tabula rasa but as one which builds on accretions of critique. Thus, again, modernism was not the only tendency in the communist movement. This is also different from what critical theorists like Habermas were to argue later, that modernity “has to create its normativity out of itself.”64 However, the major limitation, as we will see in the following, was that this understanding did not use the most radical currents within the Hindu culture. The period till the 1930s was thus essentially marked by a new sensibility which differed in great detail from the pre-colonial period, especially in the imagination of universalism which sought to go beyond the stifling limitations of caste hierarchies and in its critique of Brahminism.65 However, still it was largely romanticism and bourgeois liberalism that provided the paradigm of critique, and within that framework, as writer and poet K. Satchidanandan argues, the Communists acknowledged the contribution of literary figures like Asan and Vallathol.66 Nevertheless, the shift to a more popular and proletarian aesthetic was already visible in a rudimentary fashion. Even Asan, who began with Sanskritized diction and Sanskrit meters, had begun to move toward simple Dravidian meters.67

Socialist realism and the progressive literature movement However, it is with the 1930s and the emergence of Socialist and Communistled struggles that the shift was fully realized. The organizing framework of literature had changed from romanticism to realism, especially, socialist realism. Romanticism, originally, drew its inspiration from the French Revolution. Even though it had many variants, individual freedom, which is the essence of a bourgeois democratic revolution, was the common element in all of them. Realism was a product of the same social conditions that produced the industrial revolution, massive urbanization, proletarianization, poverty, etc. Realism transformed into socialist realism with the emergence of communism.68 The culmination of the shift to realism was the 1937 play Pattabakki (Arrears of Rent) written by Marxist theoretician and activist K. Damodaran which became immensely popular.69 It was the first play to directly address the issue of class struggle and also tackle an explicitly political issue. Its popularity was huge and was performed in all the peasant meetings and party conferences all over Malabar. P. Kesavdev’s Kannadi (Mirror) is a socialist realist novel depicting the struggles of the Alleppey coir workers and especially the 1938 general strike. It also shows the how the workers develop from a class in itself to a class for itself. A successful work, it elaborates the characteristics of a new man, a socialist man and also valorizes political activity of the laboring masses.70 P. Govinda Pillai points to the importance of the period 1929–1939 in the formation of modern Kerala.71 In 1937, the Jeevat Sahitya Sanghom 184

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(Association of the Literature of Life) was founded under the initiative of the Socialist leaders like Namboodiripad and Damodaran. Satchidanandan calls the Literature of Life as the first avant-garde movement in Malayalam literature.72 Most of the people associated with the Sanghom were those who were in the forefront of left-wing politics and peasant and working-class movements.73 The inspiration was the Indian Progressive Writer’s Association’s founding conference in Lucknow in 1936, showing also influences beyond the local. Namboodiripad wrote a piece called “Jeevat Sahityavum Soundarya Bhodhavum” (Living Literature and Sense of Beauty) in 1937 which served as a manifesto for the movement and was also the first serious attempt to apply Marxist criteria to assess Malayalam literature.74 The main thread of the argument that runs through is the assertion that art is not for art’s sake but for the sake of progress of society and that committed literature should always encourage progressive forces in society. According to Namboodiripad, two major forces are contending with each other in the world. On the one side, there is fascism, imperialism, feudalism and capitalism, and on the other, there is freedom, nationalism, democracy and socialism. Even science, which is supposedly based on non-violable laws, is not valuefree. It can be used for either progressive or reactionary purposes.75 Here, one can see the elements anticipating the Habermasian problematic of the need to bridge the artificially separated domains of science, morality and art in modernity. Science is not excluded from this, thus questioning the Enlightenment crowning of the Kantian fact–value dichotomy. However, unlike in postcolonial theory, only instrumental rationality is questioned without abandoning the quest for substantive rationality. Chatterjee, as we have seen, tends to reduce the validity of natural sciences to its cultural origins. Namboodiripad stresses it should not be understood from his argument that aesthetic beauty should be sacrificed for the purpose of “progress”; only that beauty should not become an excuse in the sustenance of conservatism. He also adds that lively literature is not one that merely demands food for the poor or a revolution and an end to exploitation.76 Damodaran, in a paper read at the conference, made a scathing critique of almost all elite literature produced so far in Malayalam for its lack of resonance with real life and the present. He saw the classical works and the recent romantic ones as a part of “literature of escape.” Instead, what was needed was a literature of “expression” which portrayed man and his reality in all its complexity, the economic, social and political aspects of his existence.77 The question of dealing with the present and looking to the future was extremely important for the proponents of the new literature. For, according to them, the trend so far has been to go back into the past and rely solely on Hindu epics while ignoring the contemporary present.78 The present cannot be fashioned only by imitating antiquity as the revivalists wanted. Soon after the formation of the Sanghom, there was enthusiasm among many known litterateurs in its activities. This included non-Socialists like 185

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G. Shankara Kurup (1901–1978), M. P. Paul (1904–1952) and Lalithambika Antharjanam (1909–1987), and others like Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai (1914–1999), Ponkunnam Varkey (1908–2003) and Vaikkom Muhammad Basheer (1912–1994), the future literary doyens and propagators of socialist realism. However, the critics were equally appalled at the way the Socialists posed the problem. Kuttikrishna Marar, a virulent critic of the movement, was to later mock that the new literature was one which falsely believed that portraying the poor sympathetically and insulting the rich was a sign of good literature.79 Another allegation was that the movement wanted to shun tradition and the glorious religious works of the past like the Vedas, Upanishads, epics, etc., and even the recent classics. Some of the critics were particularly aghast at the statement of P. Kesavadev (1904–1983), one of the leading Socialists and writers, that epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata should be burned.80 However, this was not to be a spoke in the wheel of the movement. Also, the parallel struggles of socialism and communism provided the necessary practical correlate to the discursive shifts. With the founding of the Jeevat Sahitya Sanghom and the emphasis on realism, a new genre of short story virtually exploded in the literary scene with some of the best talents emerging in it.81 The Lively Literature movement began to gain prestige as the Progressive Literature movement was doing at the national level. Poet and Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore’s speech inaugurated the Second All India Progressive Literature Conference at Calcutta. The Lively Literature changed its name to Purogamana Sahitya Prasthanam (Progressive Literature Movement, PLM) in the 1944 conference at Shoranur which was held under the aegis of the Malabar division of the Communist Party. As Thakazhi opined later: “It has to be accepted that the Communist Party had a good understanding of how to use literature and writers.”82 The wide acceptance that the movement garnered in the preceding seven years is reflected in the fact that the conference was attended by some of the major litterateurs in Kerala, unlike the 1937 Jeevat Sahitya meeting which had mainly political activists. One of the important issues that dominated the 1944 meeting was the need to raise the voice against Japanese fascism. There were also laudatory comments about the Soviet Union. In writer Kuttipuzha Krishna Pillai’s words: If Christ were to reincarnate today, he would have chosen to live in Moscow. The reason is that there is not one Sunday, but all the days in a week are Sundays. That is how moral the life in Russia is.83 These demonstrate that the concerns and imaginaries were again not restricted to the local. The second conference of the PLM was inaugurated by the Bengali litterateur Harindranath Chattopadhyay. The Catholic Church in Kerala through the Bishop of the Calicut Diocese opposed the meet because 186

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of PLM’s supposed inspiration from communism. To this Chattopadhyay responded, “A God that is scared of communism does not deserve to live.”84 The works of the Lively/Progressive Literature Movement showed the concerns of the new discourse emphatically. Kesavadev, who was also one of the earliest Socialists and trade unionists (even before the emergence of CSP) in Travancore, earned lot of acclaim in the literary field. Despite his explicit political identification with the oppressed classes and his impatience about the aesthetic side, he produced some moving stories.85 The shift in literature was obvious with the titles of stories like Kesavadev’s Meenkaran Koran (Koran, the Fisherman). Varkey’s stories famously exposed the foibles and hypocrisies of the Church leading to an important critique toward the secularization of society. Its impact was very much was felt even among the conservative laity.86 Varkey was arrested and jailed in 1944 for instigating class war through his works, the first writer to be booked on such charges.87 His short stories are considered milestones in Malayalam literature. The ordinary and poor peasants formed the world of his discourse. He saw the King and Church as the two great oppressors of the time. Almost his entire work was written from a socialist point of view. He was a great believer in the fact that a writer should have firm political commitments. He was particularly scathing of writers who were squeamish of declaring their political allegiances. Varkey remained a Communist sympathizer throughout. People like Varkey delivered the biggest blow to the aestheticist conception of art for art’s sake. Similarly, Basheer too criticized the weaknesses of Islamic society in Kerala.88 Ponjikkara Raphy, a younger contemporary of Varkey, took up the latter’s tirades against the Church and more significantly, the psychology of the proletariat came out brilliantly in his work.89 In Thakazhi’s work too, the have-nots and peasants proliferated.90 Like Basheer, “Thakazhi also captured the living language of the underclass and traced the waxing and waning of their hopes in modern India.”91 As litterateur Ayyappa Paniker put it, his “is a fierce and sustained concern for the suffering of the underdog—beggar, prostitute, peasant, factory worker, fisherfolk, scavenger, shopkeeper, the downtrodden, the impoverished middle class, destitute women, orphans, and what not.”92 One of his popular works came out in 1948 called Thottiyude Makan (Scavenger’s Son) detailing the life of three generations of thottis, cleaners of night soil. Other significant novels of his during the time are Enippadikal (Rungs of the Ladder), Thalayodu (The Skull) and Randidangazhi (Two Measures of Rice, 1949). These dealt with the lower orders, agricultural laborers, small peasantry, the Pulayas and Parayas (untouchable Dalit castes), their struggles and the growth of class consciousness. In Kesavadev, we find an unbending socialist stridency which was less concerned about the aesthetic side, probably one of the reasons why he did not scale the literary heights that others did.93 The two significant novels of his were Odayil Ninnu (From the Gutter, 1942) and Ulakka (The Pestle, 1951) which 187

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are classic examples of socialist realism. “From the Gutter” had a “galvanizing effect on the reading public of Kerala.”94 A radical story about Pappu, a rickshaw driver, who spurns all authority from his childhood, the feudal lord to his employer at the weaving company. The defiance of the latter cost him his job and also landed him in jail after which, he turns a full-time rickshaw driver. In sphere of personal relations too, he is a revolutionary who has the courage to live with a poor woman and her daughter, absolutely scandalous for a society still predominantly feudal and patriarchal.95 The ideals of conduct portrayed in the novel went along with the radical questioning in the political and social sphere. These ideals “were very different from the deference, respect for hereditary rank and readiness to absorb oneself into the cycles of an extended family, which formed the basis of social relations in old Kerala.”96 Thus, the progressive literature “described the hidden subaltern lives in a new perspective.”97 One of the noteworthy aspects of the cultural activism of the period was the role of the literary figures outside communism. To the allegations that the PLM was merely a tool for the propagation for communism, Changampuzha, the most famous of the poets among the second-generation romantics and a non-Communist, responded: Communist Party is an organization based on an economic program that will bring the good of humankind. It has an ideology that is optimistic about the success of a social structure that is founded on world peace and brotherhood. And it works towards this goal with strong integrity, unshakeable courage and commendable mentality of sacrifice. In this light, what is wrong if the PLM decides to promote communism?98 Non-Communist writers like C. J. Thomas also collaborated with PLM.99 Such affirmation of PLM from outside the communist movement demonstrated the hegemony that communism was able to establish by the mid-1940s. Hegemony is, as Gramsci conceived it, “in which one becomes aware that one’s own corporate interests, their present and future development, transcend the corporate limits of the purely economic class, and can and must become the interests of other subordinate groups too.”100 The foundations of the national-popular in the cultural domain could be seen erected here. And it should be noted this affirmation of communism came during the debacle of the party when it adopted the People’s War line in support of the British against the “Quit India” program of the Congress. Even writers like M. P. Paul and Mundassery, who had criticized the Lively Literature earlier, joined the movement. This does not mean that there were no longer any differences of opinion among the writers. They just shelved them temporarily for what they believed to be a greater cause. Namboodiripad was to later compare this joint effort to the united front forged in 188

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the political sphere.101 However, the most virulent critics like Kuttikrishna Marar were relentless in their opposition. Even writing much later in 1962, he argued: The goal of PLM should be the progress of literature and litterateurs. The worship of Soviet Union, the condemnation of Japan, a united India, the sacredness of the treaties that the native states signed with the British and so on should not be its focus of attention. If a literary organization indulges in the pursuit of such goals, poets who would go on to become teachers of the world would be reduced to being mere cheerleaders of political parties and the organization itself would decline in time.102 This was a valid criticism, but Marar was also a believer in the eternal values of literature and was not too sympathetic of the need to bring in society as a central element in literature, as acknowledged by even his later-day supporters.103 In Marar, the Sanskrit orthodoxy combined with the ideology of colonial modernity which argued for the autonomy of the aesthetic. Here, unlike in Subaltern Studies, one can see the bridging of the East–West and tradition–modernity dichotomies. The influence of the communist-led mass struggles and the cultural productions by the peasant activists is also seen in non-Communist poets and writers like Edassery Govindan Nair who in his post-independence poem “Puthan Kalavum Arivalum” (A New Pot and Sickle, 1951) makes the peasants sing the famous lines: “power, we should harvest first.”104 He also wrote the poem, “Panimudakkam” (The Strike), about a textile worker who continues to participate in a strike despite losing his children to starvation. A new sensibility is inaugurated when the peasants move away from the “moral economy” framework to the assertion of political power. Lalithambika Antharjanam’s story, “Achante Makan” (Father’s Son) is a strong critique of the liberal belief that independence would solve all the problems of the country. The story ends with the clarion call to build a new world and the words: “victory to the revolution.” This is where the imperative of the capture of state power by the working classes was realized even by nonCommunist writers. It is the Gramscian moment that recognizes that the “subaltern classes, by definition are not united and cannot unite until they are able to become a ‘State’.”105 This does not have to be construed as a teleological theorization which privileges knowledge forms tied to the state as postcolonial theory has implied,106 but as one that contends with their reality, the fact that, as Gramsci avers, the “historical unity of the ruling classes is realized in the State, and their history is essentially the history of States and groups of States.”107 Edassery’s other poems and plays too like “Koottukrishi” (Collective Farming, 1951) dealt with the peasant question and the struggles waged around it. For example, the poem “Eviction” recounts 189

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the emotional attachment of the peasant to his land under the shadow of its imminent loss: Beloved is that homestead, heaven Too can be forsaken for its sake, Born and raised there, I long to Die there. There lie my forefathers with Eyes closed in an eternal sleep.108 However, unlike in Subalternist accounts, here, largely, there is no yearning for a bygone past; rather, the liberation of the peasant in the future. The poet Vyloppilli’s work in 1952 was also titled Kudiyozhikkal (Eviction). Ulloor, one of the Great Trio of poets, wrote: It is over. The black night Of trampling upon Labor, by rich Low castes, by upper castes Women, by men and Orientals, by westerners.109 Then there were the writers who were a part of the communist movement. P. Bhaskaran’s collection of poems “Odakuzhalum Lathiyum” (Flute and the Baton) came out in 1948 and was banned by the government. Another collection came out titled “Kurekkoodi” (Some More). All these dealt with peasant issues and on how the peasants and laborers were organizing themselves and becoming strong. The poem “Randu Kannukal” (Two Eyes) is an example which describes the rape of peasant woman by the police: The black night Of trampling upon Labor, by rich Low castes, by upper castes Women, by men and Orientals, by westerners There comes, one day, Ghosts clad in khaki to Destroy the union. After the rape, Chirutha’s eyes, which earlier glowed like lotus, now are described as: 190

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Daggers that pine for revenge. Now, All the Chiruthas come charging All the Chiruthas come plunging.110 His other famous work was “Vayalar Garjikkunnu” (Vayalar Roars, 1946) written in the aftermath of the 1946 Vayalar rebellion: While the elite cowered in fear, These heeded the land’s call. Without a tremble These courageous battled those Vile men who dishonor the land. Without fear of death These courageous confronted the Government that eats its people.111 Bhaskaran, O. N. V. Kurup and Vayalar Ramavarma were the trio of poets which was closely associated with the Communist Party. The meetings of the party always had songs composed by Bhaskaran. O. N. V. used fisher folks’ language in his poem, “Puthiya Koothukal”: Hot blood flows of those Oppressed who sought to defy The fattened guns in battle . . . Cheruma fishermen will not Anymore fear the guns.112 Another poet associated with the Communist Party wrote: Time calls on us to stand firm hand-in-hand The path for forward march is all clear now There goes the grand train of revolution Come on comrades, we have suffered enough The cruelty, the hunger of this wicked world.113 Most of O. N. V.’s early poetry was written as propagandist “marching songs.” Many of them were populated by the motifs of hammer and sickle. Even though writers like Chandrashekaran rightly criticized the communist valorization of violence in this early poetry, he does not differentiate between the types of violence and also the fact that many of the poems also empowered the subaltern classes at one level by instilling in them the 191

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courage to resist state violence. The naming of the girl born in the untouchable Pulaya household as sickle in the poem “My dear sickle” is especially demonstrative of this.114 The motif of the sickle was a powerful imaginary in the communist movement in other parts of the country too like Bengal.115 Here, once again, we can see the shift in the discourse in which subaltern symbols acquire prominence, an important aspect in the overall generation of self-worth and dignity. The 1950s saw the flourishing of art and literature. After the split of PLM in 1948 (see in the following), the relations between the Communists and the non-Communists began to improve from 1952. There was significant work being produced in novels, poetry and drama. The most important aspect was the aspiration toward a “good tomorrow” that animated most of these works.116 As early as 1935, G. Shankara Kurup, a non-Communist, wrote the famous poem “Tomorrow” which was replete with hopes of a good future. If ambivalence toward modernity dominates postcolonial theory, here, modernity is not only a site from which one has to escape. There is also the absence of the apocalyptic vision and tragic tone which pervades many of the Marxist poets of Bengal.117 The decade was also known as the “Red Decade.” The plays of Thoppil Bhasi, Cherukad, Edassery, K. T. Muhammad, P. J. Antony and Varkey came out in this decade and were performed by Kerala People’s Arts Club (KPAC), Prathibha, Malabar Kendra Kalasamithi (see next chapter). PLM as an institution did not survive the split of 1948. However, the production of progressive literature continued. National figures like Mulk Raj Anand, Harindranath Chattopadhyay, Kishan Chandar, K. A. Abbas and Balraj Sahni visited the state many times to promote progressive literature.118 The imagination of a national space was also visible here, which, at the same time, sought to go beyond it in many ways. This conforms to the theoretical point that Partha Chatterjee makes that a “nationalist impulse . . . must always be a part of a larger politics that transcends nationalism; otherwise, the achievement of its formal goal, national independence, leaves it without content.”119 Despite this recognition, postcolonial theory, ironically, does not have any sympathy for politics with a universalist content. The pioneers of PLM like Thakazhi, Basheer, Varkey and Cherukad became more prominent. Thakazhi wrote the novels “Thendi Vargam” (The Beggar Class, 1950) and “Chemmeen” (Prawns, 1956) and the short story “Inquilab” (Revolution, 1952). Basheer’s works “Ntuppuppakkoranendarnnu” (Me Gran’dad’ ad an Elephant, 1951) “Pathummayude Adu” (Pathumma’s Goat, 1957) contributed effectively, by using the Muslim subaltern lingo, to the democratization of language.

The split in PLM The united movement of Communist and non-Communist writers in PLM was to last only for four years. If a tectonic shift in cultural consciousness 192

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was brought about by the communist and non-communist progressive movements, there were serious limitations which have left a deep impact until now. With the independence of the country, important differences cropped up between them. Communists like M. S. Devadas argued that this was due to the changed political conditions and the new class relations at the national and international levels and blames the non-Communists totally for the debacle.120 Namboodiripad put down the split to the tendency among the non-Communist writers to be attracted to the new establishment which was seeking them, and to the fact that the Communist Party adopted a sectarian approach from 1948 (till 1951) which called for an armed revolution.121 The divisions and the mechanical simplification that the Communists resorted to also ignited the old “art for art’s sake” argument among the nonCommunist writers. Many of the “progressive writers” became the followers of Joseph Mundassery, one of the main proponents of the “art for art’s sake” idea. Later, when Mundassery became a part of the communist-led movement, it seemed as though the dispute had been resolved in Mundassery’s favor.122 However, if the Marxists had indulged in mechanical simplification and reductionism, the other party indulged in reductionism on the idealistic side. Mundassery believed that aesthetic and art had an essence that transcended history which in turn implied that there is an unchangeable human essence. What they did not show was how this human essence interacts with material conditions in various historical periods. Rajeevan argues that this ideology of liberal humanism had gained hegemony which had made it impossible for Marxist criticism to overcome its limitations for quite some time. Marxist criticism itself had suffered because of the inability of Marxists—who were mainly political activists—to develop a theoretical base.123 One of the important Communist leaders and theoreticians, N. E. Balaram, also argued that the lack of understanding in Marxian aesthetic theory contributed to the debacle. However, according to him, the other side was equally inept at understanding the social reality of the time and the role of imperialism and feudalism in constituting it. The need to develop a radical aesthetic which would revolutionize culture was also not understood by it. The Communists, in his view, had at least a conception of how a new society and culture would look.124 Nevertheless, the sum effect of the split was the alienation of some of the best writers from the communist-led front. This included Thakazhi, Kesavadev, Basheer and so on. The dogmatism of the Communist Party in this period had its consequences at the national level too. Some of the leading lights of the national PLM like Mulkraj Anand and K. A. Abbas were also alienated from the movement.125 The program of the Communists in 1948 demanded: the establishment of a republican Kerala by abolishing monarchies, princely and feudal estates be divested without compensation, the redistribution of the property held by British capitalists and also those of the native capitalists who exploit the workers and employees excessively, the promotion of a scientific attitude among the masses mired in superstitions, 193

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resistance to Anglo-American imperialism which was the biggest impediment to world peace. It was asked by the party whether the progressive writers agreed to this program.126 When posed in this manner of a strict adherence to a party program, it drew virulent opposition from writers. It also exposed the liberal humanist ideologies of many writers who did not agree with many of the items on the program. The communist argument for literature being committed to a politics and ideology had shifted to writers being members of a political party. The opposing side felt that this would be a great impediment to the creativity of the writer.127 However, the impact of more than ten years of progressive literature is seen in critics like Mundassery who were great proponents of the importance of “form” had come around to the view that there is nothing like “art for art’s sake.”128 Nevertheless, in the 1948 conference, when the differences between the two groups were getting wider, the Communists introduced a manifesto which reflected their position that “politics is the heart of progressive literature” and “imperialism is the root of all injustices in society.” Communists at the conference tried to get support for a position which advocated that writers should be members of the Communist Party.129 There was widespread opposition to this, and the Communists responded by branding their critics as reactionaries and treating them as outsiders. Also, the writers in the communist camp were also promoted as the best in the field. Here the threat of Stalinist disciplinarianism of the party silenced even those Communists who had an objection to the program of subjecting writers to the party line and the resultant dilution of quality.130 The movement formally split in 1949. Communist writers held a separate conference which concluded that writers should not confine themselves to creating literary works but should actively participate in revolutionary struggles. Also, that literature should be totally based on socialist realism.131 Bhaskaran, a well-known poet, and later, popular songwriter for cinema, did not renew his membership in the party after the split.132 His poetry even began to critique the degeneration of the “revolutionary” party without losing his concern for the oppressed: We, the ones who watered the Ideologies of terrible hate We, the ones who pretended not to be Human beings in a war protecting Human beings.133 In another poem called the “Aavi Vandi” (Steam Rail) he compares the Communist Party to the Rail tracks that lead us backward In the guise of inviting us ahead.134

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The writers who continued to follow the party line like K. P. G. Namboothiri and D. M. Pottekad were hardly known for their literary abilities. The only exception was Cherukad. According to M. P. Paul, the reason why writers were still wary of the communist program was that they were also asked to state their position on each and every day-to-day political issues like the elections in Travancore, the boycott of elections in Cochin, liberation struggles in Burma and Malaya and so on, and more importantly, whether they would accept the leadership of Soviet Union and if not, they were considered to be the slaves of American imperialism. He also questioned the absolute supremacy of politics that Communists wanted the writers to acknowledge. Paul did not deny the importance of politics but only that of the omniscience of politics.135 Communists were accused of reducing art and literature to an instrument for their propaganda, as merely tools of “agitprop.”136 There were two camps within Communists, especially in the sectarian period as acknowledged by Communist writer Devadas himself. One section had a very short-term and reductionist view on culture. The cultural agenda was a mere accoutrement to the economic and political struggles and had no independent existence in itself. The other group, while recognizing the instrumental nature of short-term cultural struggles, also had a comprehensive and long-term outlook on culture.137 Even Cherukad, one of the few writers who never left the Communist fold, was candid enough to admit that the party went too far in making its own writers get recognition. The deleterious side in linking the different spheres together was also that nonspecialists became involved in all of them in a doctrinaire fashion. Thus, Cherukad recounts how he became active in the literary sphere along with the peasant and teaching spheres. In fact, “what was considered the mark of a good Communist was that he should be able to work and succeed in any front.”138 The split in the PLM and the stance adopted by the Communists is an example of the moments when the attempt to fuse together the cognitive, moral-practical and the aesthetic-expressive dimensions is replaced by the incursion of one domain into the other. Here, the political dimension becomes all-pervasive. Politics itself is replaced by “moral rigorism” or the “dogmatism of a doctrine”139 causing serious damage to the emerging national-popular. The Communists undertook a self-examination of the position that they adopted during 1948–1951 and the consequences it had for the progressive literary movement. Namboodiripad was especially very candid about the failures of the communist position. He even expressed regret over the kind of language used against opponents like “Kesari” Balakrishna Pillai, while at the same time reiterating his ideological differences with him, like the latter’s inability to participate in any of the political struggles waged by the Socialists/Communists in the 1930s and 1940s.140 He also pointed out that

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mistakes happened on both sides but the Communists erred in negating the role of form in literature: Communist writers did commit the mistake of trying to find a direct and mechanical relation between the economic and political struggle of the working people and the creative production of the literary workers. On the other hand, non-Communist workers made it appear as if the aesthetic quality of a work of art is something independent of, and standing above the economic and political struggles of the working people. Both denied, in fact, the need for a painstaking study of the process which class struggle in all its manifestations and the creative work of the individual author act and interact on another.141 The important consequence of the debate, in Namboodiripad’s view, was a dialectical clashing of views leading to a better understanding of reality. The main drawback of the Communist movement in the 1930s and 1940s was, in his view, the lack of grounding in Marxist theory, especially in Marxist aesthetic theory. He admits that the activists had only vague notions like the need for socialism and the goodness of Soviet Union. Also, being full-time political activists they did not have the time to devote toward the pursuit of theoretical understanding.142

Universal and the particular The socialist and communist-inspired movement in culture was markedly different from the nationalist project, which, according to postcolonial theory, “was posited not on identity but rather on a difference with the ‘modular’ forms of the national society propagated by the modern West.”143 Here, the resistance to colonial modernity leads to the “desire to construct an aesthetic form that was modern and national, and yet recognizably different from the Western.”144 Postcolonial theory’s attempt construct difference leads to a position that treats Indian culture as Western culture’s “other.” Such approaches focus excessively on cultural difference abstracted from the social formation.145 Tradition here becomes an essentialized and unreconstructed entity. The Communists, on the contrary, wanted to understand difference and tradition as part of the political and economic framework with the aim of democratizing and demystify it as well. Even when there were modernist elements, modernity was not a complete negation of the past. There is no positing of a dichotomy between the indigenous and the alien, especially in conditions of colonial modernity where it is difficult to determine the authentic or indigenous form of each institution.146 That is why even in the sphere of Chatterjee’s “inner domain” of national culture, it borrows from alien sources even as it created a new linguistic identity based on indigenous tradition. It operates with the belief that decolonization 196

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“requires not the restoration of a historically continuous and allegedly pure precolonial heritage, but an imaginative creation of new form of consciousness and way of life.”147 Therefore, while the PLM was inspired by the literary and cultural movements in Europe, it was committed to creating a local cultural sensibility. Thus, Marxist criticism in literature mounted a strong critique of the tendency to evaluate Malayalam literature solely by the standards of the canon in English, French, Russian and German. Namboodiripad argued that the greatest weakness of this trend was its failure to situate Malayalam literature in the context of Kerala’s socio-historic transformations, particularly the emergence of the bourgeois and working classes.148 Here, the communist project could be seen as wanting to overcome two types of alienation that Laroui posits as characterizing the non-Western intellectuals’ (in this case, Arab) encounter with the West: one is visible and openly criticized, the other all the more insidious as it is denied on principle. Westernization indeed signifies an alienation, a way of becoming other, an avenue to self-division. . . . But there exists another form of alienation in modern Arab society, one that is prevalent but veiled: this is the exaggerated medievalization obtained through quasi-magical identification with the great period of classical Arabian culture.149 PLM was a product of the Communist International’s call to build a united front against imperialism and fascism. This call was supported by writers like Maxim Gorky, Henri Barbusse and others. As Chattopadhyay highlighted in his speech in the 1945 PLM speech: “the PLM in Kerala is a branch of the national PLM which itself is a conduit for the worldwide movement.”150 Again, non-Communist writers played a big part in this imagination of the universal. Mundassery pointed out that the outlook of progressive literature should be universal.151 In 1935, before the new movement in literature, Balakrishna Pillai had argued that differences among different nations were superficial.“The knowledge of different customs only brings people together. Literature unites those divided by religions, customs and beliefs.”152 Balakrishna Pillai was the inspiration behind the translation of the “Communist International” song and the usage of communist symbols like the red flag.153 The Soviet Union, as an inspiration for an alternative world, captured the imagination of other non-Communist poets like G. Shankara Kurup, Changampuzha, Vallathol and Vyloppilli. Shankara Kurup saw the liberation of the colonized flying high with the aid of the red flag: Rejoice, heart, Rejoice! Beat the drums of victory For the Russian soldier. 197

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Not the urge to wage war, In the days of suffering, His sword gleams with the Desire for peace, the Love for humanism . . . That crescent-moon on the Evening-sky that Captures light from darkness Will kiss its friend on the Red flag. Rejoice, heart, rejoice! Throb under the spreading Wings of world liberation. Changampuzha sang: Let me tell you the philosophy of the sickle.154 And Vallathol took the names of Gandhi and Lenin in the same breath.155 Among the Communist writers, the identification was, obviously, more explicit. O. N. V. Kurup’s poem on the Vayalar rebellion was titled “Keralathinte Paris Commune” (Kerala’s Paris Commune): Kerala’s Paris Commune! That is Vayalar! Salute.156 It was not that writers borrowed from communist and socialist-inspired literature alone. Kesavadev’s “Odayilninnu” (From the Gutter) “drew heavily in both content and ideology from Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables.”157 The other influences were Chekhov, Maupassant, Tolstoy, Steinbeck, Knut Hamsun, Dostoyevsky, Gorky, Zola, etc. What emerges is the influence of a mélange of traditions, Western and Indian. It is not merely an attempt to imitate the West in the material dimension and create an indigenous ethos in the cultural domain. The universalist imaginations of the age are visible in works like Basheer’s Balyakalasakhi (Childhood Friend, 1944) in which the father of the protagonist Majeed pushes him out of the house asking him to roam around the country and to learn from the experience. Then, Majeed undertakes the journey in which he dons different roles and takes up different jobs. He travels thousands of miles all over the country from little towns to large cities. “To see what? To hear what? That man is the same everywhere. Only there is a difference in language and dress.”158 Travels occupy the central place in Basheer’s oeuvre; they enable one to dissolve all the hierarchies of a traditional society. This is especially so because travels were ritually prohibited for many 198

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sections of the society. The material basis of a wider imagination in Kerala cannot also be understood without looking at its history: “Kerala has historically been part of the Indian Ocean world, and these connections are better acknowledged in explorations of its pre-modern and medieval pasts.”159 The universalism of the Marxist and non-Marxist intellectuals of the time cannot be dismissed as what Gramsci terms as the “vague ‘cosmopolitanism’” and “universalism of the Catholic Middle Ages” in Italy.160 Unlike the Italian experience, here the universalism was complemented by a strong local and national consciousness too. The interactive relationship between universal and the particular in the communist project is what marks it from other projects of liberation like nationalisms focused only on a cultural identity built on difference. Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory by one-sidedly focusing on the communist project as a faithful translation of the European Enlightenment miss the agency associated with the critical appropriation of the same. The attempts to build an alternate culture based on an interaction of the foreign and the native while interrogating both could also be seen in the communist theorizing in the field of family relationships and sexuality. This was nevertheless unsuccessful. Thus, the Communists criticized some of the works of major writers like Varkey, Kesavadev and Basheer for what the former thought as the portrayal of decadent sexuality. The main criticisms that the Communists leveled against these writers were that instead of promoting man–woman relationship based on equality, they reduced romantic love to animalistic sexuality.161 In an essay written in 1949 titled “Premavum Purogamana Sahityavum” (Romantic Love and Progressive Literature), Communist writer Devadas clearly articulates the communist position on the matter. Here, Devadas echoes and bases himself on Lenin’s critique of the reduction of, what Marxists conceive as, freedom of love to the sexual instinct eviscerated of any social dimension.162 Thus, revolution in sexuality and romantic love does not mean ultimately man turning into an animal, which, according to Devadas, is the implication of some of the progressive writers’ adaptations of Freud.163 Devadas points out the contradictions in some of the progressive writers’ positions which, in his view, valorize adultery and prostitution as a questioning of conventional norms, but do not subscribe to divorce as a solution to failed marriages. This, he writes, is inimical to women’s rights and also legitimizes the outward respectability sought by bourgeois marriages. He argues that majority of the people want the freedom to marry and the freedom to annul one, not the freedom to commit adultery.164 In a critique that can be construed as similar to postcolonial arguments, Devadas was particularly scathing on some of the progressive writers who supposedly blindly valorized Western culture and education without seeing their constitutive role in Western imperialism, and also their role in debilitating indigenous culture. According to him, for them, Indian culture is only feudalism and classicism and they do not see any positive aspect in it. Revolution and progress, for these writers, can only originate in the Western 199

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capitalist system.165 This seemingly postcolonial critique does not operate on an East–West binary, but, criticizes, from the communist point of view, the progressive writers for only borrowing from the most decadent phase of Western capitalism—imperialism, and ignoring its other significant contributions to world history.166 It criticizes the progressive writers for ignoring the fact that Western culture now is indissociably linked with the commodification of all human relations including marriage and sees the uncritical romanticization of this culture as a sign of subservience to cultural imperialism. At the same time, to counter it, it does not prop up tradition; on the contrary, it is as critical of indigenous feudal decadence and the colonial order which has actually given it a lifeline. Devadas’ critique stresses that the new culture to be built does not have to be confined to the narrow choice of bourgeois and feudal cultures. In fact, he contends an alternate culture which moves away from both is already immanent in people’s culture.167 This proposal for an alternate culture did not question, like some of the progressive writers, other traditional notions like the sacredness of the institution of motherhood. At the same time, such notions were expanded to incorporate ideas like the complete equality of men and women in all spheres. While Devadas rejects what he considers as the decadent aspects of Western civilization, he praises the progressive policies that the Soviet Union has implemented toward the realization of gender equality: state provision of support for unwed mothers, to terminate a pregnancy, sexual education in school and so on.168 These were radical proposals for a society like Kerala marked by great gender inequality. However, these remained at the theoretical level, and not actualized in practice. Besides, the critique of the progressive writers seemed to be governed more by fears about sexuality. That is why prominent progressive writers like “Kesari” Balakrishna Pillai, accused the Communists of being conservative on issues of sexuality and against modern values.169 If postcolonial critique accused Marxism of “hyper-rationalism,” Marxism in practice did not go far enough in demolishing the oppressive aspects of tradition. Thus, there are breaks in the appropriation of Enlightenment universalism as well. This was another facet of the incomplete nature of the national-popular which also reflected the disjuncture between economic and social aspects.

Ambivalences and contradictions Critics have argued that the progressive literature proponents like Thakazhi, Varkey, Kesavadev and so on were caught in an ambivalent relationship with colonial modernity. On the one side, they were supporters of nationalism, social reform and resistance, and on the other, the admirers of modernization and westernization. Therefore, they call them mere reformers within the romantic realist stream.170 According to Raveendran, they were very much believers in ideas of progress, modernity, development, etc. Therefore, there 200

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is a dualistic quality to their thinking. The characteristics of this ideology are belief in scientific thinking, rationality, development, humanism, respect toward western values, nationalism and inclination toward aestheticism. All these values, according to him, are found in romanticism to modernism.171 V. C. Harris makes a similar argument. He sees an irresolvable tension and contradiction in the social reform movements which, while critiquing colonialism, were deeply implicated in colonial modernity. There is a certain valorization of Western thought, institutions, English education and so on. He finds this in the works like Asan’s Duravastha. He finds the elements of colonial discourse and bourgeoisification in the Progressive Literature as well as the communist movement.172 And, according to K. N. Ganesh, many writers were mere imitators of Western literary schools and were also implicated in the “missionary-colonial culture” and the ideas of capitalism. Even the progressive literary movement was not totally successful in charting out a different path, in going beyond the cultural paradigm inaugurated by colonial modernity. He argues that this literature (with a few exceptions) did not criticize the institutions of colonialism like the courts, bureaucracy, political and educational structure. He also finds that the critique of capitalism did not go deep enough even though Kesavadev and Thoppil Bhasi did articulate a resistance.173 Thus, he argues that there is only political decolonization without cultural decolonization: what thrived in the absence of the latter were propagandist art and literature and servility to forms of colonial modernity.174 It is imperative that the disparate tendencies and the ambivalent nature of anti-colonial resistance, and development be uncovered and even the commonalities between the writers before PLM and those belonging to PLM, and Communist and non-Communist writers. To that extent, these critiques provide perspective. However, some of the ambivalences, like in lower-caste writers, toward British colonialism and nationalism stemmed, as I have noted, from the upper-caste nature of nationalism. These critiques do not elaborate on the real lack in the progressive and Communist writers, which, as we will see in the following, is the absence of a substantial engagement with caste as a category. There is a tendency in these critiques, like postcolonial theory, to conflate modernity with colonialism itself. Colonial modernity and modernity become one here. That is why scientific thinking and rationality are seemingly associated with colonial modernity alone. Even bureaucracy, science and technology, urbanization, etc., are all reduced to capitalism.175 It is also not clear as to what real de-colonization looks like. Or there is not a clear outlining of the alternatives to modernization in a world in which every society is imbricated in it. Besides, the liberatory aspects of modernization, for aspects like caste oppression, also need to be contended with. Therefore, these positions can easily mirror Subalternist and postcolonial discourse of cultural authenticity which merely reproduces the binarizing and essentializing logic of the colonial project.176 On the other hand, as we saw, some Communist writers, instead of valorizing Western 201

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modernity or condemning it one-sidedly, wanted to acknowledge its significant contributions to world history while noting its constitutive role in that phase of Western capitalism—imperialism. Despite raising important questions, what is missing in the critiques is the shift to socialist realism, even if not fully. This shift was a constitutive element in the construction of the national-popular. Romanticism had raised the first banner of revolt against the Brahmin orthodoxy and the hegemony of the sacerdotal language. However, romanticism had still not gone the whole way in inaugurating the national-popular, limited as it was by its incomplete attention to material factors and the excessive focus on the individual. By and large, the “political” too was not explicitly dealt with under its rubric. Of course, romanticism and realism are not two compartmentalized categories. In Kerala, realism itself was imbued with some characteristics of romanticism.177 However, realism developed a critique of the mythical. The real took precedence over the fantastic. Against romanticism’s emphasis of the individual and the self, realism brought the social to the fore. Against the valorization of the infinite and the transcendental nature of the universe, realism stressed a material understanding of reality. Also, the simplicity of the language used by the writers—as we have seen previously—helped in bridging the gap between the people and the intellectuals. Talking about the emergence of a popular aesthetic, Thakazhi notes in his memoirs: The knowledge about literature was not confined to the literate. . . . One could see poetry being read even in the huts of Kuttanadan hillside and rice fields . . . Literary meets were organized even in the most remote and unreachable areas. People used to flock in great numbers to hear the musical session in party meets.178 And as Sukumar Azhikode, a doyen of Malayalam literature, noted later, the phase of progressive literature “was also responsible for the great advancement in popular publications and popular reading, which was the characteristic feature of the 1940s.”179 The split between the elite and subaltern domains is bridged to an extent. Besides, again, the local is constantly being expanded to horizons beyond it. The Communist writers and other writers part of the PLM, even when presenting a simplistic analysis of feudalism and capitalism and were not rid of binaries like rich/poor, traced the sources of oppression to these social structures.180 The biggest contribution of PLM, as Gopalakrishnan argues, was to shift the aesthetic sensibility to critical realism and to some extent, socialist realism.181

Modernity and tradition Since Dipesh Chakrabarty has argued that the Marxist failure was in an anthropological and theoretical understanding of culture in India, it is 202

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important to look at some theoretical writings of the Communists in Kerala. E. M. S. Namboodiripad, even in his early works like Onnekal Kodi Malayalikal (One and a Quarter Crore Malayalees, 1946)182 and Keralam Malayalikalude Mathrubhumi (Kerala: The Motherland of Malayalees, 1948), while laying out the conception of a linguistic Kerala, had sought to go beyond the dichotomy of modernity and tradition. However, he criticized the mechanical repetition of rituals and the blind following of tradition. He draws from his own childhood experience of being brought up in a Brahmin household and being forced to learn Hindu sacred texts like Rig Veda by rote without knowing its meaning.183 Instead, he argued for a creative and democratic reinterpretation of tradition and, in fact, commends, as we have seen, the poet Vallathol—despite his criticism of him being a bourgeois democrat—for engaging in such a task. The features that he finds in Vallathol are a respect toward the past and tradition, the interpretation of the present in terms of the past but, at the same, time imbued with the desire for democracy. He, in Namboodiripad’s view, astutely combines the ancient Hindu culture with a modern viewpoint.184 Namboodiripad seems to be echoing the activist conception of tradition seen in the Marxist culturalism of E. P. Thompson and others, without reading their work. He wants to see tradition as not a “burden of the past upon the present, an inert legacy that shapes the consciousness of people with its own prerogatives, but as an activity in the production of a past that is rooted in the social struggles over hegemony.”185 However, Namboodiripad, unlike the Subalternists, did not see tradition as unified or homogenous and there were attempts to attack those aspects of tradition which had become totally oppressive.186 He was closely associated with the reform movement in the Brahmin community and gave the famous call to make the Namboodiri into a human being in the 1944 meeting of the Yogakshema Sabha. He questioned reactionary practices by reminding the traditionalists that practices like cigarette smoking are not against tradition, though harmful to health.187 Here, again, a contrast with the Dravidian movement in Tamil Nadu which made scathing criticisms of Hindu sacred texts like Ramayana is instructive. E. V. Ramasamy did not spare even its Tamil version written by Kamban: “They say [Kamba] Ramayanam is a rare literature. What is the use? However starved one is, would one pick up food from shit . . . How can anyone who desire self-respect read Ramayanam?”188 And instead of glorifying the Tamil past, the movement wanted to locate “Tamil in the anticipatory.” It developed a critique of Tamil as embodying retrogressive cultural practices in the present.189 Namboodiripad’s views on Ramayana are opposed to this. They are similar to what Fredric Jameson and Terry Eagleton posit: Marxism can no longer be content with its demystifying vocation to unmask and to demonstrate the ways in which a cultural artefact fulfills a specific ideological mission, in legitimating a given power struc203

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ture .  .  . [It] must not cease to practice this essentially negative hermeneutic function . . . but must also seek, through and beyond this demonstration of the instrumental function of a given cultural object, to project its simultaneously Utopian power as the symbolic affirmation of a specific historical and class form of collective unity.190 The most important departure for the Communists in the later years was in the understanding of the relations between art, culture and class. Even when the producers of art are imbricated in the class relations of society, they, by the virtue of the fact they contend with life and human beings in their entirety, also rise above class considerations very often. Namboodiripad, citing the example of Valmiki’s Ramayana, argues that while it reflects the contradictions of a class society and is also produced by the ruling class, it also speaks of a sensibility which escapes the hegemonic ideologies, securing its popularity across ages. This is something that the Communists were not aware during the early period even though they had opposed Kesavadev’s insistence that the “Ramayana should be burned.”191 Here, Namboodiripad is independently articulating a position that has been theorized elsewhere in the academic realm. Terry Eagleton argues that the two most common positions adopted by Marxist scholarship has been either that “works of literature are just expressions of the ideologies of their time” and hence are “prisoners of ‘false consciousness’” or how “much literature actually challenges the ideological assumptions of its time.”192 Instead of these simplistic approaches, he seeks a middle ground which would “explain the literary work in terms of the ideological structure of which it is part” and it would also “search out the principle which both ties the work to ideology and distances it from it.”193 The communist theoretical understanding of Ramayana’s ideological and utopian dimensions later shows that there were also elements contrary to postcolonial theory’s argument that Marxist scholarship in India views the world as “disenchanted” and that it: displays [an] antipathy to anything that smacks of the religious. The result has been a certain kind of paralysis of imagination, remarkable for a country whose people have never shown any sense of embarrassment about being able to imagine the supernatural in a variety of forms.194 In a 1972 interview, Namboodiripad argued that materialism has been a part of Indian culture and the hegemony of idealism is not a peculiar cultural trait but only a part of the social process.195 He also positively evaluated the translation of Hindu texts like Ramayana and Mahabharatha into Malayalam in the 16th century by Thunchath Ezhuthachan, considered 204

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as the father of the Malayalam language. The process of development of modern Tamil, Telugu and Kannada along with Malayalam as independent languages occurred roughly at the same time and because of “the popularisation of the Hindu scriptures through the use and development of the various spoken languages for conveying the ideas contained in the classical works of Sanskrit.”196 Even though the renaissance associated with Ezhuthachan was basically religious in content, Namboodiripad argues that it was also nationalist, considering the impact it had on other religious communities and the access that it gave to the common people to these texts in a language other than Sanskrit and Tamil. He also recognized the reactionary elements in the renaissance because of the absence of any material solution to the problems of the oppressed. And while Ezhuthachan played the role of democratizing culture, there was also a severe limitation for the fact that the sacred texts may have been popular among the upper castes, but they were not so among the lower castes and untouchable communities (and also non-Hindus).197 Here, again, the breaks in tradition are noted. What is interesting here is the tracing of the origins of nationalism to the pre-modern and pre-capitalist era, before the era of “print-capitalism,” in marked contrast to Benedict Anderson’s formulations on nationalism.198 Namboodiripad’s theorization breaks the linear narrative of unproblematic transition from religious time to secular time as implied in Anderson. On the contrary, not only nationalism is not an exclusively “modern” phenomenon, even the religious can contribute to its imagination.199 The remarks about the burning of Ramayana were not fully supported by all the members of the Progressive Literature movement. However, they were used to critique the movement by the opponents. Marxists, ironically, seemed to put forward a more nuanced understanding of tradition than poets like Changampuzha who argued that the future of Malayalam literature should be based on European literature alone.200 Namboodiripad argued for the overcoming the binary of: glorifying the past culture of India or decry[ing] the whole past, ignor[ing] the enormous treasure-house of culture produced by society. . . . This trend, in other words, denies the role played by our people in producing this culture, though it was appropriated and misused by the upper layers of society and cuts off the scholar, the administrator, the publicist and the politician from the mass of the Indian people and their socio-cultural milieu.201 The Gramscian and Habermasian problematics are visible here. The Communist project wants to avoid a simple rupture: there is continuity in human society, continuity of culture. The continuity is of course not absolute, along with it there are also break 205

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[sic]. Every time the past continues but there is always a break from the past. This is the dialectical process of the development of human society. . . . It is through the improvement of the past, through the continuation of the past as well a [sic] changing that past, that we as representatives of the modern working class are trying to create a new society.202

Bridging the divided The communist project’s attempt at bridging the divided domains reflected its concerns about the social nature of literature and art in general. That is why the focus on the linking of the art and literature to life and society in which there was some success. And it was later acknowledged by virulent critics of PLM like Kuttikrishna Marar.203 In 1948, Namboodiripad argued that the belief in the primacy of form stems from an ahistorical view of reality, the misplaced notion that there are immutable laws of form which do not change even if social relations and content of literature change. Instead, all major transformations in art and literature are contingent upon revolutionary changes in society.204 The contribution of the Marxist intervention in literature was the espousal of the idea that there is nothing like art for art’s sake and all art is inextricably intertwined with human life. The privileging of the “pleasure” of producing and enjoying art for itself in the bourgeois aesthetic was questioned. Instead, pleasure was posited as a social category.205 The attempt was to break the autarchic domains and reconcile art and social life. However, critically, as I noted before, the over-emphasis on the political content of art had led to moral rigorism. Even though the committed literature of the activists produced works which attracted the oppressed masses, they lacked in aesthetic quality and also rarely captured the imagination of the people who were outside the socialist fold. This is what Namboodiripad saw as a major weakness of the movement and it was taken up by the people who argued for the priority of form in literature. Anyway, after the split of the PLM, the resolution was in the Marxists formulating a combination of form and content.206 The stated intention was to make laboring class the producers in all spheres of art and culture including literature.207 The questioning of the division between elites and masses and high and low had seen Namboodiripad assert (in a 1947 interview) that a true progressive writer would not create a hierarchy between writers and readers. And it was not just the writers who should have the power to participate in literary debates; he wanted to extend the individual freedom that writers seek to the readers too.208 This is when writers like Sukumar Azhikode were strongly criticizing the involvement of political activists in literature.209 Even in 1947 when the debate was raging between the need for independence of writers and the need for commitment to a political cause, Namboodiripad contended that independence 206

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is absolutely needed not only for art but for all spheres of creativity.210 This independence is conceived not in a vacuum, but in relation to society. Even though the literate populace was still not very high in the 1940s and 1950s (but higher than other states in India), the democratization of culture brought in more people into the fold of the appreciators of literature because of the shift in language as we saw. The level of appreciation among the ordinary people went up in this conjuncture. The literary discourse conceived as an internal self-referential one thoroughly disengaged from social practices was one of the ideologies that gained ground during the period of colonial modernity. The ideology of the aesthetic was the dominant ideology after romanticism and is the main component of modernism in art. This imposed false separation from society that was a part and parcel of this ideology was questioned during the movement initiated by the Communists. Contrary to the ideology of the aesthetic, in this period, writers (Communists and many others) were actively involved in the struggles against colonialism, imperialism and feudalism. Despite the failures and the alienation of many writers from the movement, the overall impact of the Marxist intervention and the PLM did achieve some successes in the sphere of de-Sanskritization (see next chapter) reinforcing the anti-Brahminism of the Renaissance that we noted. In his speech in the PLM meet in 1945, M. P. Paul pointed out that Malayalam has been slavishly following the dictates of Sanskrit for centuries. Thus, literature has not been able to capture the ethos of its own land. Without anchoring itself in its own culture, common sense and language, literature can hardly be called so. According to him, not only will it not be able to penetrate the hearts of people, or be able to appreciate other literature.211 The hegemony of Sanskrit was not one of language alone but of an entire ideology of Brahminism. The laws of the Sanskrit kavya tradition guided the evaluation of Malayalam literature. Namboodiripad strongly argued for popular culture and the entry of the people into the cultural field. According to him, the question is not whether the cultural products that the people enjoy is of a low or high quality, but that the people are now formulating an opinion, not only on political, economic systems and social structure, but also on literature, music and art as well and cultural practitioners who try to make cultural work in separation from people’s views will only become marginalized.212 There were important departures in the later years in the communist understanding of form and content. The question of revolutionary content versus beautiful form posed by the PLM was considered to be a false dichotomy: the “fact is that both revolutionary content and aesthetically beautiful form are the products of the people; it is their struggle first against nature, then against exploitative society, that has created all the aesthetically beautiful works of revolutionary content.”213 Even when the debate between form and content had almost sounded the death knell of PLM, Devadas in 1951 had argued that form was as important as content and such a unity was an 207

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integral part of Marxism. Also, criticizing the earlier position of the Communists, Namboodiripad argued that it: would be ridiculous to try to find a direct and mechanical connection between the natural and social environment in which particular author is living and working, and his literary work. The formation of ideas is much more complex than that. Equally ridiculous would it be to think that the individual author is nothing but a copyist who reflects his natural and social environment as a mirror reflects what is placed before it.214 He argued that the formulations of Lenin on party literature, party spirit and discipline should not be applied mechanically. Unlike the things demanded of Communist writers in 1948, the later demands were few: a basic commitment to Marxism–Leninism and the mass movements of the people, and to take into account the opinion of the ordinary masses also in their assessment of their works. The party would not interfere any more than this in the creativity of a writer. As far as non-Communist writers and the wider progressive literature were concerned, the party would indulge in only creative criticism while simultaneously making use of their contributions to the democratic process.215 The party was also to adopt a more constructive and flexible approach toward the independence of writers. The appropriate policy toward non-Communist writers was one of cooperation and agitation, friendship and criticism.216 The main problem, according to him, was the mechanical tendency to brand one camp of writers as progressives and the other as reactionaries.217 He also recognized the fact that communist works of art which are low in aesthetic quality can only attract a minority of the people. If they were of a better quality, they could attract a broader section of the masses to the ideology of communism.218

Conclusion The change in the position of the Communists, like many other radical proposals, did not become common sense; instead, they were confined to the theoretical realm. Some of Namboodiripad’s (who was the main, or often, the only, articulator of the communist movement’s theoretical positions) writings, especially later, were nuanced for a full-time political practitioner working within the confines of Stalinist party framework and had parallels to the theoretical excursus of Fredric Jameson and Terry Eagleton. Satchidanandan also finds that Namboodiripad’s literary criticism operated on Jameson’s central maxim, “Always historicize” and locates similarities with other Marxist theorists like Pierre Macherey.219 Further, as Rajan Gurukkal stresses, one of the contributions of Namboodiripad was that he was the first one to articulate that like in the other sphere of ideas, the working classes 208

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needed to challenge the ruling class ideologies of the existing historiographies and build their own historical consciousness (the parallels to Subaltern Studies are seen here). He also argues that unlike many early Marxist historians in India, the first materialist history of Kerala written by Namboodiripad did not mechanically reduce it to the European model by ignoring the unique aspects of the regional culture.220 He cites the example of Namboodiripad’s coinage of the terminology “caste-landlord-chieftain hegemony” instead of a generalistic feudal domination.221 However, there were also contradictions, evasions,222 mechanical understandings223 and politically expedient justifications of changing party policies in Namboodiripad’s writings, besides, what some scholars term as, his attempt to use Marxism as a tool to shore up the declining Brahmin hegemony (see Chapter 8).224 Similarly, PLM and the literature that was a product of it also failed to address caste in a comprehensive way (see next chapter). The notable fact was also the communist disjuncture between the struggle for political power and the self-critical theoretical position on arts and culture (following the split in the PLM) and the consequent subsumption of the latter by the former.225 The mainstream Communist parties continued to indulge in political partisanship with regard to culture after the capture of state power. One serious feature of the period under consideration has been the Communist Party’s witch hunt of many talented writers as antiCommunists and CIA agents.226 This caused severe damage to the emerging cultural, fabric of Kerala. The immense possibilities that would have been opened up with regard to a further strengthening of a democratic socialist culture, if some of the best literary talents had not been alienated from the communist movement, remained unfulfilled. If we had seen in the last chapter, how the communist movement played a critical role in the inauguration of a people’s public sphere where the subaltern classes could participate, the Communist Party’s Stalinist tendencies to control civil society proved to be deleterious in building a richer national-popular and a deeper democracy. On the one hand, the mechanical understandings in aesthetics were not just the result of an imitation of theories formulated elsewhere. It was also the lack of awareness of a wider theoretical framework in aesthetics that caused failures in the communist understanding of the relations between art and literature. On the other hand, there were some perceptive understandings of culture, as well as of religion, which went beyond hyper-rationalism as we saw. Therefore, the failures of communism in the cultural sphere have to be located more in practice and on the terrain of politics. This is where vanguardism failed; but, again, contra postcolonial theory, more than the failure stemming from a particular outcome of modernity or its externality, it can be seen in the incomplete practice of the stated goal of a socialist democracy (which promised to radicalize and extend liberal democracy), and which required a dynamic and varied civil society and cultural sphere as its fulcrum. 209

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Despite these failures, and the economistic tendencies, the importance the communist movement placed on culture as a vital constituent element of society made it see modernity not always narrowly as “institutional change brought about by the extension of rational action.”227 It differed from the national movement which has been characterized as ignoring cultural reproduction of society.228 It also, as an unintended consequence, brought culture to the fore as a force field of contestations. The intense debates that took place around form versus content in literature and the revision of positions on both sides illustrated this. The anti-democratic tendencies of the Communist Party did not prevent a vibrant literary culture from emerging outside it, and often in opposition to it. The emergence of a Dalit literary sphere later on is an example.229 The biggest contribution in the period under review was that the Communists inaugurated a new aesthetic imagination which was able to hegemonize even the non-Communist literary sphere through the Progressive Literature Movement. Here, the role of non-Communist writers was crucial as well. If the cultural renaissance of the late 19th century moved from the feudal-based cultural heritage, it was still limited by its romanticism and the consequent lack of attention to material and political factors. The Progressive Literary Movement overcame, to some extent, and unlike in Subaltern Studies, the big divide that separated the intellectuals and the people, the subalterns and elites. The national-popular could not have been constructed in the cultural domain without overhauling the modernist slogan, art for art’s sake. It was premised on fusing the compartmentalized domains and relinking art and society. Some crucial beginnings were made despite its incomplete realization.

Notes 1 The national-popular in the cultural domain was a multifaceted phenomenon spanning many areas like fiction, poetry, theater, songs, storytelling (kathaprasangam), dance, cinema and so on. In this and the next chapter, I focus mainly on literature, songs and theater. 2 See Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 8. 3 Benita Parry, “The Constraints of Chibber’s Criticism: A Review of Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital by Vivek Chibber,” Historical Materialism 25, no. 1 (2017): 193. 4 See Chatterjee, Nation and Its Fragments, 8. 5 Ibid., 7. 6 Vivek Chibber, Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital (London: Verso, 2013), 279. 7 See Jurgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987), 9. 8 Ibid., 13. 9 Arif Dirlik, The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1997), 15. 10 G. Arunima, “Imagining Communities Differently: Print, Language and the Public Sphere in Colonial Kerala,” The Indian Economic and Social History

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Review 43, no. 1 (2006): 69. But as Arunima points out, while the older liturgical languages like Syrian, Arabic and Sanskrit were now being replaced by Malayalam, ironically, the new linguistic identity did not diminish a religious communitarian identity of being Hindu, Christian and Muslim as popular religious texts began to be published in Malayalam. Thus, it was a print culture which allowed different strands of thought both secular and religious, and standardization of language did not mean the elimination of cultural diversity (Ibid., 73). Although the term used is renaissance to describe the politico-cultural ferment of the period, it will be evident in the following that it is very different from the conventional understandings of the term. Thus, it was not a revival of the classical period or a re-birth based on arts and letters of antiquity. Also, the fact that India was under colonial rule and characterized by the unique social system of caste, renaissance acquired a different meaning from that of Europe. Thus, Govinda Pillai argues that the Malayalam term, navodhanam (“new birth”) is a better description of the changes during the period than the term renaissance (“re-birth”) (see P. Govinda Pillai, “Jathimatha Prasthanangal” [Religious and Caste Movements], in Navothanasamskaram Keralathil [Renaissance Culture in Kerala], ed. P. V. Velayudhan Pillai (Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala University, 1998), 44–50). K. E. N., “Varenya Navothanathinte Athirukal: Varenya Samudayangalile Navothanavum Malayala Sahityavum” [The Limits of Elite Renaissance: Renaissance in Elite Communities and Malayalam Literature], in Nammude Sahityam, Nammude Samooham, vol. 2, ed. M. N. Vijayan (Thrissur: Kerala Sahitya Akademi, 2000). Govinda Pillai, “Jathimatha Prasthanangal,” 47. T. H. P. Chentharassery, “Sadhujana Paripalana Sangham: The Story of a Freedom Movement,” in No Alphabet in Sight: New Dalit Writing from South India, ed. K. Satyanarayana and Susie Tharu (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2011), 380–384. The Brahmin Namboodiris set up the Namboodiri Yogakshema Sabha in 1908. Some of its main objectives were marriage reform, English education, abolition of veiling amongst women and widow remarriage. The Nair Service Society (NSS) of the Nairs was founded in 1914 and had goals such as marriage and inheritance reforms and the setting up of schools. V. V. Swamy, “Prathyaksha Raksha Daiva Sabha: Historical Absences and the Other Text,” in No Alphabet in Sight: New Dalit Writing from South India, ed. K. Satyanarayana and Susie Tharu (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2011), 595. P. Pampirikunnu, “Nationalism, Modernity, Keralaness: A Subaltern Critique,” in No Alphabet in Sight: New Dalit Writing from South India, ed. K. Satyanarayana and Susie Tharu (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2011), 567. E. M. S. Namboodiripad, Sampoorna Kritikal, vol. 9, 1948 (Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha Publishers, 2007), 270–271. He mentions that science did not develop as well in the Malayalam language. Therefore, people could not access the latest developments in natural science research in Malayalam while they could read world literature in translation (Ibid., 271). Ritty Lukose, “Re (Casting) the Secular,” Social Analysis 50, no. 3 (2006): 48. A. V. Anilkumar, C (Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha Publishers, 2002), 239. There were two streams within the Sree Narayana movement, one, the dominant core led by Narayana Guru himself which was the “‘religio-reformist’ phase of Ezhava self-critique and ritual reforms aimed at de-stigmatizing their modes of worship, rites, marriage, etc.,” and still defined by the metaphysical

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22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

core of Hinduism, and two, the radical (and marginal) stream led by Sahodaran Ayyappan (J. Reghu, “Sahodaran Ayyappan: Overcoming Narayana Guru,” Utharakalam, April 10, 2012, http://utharakalam.com/. Ayyappan even transformed Guru’s “One caste, One religion, One god” into a revolutionary one of “No caste, No religion, No god” (Filippo Osella and Caroline Osella, “Once Upon a Time in the West? Stories of Migration and Modernity from Kerala, South India,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 12, no. 3 (1999): 574). M. Dasan, “General Introduction,” in The Oxford India Anthology of Malayalam Dalit Writing, ed. M. Dasan, V. Prathibha, P. Pampirikunnu and C. S. Chandrika (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012), xvii; Pampirikunnu, “Nationalism, Modernity, Keralaness,” 562. Sunil Ilayidom, “Cross: Currents Within: A Cultural Critique of Kerala Renaissance,” (paper presented at the Kerala: Towards New Horizons Seminar, New Delhi, February 21, 2009, 1–14). By 1930s the youth wing of Yogakshema Sabha, the more radical Namboothiri Yuvajana Sangham, was advocating the willful shunning of privileges that were vested in Brahmins (K. E. N., “Varenya Navothanathinte,” 92). T. T. Sreekumar, Charithravum Adhunikathayum [History and Modernity] (Kottayam: Current Books, 2001), 105–106. Tomy Joseph, “Empowerment of Dalits and the Role of Dalit Movements in Kerala: A Study of Kottayam District” (Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, St. Thomas College, Pala, 2010), 88. P. Sanal Mohan, “Dalit Discourse and the Evolving New Self: Contest and Strategies,” Review of Development and Change 4, no. 1 (1999): 12. Rajsekher Basu, “A Page from Dalit History in Kerala: The Pulaya Movement in Travancore: Cochin in the Pre-Communist Phase,” Studies in People’s History 3, no. 1 (2016): 49. Joseph, “Empowerment of Dalits,” 89. K. Saradamoni, Emergence of a Slave Caste, Pulayas of Kerala (New Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1980), 148. Joseph, “Empowerment of Dalits,” 84. Basu, “Dalit History,” 50. B. R. P. Bhaskar, “Vargamenna Mithyayum, Jathiyenna Yatharthyavum” [The Myth of Class and the Reality of Class], in Lal Salaam [Red Salute], ed. C. Anoop (Kottayam: DC Books, 2001), 219. Pavanan, “Yukthivada Prasthanavum, Keraleeya Jeevithavum” [Rationalist Movement and Kerala Life], in Nammude Sahityam, Nammude Samooham [Our Literature and Our Society], vol. 3, ed. M. N. Vijayan (Thrissur: Kerala Sahitya Akademi, 2002), 44–79. Pavanan, “Yukthivada Prasthanavum,” 77. Pampirikunnu, “Nationalism, Modernity, Keralaness,” 560. Saradamoni, Slave Caste, 148. Basu, “Dalit History,” 47, 52. Pampirikunnu, “Nationalism, Modernity, Keralaness,” 560. Shajahan Thanaloor, Dheeshanavum Velipadum [Wisdom and Revelation] (Kozhikode: Yuvatha, 1998), 19–25. See Ayyappa Paniker, “Malayalam Literature,” Princeton University, www. cs.princeton.edu/~mp/malayalam/copy/prdkerala.org/mallitrature.htm, accessed April 21, 2018. The novel, authored by a writer belonging to a Nair sub-caste, seeks to align with modernity and also contains a searing critique of Brahminism, which

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42 43 44

45 46 47

48 49

50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58

would have been impossible in literary history before (Sreekumar, Charithravum, Aadhunikathayum, 106) highlighting the anti-Brahminism noted earlier. Thomas Palakeel, “Malayalam Literature: A Brief Survey,” Kavitayan, www. oocities.org/kavitayan/palakeel.html, accessed April 22, 2018. Ibid. P. Pavithran,“Feudalisathinte Thakarachayum Avashistangalum” [The Collapse of Feudalism and its Remains], in Nammude Sahityam, Nammude Samooham [Our Literature, Our Society], vol. 3, ed. M. N. Vijayan (Thrissur: Kerala Sahitya Akademi, 2002), 297; T. K. Anilkumar, “Keezhala Sannidhyam Swathanthryananthara Malayala Sahithyathil” [Subaltern Presence in Post-Independence Malayalam Literature], in Nammude Sahityam, Nammude Samooham [Our Literature, Our Society], vol. 3, ed. M. N. Vijayan (Thrissur: Kerala Sahitya Akademi, 2002), 240. Dasan, “General Introduction,” xxx. K. K. N. Kurup, Nationalism and Social Change: The Role of Malayalam Literature (Thrissur: Kerala Sahitya Akademi, 1998), 103. It should be noted here that this is not a well-thought-out and consciously articulated political position.Asan was generally known to be diffident towards political issues. But he also reflected Narayana Guru’s recognition that the British played a role in paving way for the lower-caste challenge (T. T. Sreekumar, “Variamkunnanaum Duravasthayum” [Variamkunnan and Duravastha], Think, June 23, 2020, https://truecopythink.media/dr-tt-sreekumar-on-malabar-rebellion-andkumaranasans-duravasta?fbclid=IwAR1kigmeHMtoG6XsnTTr7NP-pb0zdP0 x5LocHSfKktp7jYvukTcAD2HtM_g). The fragmentary perspective, of course, echoes the Subaltern Studies/postcolonial framework (see Gyanendra Pandey, “In Defense of the Fragment: Writing about Hindu-Muslim Riots in India Today,” in A Subaltern Studies Reader, ed. Ranajit Guha (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997) and, also, Chatterjee, Nation and Its Fragments). “Reflections of a Thiyya Boy,” in Paniker, “Malayalam Literature.” P. K. Gopalakrishnan, Purogamana Sahitya Prasthanam: Nizhalum Velichavum [Progressive Literature Movement: Shadow and Light] (Thrissur: Kerala Sahitya Akademi, 1987), 53. It would be more appropriate to call it progressive romanticism than revolutionary romanticism (see N. E. Balaram, Marxian Soundarya Shastram [Marxian Aesthetics] (Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha Publishers, 1996), 26). M. R. Chandrashekaran, Keralathile Purogamana Sahitya Prasthanathinte Charitram [The History of Progressive Literature Movement in Kerala] (Kozhikode: Olive Publications, 1999), 189. P. K. Pokker, Varnabhedangal, Padabhedangal [Changing Colors and Texts] (Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha Publishers, 1999), 15. M. Dasan, V. Prathibha, P. Pampirikunnu and C. S. Chandrika, eds., The Oxford India Anthology of Malayalam Dalit Writing (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012), xxix–xxx. Pokker, Varnabhedangal, 16. See Gopalakrishnan, Purogamana, 112–117. Chatterjee, Nation and Its Fragments. This argument ignores the complex ways in which the different domains interact and constitute each other. E. M. S. Namboodiripad, Therenjedutha Prabandhangal [Selected Essays] (Thrissur: Kerala Sahitya Akademi, 1990), 31. Ibid., 83. Ibid. But Asan did show some recognition of the anti-feudal and anti-colonial aspects of the Mappila Rebellion (Sreekumar, “Variamkunnathu”).

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59 Here, interestingly, like the Subaltern Studies, Namboodiripad ascribes a progressive role to the bourgeoisie in Europe. 60 Namboodiripad, Therenjedutha,166–167. 61 See P. Govinda Pillai, Sahithyam: Adhogathiyum, Purogathiyum [Literature: Decline and Progress] (Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha Publishers, 1992), 50. 62 Palakeel, “Malayalam Literature.” 63 Namboodiripad, Therenjedutha, 72–74. 64 Habermas, Modernity, 7. 65 We should not draw too stark a distinction between the colonial and precolonial periods. The imagination of universalism or cosmopolitanism is not confined to modernity alone. Of course, at the same time, what is different in the new imagination of universalism has also to be recognized. 66 K. Satchidanandan, “Rithubhedangalude Nayakan” [The Hero of Changing Seasons], in Lal Salaam [Red Salute], ed. C. Anoop (Kottayam: DC Books, 2001), 161. 67 Paniker, “Malayalam Literature.” 68 Govinda Pillai, Sahityam, 17. 69 I will deal with theater in the following. 70 Gopalakrishnan, Purogamana, 57. 71 P. Govinda Pillai, “EMS as a Literary Critic and Cultural Activist,” The Marxist 14, nos. 1–2 (January–June 1998), http://cpim.org/marxist/199801_marxist_ ems_culture_pg.htm. 72 Interview, July 2010. 73 Critics have alleged that the Sanghom was mainly founded by political activists who had nothing to do with art and literature (see Chandrashekaran, Keralithile, 68). It is valid to raise criticisms about the literary credentials of people who initiated the movement. But in this critique, there is also the urge to keep the different domains of modernity autonomous and separate. The question of linking art to truth and justice and linking together different spheres while maintaining their integrity is not posed here. 74 Govinda Pillai, “EMS.” 75 Ibid. 76 Namboodiripad, Therenjedutha, 17–21. 77 E. Sardarkutty, Purogamana Sahitya Niroopanam [Criticism of Progressive Literature], 2nd ed. (Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala Bhasha Institute, 1993), 49–50. 78 Gopalakrishnan, Purogamana, 75. 79 Chandrashekaran, Keralathile, 80. 80 Andalat, Purogamana Sahityavum Communistkarum [Communists and Progressive Literature] (Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha Publishers, 1993), 89. 81 Paniker, “Malayalam Literature.” 82 Quoted in Sardarkutty, Purogamana, 52. 83 Deshabhimani, June 17, 1945. 84 Deshabhimani, June 10, 1945. 85 Paniker, “Malayalam Literature.” 86 Field notes, July 2004. 87 M. S. Dileep, Varkkiyude Velipadukal [The Revelations of Varkey] (Kottayam: Sahitya Pravarthaka Cooperative Society, 2000). 88 Paniker, “Malayalam Literature.” 89 Ibid. 90 Here, I am following the popular convention of referring to Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai by his first name, a practice which extends to many other personalities too.

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91 Palekil, “Malayalam Literature.” 92 Ayyappa Paniker, “The End of Historiography?: Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai, 1912–1999,” Frontline, April 24, 1999, https://frontline.thehindu.com/other/ obituary/article30257188.ece. 93 Palekil argues that orthodox positions like that of Kesavadev’s was responsible for Progressive Literature losing its sheen later (“Malayalam Literature.”). 94 K. M. George quoted in Robin Jeffrey, Politics, Women and Well-Being: How Kerala Became a Model (Hampshire: Macmillan Press, 1992), 88. 95 P. Kesavadev, Odayil Ninnu [From the Gutter], 4th ed. (Kozhikode: Poorna Publications, 2000). 96 Jeffrey, Women and Well-Being, 89. 97 M. Dasan et al., “Excerpts from Novels,” in The Oxford India Anthology of Malayalam Dalit Writing, ed. M. Dasan, V. Prathibha, P. Pampirikunnu and C. S. Chandrika (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012), 86. 98 Quoted in Gopalakrishnan, Purogamana, 88. 99 C. V. Sreeraman, “Samoohya Viplavum Sahithyavaum: Malayalathile Aadhyakala Anubhavangal” [Social Revolution and Literature: First Experiences in Malayalam], in Nammude Sahityam, Nammude Samooham [Our Literature, Our Society], vol. 2, ed. M. N. Vijayan (Thrissur: Kerala Sahitya Akademi, 2000), 122, 125. 100 Quoted in Chantal Mouffe, “Ideology and Hegemony in Gramsci,” in Gramsci and Marxist Theory (London: Routledge, 1979), 180. 101 Namboodiripad, Therenjedutha, 88. 102 Quoted in Chandrashekaran, Keralathile, 107. 103 Ibid., 115–118. 104 Ibid., 107. All translations from Malayalam are by me unless stated. 105 Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, ed. and trans. Quentin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International, 1971), 52. 106 See Dipesh Chakrabarty, “Radical Histories and the Question of Enlightenment Rationalism: Some Recent Critiques of Subaltern Studies,” Economic and Political Weekly 30, no. 14 (April 1995):757. 107 Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, 52. 108 K. K. N. Kurup, “Karshaka Samarangalum Malayalam Sahityavum” [Peasant Struggles and Malayalam Literature], in Nammude Sahityam, Nammude Samooham [Our Literature, Our Society], vol. 2, ed. M. N. Vijayan (Thrissur: Kerala Sahitya Akademi, 2000), 138. 109 M. R. Chandrashekaran, Communist Kavithrayam [The Communist Trio of Poets] (Thrissur: Current Books, 1998), 25. 110 Ibid., 29. 111 Ibid., 35. 112 Ibid., 66. Cherumas are one of the Dalit untouchable castes. 113 Kedamangalam Pappukutty, “Kaduthuvanchi” [Ferryboat], Janayugam, March 1953, 12. 114 Chandrashekaran, Communist Kavithrayam, 67. 115 See Rajarshi Dasgupta, “Rhyming Revolution: Marxism and Culture in Colonial Bengal,” Studies in History 21, no. 1 (2005): 89. One of the important ways the communist movement appropriated a traditional romantic symbol was the reconfiguration of the (quarter) moon into a sickle. 116 M. S. Devadas, Therenjedutha Prabandhangal [Selected Essays] (Thrissur: Kerala Sahitya Akademi, 1991), 90. 117 Dasgupta, “Rhyming Revolution.”

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118 Govinda Pillai, “EMS.” 119 Quoted in Fredric Jameson, “Globalization and Political Strategy,” New Left Review 4 (July–August 2000): 64. 120 Devadas, Therenjedutha, 22. 121 Namboodiripad, Therenjedutha, 117; see also Pillai, “EMS.” 122 B. Rajeevan,* scholar, interview, May 1999; see also see his Jananibidamaya Danthagopuram [Populous Ivory Tower] (Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha Publishers, 1991), xv. 123 Rajeevan, Jananibidamaya Danthagopuram, xv–vi. 124 Balaram, Marxian, 30–33. 125 Gopalakrishnan, Purogamana, 128. 126 Ibid., 127. Traces of modernist language are visible here. 127 M. V. Devan,* prominent painter, sculptor and art critic, points out that he was not attracted to the communist movement because he could not conceive of judgments about art being handed down by non-specialists with no expertise in art (interview, May 2013). 128 Mundassery, in an article written in 1947, argues that feelings and emotions which constitute the material for art and literature are formed in human beings in contact with the outside world (Gopalakrishnan, Purogamana, 96). 129 Devan thinks the fundamental problem was power-centered politics and this what led to the split. In his scathing words, the “party could not differentiate between Picasso and a pickaxe” (interview). 130 Chandrashekaran, Keralathile, 252, 46. 131 Gopalakrishnan, Purogamana, 102. 132 Chandrashekaran, Keralathile, 304. 133 From the poem “Prethangalude Pattu” (Song of the Ghosts), Chandrashekaran, Communist, 40. 134 Ibid. Cherukad later in 1971 wrote the novel Devalokam which was about how even Communists were attracted to the bourgeois world. 135 Chandrashekaran, Keralathile, 273, 301. This is seen in the kind of questionable means used by the Communists in getting the PLM program they wanted. To get a majority, they surreptitiously got in people who had nothing to do with literature for the meet (Sardarkutty, Purogamana, 59). 136 Chandrashekaran, Keralathile, 157. 137 Ibid., 280–281. 138 Quoted in ibid., 163. 139 Habermas, “Modernity,” 12. 140 Namboodiripad, Therenjedutha, 230. 141 Namboodiripad, Selected Writings, vol. 1, 396. 142 Namboodiripad, Therenjedutha, 297–299. 143 Chatterjee, Nation and Its Fragments, 5. 144 Ibid., 8. 145 M. Madhava Prasad, Ideology of the Hindi Film: A Historical Construction (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 13. 146 Jan Nederveen Pieterse and Bhikhu Parekh, “Shifting Imaginaries: Decolonization, Internal Decolonization, Postcoloniality,” in The Decolonization of Imagination: Culture, Knowledge and Power (London: Zed Books, 1995), 3. 147 Ibid. 148 Namboodiripad, Therenjedutha, 234. 149 Abdallah Laroui, The Crisis of the Arab Intellectual, trans. Diarmid Cammell (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 156. 150 Quoted in Gopalakrishnan, Purogamana, 89.

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151 Ibid., 91. 152 Quoted in M. P. Balaram,“Swathathinteyum Samskarathinteyum Roopikaranam Swathantryapoorva Keralathil: 1930–1947” [The Formation of the Self and Culture in Pre-Independence Kerala], in Nammude Sahityam, Nammude Samooham, vol. 2, ed. M. N. Vijayan (Thrissur: Kerala Sahitya Akademi, 2000), 157. 153 Sreeraman, “Samoohya Viplavum,” 125, 122. 154 Gopalakrishnan, Purogamana, 147. 155 Ibid., 148. 156 Chandrashekaran, Communist, 67. 157 Darren C. Zook, “The Farcical Mosaic: The Changing Masks of Political Theatre in Contemporary India,” Asian Theatre Journal 18, no. 2 (2001). 158 Quoted in Balaram, “Swathathinteyum,” 159. 159 J. Devika, “Cochin Creole and the Perils of Casteist Cosmopolitanism: Reading Requiem for the Living,” Journal of Commonwealth Literature 51, no. 1 (2016): 127–128. 160 Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, 274. 161 Devadas quoted in Chandrashekaran, Keralathile, 344. 162 See V. I. Lenin, The Emancipation of Women: The Writings of V. I. Lenin (New York: International, 1966), 97–123. 163 Devadas, Therenjedutha, 52, 64. 164 Ibid., 43–44. 165 Ibid., 41. 166 Ibid., 42. 167 Ibid., 43. 168 Ibid., 51–52, 64. 169 Chandrashekaran, Communist, 62. According to P. Govinda Pillai, conservativism about sexuality was a part of the party culture. Anything directly related to sex was considered as bad (interview, July 2010). This conservativism was affirmed by Satchidanandan. He argues that, unlike the Communists, progressive writers were challenging the micro-structures of family and everyday relationships. But he also points out that this conservativism of the Communists might have been forced by the mainstream criticism of the Communists as the embodiment of all kinds of immorality in society. One of the most common views about communism was that it would lead to an amoral society, and women would become common property, and there would be no family, and so on. This might have prompted them to adopt selective critique of societal norms, rather than a wholesale one (interview, July 2010). In the 1950s, the Communist Party passed strictures against the Communist leader T. V. Thomas for not marrying Communist leader K. R. Gowri with whom he was in a relationship (Krishnan, T.V. Thomas, 222). But the communist sexual conservativism, especially moored in patriarchal notions of sexuality, persists until now and has become more rigid in many ways (field notes, July 2010; December 2010); J. Devika argues that even some questioning of the dominant forms of family relationships which were undertaken by Communists before in the initial period become rare later (scholar, interview, July 2003). 170 P. P. Raveendran, Adhunikanantharam: Vicaharam, Vayana [Postmodernism: Thinking, Reading] (Thrissur: Current Books, 1999), 119. Similarly, the poets like P. Kunhiraman Nair, Edasseri, Vyloppilli, who were not part of the Progressive Literature Movement, are also said to be all implicated in the modernity project. 171 Ibid., 109–110. 172 Interview, May 1999. Also see his Ezhuthum Vayanayum [Writing and Reading] (Kottayam: Sahitya Pravarathaka Co-Operative Society, 1999), 139.

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173 K. N. Ganesh, “Malayala Sahithyathinte Samskarika Bhoomishashtram” [The Cultural Topography of Malayalam Literature], in Nammude Sahityam, Nammude Samooham [Our Literature, Our Society], vol. 2, ed. M. N. Vijayan (Thrissur: Kerala Sahitya Akademi, 2000), 640. 174 Ibid., 644. 175 Ibid., 640–643. 176 Pieterse and Parekh, “Shifting Imaginaries,” 9. 177 It would be difficult to call socialist realism merely romantic realism as Raveendran does, especially considering the fact that he has underlined the deep complicity of romanticism with capitalism (interview, May 1999). Maxim Gorky called socialist realism revolutionary romanticism. Socialist realism, according to Gorky, needed romanticism as an unavoidable part. For him, both thinking and imagination go together (Sardarkutty, Purogamana, 25, 31). But this is not the same meaning that Raveendran has attributed to romantic realism. Socialist realism has also been called as socialist idealism, socialist romanticism, progressive realism and so on. 178 Quoted in Balaram, “Swathathinteyum,” 162. 179 Purogamana Sahutyavum Mattum, Kottayam: SPCS, 26. 180 Antagonisms like elite/subalterns, rich/poor, tradition/modernity, village/city were dominant, instead of a complex analysis, in many non-Communist writers like Changampuzha and Vallathol. Changampuzha, for example, constructed the landlord’s exploitation as an ahistorical phenomenon (K. N. Ganesh, “Malayala,” 640). 181 Gopalakrishnan, Purogamana, 106. 182 One crore is equal to 10 million. 183 Namboodiripad, Therenjedutha, 60. 184 Ibid., 65, 66. 185 Dirlik, Postcolonial Aura, 33. 186 Namboodiripad burnt the sacred thread supposed to be worn by Brahmins and sent the ashes to the priest (Govinda Pillai, interview). 187 K. E. N., “Varenya,” 95. 188 Quoted in M. S. S. Pandian,“Towards National-Popular: Notes on Self-Respecters’ Tamil,” Economic and Political Weekly 31, no. 51 (December 1996):3326. 189 Pandian, “National-Popular,” 3328. 190 Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981), 291. 191 Namboodiripad, Therenjedutha, 302. 192 Terry Eagleton, “Literature and History,” in Contexts for Criticism, 3rd ed., ed. Donald Keesey (Mountain View, CA: Mayfield, 1998), 466. 193 Ibid., 467. 194 Chakrabarty, Habitations of Modernity, 25. 195 Namboodiripad, Therenjedutha, 79. 196 Namboodiripad, Selected Writings, vol. 1, 375. See also, Satchidanandan, “Rithubhedhangalude,” 163–164. 197 Namboodiripad, Therenjedutha, 240. 198 See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London: Verso, 1991). 199 G. Arunima argues that in medieval Kerala, there was a “reconfiguration of older religious identities in new ways” and also the “evolution of an identity— Malayali—with linguistic and regional dimensions.” But the reconfiguring of religious identities was not “inimical to the creation of an identity that will eventually incorporate these groups within a broader framework of being ‘Malayali” (quoted in P. Muhammed, “Cinema, Politics and Historical Consciousness: The

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Left and the Production of a Modern Subjectivity in Kerala, 1950s-1980s,” (Ph. D Thesis, Department of Cultural Studies, English and Foreign Languages University Hyderabad, 2017), 60). Chandrashekaran, Purogamana, 191. Namboodiripad, Selected Writings, vol. 1, 405. Ibid., 404. Gopalakrishnan, Purogamana, 135. Namboodiripad, Therenjedutha, 209. Namboodiripad, Selected Writings, vol. 1, 396. Namboodiripad, Therenjedutha, 322. Ibid., 230. Ibid., 29. Devadas, Therenjedutha, 106. Namboodiripad, Therenjedutha, 24. Gopalakrishnan, Purogamana, 90. Namboodiripad, Sampoorna Kirtikal, vol. 9, 406. E. M. S. Namboodiripad, Selected Writings, vol. 1, 420. Ibid., 391. It is interesting to note that Namboodiripad now makes a distinction between working-class literature and the wider progressive literature (Namboodiripad, Therenjedutha, 97). Devadas, Therenjedutha, 89. Devadas notes that the division between the Communist and non-Communist writers was fruitful because it exposed the fallacies of both positions and enabled them to understand each other better. This in turn helped to avoid in the future the sectarian position that the Communists adopted for a short period (Ibid.). Chandrashekaran, Keralathile, 59. Sardarkutty, Purogamana, 64. Satchidanandan, “Rithubhedangalude,” 158. Rajan Gurukkal, “EMSinte Charithra Padanangal” [EMS’ Historical Studies], in Lal Salaam [Red Salute], ed. C. Anoop (Kottayam: DC Books, 2001), 304, 307. Ibid., 308. T. T. Sreekumar, Civil Samoohavum, Idathupakshavum [Civil Society and the Left] (Kozhikode: Olive Publications, 2007), 52. K. Venu, “EMS: Dharshanika Rashtriya Vilayiruthalinu Oru Aamukham” [EMS: A Foreword to a Philosophico-Political Evaluation], in Lal Salaam [Red Salute], ed. C. Anoop (Kottayam: DC Books, 2001), 134. See Dilip Menon, “Being a Brahmin the Marxist Way: E.M.S Namboodiripad and the Pasts of Kerala,” in Invoking the Past: The Uses of History in South Asia, ed. Daud Ali (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), 40–66. B. Rajeevan, “EMSum Marxist Vimarshanathinte Prashnangalum” [EMS and the Problems of Marxist Criticism],” in Lal Salaam [Red Salute], ed. C. Anoop (Kottayam: DC Books, 2001), 173. Venu,“EMS,” 151; M. G. S. Narayanan,“EMS Ente Nottathil” [EMS, in My View], in Lal Salaam [Red Salute], ed. C. Anoop (Kottayam: DC Books, 2001), 298. Jayant Lele, Elite Pluralism and Class Rule: Political Development in Maharashtra (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981), 10. Sudipta Kaviraj, “On State, Society and Discourse in India,” in Rethinking Third World Politics, ed. James Manor (London: Longman, 1991), 91. See Dasan et al., Anthology of Malayalam Dalit Writing.

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5 THE RISE OF THE POPULAR IN CULTURE

The last chapter saw the beginnings of the national-popular in the literary domain with the Progressive Literary Movement which broke with existing culture to mainly portray the trials and tribulations of the lower orders of society. However, this had to be complemented with transformations in popular culture too. This was sought to be achieved by the new genre of songs born out of the communist movement and popular theater, both of which borrowed extensively from folk culture.1 At the same time, popular theater itself was enriched by the literary works of the Progressive Literature Movement. However, as seen in the last chapter, the emerging popular would still be marked by exclusions and severe limitations, many of which would be fully evident only much after the period, until 1957, which is under review here.

A new aesthetic Simultaneously with the shifts in the sphere of literature through the movement for progressive literature, popular culture was showing significant shifts too. As we have seen, the newspaper Prabhatham of the Socialists not only contained coverage of worker and peasant issues, but also fictionalized elements which borrowed extensively from folk culture between classes and castes, and between people and intellectuals. There emerged a new aesthetic which broke off the shackles of earlier segmentation. Here, protest songs and folk arts played a major role.2 In the early days of the formation of the peasant unions by the Socialists, it was really difficult to get peasants and laborers to get to join them as the latter were totally unused to this modern form of institution which went beyond caste affiliations. Moreover, as we saw, under the sway of the moral economy of feudalism, they were not always very open to the idea of defying the landlords. Here, the peasant unions used the medium of songs constructed in a folk style familiar to the peasants, but containing new themes (which were nevertheless an elaboration and carrying forward of older ideas of equality). K. A. Keraleeyan, the secretary of the first peasant union formed 220

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in Kerala, the Kolacheri Peasant Union, describes how the organizers used to row in small boats in the night singing songs that would take the names of peasants living on the banks of the river and asking them to join the union: Oh, Nullikodan Raman, Won’t you join the union? Oh, Kariattu Kunjamma, Won’t you join the union?3 Gradually, with the unions gaining strength, peasant activists used to sing songs for the women working on the paddy fields, which the latter used to take up. These songs recounted the injustices of colonialism, drew contrasts between the luxurious lifestyle of the Viceroy with the miserable existence of the peasants, the burden of indebtedness, the illegal exactions of the lords, the greatness of the reading rooms and libraries and the need for children’s unions: For two hundred years, the Whites have been ruling our land. Twenty-One Thousand4 we pay as Monthly rent to the Viceroy . . . And he gets ten lakhs5 for his vacation . . . Debts which break the spine, Suffering that represses. Not just the sum borrowed Its many times paid . . . Whatever happens, debt is in Arrears, always; what justice is this? . . . Pattam, Purappad, Varam6 Don’t we have to pay them all in time? Don’t we have to bow down and make Offerings to the lord on Onam and Vishu? . . .7 What slavery and injustice, how Do we suffer this? . . . For long the lords have been extracting vasi,8 The peasants have been destroyed. Now by uniting to form unions We shall show our vasi.9 Thus, the contrast between broad categories of the rich and the poor is the constant refrain: how the lords and elites have never worked hard, never held a plough or planted a rice sapling, while they, the peasants and laborers, cannot survive even when they slave the whole day in the fields; they are always working to fatten somebody else’s purses: 221

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The elite in their mansions eat and fatten themselves Have they ever seen a plough? Have they ever touched a paddy seedling?10 However, connections to the British colonialism are also made. Songs like the “Red Flag Song” written by T. S. Thirumumbu became popular. The red flag became a new symbol of liberation from capitalism and captures the imagination of the workers: Rise: rise in the midst of sky/Above, above the auspicious Red Flag.11 Let us be ready to march forward For what? To destroy poverty To fight against torture To burn the fort of capitalism Which creates poverty . . .12 The red flag becomes one that is relentlessly alluded to in marching songs13 The Soviet Union became another symbol of liberation: Throughout the world it is reverberated The thunder of the cannons of Revolution . . . (and) Russia, the pet child of November Seventh Determines the destiny of the world extensively . . .14 Most of these songs, written by Communist activists, were mocked by the literary establishment as mere padapattukal (marching songs) without any literary content. All the peasant union meetings at the taluk and firka15 levels were grand festivals with plays and various folk arts being their inalienable part. Even women and children came and stayed up very late to watch these programs. The paintings of the Communist martyrs of Kayyur were displayed in an exhibition conducted as a part of the Thalasseri Jagannatha Temple festival.16 Similarly, a communist song paid tribute to the martyrs. You the valiant swordsmen Who fought for the rise of the poor, Verily you aren’t dead, You are still alive in the proud hearts of many, Like Abhimanyu, Arjuna’s valiant son, Never shall we forget, comrades The royal path that you have trodden We swear, with our clenched fists, 222

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That death and dry hay are alike to us! Never shall we rest till we liberate the land And never shall we withdraw from fight Till Fascism is dead! Hail to thee Bolshevik heroes We salute thee “Lal Salaam, Lal Salaam.”17 Here, secular Communist “martyrs” seamlessly become a part of the religious pantheon. At the same time, the religious figures themselves are being reinterpreted for the secular cause of liberation from material exploitation. Here, there is no “passive acceptance of any past whatsoever . . . rather, it is the voluntary choice of realizing the unity of historical meaning by the reappropriation of a selective past.”18 The shrine festivals, as Menon argues, were used to propagate the ideology of communism. The slogan “make every temple festival into an all-night street corner meeting” was launched.19 Thus, instead of completely denying and religion and rituals based on it, the Communists worked with them. In the early period, there was “a revival of shrine culture albeit without the excesses of feudalism.”20 Once again, rather than the “hyper-rationalism” that postcolonial theory attributes to Marxism, here the communist movement does not completely negate tradition. With the strengthening of peasant and worker struggles elsewhere, the songs composed began to increasingly show an extra-local sensibility paralleling the scope and scale of these struggles. Now, they began to encompass the concerns of the workers in the towns and even those of the exploited teachers in schools: One by one Companies close down. Life comes to a standstill Everywhere in the land. Lords are hardly bothered Lords of the government are Hardly bothered.21 And they also began to connect the peasant struggles with imaginations of nationalism and linguistic regionalism. Toward this purpose, an array of personalities began to be invoked from the early 19th-century rebellions against the East India Company led by Pazhassi Raja and Veluthambi Dhalava to the Mappila rebellion led by Variam Kunnathu Haji. And in the same breath, a land without feudalism, kingship and exploitation is envisaged: The courageous land of Kerala, Of the courageous Pazhassi Raja. The tender land of Kerala 223

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Where lived the brave Veluthambi. Kerala which bears the battle valor Of Variam Kunnathu Haji . . . Kerala without feudalism, Without royalty and oppression. Kerala that will be independent Will be a United Kerala.22 While there is rhetoric in this, one can see the expansion of language and the elements of a critical appropriation of the past. And the linguistic identity that is imagined is not merely that, as in some scholarly accounts, but one shot through with class and imagined without feudalism. It evokes Frantz Fanon’s characterization of a revolutionary nationalism: A national culture is not a folklore, nor an abstract populism that believes it can discover a people’s true nature. It is not made up of the inert dregs of gratuitous actions, that is to say actions which are less and less attached to the ever-present reality of the people. A national culture is the whole body of efforts made by a people in the sphere of thought to describe, justify and praise the action through which the people has created itself and keeps itself in existence.23 Unlike the subaltern history portrayed by Subaltern Studies where subaltern and elite spheres are always autonomous and dichotomous,24 there is a convergence in which the nationalism that emerges is one that incorporates the aspirations of peasants and laborers too, even if not completely, as we will see in the following. Unlike Gandhian nationalism which believed in a reconstructed benign feudalism, here, Kerala is envisaged without feudalism and kingship. Thus, peasants and laborers sing: Slaves, we are not, Rest we shall not, Fight we shall unshaken . . . Rest we shall not Until we get the Power and rights Entitled to us.25 In the communist project, the future beckoned. In a song, the writer praises the bravery of: Those who write In their own blood the New history of 224

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Independent India. Those who fly the Bloodied flag In the battle of the Oppressed people.26 Here, the future is what is being looked forward to. The present is not a site from which one “must escape”27 but is one that leads to an egalitarian future. The songs composed by Communist activists like K. A. Keraleeyan, K. P. R. Gopalan, Premji, Thirumumbu and so on, as part of peasant union activity, were popular despite being not of the highest aesthetic quality. Even now they are part of popular memory,28 and also have become so much a part of the folk tradition of society to obscure their original authorship.29 The activists shaped folk arts and songs into instruments for protest against class and caste exploitation, and for raising awareness.30 In Travancore too, the importance of culture to the organization of the working class was being realized by unions like the Alleppey Coir Factory Workers’ Union which set up a workers’ cultural center. The center rewrote the prevalent conventions of drama which had it as subjects, kings and the lords, or portrayed myths or epics by staging a play about the travails of a poverty-stricken worker family. The center even trained workers in various arts. During the Second World War, some of the ottan thullal31 songs composed by the center about the starvation faced by the worker families became very popular. In Muvattupuzha, the Muslim folk song (Mappila Pattu) was adapted by local singers with communist political messaging and was performed in party rallies across many regions.32 The same was the case with the plays too. The future founding of the Kerala People’s Arts Club (KPAC), which was to revolutionize the stage, was definitely on the path trodden by the center.33 Since the agenda of the Communists was to link culture with other aspects of society, they tried to engage the political through culture. This was seen during the People’s War line when the Communist Party concentrated on developing a cultural campaign condemning Japanese fascism. Songs like “Vallatha Kaalam” (Terrible Times) were penned. This alone sold 4,000 copies in a single day. Songs like these were sung at anti-Jap meetings: What to tell Those who say It is better if the Japanese come. If the entire world declares that Fascism should be destroyed Think about its virtues.34 Also, various arts like ottan thullal, kummi, kolattam, kolkkali, kaikottikali, poorakkali, etc., and plays were staged incorporating the themes of 225

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anti-Japanese fascism.35 The anti-fascist songs used features from outside like that of Brechtian war ballads.36 Despite the gaps between the leadership and the masses, party program and its reception, these are examples when concerns far beyond the local and the national became incorporated into the popular struggles. Thus, they were similar to the articulation of the imageries of the Soviet Union as a symbol of liberation. Kavumkara area in Muvattupuzha, which elected the first Communist Party member in 1954, was mockingly called by opponents as “Moscow.”37 In the late 1940s, the Travancore government was expressing concern over the setting up of dramatic clubs and village libraries by the Communists.38 In Malabar too similar concerns were being expressed. In 1948, the district magistrate wrote in reference to the melas (cultural festivals) that were held for collection of funds for the party newspaper: Processions and postings have become now the sole form of activity of communists who deftly arrange during the various Deshabhimani Melas that are organized, interesting music and drama along with long propaganda speeches. Some of the dramatic representations are reported to consist of showing officials’ corruption and Jenmi-official conspiracy.39 This is what prompted the government to think of banning melas under the Dramatic Performances Act.40 One unintended consequence of the melas was that the party was drawn closer to the people and the folk arts. In fact, the theater movement in Malabar was an outcome of the melas.41 Plays and other folk arts were staged in these gatherings which lasted into the wee hours of the night.42 In a period when modern forms of mass entertainment had not taken roots, the melas were a major draw. However, at the same time, they were not mere entertainment too. For example, on April 3, 1946, the peasant Communists staged a play in Urathur village satirizing the oppression of the Kalliatt landlord using the folk art form of kurattipattu. The goons of the landlord disturbed the play by throwing country-bombs onto the stage.43 Similarly, one of the accused in the Karivellur incident was an ottan thullal dancer who used to propagate communist ideas in his dances.44 Culture becomes crucial to communist mobilization: a typical advertisement of party meeting would include announcements of “exciting cultural programs” along with the speeches of party leaders.45 The party promoted folk arts like poorakkali46 and utilized others like thacholikkali, vattakkali, thalipeelikkali, ivar kali, porattu, thiruvathira, kathaprasangam, etc.47 If literary culture, under communist influence, was showing paradigmatic shifts to incorporate the popular, popular culture itself was overcoming a different kind of fragmentation to make linkages beyond the local. Subaltern and elite politics converge here on new terms, with now voice for the former. 226

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What was condemned by elite/high culture as propagandist art was the key factor in linking with the folk culture. Here the transition to modern politics takes place not by completely denying the existing language but by relying on it. However, significantly the language was expanded too. Moreover, the folk arts and culture were accorded a respect that they did not enjoy before. As Namboodiripad points out, the historiography of Kerala was one which extolled the virtues of the ruling classes and elites, but not that of the lower castes who lived like slaves under them.48 A major outcome of communist cultural and political struggles is the move of the lower castes from symbolic criticism of the upper castes to real, material contestation with them. For centuries, the only legitimate avenue for the lower castes to criticize the injustices perpetrated by the upper castes was through a variety of folk arts. In North Kerala, the most prominent among them was teyyattam which was performed by the Dalits, lower castes and tribes. The themes of the art form are about persons who were unjustly punished/put to death for violating caste rules. However, later they were deified by the upper castes who wanted to atone for their mistake by such an act. During the ritual, the lower caste performers were possessed by these deities and then they criticize the upper castes on the gross misdeeds perpetrated on them.49 Thus, the cultures of upper castes and lower castes do not always exist as compartmentalized blocks. The essence of the ritual is that in a society with extreme caste segregation and oppression, it provided a space for the breakdown and inversion of the hierarchical rules. Thus, “it was a ‘symbolic strategy’ [by the dominated] whereby limits were placed on the actions, arbitrary or immoral, of those in power.” However, with the emergence of the communist movement and the resultant contestation and defiance by the lower classes and castes, ritual channelization of critique lost its rationale.50 The criticism inherent in some folk arts does not now become an end in itself, but a means to change the material reality.51 However, the use of folk arts like teyyam was not without its contradictions for the Communists. After all, these arts were a part of the feudal structure of power and the Communists legitimized them.52 At the same time, they were also products of the people and masses, and often recounted stories of valiant resistance by them against oppression and were sources of critique.53

The theater movement It was only by the 1880s that modern forms of drama emerged in Kerala in the Malayalam language. However, initially the plays were by and large translations from Sanskrit and based on religious epics. For a long time, until the emergence of Malayalam plays, Sanskrit, the language of Brahminism and the religious and political elite, dominated over the vernacular language.54 Even after Malayalam drama emerged, Tamil commercial dramas were the staple diet of Kerala until the 1920s and the masses flocked 227

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to them.55 The genre of musical drama was the dominant one for a long time. The ideology of these dramas was thoroughly based on the values of the upper classes even when they targeted the masses. With the emergence of the educated middle classes, there was a shift in drama. It moved away from the cultural framework of the nobility and the feudal classes, which structured the content and form of plays. Nevertheless, it was still shackled by an imagination which looked down upon the lower classes.56 The seeds of nationalism and anti-imperialism were being sown from the beginning of the 1900s. Despite that, the worldview of the plays was largely, at least in Travancore and Cochin, the princely states, deferential to kingship. It was only by the 1920s that significant shifts began to take place. Critiques of caste and gender exclusion began to emerge.57 Just before this in 1913, Pandit Karuppan’s Balakalesam was written, which featured for the first time a Dalit character.58 V. T. Bhattathiripad’s 1930 play Adukkalayilninnu Arangathekku (From the Kitchen to the Stage) was a landmark in this regard. It was aimed at the liberation of the Brahmin Namboodiri women whose social condition was abysmal. Brahminical ideology thus faced a powerful internal critique when other plays by Namboodiris continued in the same vein. There was also the emergence of nationalist-based concerns in drama. The genre of musical drama itself began to give away to other genres. With the movement toward realism in literature inspired by the socialist/communist movement, there was a significant alteration in the mode of Malayalam drama from the early 1930s. However, it was the play Pattabakki (“Rent Arrears”) written by Marxist theoretician and Communist activist K. Damodaran that actually inaugurated socialist realism. It was the first play to directly address the issue of class struggle. Writer and intellectual C. J. Thomas called it as the first political play in Kerala.59 What Pattabakki did was to bring about structural changes in the arena of theater. From a field governed by the upper castes and looked upon as merely as art and for pleasure, theater was now a rational and conscious activity meant as tool for social and political change.60 Pattabakki’s popularity was huge and was performed in all the peasant meetings and party conferences all over Malabar. C. Kannan, Communist leader, acted in the play since 1937 in various peasant meetings. Similarly, A. K. Gopalan, one of the most important Communist leaders, also acted in the play on many stages. It was the most popular play written by Damodaran. After “Rent Arrears,” he wrote another propagandist play Rakthapanam (Draught of Blood) in 1939, which again was quite popular and was performed in all the peasant meetings and party conferences all over Malabar: a simplistic melodramatic tale of class war in which the capitalists are cruel and inhuman while the poor workers are the paragon of virtues, it appealed to the rural masses immensely. So much so that the government was terribly afraid of its consequences: “it is objectionable as it tends to bring about class hatred between capitalist and labourers,” noted the Superintendent of Police.61 The laborers toward the end of the 228

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play are optimistic: “We might die; but our death will be the death of capitalism.” Further, “All factories are alike; all capitalists are alike; Everywhere labourers—the poor—must suffer oppression, exploitation and disgrace. To be free from them there is only one way—destroy capitalism.” Finally, “All capitalists will be cruel” who resort to “various tricks” to defeat the workers and even try to seduce some of the women among them.62 Moralistic judgments abound through the play. Socialism/communism as a superior moral system is constantly alluded to. Communism is not only an inevitable result of the logical contradictions of capitalism but also brought about by the summoning of moral force. Damodaran is thus not a believer in the scientific side of Marxism alone: “with the aid of this science [Dialectical Materialism] we can forecast the future of man and society and thus control it.”63 This belief in the controllability of “life chances” is tempered with the moralistic side. Therefore, the cognitive-instrumental dimension goes along with the moral-practical side. As in Marx, Damodaran evokes morality and ethics along with the scientific analysis of society.64 Damodaran initiated the practice of linking the communist trade-union movement with art and cultural practice.65 The socialist newspaper exhorted that since capitalists try to inculcate religious superstitions among the workers, the latter should use the religious holidays to build class-consciousness so as to reinterpret the religious experience itself. On major religious festivals like thiruvathira, workers’ theater performed on many themes with the minimum of props.66 Again, the secular and the religious intermingle. Then, there were occasions when peasants performed plays, which were seemingly dealing with religious epics, but were really critique of the oppression of landlords.67 Although Pattabakki inaugurated political theater, it was not the dominant mode in the 1940s when political struggles of all kinds were taking place. However, by the 1950s theater had taken on an explicitly political role. The 1950s were the most productive for political plays. The writers who were in the forefront of the Progressive Literary Movement were also the pioneers of the theater movement, which began to flourish with the spread of the struggles led by communism. Prominent writers like Ponkunnam Varkey were popular playwrights too. Bhasi’s play Ningalenne Communistakki (You Made Me a Communist, 1952) was a path-breaking play in terms of popularizing communism. Performed by KPAC, it was taken to every town and village in Kerala. It was to later create a record by being staged more than 10,000 times.68 The play was controversial as there were allegations that it contained subversive ideas and that it encouraged people to rebel against the government. The play was banned in 1953 under the Dramatic Performances Act. A mass movement was initiated against the ban by the CPI,69 which led to the overturn of the ban. 200,000 copies of the play were sold within two years.70 Bhasi drew the material for the play from the attempted communist uprising in Surnad in 1949 in which five policemen were killed. Again, it was a 229

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simple tale of how people caught up in the vortex of the great changes—the disintegration of the feudal society—finally come to realize that that there is no better future than one that is guided by communism. As many other plays of the time, this one too was not aesthetically well developed, which nevertheless did not affect its popularity precisely because of the fact that its content was able to successfully capture the aspirations of the people. Namboodiripad later self-critically looked at the play: The playwright has portrayed him (the Communist hero) as one who is not a living and developing Communist, with human feelings and foibles. This “Communist” comes to the stage and talks in hackneyed phrases which are supposed to be “political.”71 He points out that the majority of the plays were not of a quality that allowed them to be staged more than once or twice.72 The other successful plays of KPAC in the 1950s and 1960s were Mooladhanam (Capital), Sarvekallu (Survey Stone), Nammalonnu (We are One), Mudiyanaya Puthran (The Prodigal Son), Puthiya Aakasam, Puthiya Bhoomi (New Sky, New Earth) and so on. Kurup attributes to the socialist realist drama movement a significant role in bringing about the death of feudalism and the initiation of land reforms.73 Darren Zook too argues, “it is not too much of a stretch to suggest that the popularity of the Communists, which allowed them to capture state power in the elections of 1957, stemmed largely from the popularity of Bhasi’s play and its songs.”74 While this might be an exaggeration, the impact of the theater movement was significant. Poets like O. N. V. Kurup became popular through plays staged by KPAC. If one examines the themes of the songs in the plays of KPAC, one sees a similar kind of pattern of themes to that of the protest songs: an exhortation of the agricultural laborers, especially women, to be unfazed in front of the lord; to break the chains that have bound them for years; to claim for themselves what belong to them; to take the red flag and lead from the front; to recount the horrors of serving the masters; to wish for a new and wonderful tomorrow (a constant theme), to chant the mantra of change, and to invoke the motifs of hammer and sickle and the red flag.75 The KPAC (founded in Central Travancore in 1950) in fact came into existence with the explicit purpose of using theater for spreading revolutionary ideas in the social and political spheres. It was closely tied to the communist movement and was founded by a group of activists associated with the Communist Party. In the words of an artist associated with it: “Once a month a general body meeting was convened. All artists attended it and made suggestions to improve the play that was being staged.”76 Talented artists such as K. P. A. C. Sulochana, K. S. George, G. Devarajan, S. Baburaj, K. Raghavan Master, P. J. Antony, Kambissery Karunakaran, K. P. Ummer and K. P. A. C. Lalitha and poets such as O. N. V. Kurup, as we have seen, and Vayalar Rama Varma, to 230

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name a few, either were associated with the KPAC, or began their career in it. Almost all artistes of KPAC, in the initial days, were members of the party and contributed Rs. 40 of their Rs. 500 salary as levy to the party. The party acted as a coordinator without directly controlling it. KPAC derived inspiration from IPTA (Indian People’s Theater Association), again demonstrating the extra-local and national influences. A significant development in the national sphere in the 1940s was the founding of IPTA. It had the explicit aim of using art as a means of protest against exploitation. The setting up of the IPTA and other such formations was a response to a perceived need for new aesthetic forms that represented the people while distinguishing themselves from the cultural traditions of the mainstream nationalist movement on the one hand and commercial theater on the other.77 Thus, it had key goals like reviving of people’s culture and the folk traditions. This was seen as a crucial element in the democratization of culture as envisaged by the Communists. KPAC also created a ripple effect with other troupes coming into existence started by artistes associated with KPAC.78 The Kerala Theaters group which staged many successful plays was also linked to the Communist Party. The organization had the unique custom of the main actor and the menial worker drawing the same salary. And everybody’s expenses were borne by the company.79 Writers like Ponkunnam Varkey were associated with it and a number of his plays, were to be staged by it in the 1950s. The songs written by Vayalar Ramavarma for his plays became huge successes. In Malabar, there was a strong and popular theater movement under a group called the Kendra Kala Samithy which had ties to the national theater movement of the Left. There were some prominent literary figures who were associated with it. The strength of the movement derived from the fact that it was anchored in the life of the village and linked to other movements like the library and reading room movement.80 The annual theater festivals organized by the Samithy were not just about watching plays, but were participatory social events which energized the cultural and political life of people.81 The communist movement was a source of inspiration for groups such as the Samithy. Although the Communist activists associated with KPAC never tried to hide their political leanings, the group’s productions became very popular.82 The immense popularity of the songs in the plays is attributed to their grounding in folk culture demonstrating the significance of form. As we saw, till the 1920s the drama scene in Kerala was dominated by translations from Sanskrit plays with puranic (mythical) themes. Even the Malayalam plays were written in the style of classical Sanskrit drama. The text used for the 231

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play was mixed with slokas (verses) in Sanskrit meter. If the educated middle classes were the patrons of these plays, the masses, as it was noted, favored the Tamil musical dramas (which were devoid of Sanskritic influences). Even when Western-style prose drama became strong in Malayalam in the 1930s, the audience was mainly restricted to the educated classes.83 It was the success of combining Malayalam with a folk sensibility that led the KPAC songs to chart new paths, which were unprecedented at the time.84 Bhasi, for instance, used a very colloquial from of Malayalam prevalent in Central Travancore and among the lower caste peasant and agricultural laborers.85 However, folk was not used by KPAC without modification. It blended folk with other styles of music, especially Hindustani music of North India, thus showing the intention to create a new culture which was not essentialist or sectarian. Equally important was the adaption and use of songs from the international protest tradition. Even when the KPAC sought to create a Malayali identity, moving away from the dominant Sanskrit and Tamil influences, it borrowed from various sources—national and international.86 Moreover, the KPAC plays decided to use the most popular form—the music dramas rather than prose dramas. Here, it should be added that this development of a particular cultural essence also beckoned to the universalism of a revolutionary politics: the necessity of destroying feudalism and capitalism across the world. The form used vernacular sources, but the content went beyond them. However, this was done by expanding the meaning of the vernacular itself. Again, linguistic identity is harnessed for a politics that is in a dialectical relationship with the universal. Even though the critics looked down upon the propagandist plays, their popularity was undeniable.87 Theater became in the 1950s the primary instrument of social criticism and a weapon of social change. The fact that the capitalist-backed culture industry was yet to entrench itself and the popular/pulp dichotomy had not developed also helped the theater movement. What the theater movement did was to liberate the production of plays from a professional system. Instead, youths in towns and villages, unschooled in the theories of drama, formed theater groups of their own. These groups became the foundation of the theater movement. Though not totally secure in the aesthetic sphere, they performed the task of communicating with the masses.88 For long under feudalism, the visual culture was confined to the temples and the mansions of the lords. Art was dominated by “elitist predilections . . . which had engrossed itself in witty epigrammatic verses devoted to graphic head-to-foot descriptions of famous courtesans (like Unnineeli and Unnichiruthevi) and the frankly erotic dance depictions on the kathakali[elite dance form] stage.”89 The products of art were the result of an “aesthetics that prioritizes pleasure over everything else.” And poverty and other social problems in elite and upper-caste art were not caused by social injustices and inequalities and could only be solved by divine intervention.90 O. N. V. Kurup’s famous lines like “All the paddy that we reap, belong 232

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to us, darlings”91 captured the imagination of the masses. There were also plays which were not exactly anchored in Marxist/communist perspectives, but were nevertheless expounding ideas that were from the perspectives of peasants and laborers,92 thus demonstrating the hegemony of communist cultural and political activism. Koottukrishi (Collective Farming), penned by writer Edassery Govindan Nair, as we saw before, is an example. The theater movement provided another instance of the construction of the national-popular. While the traditional art forms, both classical and folk, were limited by “cultural and spatial” factors in disseminating communist narratives, theater was the first to break such barriers and spoke to a secular Kerala public beyond caste, class and religion.93 The plays, though supposedly used the socialist realist mode, had doses of melodrama in them as pointed out in the critique by Namboodiripad. However, the crucial distinction was that they were substantially different from the aristocratic and feudal melodramas of previous era with their glorification of the feudal order and its claims to divine sanction. Aesthetic forms can be used for different political purposes. To attribute one political function exclusively to an aesthetic form is to take an essentialist and anti-materialist position.94 Thus, melodramas are appropriated for a different function here. If the feudal melodramas were confined to the elite upper-caste space, the communist plays were created by writers and activists committed to a radical transformation of society and performed for the masses. Therefore, while the plays of the 1950s in Kerala could be accused of theatricality and excessive sentiment, they cannot be characterized as simply escapist and reactionary, or instilling false consciousness in the working class. Even when they used moral categories, they did not shy away from social reality and portrayed the working classes and the peasantry as the agents of social transformation, albeit with limitations. Thus, they differed from the conventional melodrama, which “aspires to the transcendental, ceaselessly submitting the realities of existence into mythical moral categories because these are the currency of human interaction in the pre-modern symbolic order maintained by the church and the monarchic state.”95 The same was the case with socialist realist cinema which was couched in melodrama. While the Communist Party was not directly involved in the production of films, the communist movement “created the conditions for the reception” of socialist realist melodramas of the 1950s and 1960s. Besides, the PLM and the theater movement laid the basis for the emergence of socialist realist films,96 and many of the writers, artists and works from the former became a part of the latter. Thus, popular cinema, which has not been the focus here, also played a key role in the construction of a Malayalam national-popular in the 1950s and 1960s. As Ratheesh Radhakrishnan argues, “the development of Malayalam cinema and the imagining of Kerala as a culturally bounded region were constitutive of each other.”97 And “it was Kerala’s Communist movement and its attendant Marxist ideology that 233

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often took center stage in the construction of this citizen-subject in the early decades of Malayalam cinema.”98 Unlike other cinemas in India, which were animated by the optimism of the Nehruvian national vision, Malayalam cinema in the 1950s “basically imagined a class-less society and a future nation that is devoid of class inequalities, exploitation and casteism, rather [than] celebrating the nation-in/as-itself.”99 Again, this inflection of class clearly demonstrates the differences between the nationalist imagination and the communist imagination in Kerala even when there would be commonalities in visions of development.

De-Sanskritization The shift toward the incorporation of the popular thus meant that the cultural sphere was altered. Historically, the elite upper-caste domination of art had ensured that most of the performing arts could be performed only in temples and shrines or feudal mansions (from which the lower castes were excluded), as noted earlier. Examples were chakyarkoothu, patakam, kathakali and so on. The common folk had nothing to do with them. Art and literature were always governed by the ruling elites of a particular society. Thus, art forms like kathakali were products of the Brahminical feudal complex.100 However, as we saw, many classical art forms and music genres appropriated elements of subaltern and folk arts as well.101 The exclusion of the lower castes from education and knowledge was the main form of domination exercised by the upper castes. The historian Elamkulam Kunjan Pillai estimates that till 1600, known as the Age of the Namboodiris (Brahmins), less than 1% of the common people in Kerala had any kind of education.102 Needless to add, the dominance of Brahmin orthodoxy and the people– intellectual separation brought about by it is not unique to Kerala. Only the degree varies across different parts of the country. In the neighboring state of Tamil Nadu too, the Brahmin orthodoxy virulently guarded the sacradotal status of Sanskrit. It argued that Tamil language (the main language in Tamil Nadu) and literature were mere derivatives of Sanskrit. This was part of the large system of exclusion which legitimized Hinduism and its caste-based inequalities.103 The questioning of the Sanskrit canonical tradition acquired more depth with the emergence of the communist movement. The Communists’ construction of new popular culture relied on the folk tradition thus questioning the hegemony of Sanskrit. The later-day counter cultures built upon the foundation laid by communist “agitprop” and PLM and the dismantling of the traditional paradigm.104 K. E. N. similarly argues that the subalternization of language, made possible by the Marxist intervention, led to the cultural practices of subaltern groups gaining a place in the aesthetic imagination of Kerala.105 As Namboodiripad notes, in the Sanskrit and Brahmindominated minority culture, the arts of the common people like poorakkali, 234

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thacholipattu, pulluvanpattu were not worthy of being considered art.106 We noted how he locates the fact that no major litterateurs emerged from the untouchable Paraya and Pulaya communities due to their continuing marginalization in the economic and social structure under colonialism. According to him, with the emergence of a popular culture, the need to assess cultural products on the basis of protocols established by Sanskrit experts ended.107 Namboodiripad’s critique of Sanskrit arose from the fact that it was never a people’s language. His critique parallels that of the Self-Respecters’ Movement in Tamil Nadu started by E. V. Ramasamy which saw Sanskrit as denying equality to the subalterns of the Tamils. The anti-Hindi agitation of the Self-Respecters’ Movement in the late 1930s saw the participation of subordinate groups like Shudras, Adi-Dravidas, women and illiterates. This demonstrates how language had become the instrument of empowerment for a range of subalternities.108 The communist project in Kerala differed in one dimension, for the campaign for linguistic identity was inextricably linked with the question of class too, which was absent in the case of the Dravidian movement. Also, the Communists avoided the kind of valorization of English that the Dravidian movement undertook. While the latter did not romanticize the Tamil language in an ahistorical fashion and also sought to refashion it to eliminate its own exclusions, it viewed the knowledge of English as having “kindled the spirit of freedom in our people who had been cherishing enslaved lives” and given the “knowledge to say ‘no’ to monarchy and ‘yes’ to republic . . . [and] that men and women are equals.”109 While this position avoided the pitfall of the East/West dichotomy, it reinstated another one— that of modernity/tradition. It is less focused on the critical potential extant in tradition; it struggles for a Tamil linguistic identity to be completed in the future. On the other hand, the Communists, as we saw before, saw their project as a continuation and completion of the various counter-hegemonic movements carried out in traditional and modern periods of history. They, unlike the Dravidian movement, also understood the ill effects of the dominance of English and colonial culture even while noting the many contributions made by English language to the development of Malayalam.110 The communist project of a United Kerala based on a linguistic identity had elements which challenged elite Brahminical symbolism. Of course, as we saw previously, the critique of Brahminism in the modern period had begun much earlier, during the mid-19th century through lower-caste social reform movements. The movement was against the attempts to construct a United Kerala on the basis of the retrieval of a Golden Age of the past. Namboodiripad opposed these attempts to reinstate the Brahminical mythologies which have their “origin in the feudal-militarist ruling classes of mediaeval Kerala.” However, now the bourgeoisie was the main sponsor of such a nationalism and true to passive revolution, the feudal classes were also supporters of the idea, as seen in the role of the Maharaja of Cochin in the 235

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United Kerala movement.111 Namboodiripad terms the biggest Brahminical Kerala creation myth, Keralolppathi, as “irrational and absurd.”112 The myth depicts the sage Parashuraman retrieving Kerala from under the ocean, inhabiting it with Brahmins and other castes to assist them, and donating all lands and wealth to the Brahmins. He argues that it is obvious that the Brahmins created the myth to maintain their power and position in the land ownership system.113 Criticizing the United Kerala movement’s evocation of the same myth, leftist intellectual Kuttippuzha Krishna Pillai wrote: Does the reference to Keraleeyar[Keralites] point only towards the Hindus? What value does this story of Parashuraman have for followers of other religions? Do not Christians, Muslims and Jews have equal status in the united Keralam? The propriety of mounting (a picture) of a Brahmin brandishing a weapon, a Hindu invention, which serves to allude to the Brahmins’ (traditionally-claimed) rights over the land, right in front of a United Keralam Conference held for all Keraleeyar, irrespective of caste and creed, is worth pondering upon.114 This does not mean that Communists denied the past. Instead, they wanted to draw from a different kind of mythology, one that evoked equality. This is the mythology of the Mahabali, the legendary demon king who ruled over Kerala in a reign of welfare, justice and harmony, but was nevertheless banished to the netherworld by the jealous gods.115 However, this tradition was not considered as a real past, but one which was to be realized in the future. Thus, in Namboodiripad’s words: a new Kerala in which equality and freedom reign, in which poverty and unemployment will be unknown, will begin to emerge. That Mavelinadu [the kingdom of Mahabali], which exists only in our imagination, will become a reality in the 20th century.116 He contends that before the arrival of the Brahmins with their own culture in Kerala, there were people living with their distinct cultures which were “civilized” and as developed as that of the Brahmins, but in due course these cultures intermixed.117

The structural shift The communist intervention in culture, ultimately, was the culmination of a long process of democratization of culture begun with the Renaissance. In many ways, it carried forward and also reinforced the processes inaugurated by the Renaissance, especially the de-elitization of culture. Ayyankali and the Sangham had, like the Communists later, organized musical programs, 236

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staged dramas, and folk arts of the Dalits to raise the consciousness of the oppressed.118 At the same time, there were also, contra Subaltern Studies, significant additions like a structural shift toward the language of class in the communist movement. Even here, we have seen how Ayyankali, in a pioneering way, had fused dignity with issues of redistribution and classbased demands. The contribution of the Communists was to systematically bring to the fore materiality and the class question through arts and culture, even if it was not rid of simplifications. This was something that remained nascent and untheorized in the cultural production before, even in works that explicitly addressed the problems of the lower castes.119 Krishna Pillai had exhorted workers in 1934 to leave behind caste and religious identities and identify themselves as workers first. In his words: “let the priests squabble over religion while workers fight for bread.”120 This is reflected, as we have seen, in peasant songs which talked about how the peasants could not be cowed down by the violence unleashed by their superiors, and how they will not rest until feudal landlordism is completely overthrown.121 They exhort the peasants to join the union to accomplish the same.122 It is interesting to note that some of these songs, written in the period 1937–1938, were already talking about the destruction of landlordism even when the daily struggles were still looking to find solutions within the moral economy of feudalism. Thirumumbu, in his “Red Flag song,” asks workers and peasants to unite under the red flag so that they can fight poverty and exploitation. The communist popular now explicitly locates the cause of hunger and poverty in feudalism and capitalism and not as misfortunes that befell human beings. The song ends with, “let big capitalism be scared of its wits/ let landlordism explode.”123 There was a structural change in language by the 1940s, and now the songs talked about factory strikes and so on.124 The disaffection that can potentially be caused by the “inflammatory” songs is immensely threatening to the government. As a police report notes, banning a communist booklet with songs: The booklet exhorts the labourers to wake up from lethargy, to get organized and achieve equality. The alleged sufferings of the labourers are detailed, the capitalists are attacked and the labourers are urged to dismantle the fortress of religion and to agitate for getting their grievances redressed, even at the risk of their lives, resisting lathi charges by their coordinated activities.125 Another report states that the songs “are likely to unleash wild passions and blind emotions especially when they are attuned to music and sung with effect.”126 Many such booklets with songs were banned by the government. In 1951 alone, Left publications published 2,000 short stories and poems.127 Peasant unions become a central point of resistance and contention, as seen in the poems and songs of the time.128 A radically different sensibility was 237

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inaugurated when the peasants move away from the “moral economy” framework to the assertion of political power. A new future with possibilities of liberation hitherto not envisaged is dreamt of when novels, poems, songs and theater talk about communism and the communist way of life.

The absence of the caste question The communist engagement with the popular and the attempt to construct a national-popular was marked by severe limitations. The recognition of culture as an important dimension of social life was very significant, but was also marred by trends of instrumentalism and the subjugation of culture to the pursuit of political power, as we saw in the last chapter. The contradictions of the Renaissance—in which substantial victory against some old caste hierarchies was also accompanied by a persistence of, and a reinvention of, caste hierarchies in new forms—were a feature of the communist project as well. If there was a radicalization in culture with regard to the introduction of the language of class, the same could not be said of caste despite the significant challenge to overt caste-based deference and indignities. The structural and paradigmatic shift that happened with the language in cultural productions changing to themes on unions, factory strikes, overthrowing of feudalism and capitalism, revolution, the Soviet Union, political activity as key, state excesses and so on had a major lack: the glaring absence of a program for the complete destruction of caste. Progressive plays like Ningalenne made Dalits secondary even when a call to the revolution was made.129 As we saw, like with the other critiques of Progressive Literature Movement before, feudalistic oppression is also attacked in a very simplistic manner in the play130 and shows a linear transition to class consciousness. Thus, despite the emergence of the marginalized and oppressed figure in popular culture, the treatment did not go deep enough. One of the reasons was the fact that the producers of the new culture were predominantly from the upper castes.131 Thus, if one looks at the composition of the activists who set up KPAC, helmed it in the initial years, and the writers and other artists whose work was used for KPAC plays, it was overwhelmingly upper caste.132 In Progressive Literature, of course, as we saw, the poor, agricultural laborers, peasants and all kinds of the marginalized and the subalterns came to the fore. However, even when the aspirations and thoughts of the marginalized were brought to the fore, they were represented through a middle-class framework.133 There were explicit and sympathetic portrayals of the Dalits in the stories of Thakazhi (from as early as 1935), Kesavadev, Ponkunnam Varkey, S. K. Pottekad, Kaarur Neelakanta Pillai, Changampuzha, Lalithambika Antharjanam, and many others. However, none of them entered the “aesthetics or the epistemology pertaining to community life” of Dalits.134 The question of 238

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class predominated here. According to a Dalit critique, in Thakazhi’s celebrated novel, Randidangazhi, the Pulayas dream of building the agricultural laborers’ union rather than becoming a graduate. Empowerment for Dalits was reduced to the destruction of landlordism.135 Thakazhi did not go the way of the much-earlier novels like Saraswativijayam (1892) or Ghathakavadham (1877) which explicitly dealt with caste, even with limitations.136 It took Dalit writers like T. K. C. Vaduthala, who was writing at the same time as the progressive litterateurs, to penetrate the lifeworld of Dalits and focus on caste in a substantive manner.137 While language was democratized and became simplified, and this “socialization of Malayalam was a progressive move,” according to Dalit intellectual and activist K. K. Kochu, it still did not include the lowest of castes. In his view, progressive literature was “secular and anti-religious, but not anti-caste.”138 Often, “caste is submerged by . . . nationalist universalism.”139 The rare popular cultural production that explicitly contended with caste (rather than class) exemplifies the contradictions of a progressiveness that could not go the whole distance, and where the decrying of caste and untouchability goes along with the attempts to be a “crowd-pleaser to pre-emptively assuage the anger of offended uppercaste viewers.”140 The interplay between the universal and particular, and the nation and the region thus remained incomplete. Thus, the communist intervention in culture, backed by progressive noncommunists also, was by no means a completely entrenched one. Even if the hegemony of Sanskrit and Brahminism was questioned, upper-caste ethos itself could not be challenged in its entirety. The theater movement, despite its immense contribution to the democratization of society, still did not go the way of radical theater movements like that of Augusto Boal’s “theater of the oppressed” in which the audience itself becomes participants in representing their own history and oppression.141 In creating a new imaginary, communist plays and art were different from the social reform plays like that of Adukkalayilninnu which began with the mocking of the learning of Hindu sacred texts like Vedas and ended with the words of “Hip Hurray.” Its author Bhattathiripad also gave the call to burn all the temples. This was because the Communists did not critique tradition one-sidedly, but they did not go far enough in seeking to build a new culture based on the nonhegemonic, critical aspects of tradition. Thus, they desisted from revolutionary acts against the caste system like the public burning of Brahminical texts, such as Manusmriti, by B. R. Ambedkar and his followers.142 Here, it has to be noted as well that there were aspects of Dalit resistance in Kerala which were attracted to hyper-rationalism, or Marxist atheism,143 showing the liberatory aspects of modernization. Despite the popular aesthetic, the democratization of language through theater and “marching songs,” the movement still had not fully used the potentialities of subaltern cultures, especially that of Dalits and Adivasis. Dalits, for example, have powerful oral traditions, especially related to labor and agricultural practices.144 239

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Namboodiripad’s theoretical arguments, that we have seen so far—the limitation of Ezhuthachan’s Hindu scriptures in Malayalam being inaccessible to the untouchable communities,145 the lacunae of the Renaissance with regard to the Dalits, the marginalization of subaltern cultures and arts and the need to develop a people’s culture, all needed a vibrant communist practice with regard to the annihilation of caste which was not forthcoming. Folk arts and culture were used extensively, as we saw, and thus came out of their marginalization; but it was largely instrumental, which was a major limitation in understanding their essence.146 This prevented their rational kernel being used as a transformational force against caste in a substantive way. The advancement was that even the instrumental nature of the engagement with the folk arts gave them respect unlike before when they were denounced as lower-caste culture.147 Popular subaltern cultural forms like teyyam, mostly performed by Dalit, lower-caste and tribal communities, had been condemned as primitive by a people ranging from Hindu social reformers to Christian evangelists.148

Conclusion What this chapter and the last one show is that changes in the material sphere cannot be understood unless the cultural/ideational sphere, which influences them and is influenced by them, is also understood. Similarly, social transformation cannot be reduced to political and economic aspects. The communist hegemony would not have been possible without the crucial shift in the aesthetic dimension, especially the literary and the popular segments of theater and songs that we have looked at. Even though the Communists suffered after the PLM split, the aesthetic discourse had shifted under their influence. The conditions before under feudalism and Sanskrit hegemony could be understood by Gramsci’s description of Italy: neither a popular artistic literature nor a local production of ‘popular’ literature exists because ‘writers’ and ‘people’ do not have the same conception of the world. In other words, the feelings of the people are not lived by the writers as their own, nor do the writers have a ‘national educative’ function: they have not and do not set themselves the problem of elaborating popular feelings after having relived them and made them their own.149 The Communists tried to overcome the aforementioned split between culture and the people. The writers and activists tried to bring the feelings of the people to the fore and also set them the educative task of elaborating these feelings, but with the limitations of paternalism that I noted. As in Gramsci, the cultural project cannot be read as separate from the political project in the communist movement. The former provides the base 240

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for the latter. For Gramsci, culture “is the sphere in which ideologies are diffused and organized, in which hegemony is constructed and can be broken and reconstructed.”150 The Communist activists sought to take up the “historical task as educators and elaborators of the intellect and the moral awareness of the people-nation.” The attempt was to reach the “simplest and most uneducated classes.”151 Communists recognized the need to construct a “unified national language” and also that the intervention in this regard, to be effective, must be “organically tied to tradition.” For Gramsci, the importance of the concept is that it “recognizes the specificity of national conditions and traditions.”152 The Communists’ theoretical view of Hindu sacred texts like Ramayana and its utopian dimensions beyond ruling class ideologies, the critique of Sanskrit, their understanding of Marxist aesthetics as a continuation and fulfillment of the democratization of culture initiated by caste-reform movements, and their attempt to develop a popular aesthetic by bridging the gap between the intellectuals and people, show that they had some understanding of what Gramsci had outlined as follows: The premise of the new literature cannot but be historical, political and popular: it must work towards the elaboration of what already exists, whether polemically or in other ways does not matter. What matters is that it sinks its roots in the humus of popular culture as it is, with its tastes and tendencies and with its moral and intellectual world, even if it is backward and conventional.153 The popular language and culture itself was expanded beyond the local, to incorporate imaginaries of the national and the international. It tried to translate the substantive content of the values of Enlightenment into the vernacular: a “common national vernacular” evolved by sloughing off the influence of Sanskrit and Tamil and above various spoken dialects. Yet, the main lack, as noted, was the absence of a comprehensive and practical contention with caste. In Bengal as well, in the communist cultural movement, poetry, theater, songs and films played a big role in inaugurating a socialist vision in society, but again, it was limited by a middle-class and upper-caste Hindu sensibility.154 Despite its significant failures, the most progressive and distinctive outcome of the communist engagement in Kerala, in comparative terms, could be said to be the attempt to overcome, what has been the bane of most anticolonial and postcolonial nationalist projects—culturalism. This is something that has marked Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory as well. Culturalism can be defined as the: ensemble of intellectual orientations that crystallize methodologically around the reduction of social and historical questions to abstract questions of culture and responsible therefore not only 241

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for legitimizing hegemonic relations between societies, but also for mystifying hegemonic relations of exploitation and oppression within societies.155 The culturalist assumption sees only one aspect of culture, that is, as a way of seeing the world, as a “way of organizing the world, its time and space.” However, it does not take into account the other aspect of culture—that is, as a way of making and changing the world. The first definition “mystifies its second sense, of which it is logically and historically the product, but to which it bears a contradictory relationship.”156 On the other hand, as Parry points out, liberation movements seek to join “intelligible and still viable indigenous resources and age-old traditions of colonial resistance with the ethical horizons and utopian reach of socialism.”157 The Burkinabé revolutionary Thomas Sankara argued: We must be able to take from our past—from our traditions—all that is good, as well as all that is positive in foreign cultures, so as to give a new dimension to our culture. The inexhaustible fountainhead of the masses’ creative inspiration lies in the popular masses themselves.158 In contrast, Subaltern Studies is caught between two notions of tradition: as “invention of tradition,” that is, the “organization of the past in terms of the present,”159 and Marshall Sahlins’ definition of culture as “the organization of the current situation in terms of the past.”160 However, Subaltern Studies does not tell us how the past and present interact in creating culture. Moreover, its focus on ideational elements alone does not allow us to understand the production of material culture like “clothes, food furniture, living and working conditions, housing technology, the financial system, political system, trade and the impact of these features on people’s lives.”161 On the other hand, Chibber, as we noted, ignores culture and cultural struggles in social transformation. There is no universal culture or needs on the basis of which the exploited sections automatically fight for their rights. Culture is a battleground with a contestation of ideas, and it took some momentous struggles, as we have seen, to establish new ideas. Despite this, and the emergence of class and unity in the sphere of economic sphere in a comparative sense, peasants and working classes would still be divided by caste, especially through practices like endogamy. The communist intervention in culture thus is an example of the construction of a national-popular will in the aesthetic sphere, albeit an incomplete one. In the communist cultural intervention, there were intimations of what Dirlik conceived elsewhere as a: new culture which is neither of the West nor of the past, in other words, which can be national without being parochial and cosmo242

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politan without being alien—a new culture, the making of which must accompany the making of the new world, but without which the latter cannot be conceived.162 This is a culture that sought “to be at once universal and particular . . . [and is] forged out of the ingredients of present society.”163 These intimations did not always fructify. The sinking of the roots in the “humus of popular culture” had not still substantially tapped the most radical counterhegemonic or utopian currents within it, like within the Renaissance, or that of the most marginalized communities. The egalitarian Mavelinadu would have to wait to be put into practice. However, there were steps taken toward the cultural democratization of society. Culture itself became a cog in the movement toward a material understanding and transformation of society. The most important result would be that the cultural struggles that we have seen would aid the ending of feudal landlordism and its blatant and egregious caste oppressions and humiliations, and would inaugurate an economic discourse of the peasantry and laboring classes. Thus, what was impeded in the Italian case—the molecular diffusion of “a new ideology, a new common sense based on historical materialism”164— fructified in Kerala, but with many contradictions and failures.

Notes 1 The emergence of the popular was a multifaceted phenomenon spanning many areas. Here, I focus largely on songs and theater. 2 In colonial Mozambique, cultural resistance by peasants and workers in song, dance and carving led to anti-colonial political resistance (Benita Parry, Postcolonial Studies: A Materialist Critique (London: Routledge, 2004), 87). 3 Quoted in Andalat, Rekhayillatha Charitram [History without Documents] (Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha Publishers, 1987), 176–177. All translations from Malayalam are, unless otherwise stated, by me. 4 Amount in rupees. 5 One lakh is equal to a hundred thousand. 6 Rent and other levies by the landlord. 7 Hindu festivals. 8 A feudal levy. 9 Vasi also means obstinacy. Andalat, Rekhayillatha, 178–179. 10 P. Pavithran,“Feudalisathinte Thakarachayum Avashistangalum” [The Collapse of Feudalism and its Remains], in Nammude Sahityam, Nammude Samooham [Our Literature, Our Society], vol. 3, ed. M. N. Vijayan (Thrissur: Kerala Sahitya Akademi, 2002), 305. 11 K. K. N. Kurup, Nationalism and Social Change: The Role of Malayalam Literature (Thrissur: Kerala Sahitya Akademi, 1998), 83. 12 K. K. N. Kurup, “Karshaka Samarangalum Malayalam Sahityavum” [Peasant Struggles and Malayalam Literature], in Nammude Sahityam, Nammude Samooham [Our Literature, Our Society], vol. 2, ed. M. N. Vijayan (Thrissur: Kerala Sahitya Akademi, 2000), 136. 13 M. S. Devadas, Therenjedutha Prabandhangal [Selected Essays] (Thrissur: Kerala Sahitya Akademi, 1991), 7.

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14 Kurup, Nationalism, 84–85; The translations are by K. K. N. Kurup. 15 Administrative division. 16 V. V. Kunhambu, Kayyur Samara Charithram [History of Kayyur Resistance], 2nd ed. (Trivandrum: Chintha Publishers, 1984), 105. 17 From the song, “Lal Salaam” (Red Salute) in K. K. N. Kurup, Agrarian Struggles in Kerala (Trivandrum: CBH, 1989), 117. 18 Abdallah Laroui, The Crisis of the Arab Intellectual, trans. Diarmid Cammell (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 100. 19 People’s War, December 27, 1942 cited in Dilip Menon, Caste, Nationalism and Communism in South India: Malabar, 1900–1948 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 177. 20 Menon, Communism, 177. 21 Andalat, Rekhayillatha, 181. 22 Ibid., 181–183 (my translation). 23 Quoted in Arif Dirlik, The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1997), 15. 24 See David Ludden, “Subalterns and Others in the Agrarian History of South Asia,” in Agrarian Studies: Synthetic Work at the Cutting Edge, ed. James C. Scott and Nina Bhatt (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), 210–211. There is an awareness of this dichotomy in some of the writers. For example, Chatterjee argues that it is not enough to demarcate the two domains of elite and subaltern politics, it is also imperative to trace in “their mutually conditioned historicities the specific forms that appeared, on the one hand, in the domain defined by the hegemonic project of nationalist modernity, and on the other, in the numerous fragmented resistances to that normalizing project” (Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 13). But this recognition has not by and large translated into the Subaltern Studies research. 25 Andalat, Rekhayillatha, 183. 26 Azad, “Thozhilali Varga Samarangalum, Malayala Sahityavum” [Working Class Struggles and Malayalam Literature], in Nammude Sahityam, Nammude Samooham, vol. 1, ed. M. N. Vijayan (Thrissur: Kerala Sahitya Akademi, 2000), 212. 27 Partha Chatterjee, Our Modernity (Rotterdam: SEPHIS, 1997), 19. 28 Satheesan, 30, a lower-level Communist activist, auto-rickshaw driver, who has only few years of school education, was well aware of the songs composed by Vayalar Ramavarma in the 1940s (interview, June 2003). 29 Kurup, “Karshaka,” 135. 30 Ibid., 135, 145. 31 Ottan Thullal was created in the 18th century by an upper-caste artist Kunchan Nambiar as a critique of the elitist Chakyar Koothu, but by using elements from subaltern untouchable art forms like Parayan Thullal (P. V. Sreebitha, “Sanskritization or Appropriation: Caste and Gender in ‘Indian’ Music and Dance,” Round Table India, April 5, 2014, https://roundtableindia. co.in/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=7344:sanskritizat ion-or-appropriation-of-indian-music-and-dance-2&catid=119:feature&Ite mid=132). This again shows the intermixtures, complementarities as well as appropriations of cultures, and not just breaks between them. 32 Private Papers of Pachu Ashan. 33 Puthupally Raghavan, Sakhavu R. Sugathan [Comrade R. Sugathan] (Kottayam: Current Books, 1999), 141–142. In Muvattupuzha, the beedi workers’ union started a cultural club and organized music programs and plays during

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34 35

36 37 38 39 40

41 42 43 44 45

46 47 48 49 50 51

52

party meetings, which helped the spread of the party (Private Papers of Pachu Ashan). M. Kuttikrishnan, “Uthara Keralathinte Viplava Kavi” [The Revolutionary Poet of North Kerala], Deshabhimani Weekly 13, no. 3 (July 1980): 7. M. R. Chandrashekaran, Keralathile Purogamana Sahitya Prasthanathinte Charitram [The History of Progressive Literature Movement in Kerala] (Kozhikode: Olive Publications, 1999), 108; M. S. Priyamol, “Communication Strategy and Propaganda Techniques of Communist Movement in Kerala (1930–1957),” (Thesis, Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Calicut, Kerala, 2005), 56. Sumangala Damodaran, “Protest Through Music,” Seminar 588, 2008, www. india-seminar.com/2008/588/588_sumangala_damdaran.htm. It happened after the victory in the first strike in the Ashoka beedi company which lasted for 15 days (Pachu Ashan, 86-year-old Communist activist from a Dalit caste, interview, August 2017; Private Papers of Pachu Ashan). Minutes of the meeting of Ministry of States, Ministry of Home Affairs, Ministry of Defence, Governments of Madras, Travancore and Cochin, Delhi, April 2, 1949 (Madras Government Secret Files (USS), no. 21/49, date missing (TNA)). District Magistrate, Malabar, to the Secretary, Home Department, January 27, 1948, G. O. 630 (Confdl.), Public (General A) Department, March 12, 1948 (TNA). G. O. 630 (Confdl.), Public (General A) Department, March 12, 1948 (TNA). The government also resorted to ban material considered threatening to the government. Thus, for example, it proscribed a collection of poems called Rakthageetham (Blood Song) published by the Progressive Literature Society of Chirakkal Taluk, which included poems like “Take Up the Sword” (G. O. 1668, Public (General B) Department, May 29, 1947 quoted in Kurup, Agrarian Struggles, 121–123). Pavanan, Keralam Chuvannopol [When Kerala Turned Red] (Kottayam: National Book Stall, 1995), 22. Ibid., 23. K. K. N. Kurup, Agrarian Struggles in Kerala (Trivandrum: CBH, 1989), 15. Ibid., 29. Navayugam, November 21, 1953. A retired middle-class professional, brought up in a conservative Catholic household, recollects the fascination that the cultural programs of the Communist Party had for him as a teenager despite the fact that he had no leanings towards the party (field notes, July 2004). E. M. S. Namboodiripad, EMSinte Sampoorna Kritikal [Collected Works], vol. 9, 1948, (Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha Publishers, 2007), 364. Priyamol, “Communication Strategy,” 56–58. Namboodiripad, Sampoorna Kritikal, vol. 9, 67. Dilip Menon, “The Moral Community of the Teyyattam: Popular Culture in Late Colonial Malabar,” Studies in History 9, no. 2 (1993): 217. Ibid., 190, 217. Under the communist movement, the acts of resistance of an earlier period like the ones under the leadership of Ayyankali (see V. Panikkasseri, “Excerpts from Ayyankali,” in The Oxford India Anthology of Malayalam Dalit Writing, ed. M. Dasan, V. Prathibha, P. Pampirikunnu and C. S. Chandrika (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012), 209) became more generalized and common, as we saw before. The Communists also used popular cults like that of the cult of Parassini Muthappan, a hunter deity of the lower castes, in organizing the peasant movement.

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53

54 55

56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78

The myths of the deity related to a casteless society were of relevance to the socialist movement (Kurup, Nationalism, 121). Gilles Tarabout, “Malabar Gods, Nation-Building and World Culture: On Perceptions of the Local and the Global,” in Globalizing India: Perspectives from Below, ed. Jackie Assayag and C. J. Fuller (London: Anthem Press, 2005), 193–194. V. M. Ramachandran, “The Modern Malayalam Theater: A Brief History,” in Essays on the Cultural Formation of Kerala, ed. P. J. Cheriyan (Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala Council for Historical Research, 2000). C. Achutha Menon, “Introduction,” in Capital, ed. Thoppil Bhasi, trans. K.T. Ramavarma (Thrissur: Kerala Sahitya Akademi, 1976), 6; P. Appukkuttan, “Keraleeya Rangavediyude Oru Noottandu” [One Century of Theatre in Kerala], in Nammude, Sahityam Nammude Samooham [Our Literature, Our Society], vol. 2, ed. M. N. Vijayan (Thrissur: Kerala Sahitya Akademi, 2000), 145. Ramachandran, “Modern Malayalam Theater.” Kurup, Nationalism. M. Dasan et al., “Short Fiction,” in The Oxford India Anthology of Malayalam Dalit Writing, ed. M. Dasan, V. Prathibha, P. Pampirikunnu and C. S. Chandrika (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012), 166. Appukkuttan, “Keraleeya,” 335. Ramachandran, “Modern Malayalam Theater.” SP, Special Branch, Criminal Investigation Department (CID) to Chief Secretary, dated December 6, 1939 (Public (General) Dept. G. O. No. 2232 (Confdntl.), December 14, 1939, Kerala State Archives (KSA)). Translated excerpts of Raktapanam cited in SP’s report, (Public (General) Dept. G. O. No. 2232 (Confdntl.), December 14, 1939 (KSA). K. Damodaran, “The Science of Marxism,” Public (General) Dept. G. O. 1351 (Confdtnl.), August 8, 1939 (TNA). For a critique of the widely prevalent position that Marx did not have a concept of justice and ethics see Norman Geras, “The Controversy about Marx and Justice,” New Left Review 150 (March–April 1985): 47–85. A. V. Anilkumar, C (Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha Publishers, 2002), 41. Prabhatham, January 23, 1939. Pavithran, “Feudalisathinte,” 307–308. R. Nandgopal Menon, “Path-Breaking Plays,” Frontline 18, no. 10 (May 2001): 28. Menon, “Introduction,” 5. Priyamol, “Communication Strategy,” 53. E. M. S. Namboodiripad, Selected Writings, vol. 1 (Calcutta: National Book Agency, 1982), 406. E. M. S. Namboodiripad, Therenjedutha Prabandhangal [Selected Essays] (Thrissur: Kerala Sahitya Akademi, 1990), 41. Kurup, “Karshaka Samarangalum,” 141. Darren C. Zook, “The Farcical Mosaic: The Changing Masks of Political Theatre in Contemporary India,” Asian Theatre Journal 18, no. 2 (2001): 181. K. P. A. C., KPAC Nataka Ganangal (Thiruvananthapuram: Prabhat Book House, 2000), 18–22, 43, 129, 148, 164. O. Madhavan, actor and a former secretary of KPAC, quoted in Menon, “PathBreaking Plays,” 27–28. Damodaran, “Protest.” Menon, “Path-Breaking Plays.”

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79 M. S. Dileep, Varkkiyude Velipadukal [The Revelations of Varkey] (Kottayam: Sahitya Pravarthaka Cooperative Society, 2000). 80 Menon, “Introduction,” 12; Ramachandran, “Modern Malayalam Theatre.” 81 Ramachandran, “Modern Malayalam Theatre.” 82 Appukkuttan, “Keraleeya, 335. 83 Menon, “Introduction,” 5–15. 84 O. N. V. Kurup, foreword to KPAC Nataka Ganangal [Songs of KPAC Plays], by K. P. A. C. (Thiruvananthapuram: Prabhat Book House, 2000), vii–viii. 85 Menon, “Introduction,” 15. 86 Damodaran, “Protest.” 87 Ashok Mehta, a national-level CSP leader and Communist critic, writes: “The Communists have given special thought and taken particular pains to build up their various front organisations. From the avowed Friends of the Soviet Union to the less obvious progressive Writers’ Association and the People’s Theatre organisations have been built up to penetrate into cultural and social life to build up footholds in sectors where straightforward political agitation evokes no echo. These organisations, with their clever front men, are a fruitful source of information, and contacts to the Communists. In the underground work these organisations will yield rich harvest” (“How Strong Are Communists?” (Amrit Bazar Patrika, 18 April 1948, IOR/L/PJ/12/499, British Library, London)). 88 Namboodiripad, Therenjedutha, 34. 89 T. K. Ramachandran, “Imagined Identities, Fabricated Memories: The Fascist ‘Hindutva’ Ideology and the Cultural Life in Contemporary Kerala: A Question of Contexts,” (unpublished manuscript, 1999), 6. 90 M. Dasan, “General Introduction,” in The Oxford India Anthology of Malayalam Dalit Writing, ed. M. Dasan, V. Prathibha, P. Pampirikunnu and C. S. Chandrika (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012), xxv. 91 Chandrashekaran, Communist, 151. 92 Namboodiripad, Therenjedutha, 144. 93 C. S. Venkiteswaran, “Some Notes on Communist Idea/ls in Malayalam Cinema: Hope, Disenchantment and Nostalgia,” (Unpublished Manuscript,2018), 6. 94 M. Madhava Prasad, Ideology of the Hindi Film: A Historical Construction (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 58. 95 Ibid., 71. 96 P. Muhammed, “Cinema, Politics and Historical Consciousness: The Left and the Production of a Modern Subjectivity in Kerala, 1950s-1980s,” (Ph.D. Thesis, Department of Cultural Studies, English and Foreign Languages University Hyderabad, 2017), 31. One of the central tropes of the communist melodramas was sacrifice, at both the individual and collective levels (Ibid., 32). 97 Ratheesh Radhakrishnan, “What Is Left of Malayalam Cinema?,” in Cinemas of South India: Culture, Resistance, Ideology, ed. Sowmya Dechamma and E. Satya Prakash (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010), 25–48. 98 Patricia L. Swart, “Politics, Gender, Spectators: An Ethnographic Exploration of the Malayalam Cinema of Kerala,” (Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, New School University, 2011), 125. 99 Venkiteswaran, “Some Notes,” 3. Venkiteswaran refers to two significant films, Neelakuyil (Blue Koel, P. Bhaskaran & Ramu Kariat, 1954) and Rarichan Enna Pouran (Citizen Rarichan, P. Bhaskaran, 1956), which talk about the themes of the cultural movement of the decade like caste oppression, feudalism, poverty and exploitation of agricultural labor, without explicitly referring to communism.

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100 Namboodiripad, Therenjedutha, 241. 101 Sreebitha, “Sanskritisation.” 102 Andalat, Purogamana Sahityavum Communistkarum [Communists and Progressive Literature] (Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha Publishers, 1993), 53. 103 M. S. S. Pandian,“Towards National-Popular: Notes on Self-Respecters’ Tamil,” Economic and Political Weekly 31, no. 51 (December 1996): 3323–3324. 104 P. K. Pokker,* scholar, interview, May 1999. 105 K. E. N., “Varenya Navothanathinte Athirukal: Varenya Samudayangalile Navothanavum Malayala Sahityavum” [The Limits of Elite Renaissance: Renaissance in Elite Communities and Malayalam Literature], in Nammude Sahityam, Nammude Samooham [Our Literature, Our Society], vol. 2, ed. M. N. Vijayan (Thrissur: Kerala Sahitya Akademi, 2000), 107. 106 Namboodiripad, Sampoorna Kritikal, vol. 9, 403. 107 Ibid., 405. 108 Pandian, “National-Popular,” 3323, 3328. 109 E. V. Ramasamy quoted in ibid., 3324. 110 Namboodiripad, Therenjedutha, 151–152; N.V.P. Unnithiri,“EMS inte Bashanireekshanangal [EMS’ Observations on Language],” in Lal Salaam [Red Salute], ed. C. Anoop (Kottayam: DC Books, 2001), 341–342. 111 E. M. S. Namboodiripad, Kerala: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow, 2nd ed. (Calcutta: National Book Agency, 1968), 186–187. 112 Namboodiripad, Sampoorna Kritikal, vol. 9, 68. 113 Ibid. 114 Quoted in J. Devika, “‘A People United in Development:’ Developmentalism in Modern Malayalee Identity” (working paper 386, Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, June 2007). 115 As the popular folk song goes, under his reign, “all men were alike/ there was no falsehood, no cheating, no lying/ no danger to anyone”. After Mahabali’s (Maveli) banishment, he was allowed to return to his own kingdom once in a year. Kerala’s most popular harvest festival Onam also celebrates his return. Mahabali is an icon among the lower-caste/Dalit communities who believe he is a victim of Brahminical deceit (P. K. Yasser Arafath, “Onam, Mahabali and the Narrow Imaginations of the Right,” The Wire, September 4, 2017, https:// thewire.in/politics/onam-mahabali-hindutva-right). The mythology is prevalent in various forms in other parts of India as well. 116 Quoted in Devika, “People United,” 7. 117 Namboodiripad, Sampoorna Kritikal, vol. 9, 70, 32. 118 Tomy Joseph, “Empowerment of Dalits and the Role of Dalit Movements in Kerala: A Study of Kottayam District,” (Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, St. Thomas College, Pala), 83. 119 The work of the Kumaran Asan is an example (Pavithran, “Feudalisathinte,” 303). 120 Pavithran, “Feudalisathinte,” 301. 121 Kurup, “Karshaka,” 145. 122 Ibid., 134. 123 Ibid., 135. 124 Azad, “Thozhilali Varga Samarangalum,” 212. 125 File No. 1923/44/C.S., Reports and Publication of “Labour Songs” (KSA) quoted in S. P. John, “History of the Left Intervention in the Cultural Scenario of Kerala,” (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Kerala, Trivandrum, 2012), 40. 126 File No. 58/1949/C.S. (KSA) cited in John,“History of the Left Intervention,” 41. 127 T. J. Nossiter, Marxist State Governments in India (London: Pinter, 1988), 42.

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128 Chandrashekaran, Communist, 29. Cherukad’s works could be said to be a literary portrayal of the struggles of the peasant union (Pavithran, “Feudalisathinte,” 308). 129 The film adaptation made years later does not deviate from the play’s central premises. The upper-caste Communist organizes the Dalit laborers (see Ningalenne Communistakki. Directed by Thoppil Bhasi. Alappuzha: Boban Kunchako, 1970; similarly, in Mooladhanam, the upper-caste Communist organizer is given shelter and support while he is hiding by the lower-caste Communist sympathizers (Directed by P. Bhaskaran. M. Azim, 1969). But by the 1970s, Thoppil Bhasi and KPAC wrote and produced plays which took a critical look at the communist movement (P. Muhammed, “Cinema, Politics and Historical Consciousness: The Left and the Production of a Modern Subjectivity in Kerala, 1950s-1980s,” (Ph.D. Thesis, Department of Cultural Studies, English and Foreign Languages University Hyderabad, Hyderabad, 1989), 145–146). 130 K. Sreejith, “Experience of Janakiya Samskarika Vedi in Kerala (1980–82),” Economic and Political Weekly 40, no. 50 (2005): 5333–5337. 131 T. K. Anilkumar, “Keezhala Sannidhyam Swathanthryananthara Malayala Sahithyathil” [Subaltern Presence in Post-Independence Malayalam Literature], in Nammude Sahityam, Nammude Samooham [Our Literature, Our Society], vol. 3, ed. M. N. Vijayan (Thrissur: Kerala Sahitya Akademi, 2002), 240. 132 See http://kpacdrama.com. 133 K. N. Ganesh, “Malayala Sahithyathinte Samskarika Bhoomishashtram” [The Cultural Topography of Malayalam Literature], in Nammude Sahityam, Nammude Samooham [Our Literature, Our Society], vol. 2, ed. M. N. Vijayan (Thrissur: Kerala Sahitya Akademi, 2000), 639. 134 Dasan et al., Malayalam Dalit Writing, 50. 135 P. Pampirikunnu, “Nationalism, Modernity, Keralaness: A Subaltern Critique,” in No Alphabet in Sight: New Dalit Writing from South India, ed. K. Satyanarayana and Susie Tharu (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2011), 563. 136 Ibid. Dasan, “General Introduction,” xxxii. 137 Dasan et al., Malayalam Dalit Writing, 50. 138 K. K. Kochu, “Language and People,” in The Oxford India Anthology of Malayalam Dalit Writing, ed. M. Dasan, V. Prathibha, P. Pampirikunnu and C. S. Chandrika (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012), 255. 139 Pampirikunnu, “Nationalism, Modernity, Keralaness,” 563. 140 Anna Vetticad, “Indian Films That Sparked the Critic in Me: P. Bhaskaran, Ramu Kariat’s Neelakuyil Married Caste, Sexual Politics and George Eliot,” First Post, December 2, 2020, www.firstpost.com/entertainment/indian-films-thatsparked-the-critic-in-me-p-bhaskaran-ramu-kariats-neelakuyil-married-castesexual-politics-and-george-eliot-9074011.html. Thus, the landmark film, Neelakuyil, posits caste as a choice for the lower castes and is ultimately written from the point of view of the casteist upper-caste hero (Ibid.). 141 See Dia Mohan,“Jana Sanskriti’s Theatre and Political Practice in Rural Bengal: The Making of Popular Culture,” South Asian Popular Culture 2, no. 1 (2004): 39–53. 142 Bhalchandra Mungekar, “Annihilating Caste,” Frontline, July 29, 2011, https:// frontline.thehindu.com/social-issues/article30176329.ece. 143 Dasan, “General Introduction,” xxix. 144 Ibid., xxvi. 145 Even though Ezhuthachan belonged to a lower caste, his Malayalam was still heavily influenced by Sanskrit and located in an upper-caste framework which completely ignored the languages of the lower castes (Dasan, “General Introduction,” xiv).

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146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159

160 161 162 163 164

Ganesh, “Malayala Sahithya,” 644–645. Tarabout, “Malabar Gods,” 195. Ibid., 192. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from Cultural Writings, ed. David Forgacs and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, trans. William Boelhower (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1985), 206–207. David Forgacs, “National-Popular: Genealogy of a Concept,” in The Cultural Studies Reader, ed. Simon During (London: Routledge, 1993), 186. Gramsci, Cultural Writings, 211. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, ed. and trans. Quentin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International, 1971), 350. Gramsci, Cultural Writings, 102. Subho Basu and Auritro Majumder, “Dilemmas of Parliamentary Communism,” Critical Asian Studies 45, no. 2 (2013): 175, 188. Dirlik, Postcolonial Aura, 26. Ibid., 24. Parry, Postcolonial Studies, 10. Quoted in ibid., 87. K. Sivaramakrishnan quoted in Vinay Bahl, “Situating and Rethinking Subaltern Studies for Writing Working Class History,” in History after the Three Worlds: Post-Eurocentric Historiographies, ed. Arif Dirlik, Vinay Bahl and PeterGran (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), 101. Quoted in Bahl, “Subaltern Studies,” 101. Bahl, “Subaltern Studies,” 100. Dirlik, Postcolonial Aura, 27. Ibid., 49. Gramsci, Cultural Writings, 211.

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6 REDISTRIBUTION AND RECOGNITION The land reforms and the workers’ act

The most important dimension of the construction of the national-popular will by the Communists was bridging the material-symbolic division of social existence which had characterized the bourgeois nationalist imagination. Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory through their culturalist reading accentuated this division between the material and the cultural. The developing schism in social theory between society and culture on one side and state institutions and political economy on the other was dramatized by Subaltern Studies.1 This chapter will show that the struggle for land reforms and labor legislation is a demonstration of the inseparability of the material and symbolic dimensions. The Communists’ negotiation of the transition to a democracy, unlike the postcolonial bourgeois nationalist imagination, recognized that the empowerment of lower peasantry and agricultural labor and their enjoyment of citizenship rights required the amelioration of their material condition. As Gramsci asks: Can there be cultural reform, and can the position of the depressed strata of society be improved culturally, without a previous economic reform and a change in their position in the social and economic fields? Intellectual and moral reform has to be linked with a programme of economic reform—indeed the programme of economic reform is precisely the concrete from in which every intellectual and moral reform presents itself.2 At the same time, the incomplete national-popular meant that the slogan “land to the tiller” was only partially realized and what Patrick Heller had termed as “arguably the most successful strategy of redistributive development outside the socialist world” would confer on the agricultural laborer, the actual tiller of land, rights to only homesteads and labor rights. This is something that has been obscured in the valoristic assessments of the Kerala Model. This phase of struggle was also to take place between 1957 and 1974, and communism’s gradual ensconcement in electoral politics with the attendant pressure toward dilution of its class agenda. 251

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The enormous support that the Communist Party got from the peasantry and agricultural labor and the intense struggles that followed for land reforms and labor legislation belie the culturalist analysis of Subaltern Studies. At the same time, they should not be considered as a “material” struggle alone for it was for it was equally about recognition. There has been a tendency to see peasant movements as fighting for economic interests only.3 The land reforms were not just the end result of a process merely motivated by “land hunger” as Jeffrey Paige has argued with regard to peasant revolts of early modernity, which were “little more than simultaneous land rushes by thousands of peasants bent on obtaining land that they may legally regard as theirs.”4 Subaltern Studies’ critique of modernity and the reinstatement of the subaltern, based as it is on the celebration of subalternity, does not involve the material transformation of the subaltern. Therefore, it is not clear as to how the Subalternists’ aim of inaugurating a “democratic project . . . [with] the peasant as citizen in contemporary political modernity”5 can be fulfilled. The basic problem stems from the fact that Subaltern Studies considers the notion of class as an external phenomenon, implanted in India via colonialism. Moreover, the concept of class is defined in non-economic terms, in terms of power relations. Hence, we have the broad category of the subaltern and the elite classes.6 In the colonial period, the peasant’s subjection to the state, moneylender and the landlord: was primarily political in character, economic exploitation being only one, albeit the most obvious, of its several instances. . . . Indeed, the element of coercion was so explicit and so ubiquitous in all their dealings with the peasant that he could hardly look upon this relationship with them as anything but political.7 Here, the understanding of class as the “performance, appropriation, distribution, and receipt of surplus labour”8 is missing. This narrative ignores the implications of the fact that in all agrarian class societies this surplus goes to the dominant class of non-producers.9 Without the material transformation of the condition of the marginalized classes, many postcolonial democracies in the South have turned out to be formal democracies. Formal democracy guarantees civic liberties, pluralism, the system of contract, and the principle of representation. However, it “does not reveal anything of the economic structure of society, its relations of contract, and correspondingly its power relations.” Therefore, it becomes the paradox of formal democracy that the right to property in practice “excludes de facto the majority of population from that property.”10 Therefore, the transition from feudalism to capitalism does not bring about any substantial change in the life chances of the peasantry and agrarian labor. Agnes Heller argues that this paradox can only be solved by formal 252

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democracy turning itself into socialist democracy and by generalizing ownership.11 Subaltern Studies’ critique of bourgeois (Western) ideas of equality does not allow it to formulate an effective solution to the paradox. It seeks a revival of community alone as answer to the onslaught of capital.12 However, this presupposes society expressing one homogenous will, which does not exist in actuality. Therefore, the system of contracts which protects the interests and will of every constituent of society becomes an inevitability,13 even as non-contractual forms of community can be sought to be constructed simultaneously. However, Subaltern Studies will not accept something like “interests” because that is premised on bourgeois notions of the individual. On the contrary, the peasantry acts on the basis of community: “Collective action does not flow from the contract among individuals; rather individual identities themselves are derived from membership in a community.”14 Communism in Kerala, while being implicated in the modernist project, also displayed tendencies that went against it. From the beginning, for example, it was under no stagist illusion that it had to construct an industrial working class and capitalism before it could think about socialism. It understood very well that it was absolutely based on the peasantry and its struggles since Kerala was an agriculture-dependent society. Very early on, it was clear that the party’s success was due to support of the peasantry and agricultural labor. It also recognized that the conditions in which it functioned resembled the Chinese situation more than the Soviet one.15 Unlike the Subalternist critique of Marxist and communist belief in the mode of production teleology, here the communist mobilization is premised not on the “death of the peasant,” as we saw in the period of the construction of communist hegemony. This is akin to Gramsci’s emphasis on contending with the peasantry and its consciousness in Italy as the peasantry dominated in numbers. In essence, the transition to a democracy was helmed by the agricultural labor and peasantry and not by the industrial working class or the emerging bourgeoisie.

Prelude to land reforms What will be the institutionalization of land reforms in the 1970s after decades-long strong struggle by the communist parties should not obfuscate the fact that agrarian radicalism was not just the outcome of communist activism, but predates it by at least a century. Malabar saw a series of agrarian uprisings for nearly hundred years16 before the emergence of the Communists. As a substantial number of the tenants were Muslims and the superordinates, Hindu, the conflict assumed religious overtones, especially because the rebellions were expressed in Islamic idioms. Despite the explosive nature of these uprisings, “they did not spawn continuing organization or lasting political projects but were more in the character of jacqueries.”17 However, this changed with emergence of the communist movement. 253

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It was, as we have seen, the ability (and the promise) to simultaneously address exclusions based on material and symbolic aspects and the bringing to the fore of the dimension of material oppression that entrenched Communists in society. However, until the communist movement secured state power, it did not have the power to fundamentally alter social relations. In the first elections held in 1957, after the present-day state of Kerala came into existence in 1956 by unifying the three administrative regions of Malabar, Travancore and Cochin, the Communists assumed governmental power, which was the result of a two-decade long ideological struggle. Initially, as we have seen, the peasant movement had operated with in the moral economy framework. The peasants were mainly against the “illegal” feudal exactions which went above the rent amount. Gradually, demands for the reduction of rent, and then, “land to the tiller” entered the peasant vocabulary. With the liberation from colonial rule, peasants and the agricultural labor began to really assert their rights. The Communist Party itself put forward specific demands by 1954 which included the suspension of evictions, conferring of ownership rights on those who had possession rights of 12 years, ceiling of acres on holdings and so on.18 The push to the land reforms got a fillip with the unification of all the regional Karshaka Sanghams into a state unit called the Kerala Karshaka Sangham (KKS) in 1956 in a conference held at Shoranur. It claimed a membership of 130,000. The conference put forth the demands for the suspension of evictions, implementation of land reforms, debt relief for peasantry and so on.19 However, the strength of the landed classes can be gauged by the fact that even after two decades of peasant struggle, the agrarian structure had remained almost unaltered.20 With the rise of the communist movement, there was an increasing fear among the propertied classes.21 The non-communist government that came to power in 1954 in Travancore–Cochin piloted seven Land Reform Bills, but had to face the stiff opposition of the vested interests. The landed classes toppled the ministry before it could pass the bills. The Congress government that followed it passed five Land Reform Acts which did not have any radical content in them, and therefore, did not evoke any opposition.22 The Malabar Landholders’ Association, for example, called the legislation of the Madras government to amend the Malabar Tenancy Act in the 1950s as “class legislation” that “has caused widespread discontent and apprehension in the public mind.”23 Here, it is interesting to note how the interests of the landed class have been disguised as that of the public. There were a variety of arguments proffered against the move which included the recourse by the feudal classes to the market logic of increasing productivity.24 While Subaltern Studies criticizes the evolutionism of teleological theories to show the persistence and inevitability of pre-capitalist elements in modernity, it misses the adoption of languages of modernity—“the public,” “productivity” and so on—by the feudal propertied classes in a quest to legitimize their power. If the feudal propertied were threatened, the emerging capitalist classes, like 254

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the Christian business class in Kerala had a strong vested interest in the scuttling of land reforms. They had invested vast amounts of capital got from business in agriculture, and their primary interest was in expanding market forces in agriculture. The ceilings sought to be imposed by land reforms would have been a great impediment to these classes’ aspirations for an unrestricted development of capitalism. They held high positions within the Congress party and were able to successfully thwart any attempts (even mild ones) at reform of the land structure.25 The government was even warned that the proposed agrarian bill,“instead of appeasing the Communists, it will only tend to swell the number.”26 However, the relentless push by the Communists ensured that the amendment was passed. It secured some concessions and independence to the poor tenants but without dismantling landlordism.27 The question of abolishing landlordism was all the more urgent in Malabar where the percentage of cultivated area held by tenants, as we have seen, was substantially more than in Travancore.28 In 1951, the distribution of agrarian classes in Kerala was in this order (figures for India in parentheses): land owners: 35.3% (67.8), tenants: 23.1% (12.6), agricultural laborers: 39.2% (17.9), non-cultivating rentiers: 2.4% (1.8).29 The incompleteness of earlier reforms like the 1930 Malabar Tenancy Act has already been seen in Chapter 2. As in the phase of the construction of hegemony, the Communists, in this phase of the implementation of the land reforms, perceived and attacked landlordism in structural and systemic terms.

The arduous road to land reforms The question of tenancy reforms, which was on the agenda of the Communists since the movement began, became the most important issue confronting the newly formed communist government. The weight of expectations on the new government could be gauged by the fact that within a week it passed an ordinance staying all the evictions of tenants and hutment dwellers, and barring the courts from entertaining fresh eviction suits till the time the Agrarian Relations bill could be introduced in the Assembly.30 The whole historical momentum was for the resolution of the land question. The bill itself was introduced in December 1957, and after a long-drawn process of discussions and consultations with all the interest groups and in the Legislative Assembly, the Kerala Agrarian Relations Bill (KARB) was passed on June 10, 1959.31 The main features of the 1957 bill were: the fixing of a ceiling for the extent of holdings, the fixation of maximum rates of fair rent in respect of various classes of land, the surrender of land in excess of the ceiling, compulsory purchase of the rights of the landlord by permanent tenants on payment of a purchase price, rights of tenants to fixity of tenure and so on.32 The reaction to the bill was on expected lines. There was a huge counter-mobilization 255

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of the landed interests. The opposition to the bill by even members of a party like the Praja Socialist Party (People’s Socialist Party) showed the kind of interests ranged against land reforms. One of its members, in a discussion of the Select Committee Report on the bill in the Assembly, described the implications thus: Tens of thousands of murders will take place after the passage of the bill. What has come down through many generations will breakdown and disappear. . . . It is a sin to take away somebody else’s land and wealth [which is] equivalent to murder. . . . I had felt earlier that it is not yet time to introduce adult suffrage here. That is the reason why they [Communists] have been able to come to power and introduce this expropriatory bill.33 It is interesting to note the view that democracy is responsible for the Communists coming to power. It was also not unsurprising that huge public demonstrations took place, just two days after the bill was passed, led by the Catholic Church and the Nair Service Society (NSS) of the Nair caste, the two communities which were going to be substantially affected by the land-reform bill and the education bill (which sought to regulate the private ownership of educational institutions). Of course, the “counter-revolution” called the Vimochana Samaram (Liberation Struggle) could not be built on the premise of the threat to “material” interests of the mainly upper classes of these communities, it had to involve a symbolic discourse as well, which was the supposed threat to religion posed by the “satanic” force of communism. Among the Christian laity especially this was an important factor that mobilized it against the communist government.34 A Catholic Bishops’ conference was held which explored “material and spiritual” ways of overthrowing the communist government.35 The “Struggle” was a grand coalition of religious and casteist interests among the Nairs, Christians and the Muslims, which lasted six weeks, and was able to secure the assent of the central government which had no qualms in undemocratically dismissing the communist regime. As A. K. Gopalan argued: “The bourgeoisie swears by democracy only as long as the balance of power remains in their demands. When it begins to slip away, they will resort to anti-democratic and fascist methods to retain it.”36 The coalition of the propertied classes of all the communities and their virulent evocation of religious symbols contradicts the Subaltern Studies’ positing of the community and capital as antithetical universals.37 This conceptualization is as historicist and evolutionist as the theories that Subaltern Studies seeks to criticize. It does not see the myriad forms that community has assumed in the present-day conditions. Chatterjee argues (by following Marx, as he claims), “community, in the narrative of capital, becomes relegated to the latter’s pre-history, a natural, 256

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pre-political, primordial stage in social revolution that must be superseded for the journey of freedom and progress to begin.” However, according to him, what Marx did not see “was the ability of capitalist society to ideologically reunite capital and labor at the level of the political community of the nation.”38 Chatterjee does not, however, acknowledge the unity of capital and community (at a level other than the nation). Therefore, it is posited to be in contradiction with capital. “Community, which ideally should have been banished from the kingdom of capital, continues to lead a subterranean, potentially subversive, life within it because it refuses to go away.” Community “marks a limit to the realm of disciplinary power.” It is only by “uncovering a necessary contradiction between capital and community,” we can move to a “fundamental critique of modernity from within itself.”39 This ignores the ways in which community becomes a terrain of disciplinary power and also as a site for the reproduction of capital by trying to paper over the inequalities (especially related to class) within it. This was demonstrated in no uncertain terms in the Liberation Struggle against the communist ministry. The growing demand for land reforms led to the formation of a landowners’ association drawing members from across communities, which indulged in violent campaign against the laborers and trade unionists.40 Here, the material/symbolic and capital/community binary posited by Subaltern Studies collapses. What was interesting was that after the fall of the communist government and the dilution of the KARB by various non-communist governments, the peasant mobilization, instead of slackening, only acted as a catalyst for “continuous debate, struggle, and movement.”41 After the communist government fell, there was a peasant jatha under A. K. Gopalan’s leadership, which traversed from one end of the state to another, with the purpose of putting pressure on the new government to pass the KARB without any amendments. Numerous meetings were held and hundreds of pamphlets were distributed. The scale was unprecedented, covering 425 miles in 26 days of walking, and selling 35,000 pamphlets to the people.42 Until the last day, Gopalan reportedly addressed one million people in 266 public meetings.43 Like in the early years of activism, the peasants started asking for receipts for the rent paid and even marched on jathas to the janmi’s houses.44 The Communist Party organized many meetings and study classes to sensitize the public about the character of the KARB and the need to oppose amendments to it. Before the 1964 Land Reform Act was passed by the Congress government, a new organization called the Karshaka Niyama Raksha Samiti (Council for Protection of Land Reforms) was formed to press for the implementation of the KARB.45 The party and the peasant unions relentlessly “organized marches, satyagrahas, picketing, hunger strikes by the leadership and even a ‘Land Reforms Act Burning Day’ during which copies of the 1963 Act were publicly torched.”46 In order to heighten the awareness of the peasants the party, 257

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for instance, tried to organize a volunteer squad by the name of “kisan service squad” in every village with the intention of making the All India Kisan Sabha meeting, which was to be held in Kerala, a grand success. The meeting was to formulate a plan of action with regard to the solution of the problems facing the peasantry especially the question of tenure reform.47 The peasant unions elected a representative from each block in the state to send to the all-India meeting. To sensitize the peasantry to the larger issues involved and the program to be undertaken, jathas were constantly undertaken under the aegis of the karshaka sanghams, which went house to house and also held public meetings. Struggle councils were formed, and peasant volunteers were recruited with the purpose of winning the rights of the peasantry.48 The KKS had organized in the early 1960s a special conference for oral tenants, that is, for those without any written records of rights or the receipts of rent paid. Similarly, the KKS won a significant demand regarding the creation of record of tenancy for those tenants with disputed rights.49 Contra Subaltern Studies, the demand for modern forms of legal system is visible here and they are not merely imposed on a “traditional” order. The distance traveled from the first years of peasant activism can be gauged from the fact that there was hardly any participation in public meetings in the countryside then. As Keraleeyan reminisced, the activists had to speak mostly to air and the trees.50 On the other hand, the fall of the communist ministry and the eight-year gap until the next one was elected gave ample time for the landed classes to prepare for the impending legislation of another agrarian reform bill. In the meantime, the non-communist governments passed legislation that hollowed out the core of the KARB. For example, the Kerala Land Reforms Act of 1964 removed the provision for the compulsory vesting of the rights of the landlord in the government for transfer to the tenants thus putting off the agenda of the abolition of landlordism. It included tenure reform rather than land redistribution, increase in the ceiling limit, doubling the amount of land which can be owned by a “small-holder,” increasing the amount to be paid by tenants for the purchase of the land cultivated and so on.51 If the government was lenient, landlords themselves used many innovative methods to evade the law like mortgage arrangements which concealed tenancy, partition and transfer of tenancies (most of which were bogus), etc. The Act itself encouraged sales and transfers of land on a big scale. This was around 0.4 million acres in the period 1957–1966, negatively affecting the amount of surplus land that would be redistributed in the future.52 Replicating the all-India-land-reform experience, during the Congress government that followed the Communists, in fact more tenants had been evicted than granted fixity!53 The Revenue Minster of the government pointed out that the rationale behind the new bill was that: it should not be the case that the benefits of any social reforms should go to only one section of the population and thus by impli258

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cation, the disadvantages borne by another section. All groups of people should be equally considered and the whole process should be just.54 In essence, the minister was hinting at the fact that legislation of the kind that the Communists sought to pass were expropriatory in nature and would undermine the position of the propertied. Questions like the historical origins of property and how its ownership is blatantly skewed are not gone into here and the propertied harbor a sense of being the victims.55 It was only with the coming back to power of the Communists heading the United Front ministry in 1967 that they could once again address the question of land reforms.56 The ministry introduced the comprehensive land-reform amendment bill in the Assembly on August 19, 1968 and passed it (Kerala Land Reforms Amendment Act, KLRAA) on October 17, 1969 “as a successful attempt to restore the major provisions of the KARB of 1959.”57 However, the story of land reforms was yet to be completed for the mere act of passing of legislation does not mean much in a formal democracy.58 The CPM knew that unless tremendous pressure was brought upon the government from below, the Act would go unimplemented. In December 1969, soon after the passing of the Land Reform Act, the CPM held a peasant and agricultural labor convention inaugurated by A. K. Gopalan, the president of the All-India Kisan Sabha. It was reported that nearly 300,000 people attended the main rally, which was so large that it worried the propertied classes. Three campaign jathas converged from different parts of the state traversing through many villages and addressing many meetings.59 Again, what is to be noted is the extra-local mobilization of people with the regional and national imaginary strong. In the meeting, it was declared that the “peasants themselves” would take the initiative to take over the land and “secure . . . all benefits under the Act.” According to Gopalan, “no Government machinery could succeed in implementing land reforms.”60 The CPM exhorted its Karshaka Sanghams to implement the act through direct action without waiting for the government to do so. It was decided that no rent should be paid; the hutment-dwellers (agricultural labor who were attached to the landlords and who lived in hutments provided by the latter) should fence off ten cents of land around his/her hut; all excess land should be occupied, and that all attempts by the government, police and courts should be resisted.61 This was a major issue of confrontation between the government and CPM activists. Ismail recalls the huge struggles that had taken place in the Muvattupuzha region, especially against some of the big landlords. In one incident, Ismail was jailed for 15 days.62 Many agricultural laborers, according to Pachu Ashan, went to jail.63 The party claimed the deaths of 32 peasants and the arrests of 50,000 activists.64 According to Gopalan, “massive repression” was undertaken by the government against 259

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the struggle including the razing of huts and the raping of women laborers.65 The agricultural labor and hutment dwellers could be mobilized because they bore the brunt of the bureaucratic red-tapism.66 The land-grab agitation that was launched on the first day of the KLRAA coming into existence had the primary goal of encouraging hutment dwellers to fence off their land to thwart this invariable cumbersomeness of bureaucracy. The landless agricultural laborers in many places put up huts on government and private lands and hoisted the Communist Party flag. About 150,000 laborers are supposed to have got land in this manner.67 This conflict was an important event in bringing to the fore the class contradictions between the landless laborers and the other classes. Thus, contra Subaltern Studies, there is no homogenous peasant community. The classes that got land under land reforms would later be hostile to agricultural labor securing land. It was obvious that without pressure from below, the bureaucracy would not act. For example, in the district of Alleppey, by 1973 only 13 families surrendered 392.54 acres of excess land.68 The “Excess Land Agitation” itself was specifically launched in 1972 as a counter to the government’s failure to implement ceiling provisions. In the exercise of identifying excess land held, it was impossible to do so without the local participation of the people. A Samara Samiti (struggle council) was formed to identify land holdings; the results were matched with Revenue Department figures.69 It had become a common practice for the Samiti volunteers to enter surplus land belonging to landlords and start cultivating and harvesting crops. The fact that the land was occupied was indicated by planting the red flag of the Communists.70 Armed resistance became the norm in areas where peasant mobilization has been strong. The peasantry took over illegal surplus lands held by landlords, and also protected their crops against the might of the landlords, the police and the hoodlums hired by the landlords. Almost 200 and 300 volunteers were getting arrested every day.71 Then, there was the picketing of government offices across the state.72 Gopalan, again, led a jeep procession through the state in 1972 as a part of the campaign to identify excess land during which the objectives and needs of the agitation were explained to the people.73 The end result of the process was the identification of almost 200,000 acres of surplus land.74 Gopalan spent 23 days in jail for taking part in the struggle. He himself noted in irony that he was in prison when India became independent in 1947, and also in the 25th year of its independence.75 Thus, the struggle for land reforms, as the struggles in the initial phase, was distinctly marked by the characteristics of a political society as theorized by postcolonial theory. Now, this usage by postcolonial theory can lead to a lot of confusion as it differs from the existing understandings of political society, which like Gramsci’s, mainly equate it with the state. However, in postcolonial theory, political society is a domain “lying between civil society and the state.”76 The main argument is that Western political theory (because 260

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of its inherent Eurocentrism) is unable to theorize about much of political activity in the Global South, for it encompasses only the formal and legal aspects thus excluding a vast domain of activity which does not conform to the rules of modern civil society.77 Chatterjee argues that “The politics of democratization must therefore be carried out not in classical transactions between state and civil society but in the much less well-defined, legally ambiguous, contextually and strategically demarcated terrain of political society.”78 A classic example of this is the thousands of poor, illegal squatters in urban areas whose rights are guaranteed not by law but by strategic negotiations with political parties. Since civil society is restricted to only a small section of “citizens,” it is imperative that theoretical vocabulary be found for the political practices for the vast majority of the people. This is a laudable venture, but in keeping with the binarizing strategy, in postcolonial theory, political society is posited against civil society and also privileged over it.79 The struggles for land reforms constantly violated the standards of civil society and thus would fall under the notion of political society. Violence and force were resorted to often as demonstrated in the forcible occupation of excess lands and the fencing off of hutments.80 However, where postcolonial theory errs is to see political society as the domain of the marginalized and the subalterns while viewing civil society as an arena of the elites. It misses the bridging of the binary. The peasant struggles while violating civil society norms were also simultaneously seeking to establish a civil society which incorporated all sections of the population. They were also about moving from the temporary contextual arrangements of political society mediated by the power of political parties to the rational-legal framework of modern democracies as demonstrated by the peasants’ demand for rent receipts and the abolition of oral tenancy. Thus, as will be elaborated in the following, they also crucially bridged the binaries outlined by postcolonial theory.

The abolition of landlordism The cumulative result of almost three decades of struggle was that it bestowed on “Kerala the unique distinction among the Indian states of having abolished feudal landlordism lock, stock and barrel.”81 The immediate result of the land-grab and excess land agitation was the accruement of benefits to the agrarian underclass. The main achievement was the inclusion of the Land Reform Act in the Ninth Schedule of the Indian Constitution, which put it beyond the purview of judicial review.82 A variety of other demands of the Struggle Council like the publication of the ceiling returns, penal sanctions against those in violation of the provisions of the Land Reform Act, inclusion of people’s representatives in the distribution of excess land and so on were met.83 The Communist leaders themselves saw the bigger achievement as the politicization of the peasants and agrarian labor with the participation of nearly 200,000 volunteers in the struggle.84 One of the 261

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early indicators of the popular support for the mobilization undertaken by the Communists was the increase in votes received by CPM, which went up from 1.5 million votes (in 1967) to 1.75 million votes in 1970.85 It was through the land reforms that the Communist parties virtually secured their hegemony over the poor peasantry.86 However, the definition of “personal cultivation” was broadened by the Land Reform Act to include “supervision,” which seriously affected the slogan, “land to the tiller.”87 This was the core reason for the future marginalization of agricultural labor when it comes to wealth ownership and its deleterious effect on the socioeconomic status of Dalit castes.88 Despite this, if the land reforms of Kerala leave behind the reforms in other states by a great distance, it is a commentary on the scale of control that was exercised by the feudal landed classes in the rest of India. If the agricultural labor was not the main beneficiary of the land reforms,89 the provision of allotting 3–10 cents (1 acre = 100 cents) to the hutment dwellers attached to the landlords (and composed mainly of former agrestic slaves) which benefited nearly 300,000 landless households was an important achievement. As a result, the percentage of agricultural labor which was without land was reduced from 30% in 1963–1964 to 7.8% in 1983–1984.90 What this did was to end the “threat of eviction as a source of landlord control and power.”91 Similarly, the percentage of other rural labor without land was reduced from 40% to 5% in the same period.92 Herring contends that the “the core of the reforms—the abolition of landlordism was remarkably successful, despite delays, setbacks, and evasion.” He puts the number of tenant beneficiaries at almost 1.3 million which constituted 43.3% of the agricultural households,93 a significant number by any standard. Of course, the Communists were aware of the limitations with which they had to function, and also the fact the reforms would remove only feudalism, not capitalism. “In its anti-feudal character, land reform in Kerala was revolutionary; in other respects, it was reformist and may even be considered to be radical, but was certainly far from revolutionary.”94 The greatest failing of the reform was that the class position of the agricultural labor would remain the same and the size of the land for it was miniscule to upturn caste-based social status in a revolutionary fashion. Further, the large plantations were excluded from the purview of land reforms,95 which would later turn out to be a great impediment in further democratization of production relations. Yet, the land reforms and the labor legislation that we will see in the following, other than abolishing feudal relations, did constrain capitalism, forcing it to be democratically mediated by the organized power of the working class and peasantry.96 The poet G. Shankara Kurup argued that the significance of the reforms was not understood properly “because we have been conditioned to the theory of blood-soaked revolutions.”97 However, in the minds of people, the impact of the reforms was nothing but revolutionary despite the lack 262

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of land for the real tiller. This was because of the extreme nature of feudal caste-based oppression and its features like slavery that were prevalent in Kerala. In a Dalit woman’s account, even the securing of the rights to the tiny plot of the homestead was considered the most significant from an experiential sense.98 As one of the beneficiaries, an Ezhava from a small peasant household put it, his family “could not believe the fact that they got rights over the land they have been cultivating over a hundred years.”99 Similarly, the importance of the land reforms in Kerala, from a comparative perspective, emerges clearly when we place them against the experience elsewhere, and the overall story is that of the “long history of failed agrarian reforms.”100 Even where they have been successful, they have not come about through a democratic mobilization. The most famous irony is that of the failure of agrarian reforms in the oldest liberal democracy, the United States.101 Despite risking embourgeoisement, the Communist Party was clear that until the peasants got permanent rights on the land they tilled, the laws regarding rent reduction and so on were not going to be effective.102 This can be contrasted with the other argument for the indirect alleviation of poverty through higher growth rates that would trickle down. However, this has not been proved empirically.103 The transformation brought about by the peasant activism under communism also questions the argument similar to that of the Subaltern Studies put forth by Gail Omvedt (from a national perspective) that the Communists had a negative attitude toward the peasantry and always wanted the latter to be subordinated to the “leadership of the working class.”104

Workers’ rights If the land reforms primarily benefited the tenantry, especially the richer sections, and the landless agricultural laborers, who were the actual tillers of the soil, got only tiny homesteads, the latter won a significant victory through the legislation of the Kerala Agricultural Workers’ Act (KAWA) in 1974, called “the most progressive agrarian legislation up to date anywhere in India.”105 This was also the result of a protracted struggle of the agricultural labor, which as we have seen, started in the early 1940s. The first communist ministry was dismissed before it could enforce the Minimum Wages Act that it passed. With the impending actualization of land reforms, the agrarian coalition mobilized against feudalism began to collapse. Unlike the Subalternist emphasis of an undifferentiated peasant community, the class differentiation was becoming all the more prominent and it was clear that many of the farmers who were resisting the demands of the laborers were ex-tenants and Communist backers.106 The irony is that, as Chibber points out, Chatterjee does talk about the class differentiation within the peasantry but underplays it to privilege the community consciousness of the peasantry.107 The CPM increasingly realized that it had to mobilize the 263

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landless laborers and the poor peasantry on a bigger scale than before. In Gopalan’s words: Agricultural laborers now constitute 25 to 40 percent of the population in most of the states and we have to make them the hub of all our activity. Reluctance to take up their demands, fearing that this will drive the rich and middle-level peasant away will have to be given up.108 The state-wide independent agricultural laborer’s union of the CPM, the Kerala Karshaka Thozhilali Union (KSKTU), was formed in 1968, the main aim of which was to fight independently for the rights of the laborers. Their demands were focused on the issue of wages and the right of attached workers to exclusive control over harvesting operations. The farmers were against the raising of wages, and also sought to break the labor agitation by importing cheaper workers from neighboring states.109 Within five years, KSKTU had a membership of 130,000.110 The entire struggle of agricultural labor was to end the reign of feudalism and also despotic capitalism. For a whole day’s backbreaking work of 12–14 hours, sometimes the wages paid were two rice pancakes!111 One of the important demands won by labor was the introduction of the system of sirens to mark the beginning and the end of the day’s work, which was earlier decided by the discretion of the landlord. Traditional forms of entitlements like the theerpu (payment of paddy to the laborers) were sought to be institutionalized into annual bonus payment for the agricultural laborers.112 Here, unlike the emphasis of Subaltern Studies, what the laborers are seeking is to establish the rational-legal system of the modern state rather than be subjected to the traditional charismatic authority. At the same time, they would resist the logic of accumulation of the modern capitalist state. The KAWA was a culmination of the struggles of landless agricultural labor. In 1973, KSKTU organized a massive harvest strike which mobilized 150,000 laborers; there were also violent confrontations between laborers and the farmers.113 KAWA strengthened the provisions for regular hours and payment of wages and established a provident fund for workers. The Act granted the status of “permanent worker” to any laborer “bound by custom or contract or otherwise to work in the agricultural land of that landowner.”114 Thus, what KAWA did was to fulfill the demand of workers for security of attachment which was the feature of the moral economy of feudalism, but without its hierarchies.115 Here, again, the continuity between tradition and modernity, and also the disjuncture between the two emerges unlike the one-sided emphasis on the dichotomy in the culturalist frameworks of Subaltern Studies. KAWA also limited the daily hours of work to eight.116 By 1980, the Communist-led government introduced old age pensions for the workers, which covered almost 170,000 workers in a year’s time. The 264

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strengthening of labor evoked the ire of the landowners who called the KAWA “the factory acts.”117 The real effect of the powerful movement led by the agricultural labor class was the rise in real wage rates of agricultural labor. Before KAWA in 1968, the strongholds of communist labor mobilization, Alleppey and Palghat districts, had already recorded the maximum percentage increase in wage rate compared to even the Green Revolution areas of Punjab, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu.118 And within just over a decade after KAWA, real wages in Kerala lagged behind only the states of Punjab and West Bengal for men, and Punjab for women despite lagging way behind in agricultural production.119 One significant change after the land reforms was that agricultural labor was no longer available as a submissive and exploited force at absolute low wages.120

Against governmentality The implementation of the land reforms and workers’ rights was possible only through the mobilization of classes beyond segmented identities and pre-existing communal identities like religion and caste, which Subaltern Studies emphasizes as almost immutable.121 This is despite the fact that caste hierarchies would not be completely destroyed, and class identity would still be affected by caste divisions. Yet, class formation and class-based actions went further than anywhere else in India. It was successful because the people “goaded, threatened and shamed the government”122 which, as we have seen, often crossed the limits of legality. However, it cannot be assumed that democratization can be achieved by remaining only at the level of political society as postcolonial theory does. It valorizes community as the essence of political practice in the East while positing civil society as the essence of Western politics.123 In drawing a dichotomy between East/West, political society/civil society, postcolonial theory ignores the myriad ways in which these binaries are being bridged.124 As we have seen, the subaltern classes were also struggling to build civil society institutions like peasant unions and establish procedures like setting definite work times, creating records for rent paid and so on. The power of the feudal and capitalist classes in Kerala has been resisted precisely because of the fact that gains made by the working classes and the peasantry were institutionalized and made part of the democratic order. Postcolonial theory, instead, privileges the temporary rights won through community struggles in the paralegal domain of political society. It tends to ignore the simultaneous struggles by the marginalized for citizenship, democracy and welfare because they are ultimately products of the ideology of Western individualism. The individual/community dichotomy here misses the complex interaction between the compartmentalized blocks of tradition and modernity. Similarly, Subaltern Studies draws a distinction between peasant-communal politics and organized politics.125 It is right that many resistances that arise 265

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out of popular spontaneity do not rely on elite or leadership initiatives. However, as Alam argues, this does not mean that they lead to desirable consequences (popular mobilization in communal riots is an example). It does not also demonstrate that autonomous peasant politics had developed a stable long-term concrete option for the oppressed classes.126 Even when Subalternists admit that peasant-communal ideology may not be totally capable of identifying and resisting exploitation and that it requires awareness brought in from outside—the sphere of organized politics, they do not see these two spheres having any commonalities. Like civil society, organized politics is characterized by “centrality of the individual, the collective as the aggregation of individuals, sectional interests, alliances between sectional interests” and so on, values which are totally alien to peasant-communal ideology.127 This dichotomy follows the tradition–modernity and the other binaries that we saw earlier. There was the relentless emphasis on the fact that the rights can be won over only by agitations and struggle.128 T. K. Oommen has rightly argued that in a society characterized by extreme concentration of wealth and power, the state machinery, the court, the press and so on are hardly sympathetic to any social change in favor of the poor. In this scenario, legislation is necessary, but not a sufficient instrument to institutionalize social change. Therefore, “pressure built from below through militant protest movements”129 becomes a tool to implement the laws passed. According to the CPM, it was foolhardy to believe that the bourgeois government, which was thoroughly constrained by the feudal forces, would implement the land reform by itself: Experience has proved that the efforts to solve the problem of redistribution of land through legislation fixing ceilings on land-holding are totally ineffective. . . . Our Party should ceaselessly educate the peasantry and agricultural labor masses that the basic slogan of abolition of landlordism without compensation and the giving of land to agricultural laborers and poor peasants free of cost is to be realized through the mass action of the entire peasantry.130 Communists never faced the problem of mobilization. The politicized tenantry and the agricultural workers, as we have seen before, were often a step “ahead of the party as a whole in their willingness to engage in militant political action and to struggle against oppression.”131 However, what Subaltern Studies did not recognize was the need for the channelization of the spontaneity into coherent large-scale action which is what the struggle for land reforms did. The success of the implementation can be gauged by the fact that by 1982 the implementation agencies were able to clear 99.8% of the total applications for assignment of ownership rights to cultivating tenants, 99.1% of the total applications for purchase of hutments, and 97.2% of the total land ceiling returns.132 266

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The process of the legislation and the implementation of land reforms and workers’ rights shows that the effects of transition to modernity are not predetermined and inexorable but are shaped by agency and collective action, through parliamentary and extra-parliamentary struggles. Sometimes force was used by subaltern classes to overcome the might of the ruling classes and the state ruling in their favor. The alteration of a social order characterized by the concentration of wealth and power took place not by a denial of “modern” institutions, but through them, significantly transforming them at the same time. These very “alien” institutions were appropriated and molded by the disadvantaged groups and classes to their benefit. Thus, what was achieved was a substantial subversion of the modern forms of governmentality. Governmentality, a key term in Foucault’s theory and used extensively by Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory, designates power which goes beyond spontaneous forms of its exercise; it is the “regulation of conduct by the more or less rational application of the appropriate technical means.”133 More importantly, Communist peasant activism, through land reforms, achieved a different kind of leveling by eroding pre-modern feudal modes of power, something which has been obfuscated by postcolonial theory in its one-sided critique of modernity. In fact, the peasantry and agricultural laborers could be mobilized under one umbrella beyond class distinctions precisely because of the extreme oppression suffered under feudalism, as we have seen in the earlier chapters.134 As noted, the nature of oppression perpetrated by the landlords was severe in many cases, with physical violence against the poor tenants and labor being the dominant feature.135 What was being sought through land reforms was the “reversal of the political axis of individualization,”136 the concentration of power in one individual, which was characteristic of the feudal system, ironical, considering the positing of individual rights as Western in Subaltern Studies/postcolonial theory. Rather than operating with a tradition/modernity binary, the communist discourse was simultaneously resisting the direct forms of power and violence associated with the “traditional” order, and also the new “human technologies of rule”137 that characterize modernity. That is why I will argue that the political order sought to be established is qualitatively different from the parliamentary democracy that Foucault describes (quite erroneously) as being, in essence, the same as the feudal system that preceded it.138 The other main objective was to reorganize the relations of production through land reforms and workers’ rights without which emancipation of the peasantry and agrarian labor was not possible. In an agrarian society, the control of land by the lords and the landlessness of the majority of the agrarian producers led to the suppression of citizenship rights of the latter.139 Postcolonial theory, following Foucault, had problematically excluded the analysis of relations of production in its critique of modernity and focused exclusively on power relations, as we have seen. And power itself, in the 267

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modern era, unlike the overt violence and haphazardness of feudalism, operates “through progressively finer channels, gaining access to individuals themselves, to their bodies, their gestures, and all their daily actions.”140 For Foucault, power does not originate or is possessed by an individual or groups of individuals: it is “a machine in which everyone is caught, those who exercise power just as much as those over whom it is exercised.”141 While this analysis is a brilliant exposition of the anonymity of modern forms of power, it is deficient in the understanding of class domination, and as a result, in making sense of societies of the Global South like that of India characterized by despotic capitalism, in which traditional forms of exploitation are conjoined with capitalist ones.142 Before the poststructuralist turn, Subaltern Studies had undertaken an effective Gramscian analysis of the Indian society. However, even then, the lack of an adequate class analysis was visible,143 a tendency that reached its apogee with the cultural turn of Subaltern Studies. This is a major lacuna which prevents us from understanding the normative discourse behind land reforms. The historic struggles behind their implementation were as much as for recognition as they were for material redistribution. “The relentless daily struggle for a livelihood . . . [especially the] most basic need: securing enough to eat”144 or the material dimension is obfuscated in the Foucauldian analysis.145 Thus, once again we can see that the various antinomies posited by postcolonial theory are bridged by the peasant and worker struggles enabling to overcome governmentality to a substantial extent. Chakrabarty had argued that workers: acted out of an understanding that was pre-bourgeois in its elements. It was not that they did not value things economic: poverty itself would have often brought home to the worker the value of money. Yet the “economic utility” and the “reasonableness” of an action were different categories, the former, often subsumed under the latter.146 Thus, they were governed by religious, kinship, linguistic or race affiliations. Of course, these affiliations provided “economic and material utility” to the workers. However, to argue that this utility is the reason for the workers to retain these bonds is to attribute to them with a “bourgeois rationality, since it is only in such a system of rationality that the ‘economic utility’ of an action . . . defines its reasonableness.”147 Chibber, as noted before, correctly argues that the struggle for rights and individual material interests cannot be dismissed as Western bourgeois notions, for the agents in the West who fought for these were the lower classes who were immersed in pre-bourgeois culture.148 At the same time, as we have seen previously, in Kerala, the struggle for material interests is also often intertwined with the struggle for recognition, both at the community as well as individual levels. 268

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Beyond passive revolution Partha Chatterjee has argued that “passive revolution is in fact the general framework of capitalist transition in societies where bourgeois hegemony has not been accomplished in the classical way.”149 As a result, while the Indian state in the 1950s sought to undertake rapid industrialization without seeking to disturb the rural power structures, “the logic of accumulation in the ‘modern’ sector inevitably altered the agrarian structure as well” and “even subsistence peasant production was deeply implicated in large-scale market transactions, that the forms of agricultural surplus now combined a wide variety and changing mix of ‘economic’ and ‘extra-economic’ power.”150 Of course, this tendency of ‘forced commercialization’ of the peasant economy is an inevitable consequence of the development of capitalism.151 The new Indian state resultant of the anti-colonial struggle did: not attempt to break-up or transform in any radical way the institutional structures of “rational” authority set up in the period of colonial rule . . . it also does not undertake a full-scale assault on all pre-capitalist dominant classes: rather it seeks to limit their former power, neutralize them where necessary, attack them only selectively, and in general bring them around to a position of subsidiary allies within a reformed state structure.152 The land reforms brought about under the aegis of the communist mobilization, I will argue, have moved away from this general trajectory of passive revolution that characterized the larger Indian social transformation despite the serious limitation that the real tiller of the land did not get cultivable land and only small plots, and protection through labor laws. In fact, the land reforms in Kerala were crucial to the avoidance of the Indian denouement. Both the impediments in the form of the nature of the inherited colonial state and the power of pre-capitalist ruling classes were overcome by the communist mobilization and administration which bent the power of the pre-capitalist dominant classes, and also changed the nature of the state established after independence.153 The Communists could be seen as completing the bourgeois democratic revolution, a task which the bourgeoisie could not undertake in any effective manner.154 However, the elimination of the feudal and parasitic elements does not lead to the unbridled entrenchment of the bourgeoisie, rather a capitalism regulated by the power of the subordinate classes to constitute a social democracy. Of course, the incomplete nature of the land reforms would mean that later under neoliberalism this social democracy would come under intense pressures from capital. Subaltern Studies’ positing of passive revolution has the merit of recognizing the combination of capitalism and feudalism (and thus tradition and modernity) in the social formation. However, then it goes onto posit it as the “general” 269

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framework for the South. This is again falling back into historicism and evolutionism, which it criticizes, and which negates the possibility of a different trajectory (as in the Kerala case) to modernity. Moreover, it valorizes passive revolution, for it sees the pre-capitalist community as a critique of capital and modernity. This obfuscates the exploitation within the moral economy of feudalism as well as caste oppression. Chatterjee argues that after the initial years the Indian state had moved away from programs like “community development” to the distribution of “poverty removal” packages directly to the selected target groups among the poor “as a gift from the highest political leadership.” For him, such “premodern” and traditional charismatic forms of legitimation are not an aberration but the “unity and indeed the representative character of the ‘modern’ sector as the leading element within the nation has to be legitimized precisely through these means.”155 This becomes a justification for the perpetuation of individualized modes of power characteristic of feudalism. The Kerala experience shows the possibility of going beyond this formulation as the mobilization from below not only renders useless the role of the state as a benevolent patron but also reinstates another facet of the traditional order, the (comparative) security and permanence enjoyed by the subaltern classes in the feudal order.156 The latter is achieved through the modern forms of legislation enacted by the democratic political order. The legitimation of the “modern” political order comes not by propping up the power of the feudal propertied and ruling in alliance with it, but by realizing to, at least, some extent the aspirations of the pre-capitalist producers. Chatterjee further argues, “‘rational’ planning and the other of ‘irrational’ politics—are inseparable parts of the very logic of this [developmental] state conducting the passive revolution.”157 According to him, there is a profound ambiguity in the “relations between the ‘modern’ sector and the rest of the people-nation” because of the mobilizations based on “pre-existing cultural solidarities such as locality, caste, tribe, religious community or ethnic identity.” The more fundamental ambiguity is that of a “state process which must further accumulation while legitimizing the ‘modern’ sector itself as representative of the nation as a whole,”158 or that of “combining accumulation with legitimation while avoiding the ‘unnecessary rigours’ of social conflict.”159 The initial promise of overcoming the dichotomy of modernity and tradition is negated by its reinstatement. State is associated with the modern while tribe, caste, religious community are pre-modern. There are no fractures within the latter; they are homogenous wholes which resist the modern. This assertion becomes problematic in the context of peasant and labor struggles in Kerala. These struggles question the ambiguities which Chatterjee posits as the “necessary consequences of the specific relation of the postcolonial development state with the people-nation” and also the assertion “that these ambiguities cannot be removed or resolved within the present constitution of the state.”160 He ignores, even when he focuses on 270

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the Indian state, the significant instances of the questioning of the logic of accumulation itself or primitive accumulation (which meant the “expropriation of the agricultural producer, of the peasant, from the soil”).161 After all, the 20th century is marked by historic peasant movements “mobilized around issues of land, of rent and tax, of pauperization and of extreme oppression and social injustice.”162 What the land reforms prevented was the further expropriation of the direct producers. They do not perpetuate the pre-capitalist community as it is but reconstitutes it by eliminating its most egregious hierarchies and exploitation, albeit in an imperfect manner because the agricultural labor was still at the bottom, both economically and socially, and that big plantation interests could not be curbed. Nevertheless, the order of capitalism is sought to be regulated by the small peasantry and working classes. This is unlike passive revolution, where capitalism establishes its hegemony by incorporating dominant pre-capitalist ruling classes by making them the subordinate partners. In especially overcoming the Subalternist binary of modernity and tradition, the small peasantry and the working classes demonstrate that the modern state can be appropriated and reconstituted democratically, within the limitations imposed by the liberal democratic framework of the nation-state.

Redistribution and recognition I have argued so far that the struggle for land as not merely a “material” struggle but also simultaneously as a symbolic struggle against caste oppression. Here, to revisit Nancy Fraser, redistribution and recognition are irreducibly bound together. Justice, according to her, “requires both redistribution and recognition.”163 It is only analytically that we can make the distinction between the two for: (e)ven the most material economic institutions have a constitutive, irreducible cultural dimension; they are shot through with signification and norms. Conversely, even the most discursive cultural practices have a constitutive, irreducible political-economic dimension, they are underpinned by material supports. Thus, far from occupying two airtight separate spheres, economic injustice and cultural injustice are usually interimbricated so as to reinforce one another dialectically.164 Once we bear this in mind it becomes easier to conceptualize that even “[r]edistributive remedies generally presuppose an underlying conception of recognition.”165 The communist land reforms are a good example of this mutual constitutiveness. Because of the strong class–caste correlation, the question of abolition of landlordism was not merely an economic issue, but deeply intertwined with issues of recognition,166 as we have seen with 271

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the huge struggles against social aspects of landlordism waged by the lower castes before. Postcolonial theory obscures this interconnection by focusing on the cultural in isolation.167 Early accounts like that of James Scott had begun this tendency with the notion of the “moral economy” which has influenced Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory to a great extent. According to Scott: The problem of exploitation and rebellion is . . . not just a problem of calories and income but is a question of peasant conceptions of social justice, of rights and obligations, of reciprocity. . . . [Thus] the study of the moral economy of the peasantry, while it begins in the domain of economics must end in the study of the peasant culture and religion.168 While this is valid to a certain extent in analyzing the moral economy of the peasant, it is extended as a general framework by Scott and as well as Subaltern Studies. Here, the problem of exploitation is conceived as a problem of recognition, and then the latter is stripped of its “social-structural underpinnings,” and is equated with “distorted identity. With the politics of recognition thus reduced to identity politics, the politics of redistribution is displaced.”169 Even nuanced poststructuralist accounts like that of Arturo Escobar indulge in the mystification of the cultural. While he rightly recognizes that “peasant resistance reflects more than the struggle for land and living conditions,” he goes to the extent of arguing: “it is above all a struggle over symbols and meanings, a cultural struggle.”170 Escobar argues that the countryside is characterized by two economies, “one based on livelihood, the other on acquisition,” with the former dominating the peasant economy. The livelihood economy is not governed by the logic and rationality of the market even though the latter is displacing the former. This reliance on use-value rather than exchange value is attributed by Escobar to the “sheer fact of cultural difference.”171 In this analysis, the pre-capitalist economy is “cultural,” there is no class differentiation within the peasantry which is a homogenized category. As in Scott172 and Subaltern Studies, the concept of class is equal to peasant. Subaltern Studies also believes that only capitalism is economic, while pre-capitalism is cultural.173 As we saw, for it the notion of class is an external phenomenon, implanted in India via colonialism. While it is true that the “peasant economy” is characterized less by market rationality, it is surprising to learn from Escobar the absence of exploitation/oppression, economic or otherwise, within it. This resembles the classic Chayanovian “middle peasant thesis” which posits the reproduction of the family labor farm irrespective of the presence or absence of feudalism, capitalism or socialism. It is not dependent on the fluctuation in wages, profit, interest and rent and so on. Change itself is endogenous and is linked to demographic differentiation and consumption requirements.174 What is 272

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most problematic in this picture of the “eternal” peasant economy outside history portrayed by Escobar and Subaltern Studies is that it fails to theorize the possibility or the desirability of emancipation among the “peasantry” and implicitly participates in the affirmation of status quoism.175 Scott’s main theme is that peasants are governed by a “subsistence ethic,” which means that their fundamental motive is to ensure themselves a reliable subsistence, rather than to seek maximization of profits as visualized in neo-classical economics. Pre-capitalist communities were built around this “subsistence ethic” and subsistence security was guaranteed through “traditional forms of patron-client relationships, reciprocity, and redistributive mechanisms.”176 Scott argues that the “minimal formulation was that elites must not invade the subsistence reserve of poor people; its maximal formulation was that elites had a positive moral contribution to provide for the maintenance needs of their subjects in time of dearth.”177 What provoked peasant rebellions, in this account, was the radical undermining of this moral economy of the “subsistence ethic” by the imposition of capitalism and the development of the modern state under colonialism. This is similar to Chatterjee’s notion of the imposition of class from outside. The peasant revolts could thus be essentially seen as attempts to re-establish the traditional practices—the moral economy of the pre-capitalist community.178 Scott also fundamentally reverses the Marxian notion of exploitation in which the proportion of the product expropriated was the measure of exploitation. On the contrary, here, from the “existential” viewpoint of the peasant, exploitation is seen as not “how much is taken” but “how much is left.”179 It is this “safety-first,” “risk-averse” behavior of the peasant that makes him resist capitalist penetration, which threatens subsistence, and not feudalism, which guarantees it. Also, the main mode of resistance by the peasantry is not of a mass revolutionary nature but of a small-scale, spontaneous “everyday forms of peasant resistance” characterized by “poaching, foot-dragging, pilfering, dissimulation and flight.”180 I am not arguing that revolutionary activity is the main mode of peasant resistance but to recognize the potentiality that exists as a part of the peasants’ contradictory consciousness. The scale of the struggles launched by the peasantry and agricultural labor in Kerala since the establishment of CSP and the peasant unions shows the possibility of going beyond Scottian everyday forms of peasant resistance. Like Subaltern Studies’ celebration of subalternity, Scott “is relatively uninterested in the consequences of resistance, celebrating the fact of the ‘weapons of the weak’ and leaving one in no doubt as to where his sympathies lie, but ultimately pessimistic about the possibilities of change.”181 The push for land reforms by the lower classes can only be understood by going beyond the moral economy which “denies the active striving of the different components of the rural population as class subjects; that is, either by rich peasants to become small agrarian capitalists or by poor peasants and 273

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agricultural laborers to improve their position as workers.”182 In contrast, the communist mobilization could succeed precisely because of the existence of aspirations of emancipation among the oppressed classes and its ability to connect with them. Here, material exploitation was a crucial factor. As a Christian daily wage laborer recounts, it was the struggle by the Communists for minimum wages when they were non-existent which forced him to join them. According to him, when thousands of workers were participating in it, he could not have isolated himself.183 In an Ezhava woman Communist activist’s words, her father, a staunch Communist, used to say that the party was the one that allowed them to eat rice.184 Even workers who are not Communists acknowledge that the land reforms and the struggle for worker rights were the biggest contribution of the Communists.185 The notion of subsistence itself began to change as “comparative social learning expanded significantly the standards of what subsistence should mean. If former tenants can wear shirts of synthetic cloth and wristwatches, young laborers ask, why can’t they?” Also, “public policy provided crucial cues about rights and social justice, which revised expectations and were incorporated strategically into the struggle.”186 As the character Kelan (an agricultural laborer) says in the novel Kayar, “Now everyone one can walk anywhere wearing a shirt and a head cloth, singing a song and smoking a beedi.”187 Rather than yearn for the pre-market era with its guaranteed subsistence and the benevolence of the patron, the underclasses in the postland reforms era are participants in further struggles to democratize and socialize the means of production. They are also reluctant to work for the former landlords. The sarcasm with which the tenants treat their former landlords is very evident as seen from the following account at a fair-price shop; the tenant asks: “Once when I brought your varam [landlords’ share of the crop] promptly, you returned it asking me to dry it again. Now what will you tell this shop-keeper when he supplies you rotten and stinking rice?”188 Most importantly, the intertwinement of the material and symbolic is visible from the fact that derogatory practice toward the lower castes could not be sustained anymore for the lack of material basis. Practices like coercing women from tenant families into sexual relations with the landlord with the threat of eviction for unpaid rent were no longer possible.189 Earlier it was common for the tenants of “polluting” castes to deliver the crop through persons of non-polluting castes. However, after the reforms, the polluting castes refused to adhere to such humiliating practices even threatening to take the crop back if the lords refused to accept it. This was possible only because of the elimination of the fear of eviction with the conferment of ownership rights on the tenants.190 The earlier attitudes of defiance which we saw in the late 1930s and 1940s had become quite common. The allotment of hutment sites and the resultant improvement in the status of the agricultural laborers had an unmistakable dimension of recognition 274

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despite the small plots of land. Jeffrey notes how the mainly lower-caste poor were able to “walk without self-debasement” because of the minimum security guaranteed by the hutment.191 The status misrecognition suffered by the lower classes/castes found a strong rectification with the ascendance of the Communist Party. The majority of the supporters of the party were considered by the elites and middle classes as a part of a class “with very little at stake and much less faith in dignified behaviour, decent language, or drawing room courtesies.” They were the “unknown, uncultured and uneducated people suddenly shooting up to positions of power.”192 In the account of an upper-caste Christian woman activist of the CPM, when she was in college, she could not even think of joining the party as it was considered a party of Dalits and poor classes.193 The derision toward the lower castes, especially Dalits (more than lower classes), is something that persists and is seen in the way the upper castes talk about the lack of “charisma” among the Communist leaders which is often an allusion to those with lower-caste origins and the darker skin color.194 Even the most powerful of Communist leaders are subjected to casteist abuse.195 Or these would take the form of upper castes mocking the lower-caste attempt to adopt upper-caste names or even “Communist” names like Chou Enlai or Stalin, or the lower castes as desperate to gain mobility and thus indulging in all kinds of corrupt practices.196 However, these narratives are also forced to remain mainly at a symbolic level in the private sphere unable to revert to earlier practices of overt oppression. Thus, the narratives exist as “hidden transcripts,”197 but in this case, of the privileged castes. It leads to an exaggerated sense of false victimhood that the present system is one in which the “forward [upper] castes have no place.”198 It is striking that this feeling persists even in the present when there are huge differences materially between the upper castes and the Dalits in terms of life chances and that the latter do not have cultivable land or land assets despite land reforms. The emergence of communism gave a new horizon unlike before when lower-caste attempted attainment of recognition by methods like conversion to Semitic religions like Christianity and Islam, only to suffer discrimination within their fold.199 The struggle for recognition was now interlinked with the struggle for redistribution of material resources. The communist movement showed elements of moving from an identity model to a status model: which understands social justice as encompassing two analytically distinct dimensions: a dimension of recognition, which concerns the effects of institutionalized meanings and norms on the relative standing of social actors; and a dimension of distribution, which involves the allocation of disposable resources to social actors.200 The major limitation was that it did not fully encompass the lowest of the castes. 275

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What land reforms did was to break the economic dependence of the lower castes on the upper castes and the consequent religious dependence. The upper castes controlled the temple complex and each low caste had a specific function according to the rank in the performance of temple rituals and festivities. The temple-based culture of hierarchies collapsed because the land reforms struck at the base of the material power of temples—the extensive ownership of lands.201 Even though the religious dependence may persist in the post-reforms era, it has become a mere vestige of former practices.202 As Filippo and Caroline Osella write: The upper-caste “Nayars appear to have made temples their ‘last stand’ for the maintenance and assertion of caste distinction, an arena for preservation of monopoly cultural capital.”203 Just as the land reforms, the institutionalization of the rights of agricultural labor contributed not only to their, even if minimal, material amelioration, but also to the amelioration of the misrecognition suffered by them, especially the Dalits. What the contractual relationship moved away from personal forms of rule and the kinds of extra-economic oppressions that we saw before. The breakdown of patron–client relations was the most significant outcome. This is clearly visible in the field. The traditional patron was substituted by the state and labor-tying arrangements by contractual obligations; the state could now interfere in the disputes between landowners and laborers.204 The emboldening of the workers was palpably demonstrated by the fact that the number of agricultural disputes referred to the Labor Department went up from 444 to 4,279 in the two years after the legislation of KAWA.205 According to an Ezhava laborer, earlier “if you asked for wages, you could get beaten up, now proper wages are demanded as matter of right, not as charity from the lord.”206 Even the attitude of the employers has changed: “It has become the norm to respect the laborers.”207 The craving for recognition as an equal member and citizen of society as mentioned earlier is evident from the account of an untouchable laborer in another research account: In the past, we would have to go to the landlords’ house to get our pay. We would stand with our head bowed and our hands open. Now he must come to the field to pay us. If he doesn’t have exact change, we send him off to get it.208 Similarly, in the words of an activist of KSKTU: “in the past laborers were slaves. They depended on the charity of the landlords. But the [Communist] party has taught them the right to demand fair wages.”209 Even though the latter quote discounts the fact that the laborers themselves are invested with a contradictory consciousness, it shows the extent to which the Communist Party had brought about a new discourse.210 In Kayar we again see how the first strike of agricultural labor declared by the party in the early days was mocked at by the landowners, but the latter soon realized that not a single 276

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laborer came to work delivering a blow to patron–client relations.211 Now the matter of wages is something that is beyond dispute.212 The struggle so far has not been in terms of collective rights of workers and peasants alone, but it has also been a struggle for the assertion of the individual. Subaltern Studies, as we have seen, in privileging community in the community/ individual binary does not allow any scope for individual rights which are mere bourgeois manifestations. The emphasis on love and kinship stand as dichotomous with the claims of the individual.213 In contrast, the persistent theme of the accounts part of this book is the assertion of the individual along with the collectivity214 through communism, which does not focus on the individual per se. The success of the land reforms was the cumulative combination of legislation and agitation even though “the volume and density of the benefits accruing from land-reform legislation have not at all been proportionate to the intensity of struggles waged by these strata of the Kerala peasantry.”215 The unprecedented mobilization of peasants and agricultural laborers, indicated by the huge numbers in which they participated, is an indicator of the importance of the discourse of the “material” in the transition to modernity without sliding into a position that is determinist and which can be a tendency in Chibber. The effectiveness of the communist project was in the recognition and the synthesis of this element. At the same time, an economistic conception of the peasantry—as the “backward” stratum which has to be made capable of producing efficiently for the market—was overcome, even if such tendencies did also exist. The “physicalist and probabilistic” discourse with a “purely instrumental conception of nature and work”216 has been the overriding characteristic of development projects in the Global South. As we saw, the Communists did see modern development through the prism lens of science and technology, industries and even atomic plants. On the other hand, they could go beyond this conception to see peasants, in some senses, as leading a “whole way of life.”217 This is also seen in the understanding of the cultural dimensions of feudalism—the systematic misrecognition suffered by people across classes. However, this, as we have seen, was not by adopting a culturalist position, which argues that “the economy is not only, or even principally, a material entity. It is above all a cultural production, a way of producing human subjects and social orders of a certain kind.”218 Of course, there is no denying the fact that the emergence of a new mode of production requires changes in the moral and cultural sphere as well. Habermas has questioned the attribution of the status of independent variable to forces of production in the Marxist analysis. Instead, according to him: “The introduction of new forms of social integration . . . requires knowledge of a moral-practical sort and not technically useful knowledge that can be implemented in rules of instrumental and strategic action.”219 However, the fact that instrumental, strategic and market-related action has made spectacular incursions into variety 277

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of cultural spaces, without completely altering the latter, forces us to recognize the importance of the “material” in determining a social formation. As Gramsci had recognized: “mass ideological factors always lag behind mass economic phenomena.”220 Therefore, to reduce the economy to merely or mainly a cultural system is to see social reality in terms of categories like tradition and modernity without paying attention to production relations and forces of production within these. Here, exploitation within feudalism, which we have seen so far, gets absolved with capital, technology and the state considered as the oppressors of the peasantry. While the “heterogeneity of the peasant reality” is considered, class differentiation in the form of categories like labor, small farmers and capitalist farmers is not considered part of this heterogeneity.221 This culturalist approach adopts an ahistorical approach seeing all peasant villages as “communal, subsistence-oriented, nonexploitative, culturally in tension with ‘outside’ dominant classes, and economically on the defensive against encroaching capitalism or imperialism.”222 Jeffrey Paige has demonstrated that exploitative class relations and conflict can exist within subsistence-oriented villages.223 The most important dimension of the communist negotiation of modernity in this phase of the struggle for land reforms and labor legislation was the fusing of the material and the symbolic. There was realization that substantive democracy could not be realized without material redistribution of resources.224 However, the struggle for redistribution was aided by the struggle for recognition.225 Dilip Menon argued that the 1950s marked a shift in communism because of the pursuit of parliamentary politics and the attainment of linguistic statehood. It moved from being people-oriented to state-oriented and to the “national rhetoric of development” in which people were mute spectators.226 Here, Menon specifically refers to the early plays of Thoppil Bhasi like Ningalenne Communistakki and Mudiyanaya Puthran which portray a “radical politics of peasant mobilization (albeit controlled)” to the later ones like Puthiya Akasam Puthiya Bhumi, Aswamedham and Sarasayya, which move to the national rhetoric of development in which, not peasants or political activists, but technocrats like doctors and engineers are the heroes.227 However, here, there is no difference between the national imagination of Nehru and the communist imagination in Kerala. Of course, there are similarities between these two imaginations.228 However, there are differences also as we have seen. The binary drawn between people-oriented and state-oriented is too stark, for the elements of the former are present in the post-1950s also in the period that we are looking at. Despite the de-radicalization that parliamentary communism brings forth, it is not a linear shift. The significant achievement of Communists, land reforms and the workers’ legislation, happened after the shift in this period and with critical agency of the peasants and workers, and through militant struggles. Thus, the change from radical politics of peasant mobilization is not a simple case of revolution being 278

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abandoned for reform. For, while undeniably, as we have observed, and as Desai points out, electoral communism has skewed priorities toward winning elections and scotched “insurgent possibilities,” the successes like land reforms and labor legislation were made possible by it, and more importantly, staying out of parliamentary politics would have made communism irrelevant.229 Besides, we have noted that how the original intent of the land reforms, especially land to the tiller, was drastically diluted and despite that the legislation faced immense opposition, and the eight-year gap between the first and second communist ministries had allowed the landed classes to substantially subvert the future legislation. This shows the severe constraints under which parliamentary communism operated while also making it, at the same time, a non-entity outside the parliamentary system in the larger framework of an Indian liberal democratic state. Ironically, many Dalits and Adivasis were to later join the militant Left because of their disenchantment with the parliamentary system and their belief that no radical change was possible within the Indian Constitution.230 The radical substance of a politics cannot be formulated in abstraction and outside of “concrete historic contexts.”231 Therefore, the critique of electoral communism has to be based on what is possible within that framework rather than the binary of electoral versus non-electoral communism. Utilizing the potentialities within that to the maximum possible extent in deepening democracy, combining parliamentary and extra-parliamentary struggles as well as struggles in the cultural sphere, should be the basis of assessment. It is especially in the latter that communism would decline from the 1970s. It has been argued that the Communist vision of a linguistically united Kerala was driven not just by the desire to a more equitable society; underlying it was also the fear of ‘backwardness’ vis-à-vis the rest of south India, already evident in the writings of prominent intellectuals such as Kesari A. Balakrishna Pillai.232 However, in the mid-20th-century global geopolitical scenario, the turn to modernization and developmentalism by postcolonial nations and national leaders, as Chibber rightly argues, was not just because of the internalization of Enlightenment values, but also because it was a compulsion and an imperative of the global system which did not have a “nonmodernizing” model to pursue.233 Referencing the shift from the vanguardist revolutionary to the technocrat as a hero, P. Muhammed argues that the state is “coming to the people-nation” rather than the people being passive subjects. The difference between the Nehruvian state and the state under the Communists was that the former was focused on accumulation while the latter was focused on redistribution.234 Communist developmentalism was marked by contradictions also.235 279

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Another argument put forth by Prerna Singh that land reforms were successfully implemented because of the strength of linguistic identity is problematic as well. According to her, the: enactment and implementation of these land reforms was a long and fraught process that generated considerable socio-political conflict. However, the very fact that such a comprehensive redistribution of income could occur (in contrast to other states in India where far more limited land reforms were thwarted by powerful interests) and that too with a relatively limited degree of violence could be seen as a testament to the cohesiveness of the Malayali political community.236 While we have dealt with the importance of subnational identity in the construction of the national-popular, the achievement of land reforms and the labor reforms, as we have seen, was made possible by the relentless struggles waged by the peasants and the workers right from the 1930s and with costs in terms of lives lost and physical violence endured. The ruling classes did not concede to the demands because of a strong regional identity but because they were bent by the force of the resistance of the subaltern classes. Similarly, when Singh argues that the communist governments’ commitment to land reforms is “far greater than the commitment of Communist Party governments in other Indian states,” the reason is not only a stronger linguistic identity but a much deeper national-popular, in which anti-caste struggles began much earlier, and later systematically fused with class struggles. Leisering contends in his review of Singh’s elaboration of the subnationalism argument in her book237 that there is an under specification of the thesis that subnationalism entails progressive social policy.238

Conclusion In understanding the transformation brought about, what is important is to recognize the tremendous push by the subordinate classes to end precapitalist forms of domination, unlike the arguments that have merged as a part of all “post” discourses. The Communists were merely critical catalysts of this motivation. Even though we do not have to accept the progressist and linear tenor or the “epistemic Eurocentrism”239 of Marx’s early formulation of imperialism and colonialism as an “unconscious tool in history,” his conceptualization of idyllic village communities as “the solid foundation of Oriental despotism . . . enslaving [the human existence] beneath traditional rules . . . contaminated by distinctions of caste and slavery” is something that the peasantry and the agricultural labor themselves in Kerala villages would not have disagreed with. The mass support for land reforms and the workers’ legislation demonstrates the questioning of the romanticization of feudalism. Here, a 280

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rethinking of the Polanyian problematic is needed: while embedding of production relations in society is imperative, it is also necessary to see that disembedding is liberatory. Communist success was in the contribution to the “depersonalization of social relations, disembedded from social conditions of servitude, diffuse claims, or extra-economic domination but reembedded in new social institutions in the form of public law.”240 However, what is significant in the struggles against feudalism is the reinterpretation of, and the dialectical carrying forward of, the critical elements within it. Thus, permanent employment, which was a feature of the traditional feudal arrangement, was now reinstated in KAWA without the accompanying servility of the former. There was an alteration of the material underpinning of caste hierarchy and the related overt symbolic oppressions and indignities. The greatest loss of land was suffered by the (so far hegemonic) Brahmins (and the temples authorities), mainly the landowning class and the net gainers were the Thiyyas/Ezhavas, Muslims, Christians and the Nairs, breaking the caste– class correspondence to an extent. In a study of a region in Malabar in the 2000s, it was found that upper-caste Hindus owned only 39% of land compared to 85% in 1936 (the caste–class correlation is evident here), the primary beneficiaries being the Thiyyas and the Brahmins being the most affected in terms of loss of land.241 The control of landlords on village life manifested in practices such as their homes serving as a court to decide all village disputes ended, and was substituted by the mediatory role of the peasant union and the Communist Party.242 The success in ameliorating the condition of the subaltern classes through land reforms and worker legislation also shows the inadequacy of resistance mounted only on a cultural level as theorized in the writings of Subaltern Studies. Ludden cogently argues that there is a similarity among Subaltern history, neo-classical economics and rational choice theory, in that “they all depict social actors who are driven by strict rules of behaviour and consciousness, established in theory.”243 What is missing in the Subalternist portrayals is social change, social mobility or even the fact that some subalterns can themselves turn into elites.244 The social transformation in Kerala belies the Subalternists’ ahistorical depiction of peasant struggles as merely against state and modernity. The class conflict, the struggle against feudalism and capitalism, and the craving for equality point to this. The “centrality of communist-led class formation for Kerala’s post-independence land and labour reforms is clear.”245 The Subalternist theory, on the other hand, is more interested in recovering “difference” as a criterion in history. For it, capitalism is never foundational or universal, there is always “ambivalence” and “alterity” present in its constitution. The story of capitalist modernity in the colonized world is characterized by “incompleteness” and “failures.” Its universality is marred by the particularities in the form of race, nation, religion and so on.246 This, as we have seen, was intensely debated in the responses around Chibber’s book. 281

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While these particularities, indeed, do exist in the Kerala example, capital has been resisted not because of the operation of difference, but fusing together of these differences, and at the same time, by the internal critique of these essentialized differences. Nation, region, caste and religion at various times in the struggle, unlike in the Subalternist narrative, were mobilized in the service of capital and feudal power. If this has been overcome to an extent, and if the processes of primitive accumulation and proletarianization have been relatively avoided, it has primarily to do with the qualitatively different political and social mobilization that emerged under the Communists. Even when cultural difference is claimed, it is about the inauguration of new dispensation which was different from the older power structures and other states in India. The land reforms (along with the regulation of work conditions) were considered as the “greatest contribution” of Communism. Communist leaders and activists are particularly proud of this fact and they compare it to other Indian states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar where feudal forms of oppression are extremely severe.247 Of course, this sense of achievement obfuscates and masks the new forms of exploitation that emerged and the caste oppressions that persisted. However, it still does speak to the aspirations of redistribution and recognition which have been inadequately understood by culturalist frameworks like that of the Subaltern Studies. If Barrington Moore argued, from a different theoretical perspective, but much like Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory later, Indian independence arrived, “partly under the impetus of peasant yearning for a return to an idealized village past,”248 the cumulative effect of the communist struggles on Kerala was such that the peasants were no longer looking to the past but had their eyes planted in the future. At the same time, the land-reform process was incomplete despite the fusing of the material and the symbolic and redistribution and recognition. Even though the transition to democracy was premised on the peasant as citizen and thus overcame the tradition/modernity binary, the skills of the agricultural labor honed over centuries were not tapped as an asset for modernity. The subaltern resistance under an organized party and movement was still not enough to secure the original goal of land to the real tiller, the agricultural laborers. This was a drastic retreat from the revolutionary goal. The land reforms benefited the different classes and castes disproportionately, with the Dalit castes still at the bottom in terms of land ownership. While formal democracy turned into a social democracy, full equality for the Dalit subalterns who faced the worst oppressions under feudalism was still to be achieved. Thus, Agnus Heller’s conception of a socialist democracy and generalization of property ownership for the most exploited classes remained distant. When the depredations of landlordism were ended, the Dalits and Adivasis were left with the least resources to enter the capitalist market. Further, wage increases were an important achievement, but once this was 282

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achieved, the strategy could reach a dead end where wages increases alone cannot solve the agrarian problem and could even backfire.249 Ironically, Communist leaders end up seeking an “ideal farmer-labour relationship” rather than an “abolition of that relationship and to the restructuring of society.”250 The incomplete struggles against caste that we saw in the last chapters also meant that the distinctive linguistic identity and the national-popular still did not include Dalit and Adivasi liberation in the full sense on its horizon. The overcoming of passive revolution would eliminate feudalism, though not necessarily caste, one of its central pillars. Unlike in Vivek Chibber, the direct experience of poverty and exploitation does not automatically produce a unified economic response, for the struggle for equality among the subaltern castes and classes would still be marked by cultural notions of hierarchy. Thus, it has to be understood that the significance of the Kerala land reforms and the agrarian legislation is only in the comparative global context where “agrarian reforms are notoriously difficult to implement,” and there is a history of “broken promises and unimplemented programs all over the world, especially in India and Latin America.”251 And the Kerala experience is a reminder of the fact that “even modest land reforms cannot be implemented without effective popular struggles and without a strong state that has the power and the will to implement reforms.”252 The incompleteness of the reforms was to set the stage later in the 2000s for the further waves of land struggles of the Dalits and Adivasis, outside the communist movement.

Notes 1 David Ludden, “A Brief History of Subalternity,” in Reading Subaltern Studies: Critical History, Contesting Meaning, and the Globalization of South Asia, ed. David Ludden (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001), 5. 2 Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, ed. and trans. Quentin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International, 1971), 133. 3 Theda Skocpol, “What Makes Peasants Revolutionary?,” Comparative Politics 14, no. 3 (April 1982): 364. 4 Quoted in ibid., 356. 5 Dipesh Chakrabarty, Habitations of Modernity: Essays in the Wake of Subaltern Studies (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 19. 6 Anjan Chakrabarty and Stephen Cullenberg, Transition and Development in India (New York: Routledge, 2003), 106. 7 Ranajit Guha, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983), 8. 8 Chakrabarty and Cullenberg, Transition and Development, 106. The agricultural laborers were as much troubled by economic exploitation as by social oppression of landlordism, as we have seen before. According to The Report of the Agrarian Problems Enquiry Committee, the four main problems they faced were “the insecurity of employment, fear of losing employment in the slack season, fear of eviction from house-sites and fear of recall of loans which can

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9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

18 19 20 21

22 23 24

25 26 27 28

never be repaid” (Ronald Herring, Land to the Tiller: The Political Economy of Agrarian Reform in South Asia (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1983), 169). Henry Bernstein, Class Dynamics and Agrarian Change (Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2010), 21. Agnes Heller, “On Formal Democracy,” in Civil Society and the State: New European Perspectives, ed. John Keane (London: Verso, 1988), 138–139. Ibid., 143. See Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 163. Heller, “Formal Democracy,” 143. Chatterjee, Nation and Its Fragments, 163. Draft Kisan Report, Communist Party of India, Kerala State Committee (February 1943). P. Radhakrishnan, Peasant Struggles, Land Reforms and Social Change: Malabar 1836–1982 (New Delhi: Sage, 1989). Ronald Herring, “‘Fanaticism,’ Jacquerie, Movement, Party: Ratchet Politics and Peasant Mobilization in South India, 1836–1956,” (paper presented at the Power, Agrarian Structure and Peasant Mobilization in Modern India Symposium, Charlottesville, May 25, 1997, 8). T. K. Oommen, “Agrarian Legislations and Movements as Sources of Change: The Case of Kerala,” Economic and Political Weekly 10, no. 40 (October 1975): 1575. T. K. Ramakrishnan and M. P. Narayanan Nambiar, Keralithile Karshaka Prasthanam [Peasant Movement in Kerala] (Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha Publishers, 1990), 35–36. T. V. Sathyamurthy, India since Independence: Studies in the Development of the Power of the State, vol. 1, Centre-State Relations: The Case of Kerala (New Delhi: Ajanta Publications, 1985), 190. As one of the characters in Thakazhi’s magnum opus novel Kayar (Coir) says: “first it will be decided as to how many acres of land can be held by one family. Then the government will confiscate anything above that” (Paul Manalil, Kalathinte Kannadichillukal (Kottayam: Current Books, 2002), 138). Oommen, “Agrarian Legislations,” 1574. Letter from the Secretary, Malabar Landholders’ Association to the Prime Minister, Government of India, dated August 10, 1950, G. O. 433 dated February 21, 1951, Revenue Department, Government of Madras, 1951 (KSA). See the petitions by V. G. Sukumaran to the Chief Minister, Government of Madras, dated August 4, 1950; K. Unnikrishna Menon, to the Secretary, Legislative Department, Government of Madras, dated August 6, 1950, G. O. 433 dated February 21, 1951, Revenue Department, Government of Madras, 1951 (KSA). Sathyamurthy, India, 187. Petition (author unknown) to the Minister for Land Revenue, Government of Madras, dated March 1, 1950, G. O. 433, February 21, 1951, Revenue Department, Government of Madras, 1951 (KSA). Patrick Heller, The Labor of Development: Workers and the Transformation of Capitalism in Kerala: India (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), 70. This did not mean that the repressive labor regime characteristic of feudalism was abolished in Travancore because of the greater commercialization of land. In fact, while commercialization eroded many of the traditional rights of the laborers, exposing them to the vagaries of the market, they were simultaneously

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29 30 31 32 33 34

35 36 37

38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53

54 55

oppressed by pre-capitalist social institutions (Ibid.). Again, the tradition– modernity dichotomy collapses here. Herring, Land to the Tiller, 160. Mathrubhumi, April 19, 1957. Mathrubhumi, June 11, 1959. The Kerala Agrarian Relations Bill 1957, L. S. Bill No. 51 of 1957 (Thiruvananthapuram: Government Central Press, 1957). Navajivan, April 18, 1959. Mary, a middle-class Catholic woman in her early 60s, described with great passion her participation as a young girl in the “Liberation Struggle” against the “atheistic Communists” (interview, May 2003). There was also the incident of a Christian woman trying to sacrifice her newly born child as a mark of protest against the Communists: as recounted by Srikumar, an upper-caste Hindu and a retired professional, interview, May 2003). A. K. Gopalan, In the Cause of the People: Reminiscences (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1973), 232. Ibid., 234. In the account of Saju,* a lower level Communist activist from an erstwhile landlord Christian family, his family’s hatred towards an “atheistic communism” was hardened when it lost land due to the land reforms (interview, August 2004). Of course, there were radical interpretations of religion too. In the account of a strong Catholic believer, the land reforms were a good policy for they catered to the interests of the poor and any Christian could not disagree with that (Jose, small industrialist, interview, July 2004). Chatterjee, Nation and Its Fragments, 236. Ibid., 236–237. Filippo Osella and Caroline Osella, Social Mobility in Kerala: Modernity and Identity in Conflict (London: Sterling, 2000), 200. Heller, Labor of Development, 76. Deshabhimani, July 23, 1960; Gopalan, Cause of the People, 248, 252. Radhakrishnan, Peasant Struggles, 130. Deshabhimani, November 5, 1961. Oommen, “Agrarian Legislations,” 1578. Heller, Labor of Development, 76. Deshabhimani, January 11, 1961. Navajivan, November 4, 1961. Sathyamurthy, India, 136. Quoted in C. H. Kanaran, Vegam Pora [Not Fast Enough], vol. 1, ed. Andalat (Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha Publishers, 1978), 198. Herring, Land to the Tiller, 175; Navayugam, November 2, 1963. C. R. Yadu and C. K. Vijayasuryan, “Triple Exclusion of Dalits in Land Ownership in Kerala,” Social Change 46, no. 3 (2016): 398. Herring, Land to the Tiller, 176, 178, Radhakarishnan, Peasant Struggles, 177. For details of the various amendments sought by the various non-Communist parties which basically sought to dilute the KARB, see Deshabhimani, July 27, 1960. Navayugam, November 2, 1963. Thus, it was argued that measures like land reforms are possible under the Communists because “they do not respect the right to property” (George, professional, landowner, interview, July 2004; Simi, woman professional from a Christian landed family, interview, July 2004). This highlights the contradictions of ushering in social democratic measures in a liberal democracy.

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56 In the meantime, as noted, in 1964, the Communist Party had split into two: CPI and CPM. 57 Radhakrishnan, Peasant Struggles, 146. 58 Soon after the legislation was passed, the CPM-led ministry fell due to internal differences among the constituent parties of the United Front. The CPI left the Front to head a new ministry with the support of the Congress party. 59 Mathrubhumi, December 13, 1969; Jeffrey, Women and Well-Being, 176. 60 Robin Jeffrey, Politics, Women and Well-Being: How Kerala Became a Model (Hampshire: Macmillan Press, 1992), 177. 61 Deshabhimani, December 16, 1969. 62 P. M. Ismail, CPM leader, interview, December 2018. 63 Private papers of Pachu Ashan. 64 Bhabani Sengupta, Communism in Indian Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), 278. 65 Gopalan, Cause of the People, 290. 66 Oommen, “Agrarian Legislations,” 1579. 67 V. Muraleedharan Nair, Dynamics of Agrarian Struggle (New Delhi: Anmol Publications, 1996), 134. 68 Oommen, “Agrarian Legislations,” 1579. 69 Herring, Land to the Tiller, 203. 70 Sathyamurthy, India, 259. 71 Sengupta, Communism, 294, 306; Kerala Kaumudi, May 26, May 27, and June 17, 1972. 72 Deepika, May 26 and May 27, 1972. 73 Keralakaumudi, July 5, 1972. 74 Muralidharan, Dynamics, 140. 75 Cause of the People, 296. Deepika, May 27, 1971. 76 Partha Chatterjee, “Beyond the Nation? Or Within?,” Social Text 56 16, no. 3 (Fall 1998): 57. 77 Civil society is defined as those “characteristic institutions of modern associational life originating in Western societies that are based on equality, autonomy, freedom of entry and exit, contract, deliberative procedures of decision making, recognized rights and duties of members, and other such principles” (Chatterjee, “Beyond the Nation,” 60). 78 Partha Chatterjee, “Community in the East,” Economic and Political Weekly 33, no. 6 (February 1998): 281. 79 See next chapter for a detailed discussion. 80 This has been a feature from the beginning of socialism and communism. Lawrence recounts an incident from the early 1950s when party peasant union workers helped landless peasants enter a government uncultivated land and cultivate it. There was a confrontation between the police and the peasants in which one police officer was killed (M. M. Lawrence, “Dr. Abraham Chathuruthi,” Facebook, May 26, 2019, www.facebook.com/MMLawrenceCPIM/ posts/1017738265225058). In the mid-1960s, Pachu Ashan describes an incident in Onakkoor, near Muvattupuzha, where there was an intense agitation for the fishing rights in a local water tank which was controlled by a prominent landed family. Finally, the peasants and the workers won the right through a court order demonstrating a combination of methods of political and legal methods (Private Papers of Pachu Ashan). 81 M. A. Oommen, Essays on Kerala Economy (New Delhi: Oxford, 1993), 3. 82 Gopalan, Cause of the People, 298. 83 Sathyamurthy, India, 259.

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84 Chintha, October 13, 1972. 85 Sathyamurthy, India, 251. 86 In one lower-level CPM activist’s account, his family’s faith in communism and their allegiance to it was sealed with the land reforms (Santhosh,* interview, August 2004). 87 Herring, Land to the Tiller, 155. The normative assumptions behind the “land to the tiller” reform may be construed as bourgeois rather than socialist. It is especially so when “tiller” means not only someone who engages in “self-cultivation,” but also who hires and supervises labor. Thus, Herring argues that it is more appropriate to term it as a part of bourgeois revolution than socialist revolution (Herring, Land to the Tiller, 155). But the capitalism that emerges is a regulated one. 88 See Chapter 8. 89 As Sathyamurthy points out: “Because the legislation defined the term “tenant” in terms of property relations and made no attempt to distinguish between different classes of tenants—in terms of production relations . . . there was a wide variation in the level of benefit accruing to different classes of tenants as a result of the legislation. Thus, the better off tenants benefited far more, proportionately speaking, than the not well-off tenants who controlled less land and employed fewer labourers” (Sathyamurthy, India, 287). Rich farmers, who constituted 13.3 percent of the agrarian households, got 38.7 percent of the redistributed land (Yadu and Vijayasuryan, “Triple Exclusion,”399). 90 Oommen, Kerala Economy, 4–5. 91 Heller, Labor of Development, 78. 92 Jeffrey, Women and Well-Being, 179. 93 Herring, Land to the Tiller, 211. 94 Sathyamurthy, India, 289. 95 These plantations were initially acquired by the British capital under colonialism from the princely states through leases and at low tax rates. Even after land reforms, they were controlled by it until they were taken on by Indian big capital (K. T. Rammohan, “Caste and Landlessness in Kerala: Signals from Chengara,” Economic and Political Weekly 43, no. 37 (September 2008): 14. 96 For a detailed understanding of this process see Heller, Labor of Development. 97 Quoted in Radhakrishnan, Peasant Struggles, 272. 98 Shantha, Dalit woman, CPM activist, interview, July 2003. 99 Santhosh, interview. 100 Ronald J. Herring, “Beyond the Political Impossibility Theorem of Agrarian Reform,” in Changing Paths: International Development and the New Politics of Inclusion, ed. Peter P. Houtzager and Mick Moore (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003), 59. 101 Ibid., 72. 102 See Political Resolution of the Fourth Congress of the Communist Party of India (New Delhi: New Age, 1956). 103 Ronald J. Herring, “Contesting the ‘Great Transformation’: Local Struggles with the Market in South India,” in Agrarian Studies: Synthetic Work at the Cutting Edge, ed. James C. Scott and Nina Bhatt (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), 257. 104 Gail Omvedt, Reinventing Revolution: New Social Movements in India (New York: ME Sharpe, 1993), 19. 105 Sathyamurthy, India, 262. 106 Heller, Labor of Development, 82. 107 Vivek Chibber, Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital (London: Verso, 2013), 167–169.

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108 Original emphasis. People’s Democracy, February 11, 1968. 109 Heller, Labor of Development, 82–83. 110 Anil Varughese, “Democracy and the Politics of Social Citizenship in India,” (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Toronto, Toronto, 2013), 230. 111 Saju, interview. 112 Sathyamurthy, India, 186. 113 Heller, Labor of Development, 83. 114 Kerala Agricultural Workers’ Act (Government of Kerala, 1976), section 70. 115 Herring, “Contesting the ‘Great Transformation’.” 116 It was also provided that the wages should be paid at the threshing floor itself (Kerala Agricultural Workers’ Act (Government of Kerala, 1976), section 70, section 19). 117 Jeffrey, Women and Well-Being, 184. 750 agricultural laborers of a total of 1,000 in the union in Pampakuda Panchayat got welfare benefits alter (Private Papers of Pachu Ashan). 118 A. V. Jose, “Wage Rates of Agricultural Labourers in Kerala,” Economic and Political Weekly 8, nos. 4/6 (February 1973): 281–288. 119 Heller, Labor of Development, 91. 120 K. N. Harilal and K. K. Eswaran,“Agrarian Question and the Local Governments in Kerala,” (RULSG Occasional Paper 3, Research Unit on Local Self Governments, Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, March 2015). 121 See Dipesh Chakrabarty, “Class Consciousness and the Indian Working Class: Dilemmas of Marxist Historiography,” Journal of Asian and African Studies 23, nos. 1–2 (1988): 29. 122 Herring, Land to the Tiller, 205. 123 Chatterjee, “Community in the East.” 124 See next chapter. 125 Partha Chatterjee, “Agrarian Relations and Communalism: 1926–35,” in Subaltern Studies I: Writings on South Asian History and Society, ed. Ranajit Guha (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982), 37. 126 Javeed Alam, “Peasantry, Politics and Historiography: Critique of the New Trend in Relation to Marxism,” Social Scientist 11, no. 2 (February 1983): 45–46. 127 Chatterjee, “Agrarian Relations,” 37. 128 See Janayugam, November 1961. 129 Oommen, “Agrarian Struggles,” 1572. 130 Cited in Sengupta, Communism, 310. 131 Sathyamurthy, India, 205. 132 Radhakrishnan, Peasant Struggles, 163. 133 Barry Hindess, Discourses of Power: From Hobbes to Foucault (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 106. 134 Of course, I am not ignoring the benign aspects of the moral economy of feudalism (see James Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Subsistence and Rebellion in South East Asia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1976)). But, as we have seen, more often these benign aspects have been followed in theory than in practice. 135 Saju, interview. He describes how he grew up with stories of there being a curse on his family because of the atrocities committed by his forefathers. The discourse of recognition is unmistakable. According to Joykunju,* a Dalit Christian laborer and Communist activist, until his father’s generation, they lived like “slaves”, even food being given by the upper caste lords were served on leaves in a hole dug in the ground (interview, July 2004).

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136 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977), 192. 137 Nikolas Rose quoted in Stuart Corbridge et al., Seeing the State: Governance and Governmentality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 10. 138 “It is the same theory of sovereignty re-activated through the doctrine of Roman Law, that we find in Rousseau and contemporaries . . . now it is concerned with the construction, in opposition to the administrative, authoritarian and absolutist monarchies, of an alternative model, that of parliamentary democracy” (Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge, ed. Colin Gordon (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1980), 103). 139 See Herring, “Agrarian Reform,” 60. 140 Foucault, Power/Knowledge, 152–153. 141 Ibid., 156. 142 See Heller, Labor of Development, 43. 143 See Terence J. Byres, “State, Class and Planning,” in The State, Development Planning and Liberalisation in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 74. 144 Bernstein, Class Dynamics, 7. 145 Foucault himself, with his questioning of the notion of subjecthood, account for recognition either. 146 Dipesh Chakrabarty, Rethinking Working-Class History: Bengal, 1890–1940 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), 212. 147 Chakrabarty, Rethinking Working-Class History, 211–212. 148 Chibber, Specter of Capital, 202. 149 Partha Chatterjee, “Development Planning and the Indian State,” in ibid., 95. 150 Ibid., 97. 151 Bernstein, Class Dynamics, 49. 152 Chatterjee, “Development Planning,” 95. 153 More about this in the next chapter. 154 P. Eashvaraiah, The Communist Parties in Power and Agrarian Reforms in India (New Delhi: Academic Foundation, 1993), 87. 155 Chatterjee, “Development Planning,” 101. 156 See Herring, “Contesting the ‘Great Transformation’.” 157 Chatterjee, “Development Planning,” 101. 158 Ibid., 100. 159 Ibid., 97. 160 Chatterjee, Nation and Its Fragments, 217. 161 Karl Marx, Capital, ed. Frederick Engels. trans. Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977), 667. 162 Bernstein, Class Dynamics, 120. 163 Nancy Fraser, “From Redistribution to Recognition? Dilemmas of Justice in a ‘Post-Socialist’ Age,” New Left Review 212 (July–August 1995): 68. 164 Ibid., 72. This is not to deny the existence of ideal-typical collectivities that are located purely in the political economy and cultural ends of the spectrum. One example of the latter is groups that are oppressed on the basis of sexuality (Fraser, “From Redistribution,” 74–77). 165 Ibid., 73. 166 Santhosh, interview. T. V. Thomas,* contractor by profession, interview, May 2003. He, hailing from a lower peasant family, described the relief in not having to perform the deferential obligations to the Hindu landlord after the land reforms. 167 The split between the material and cultural aspects is complete in postdevelopmentalist arguments like that of Stephen Marglin, “[C]ulture is seen

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168 169

170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190

by all of us as foundational. That is, we see culture as neither reflective nor instrumental. Culture is not a superstructure that emerges from and reflects a given material base. Nor is culture to be understood as the instrument which may facilitate or obstruct improvement in the material standard of living” (Stephen Marglin, “Towards the Decolonization of the Mind,” in Dominating Knowledge: Development, Culture and Resistance, ed. F. Apffel Marglin and S. Marglin (London: Clarendon, 1991), 23. Scott, Moral Economy, viii. Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking Recognition,” New Left Review 3 (May–June 2000): 110–111. The identity model transposes the problem of recognition to the cultural and political terrain. To suffer misrecognition is to be subjected to devaluation by the dominant culture, and consequently ends up internalizing the negative view held by the dominant other. The only remedy for this is for the misrecognized group to counter the hegemonic representation by developing a new affirmative culture in which it is not discriminated against. Fraser points out that the identity model largely ignores economic maldistribution and also sees cultural representation as a free-floating discourse without any institutionalized underpinnings or without its intertwinement with distributive injustice (Fraser, “Rethinking Recognition,” 111). My emphasis. Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 167. Ibid., 168. Tom Brass, “Moral Economists, Subalterns, New Social Movements and the (Re-) Emergence of a (Post-) Modernized Middle Peasant,” Journal of Peasant Studies 18, no. 2 (1991): 179. See Chakrabarty and Cullenberg, Transition and Development, 159. Brass, “Moral Economists,”175. Ibid., 178. Scott, Moral Economy, 9. Ibid., 33. Ibid., 7. Ibid., 31. J. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990), xiii. J. Hariss, “Between Economism and Post: Modernism,” in Rethinking Social Development: Theory, Practice and Research, ed. David Booth (London: Longman, 1994), 192. Brass, “Moral Economists,” fn. 7, 196. But this cannot be posited as a universal as Chibber suggests without looking into the particular historical situation. Devasia, interview, August 2012. Leela, interview, August 2017. Pareeth, 78, retired laborer, interview, May 2011; Khadeeja, a 48-year-old woman, recounts how her grandfather, an agricultural laborer, got one acre of land as a part of the excess land agitation (interview, December 2018). Herring, “Contesting the ‘Great Transformation’,” 255. But I do not agree with Herring’s affirmation of James Scott’s thesis, for he does not take into account the problems with it that we have discussed. Manalil, Kalathinte, 140. Quoted in Radhakrishnan, Peasant Struggles, 239, 240. Saju, interview. Ibid.

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191 Jeffrey, Women and Well-Being, 180. See also Joseph Mathew, Ideology, Protest and Social Mobility: Case Study of Mahars and Pulayas (New Delhi: Inter-India Publications, 1986), 107. 192 G. K. Lieten, The First Communist Ministry in Kerala, 1957–9 (Calcutta: K. P. Bagchi & Co., 1982), 128. 193 Molly, interview, August 2017. 194 Mohan, from a prominent landed Nair family, interview, May 2003. 195 “‘Some People Remind Me of My Caste Quite Often,’ Says Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan,” Scroll, January 3, 2019, https://scroll.in/latest/908057/some-peopleremind-me-of-my-caste-quite-often-says-kerala-cm-pinarayi-vijayan. 196 A. K. Nair, retired schoolteacher, July 2003; Yohannan, interview, May 2011. 197 J. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990). 198 Janamma, a retired government employee, interview, July 2003. 199 Lieten, First Communist, 162. Among (upper-caste) Christians as well, there was a “taboo” about interacting with lower castes. In schools run by the Church, there were in the 1950s instances when the students were treated differently according to their caste status [this is something that has definitely not been eliminated now, but, again, it would be more subtle than overt]. The Dalit students were even made to work (without pay) on the school premises (field notes, July 2004). 200 Fraser, “Rethinking Recognition,” 116. 201 Saju, interview. 202 See Radhakrishnan, Peasant Struggles, 252. 203 Osella and Osella, Social Mobility, 185. 204 Section 23, Workers’ Act. 205 Heller, Labor of Development, 139–140. 206 Selvan,* lower-level Communist activist, interview, May 2003. 207 Jose, interview. 208 Heller, Labor of Development, 95. 209 Ibid. 210 Remarkably, even non-Communist and anti-Communist political leaders too started talking in terms of “class consciousness” (Deepika, May 16, 1961). 211 Manalil, Kalathinte, 135. 212 Joykunju and Jose, interviews. 213 See Chatterjee, Nation and Its Fragments, 239. 214 In one laborer’s account, under feudalism, the superior could do anything, “make anyone sleep or stand”. Now if anybody, including the employer, violates his space, he would not tolerate it (Selvan, interview). Even in the seventies the Communists were leading a struggle against the practice of landlords (and even their children) addressing adult laborers as chekken and pennu (boy and girl) (see Deshabhimani 19, 2004). 215 Sathyamurthy, India, 274. 216 Escobar, Encountering Development, 160. 217 See ibid., 162. The communist project, even though was part and parcel of the modernity project, was not fully implicated in progressism, especially in its popular versions in this period. In its attitude towards development, there were instances when it was sensitive to the human cost of big development projects. In the early sixties, for example, A. K. Gopalan led a popular movement of the people summarily evicted in an area earmarked for a hydro-electric project. Around 1800 families were evicted (Deepika, June 13, 1961). The police adopted very harsh methods including the destruction of huts and standing

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218 219 220 221 222 223 224

225

crops (Sathyamurthy, India, 219). Gopalan conducted a famous hunger strike against the lack of adequate compensation for the evictees as a result of which the government increased the compensation (Deepika, June 15, 18, 22, 1961). While he accepted that evictions might have to be undertaken sometimes, he wondered whether it should be done at the expense of the proper rehabilitation of the people involved. If the latter is the case, “it only means the destruction of thousands of human-beings in the name of national reconstruction” (Gopalan, Cause of the People, 236). As Father Vadakkan, a Catholic priest and peasant activist, who was virulently anti-communist pointed out, when it came to protecting the interests of the evictee farmers, nobody other than the Communists came forward. And he particularly acknowledged his opponent Gopalan’s role in bringing the issue to the forefront in Kerala (Deepika, June 22, 1961). The KKS organized “block jathas” in many parts of the state and also house-tohouse campaigns, discussions and meetings (Radhakrishnan, Peasant Struggles, 135). Here, one can see hints of recognition beyond economism that big development projects for national progress at the expense of the people. There was a statewide agitation against another eviction for a forest conservation project in which picketing of collectorates and taluk offices were undertaken. The peasant jatha reached the state capital and the confrontation with the police resulted in 1986 Communist activists being arrested on the spot (Mathrubhumi, December 12, 1961). In support of the peasant struggle, the working-class unions under the Communist Party struck work and the number of workers involved were over 100,000 (Muralidharan, Dynamics, 122). Escobar, Encountering Development, 59. Quoted in Agnes Heller, “Habermas and Marxism,” in Habermas: Critical Debates, ed. John B. Thompson (London: Macmillan Press, 1982), 37. Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, 168. See Escobar, Encountering Development, 144–145. Skocpol, “What Makes Peasants Revolutionary?,” 360. Ibid. Land reforms and the Workers’ Act were one of the main reasons for the significant decrease in poverty levels in Kerala. In one poor peasant’s view, unlike under feudalism, at least there is some security after land reforms and “there is not a house which goes without gruel” (Kochavan,* Muslim small farmer, interview, July 2004). Inequality reduced in Kerala until the beginning of the 1990s, when neoliberal reforms began to take effect, and agricultural laborers could also fall back upon the tiny homesteads as a supplementary source of income to the wages (A. P. Sreeraj and Vamsi Vakulabharanam, “High Growth and Rising Inequality in Kerala since the 1980s,” Oxford Development Studies 44, no.4 (2015): 370, 381). One of the important results of labor activism under communism is that the informal sector is as organized as the formal sector, unlike other parts of India. The daily wage rate of paddy field workers (male) increased from Rs. 11 in 1981 to Rs. 148.72 (male) in 2003–04 (Economic Review, State Planning Board; Government of Kerala, 2004). In 2015–16, for agricultural field labor, the highest wages in India were in Kerala: which were 105% and 96% above the India average for men and women respectively (Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Agriculture Wages in India: 2015–16 [New Delhi: Government of India, 2017]). The poor in Kerala are now imbued with “a sense of power and self-worth”. Unlike the feudal era, the lower castes now do not take oppression lying down. As one person put it: “it is not whether he ‘can,’ rather now it is that he ‘will’

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226 227 228

229 230 231 232 233 234

235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244

retort” if wronged by the elite (Ann George, “Multiple Dimensions of WellBeing: A Micro-Level Study of the Poor,” (M. Phil. dissertation, Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum, 2001), 67–68). Dilip Menon, “Lost Visions? Imagining a National Culture in the 1950s,” in Land, Labour and Rights: Ten Daniel Thorner Memorial Lectures, ed. A. Thorner (New Delhi: Tulika, 2002), 262, 266. Menon, Lost Visions, 266. According to Namboodiripad, “the Communists and other Leftists extended their support to the main principles of the Nehru model of Indian planning— rapid industrialization with emphasis on the building of heavy industries; the building of a powerful public sector as a counterforce to the foreign multinationals as well as to Indian big business which was rapidly developing into monopolies” (quoted in P. Muhammed, “Cinema, Politics and Historical Consciousness: The Left and the Production of a Modern Subjectivity in Kerala, 1950s-1980s,” (Ph.D. Thesis, Department of Cultural Studies, English and Foreign Languages University Hyderabad, Hyderabad, 2017), 109). Manali Desai, State Formation and Radical Democracy in India, 1860–1990 (London: Routledge, 2006), 15. This is clearly seen in the fate of the extreme Left which is still pursuing a path of violent revolution underground. Luisa Steur, “Indigenist Mobilization: ‘Identity’ versus ‘Class’ after the Kerala Model of Development?,” (Ph.D. Thesis, Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, Central European University, Budapest, 2011), 139. Aditya Nigam, “Logic of Failed Revolution,” Economic and Political Weekly 35, no. 5 (January 2000): 263. J. Devika, “Egalitarian Developmentalism, Communist Mobilization and the Question of Caste in Kerala State, India,” Journal of Asian Studies 69, no. 3 (2010):811. Chibber, Specter of Capital, 266, 269. Muhammed, “Cinema,” 122, 125. Of course, this technocracy and belief in developmental projects like big dams did not have a clear ideology about environmentalism, but as we saw, the potential displacement of people was also resisted. Mudiyanaya Puthran, the film (1961), which was adapted from the play, looked down upon industrialization with suspicion (Muhammed, “Cinema,” 99). Prerna Singh, “We-ness and Welfare: A Longitudinal Analysis of Social Development in Kerala, India,” World Development 39, no. 2 (2011): 291. Prerna Singh, How Solidarity Works for Welfare: Subnationalism and Social Development in India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). L. Leisering, review of How Solidarity Works for Welfare: Subnationalism and Social Development in India, by Prerna Singh, Journal of Social Policy 47, no.1 (2018): 204–228. Deepa Kumar, “Marxism and Orientalism,” International Socialist Review 94 (Fall 2014), https://isreview.org/issue/94/marxism-and-orientalism. Herring, “Contesting the ‘Great Transformation’,” 255. R. Ramakumar, “Public Action, Agrarian Change and the Standard of Living of Agricultural Workers: A Study of a Village in Kerala,” Journal of Agrarian Change 6, no. 3 (2006): 317. See Radhakrishnan, Peasant Struggles, 213 ff. David Ludden, “Subalterns and Others in the Agrarian History of South Asia,” in Agrarian Studies: Synthetic Work at the Cutting Edge, ed. James C. Scott and Nina Bhatt (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), 212. Ibid.

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245 Desai, State Formation, 5. 246 Gyan Prakash, “Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World: Perspectives from Indian Historiography,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 32, no. 2 (1990): 383–408. 247 P. G. Suresh Kumar, former middle-rung Communist leader, interview, July 2004; Selvan, Kochavan and Saju, interviews. According to Selvan, in relatively advanced states like Tamil Nadu people are bought and sold like cattle for Rs. 20,000. Even non-Communists compare the achievement of Kerala with the north Indian states where “there is no respect for life” or economic security for the workers (Pradeep, lower-level government employee; Sunil, computer professional, interviews, July 2004; Divakaran, government engineer, interview, August 2004). 248 Barrington Moore, Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1967), 430. 249 Joseph Tharamangalam, Agrarian Class Conflict (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1981), 96. 250 Ibid., 97. 251 Joseph Tharamangalam, “Human Development as Transformative Practice,” Critical Asian Studies 42, no. 3 (2010): 363–402. 252 Ibid., 374.

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7 RECONSTITUTING THE POLITICAL The People’s Plan

If the last chapter saw the communist intervention in the sphere of political economy with regard to land reforms and labor legislation, in this chapter we will look at its negotiation of the “political” by specifically focusing on the decentralization program called the People’s Plan Campaign initiated by the CPM-led Left government inaugurated in the period 1996–2001.1 However, this period, unlike the last one we examined, was one by which, among other structural changes, the communist movement had substantially de-radicalized after 40 years of electoral politics, and had to increasingly contend with capital accumulation when in government. Also, by this period (as we will see in the next chapter), the communist national-popular would be substantially challenged for its incompleteness. Despite the critique of modernity, one of the biggest lacks in postcolonial theory is the absence of a conception of an alternative to modern democracies. It wants to expose the “contingency of instituted forms of politics and open up new forms of political sociability,”2 or in Chatterjee’s words, to fashion a language that “must allow us to talk about community and the state at the same time.”3 However, the major difficulty is that these arguments do not specify with any detail what the contours are of these “new forms of political sociability,” or the kind of community they have in mind— if we assume that it is not the existing communities with their hierarchies. It will be argued that the People’s Plan constituted an attempt by communism to inaugurate new forms of political sociability which are not just anchored in older forms of community, and of the restructuring of the role of the state itself. In some ways, this can be seen as the appropriation of the critical potential of modernity. However, the successes, and the failures of the Plan throw up important theoretical questions, which run counter to many of the central assertions of postcolonial theory and Subaltern Studies, especially in the later reformulations. In the assessment of the Plan, there have been accounts which have romanticized the Plan as already establishing popular rule. For example, under the Plan Kerala has supposedly moved from “constitution of public spheres . . . to the institutionalization of participatory publics.”4 On the other hand, there 295

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are arguments which posit that the Plan is just an instrument in furthering the hegemony of a thoroughly deradicalized party-centered communist movement; in essence, it is a “controlled decentralisation that would suit the kind of decentralisation that institutions such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) were beginning to experiment with in the context of the retreat of the state from certain sectors.”5 With regard to the first position, it is obvious that a democratic decentralization program can only go thus far in the ultimately bourgeois democratic framework of the larger nation state. Further, it was undertaken in a period when two tectonic events had already taken place. One was the disintegration of the Soviet Union (and the evanescence of the communist dreams represented by it), and the second was the liberalization of the Indian economy and moving to a market economy. Kerala society thence is riven by a lot of contradictions and ambiguities, especially the intense struggle between an older imaginary of radical socialist and other counterhegemonic ideas and the increasing domination of capitalism.6 (This is seen in other locations like China where the transition to capitalism cannot still be openly embraced.)7 The latter has given rise to a focus on consumption8 and the private sphere. Thus, many of the lofty and radical ideals of the Plan were co-opted by various strategies of misrepresentation, idealization and depoliticization.9 A significant threat emerged in the form of “bureaucratic capture.” The bureaucracy “overreacted to the prospect of political competition and the entry of non-experts and the uninitiated into planning” by trying to discipline, erect barriers or co-opt participatory institutions. Besides, participation rates declined occasioned by participation fatigue.10 Moreover, the main forces behind the People’s Plan, the communist parties, are themselves going through a severe ideological crisis. Therefore, it cannot be argued unequivocally that there is a unilinear deepening of democracy. Many have seen the labor quiescence and the decline of militant struggles in Kerala since the late 1970s as the co-optation of the communist movement. There was a steady reduction in industrial disputes that caused work stoppages from a high of 1,322 (1970–1974) to 104 (1995–199), and further, to 37 (2006–2011).11 However, Heller, writing in the end of the 1990s and against the received wisdom, argued that this was the result of the institutionalization of class conflict: the “decline of overt class struggle does not reflect a shift in the balance of class forces, or the triumph of market forces.”12 While he accepts the initial barriers to growth from labor militancy, he cites the increasing levels of production from the 1990s to argue that these barriers have been removed, “not as result of some ineluctable triumph of the logic of capital or the political defeat of labor but through a process of negotiated class compromise.”13 Heller is only partly correct (also because capital has strengthened further since the late 1990s). Labor quiescence is not just the result of the institutionalization of class conflict as argued by him. It also involves the deradicalization and the embourgeoisement of the organized 296

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and unionized working classes and the peasantry.14 To that extent, there is a co-optation of the working classes by bourgeois democracy and its values. Therefore, the shift from militant class struggle to social democratic strategy of class compromise on the part of the organized Left was not just a tactical strategy adopted by it in reaction to the limits of the redistributive trajectory of development,15 but is also reflective of the changing social structure. It is true that even with the incursion of neoliberalism, many labor–capital arrangements, which demonstrate the power of labor, remain, and that this incursion, more than elsewhere in India, is contested. Thus, the entry of big global and national capital is subtle and staggered.16 The non-market sector is also strong in a comparative sense. One-third of the state’s population consists of members of cooperative societies, and on categories like membership, deposits and credits secured from cooperative societies, Kerala is ranked first in the country. Kerala has only 1.75% of the total primary agricultural credit societies in India, but had a share of 37.45% of the total deposits.17 Despite being only 2.5% of India’s population, Kerala has 17% membership of cooperative societies.18 Yet, trade unionism has declined, especially in large employment sectors like coir which gives jobs to 500,000 workers19 and which, as we have seen, has been the hotbed of class struggles. The only difference between Kerala and the other Indian states was that workers still, as a result of those past struggles, enjoyed a better standard of living than workers in comparable conditions.20 However, what cannot be ignored is the increasing sense of resignation and inevitability about the entry of big capital and the inability of small traders and producers to compete with it as it has vast production and supply networks.21 Further, there is increasing informalization in unregulated sectors which employ migrant laborers from other states in India.22 Their number has reached a phenomenal 3.4 million in 2018.23 Keeping in line with the welfarist influences, Kerala was the first state in India to institute a social security scheme for migrant workers.24 Yet, the migrant workers earn less than local workers and the living arrangements of the former are poor.25 Across India, seasonal migrant labor constitute millions of workers and “involve new forms of oppression and exploitation.” These workers are overwhelmingly Dalit, Adivasi and come from poor regions showing that class is co-constituted by caste, tribe and region.26 There have been some significant structural changes in Kerala society as a consequence of the success of the redistributive policies like land reforms, other welfare measures, liberalization of the economy and migrant remittances. In 2016, remittances were estimated to be 36% of the Net State Domestic Product. The number of non-resident Keralites abroad in 2016 was 2.24 million.27 Thus, since the 1980s, Kerala has “been sucked into the vortex of globalisation in the form of an offshore boom located in the Arabian Gulf.”28 Kerala is the most externally integrated of all Indian state economies. The class structure has changed substantially. Thus, there is a 297

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significant increase of non-agricultural workers (15.32–34.18%) and urban elite (3.71–9.71%), decline in agricultural workers (24.89–9.76%) and small peasants (17.39–10.28%) from 1983 to 2009–2010. There is also the rise of a class of petty owners.29 The economy is indeed growing at a much faster rate than the national average,30 overcoming the stagnation of the earlier period till the late 1980s (see the next section). However, the growth is focused on the service sector which has burgeoned rapidly and there has been a drastic shift away from agriculture reflected in the decline of agricultural labor,31 which has a caste dimension because of the huge numbers of Dalits dependent on it. There is also high investment in land and construction, including residential construction activities.32 There is a crisis in the productive sectors and as a result, unemployment rates are very high. This also leads to an economy dependent on borrowing which also affects the famed public expenditures of the welfare state.33 The communist government accepting loans from the Asian Development Bank with neoliberal conditionalities was a sign of the pressure to embrace market rationality.34 Robust public health and education, the product of sustained struggles by the people, was affected. Increasing dependence on the private sector is a consequence.35 Public sector companies, which should have been a model in a welfare state, themselves show a poor record with a large majority being loss-making enterprises.36 However, some scholars have argued that the communist government’s selective adoption of neoliberal policies is the most pragmatic course of action under capitalist globalization and this has not led to the abandonment of the democratic development state.37 According to them, social democracy, rather than socialism, is the more viable option to “balance the efficiency criteria of markets with the equality and justice criteria of community.”38 Nevertheless, the rising inequalities in the post-1990s Kerala do not afford a very optimistic prognosis. By 2009–2010, Kerala had the highest inequality among states. However, contrary to the rest of India, there is a “phenomenal increase” in within-class inequality, and a “less significant increase in between-class inequality.” One of the main reasons is migration and resultant and income differences.39 The structural changes have substantially altered the nature of politics.40 It has affected the communist movement as well, which is increasingly middle class in its orientation.41 There is a mistaken feeling among the Left that major material demands of the oppressed and marginalized have already been achieved setting the stage for a politics based on consensus than on confrontation.42 While the move to non-class concerns like ecology and gender was welcome, it also erroneously believed that the class question was settled. This, of course, ignores the fact, as we have noted, that the land question, for example, was incomplete. As a result, some scholars have termed the Plan as a shift from welfare as people’s right to welfare as “minimum entitlements tied to self-help and forms of work-for-welfare.”43 This means 298

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that welfare is increasingly targeted, and not universal, and aimed at categories like “Below Poverty Line” and “destitutes.” It also is imbued with liberal individualist notions of interest maximization.44 The questions centered around the redistribution of productive assets were put on the backburner. Deliberative democracy may also have the disadvantage that it may discourage radicalism and militancy. Commitment to deliberative processes may rule out more radical methods of challenging power.45 And if the deliberative bodies become sites for genuine challenge to the power of entrenched classes, then they may seek to abolish these bodies.46 There have been thus criticisms against the Plan that it was based on the avoidance of conflict or the suppression of conflicts as the focus was on deliberation.47 The greatest threat to the Plan comes from a reductionist understanding of politics in which structural questions of power and exploitation are substituted for political party partisanship or a harmony model of power in which “the poor and powerless could acquire tools for self-reliance that would ensure their empowerment without radically transforming power structures in society.”48 The criticisms of the Plan are by and large correct. At the same time, we should be wary of reducing it merely to a top-down control mechanism of the ruling classes and the dominant forces which maintains status quo, as some versions of the second position argue. This ignores the fact that social transformation is not completely under the control of the actors, and any account which makes out that “the course of history is completely determined by the will and stratagems of the ruling class, always leaves something to be desired.”49 Importantly, the discourse of democracy, once introduced, can take on an inexorable logic: “as de Tocqueville clearly understood, once human beings accept the principle of equality in one sphere they will attempt to extend it to every other sphere of life.”50 However, of course, as we have seen throughout this book, it does not happen automatically, but also needs political agents and agency and cultural struggles. Despite the de-radicalizing tendencies that have crept into the Plan, it would not be entirely correct to equate the Plan with a World-Bank-like decentralization. The World Bank perspective can be termed as part of revisionist neoliberalism which “sees institutions and actors in civil society as partners for enabling state institutions. Popular participation is seen as a means for making development interventions more cost-effective and efficient and also a step toward privatization of state services.”51 The social structure in which the Plan operates and the political conditions that have generated it need to be assessed before reaching a conclusion about it being a World-Bank-inspired program.52 The initial conceptualization of the Plan as a deepening of democracy rather than merely as an economistic solution still gives the People’s Plan a different kind of potential for democratization, even if its fulfillment will require the agency of individual and social actors, and the emergence of social forces that can overcome the stultification of 299

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the Left. Moreover, seeing it as a unified action on the part of those who wield power to initiate democratic decentralization ignores the fact that the Plan was intensely opposed by many sections of the Communist Party leadership, bureaucracy, trade unions and so on.53 And now there is a struggle against bureaucratization, with even the main political parties opposing it.54 While the Plan, after more than 20 years, has not furthered substantively radical democratic development, the success has been that local participatory democracy has been institutionalized.55 The question remains if it can overcome its current routinization and radicalize Kerala’s social democracy further to achieve structural reforms, and to complete the incomplete national-popular as well as envisage socialities and economic production beyond the market. In examining the politics of decentralization, and its successes and failures, we will see in the following that even the new theoretical formulations like “political society” developed by Subaltern Studies is inadequate to understand the complexity of the new politics. What is particularly problematic is the resorting to of binaries like political society/civil society. Judith Whitehead argues that this is a result of the subscription to a liberal democratic state theory.56 Further, these binaries are pre-given and fixed. I will argue that despite the People’s Plan not fulfilling its promise, it constituted an important effort at the extension of popular sovereignty which again fundamentally puts into question postcolonial theory’s understanding of the relationship between state, civil society and modernity in the Global South. Here, what emerges through the People’s Plan is also the importance of the role of political intervention. The “constitutive role of political intervention” is a “supplementary logic” that is already present in Marx’s texts,57 but has largely been ignored. In Gramsci, this takes center stage: “it is not the economic structure which directly determines political action, but it is the interpretation of it and of the so-called laws which govern the course it takes.” Further, according to him: The term “catharsis” can be employed to indicate the passage from the purely economic (or egoistic-passional) to the ethico-political sphere, that is the higher elaboration of the structure into superstructure in the minds of men. This also means the passage from “objective” to “subjective” and from “necessity” to “freedom.”58 All this happens in the sphere of the civil society, which for Gramsci is not merely the sphere of private interests that sustained the hegemony of the bourgeoisie, but is also the terrain in which the struggles for counterhegemony are launched. As we saw, for Gramsci, state and civil society should exist in a symbiotic relationship. In the case of the communist People’s Plan, this relationship acquired another dimension. Thus, notably, it was the product of a state-led initiative. Gramsci had insisted that the revolution must 300

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first occur in civil society before it can take place in the state.59 Here, the relationship is almost reversed, even though we are not referring to anything that resembles a revolution. Nevertheless, what we can gain from Gramsci is the insight that the resolution of the historic problem of the oppressed class cannot happen merely in the sphere of economic relations: “an exclusive concentration on the base . . . leads the working class toward a sterile and indecisive class struggle.” While material conditions have to be transcended, they cannot also be done so by mere domination without consent.60 The communist movement’s initiation of People’s Plan showed some understanding of these dimensions, albeit in a liberal democratic framework of the nation state and also forced by the changing socioeconomic structure, limits imposed on continuing militancy and the waning hegemony of the communist movement itself.

The material context Here is a brief outline of the material conditions and some of the features of the stagnation of the Kerala economy till the late 1980s to show the context in which the democratic decentralization program was envisaged. If the economic structure of Kerala society had undergone relatively fewer changes till the implementation of the land reforms, it underwent tremendous changes following it. The success of the land reforms and workers’ struggles themselves generated new problems. From the point of view of the communist movement, what was significant was the emergence of a new class of capitalist farmers from the previously oppressed class of tenantry.61 Unlike the Subaltern Studies’ narrative of a unified peasantry above class, the institutionalization of workers’ rights and the liberation of tenantry led to the fracturing of the communist class coalition which had mobilized against feudal landlordism. Regulated capitalism had resulted, according to some commentators, in a “stalemated class conflict” because of the contradiction between agrarian capital and labor.62 Land reforms resulted in new class conflicts arising out of the issue of the distribution of the “rent fund” and the problem of the embourgeoisement of the peasantry. In many farmers’ accounts, the CPM had even become “a party of laborers.”63 After the land reforms, the agrarian structure was characterized by the absence of large landholders outside the plantation sector. Nearly 80% of the landholders were small-scale landholders whose average size of landholding was one-third of an acre. Since it was not possible for these smallholders to meet their subsistence from agriculture, most of them are forced to seek outside wage or salary employment. This peculiar situation made it necessary even for smallholders to employ wage laborers to cultivate the land. They were small-scale capitalist farmers cultivating largely marketoriented commercial crops. They cannot be classified as the peasants of yore.64 Thus, there was the coexistence of smallholdings with high incidence 301

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of wage employment in agriculture. As Isaac and Mohana Kumar commented in 1991: Such a situation renders it difficult to build the unity of rural masses. . . . The wage question tends to divide landholders, whether small or large from the wage labourers. The situation has become precarious in the context of stagnant productivity.65 With land reforms, there was also the transformation of tenants with large holdings into a class of capitalist farmers who could see agriculture as a profitable enterprise. Further, with the progress of mechanization, the reliance on labor began to decline leading to more casualization of labor.66 The land question ceased to be an important issue of mass mobilization as the majority benefited from the reforms excluding the Dalits and Adivasis. Extreme fragmentation, compounded by failures of efforts at collective mobilization like cooperative farming, has prevented rational cultivation. The high cost of labor and the increasing non-productivity of agriculture made farmers turn to practices like leaving land fallow or leasing it out illegally to poor tillers.67 Peasants tried to minimize their dependence on workers by looking for alternative investment opportunities. As a result, investment mainly took place in areas where labor was not well organized like in commerce which included outright speculation in real estate (itself occasioned by the increasing rate of urbanization), banking and so on.68 From the 1970s to the late 1980s, Kerala’s economy underwent severe stagnation in the spheres of material production and was characterized by soaring unemployment, acute fiscal crises and question marks on the sustainability of its famed social welfare expenditures. Kerala was one of the few Indian states whose economy did not show signs of acceleration from the late 1970s. In fact, the State Domestic Product (SDP) growth rate in the 1980s was not only markedly lower than the national average but also significantly lower than the SDP growth rates achieved during the previous decade.69 Agricultural stagnation was compounded by the further shift in cropping pattern to commercial crops (which are subject to the vagaries of the international market) like coconut and rubber which has been taking place since the mid-1970s.70 Similarly the industrial performance too had been dismal. As a result, the share of the manufacturing sector in SDP had tended to decline.71 With the stagnation in agricultural and industrial sectors, the unemployment situation in the state had worsened. The unemployment rate was around three times the national average in the mid-1990s.72 However, the crisis in the Kerala economy had been camouflaged by emigrant remittances from the oil-rich Gulf region from the mid-1970s, the same period in which the economy began to stagnate. These remittances constituted as much as 25% of the SDP in the early 1990s.73 The migrant 302

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family savings were mainly diverted to non-productive activities like consumption heralding a new era of consumerism.74 With the attainment of successes relating to land and labor, the communist movement itself had entered a phase of relative stagnation from the mid-1970s with its electoral support stable at the 40% achieved in the 1960 elections. In a self-critical account of the Left, it: found itself incapable of making any decisive breakthrough in the compartmentalization of political life and bring about a realignment of political forces. Its success in mass mobilization in numerous struggles for radical reforms, redistribution and democratic rights failed to get reflected in the electoral strength of the left.75 While the elimination of landlordism did not give cultivable land to the agricultural labor, it did not also mean that all forms of exploitation came to an end. What happened was the emergence of alternative bases of power “such as influence within religious communities, the ability to manipulate markets and the supply of credits, and political and administrative positions.” The landlord was replaced by the state and bureaucracy as the new “super patron.”76 “The broad-based social movements that saw the expansion of social citizenship have been displaced by more narrow and sectoral interests, most notably industrial unions in the public sector and public employee associations.”77 Further democratization depended also on the democratization of ownership and control of the means of production other than land.78 While it is a fallacy to argue that the land reforms alone contributed to agricultural stagnation, it is true that the communist movement had generally put questions of economic development on the backburner and had failed, at least until the 1990s, to make the difficult transition “from a social transformational force to a force of accumulation.”79 This, again, demonstrates that tendencies of modernism and developmentalism are not the only ones which were extant. There were strong tendencies of Luddism from the point of view of protecting employment of workers, seen in agitations against computerization, for example. This led to the communist parties being seen as anti-modern or anti-technology.80 However, the main trajectory of development was bureaucratic, top-led development. Even when the Left tried to extend democracy, it was mainly in the form of state programs and co-operatives which were under the control of politicians and bureaucrats leading to “centralism, politicised vested interests, factionalism and compartmentalisation, and for collective and individual clientelism as well.”81 According to Tornquist, the Communists had mainly concentrated on the privately owned means of production without paying attention to publicly owned means of production. The fact that they tried to fight corruption by a centralized and disciplined organization did not solve the basic problem of a top-down government. 303

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Early attempts The crisis in the economy, the middle-classing of society, and the stagnation of the communist movement were the immediate contexts in which the Communists initiated the new project of democratization in the late 1980s first. However, by no means, the project itself was intended as merely an instrument to increase economic production. The decentralization of state power was projected as an integral part of democracy. Namboodiripad called it democracy built on four pillars.82 The new project of democratization, although occasioned by the immediate exigencies, had some links with the past. As early as the 1958 Report of the Administrative Reforms Committee, submitted during the first communist ministry and under the chairmanship of Namboodiripad, had one of its main terms of reference as “[t]o suggest methods for democratization of the organs of Government at the various levels with a view to effective participation of local self-governing institutions or other representative bodies in the administration.”83 Tornquist argued before that there were two major schools of thought within the broad communist movement—the state-modernist and the popular-developmentalist school. The former, characteristic of the leaders of the newly independent countries of 1950s and 1960s, believed in top-down development, largescale industrialization and efficient state intervention. The latter school, which was marginalized within the Left (until the late 1980s) was for a popular and bottom-up approach to development, for people “developing their own capacity to increase production and improve their standard of living” and for them “to promote their own future through collective organization and action based on common interests and ideas instead of relying on individual solutions, patronage or communal loyalties.”84 These differences throw into question the binaries drawn by Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory, as well as the one-sided understanding of the communist project as hyper-rationalism. While this kind of a categorization allows us to understand the differences between the two schools, this does not throw light on the important initiatives taken by the so-called state modernizers. In Tornquist’s schema, Namboodiripad is in the first school, which ignores the fact that he was the most important figure in the initiation of the People’s Plan. His interest in democratic decentralization goes back as far as 1938 when he wrote a piece on the subject. In 1946 he talked about the need for the democratic control over the bureaucracy starting from the village.85 Both 1957 and 1967 ministries under Namboodiripad made efforts at inaugurating village democracy. According to the 1958 Reforms Committee: For almost all activities of Government there are departmental agencies down to the village level. Thus, there are separate functionaries for different departments like Public Works, Public Health,

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Education etc., all of whom function independently of the Panchayat [lowest elected body] and, by and large, of each other also. The revenue administration of the village is done by the revenue staff which forms part of the general administrative arm of the Government. There is urgent need for coordinating the activities of the activities of these functionaries and bringing them under the control of a local and immediate elected body like the Panchayat, if the results of our planning and development are to be lasting and permanent.86 The main difference between the proposals of this Committee and the Balwant Rai Mehta Committee appointed by the Government of India was that the latter saw the lower-level elected bodies as merely development agencies.87 In 1958, there were two viewpoints regarding District councils—the proposed units of administration at the district level. One view argued that the councils should have an advisory role alone and should be constituted by indirect elections or nominations. The other side was for the vesting of entire responsibilities regarding administrative and development matters with the councils and was also for the direct elections of the councils. Namboodiripad who was a strong advocate for the latter group, and the bill incorporating its views could not be passed only because the government fell. However, he himself noted that only two cabinet members including himself were interested in decentralization and the others were against giving up power.88 Even the 1980 Marxist-led government failed to legislate on the matter because of opposition from its own coalition partners. It was only in 1987 that the District Council Act was passed by the Left government. To understand the People’s Plan, these earlier attempts have to be understood. A more important cue to the seeds of the People’s Plan, in my view, lies in the attempts to democratize the implementation of the land reforms. Interestingly, even more so for a Marxist of a “Stalinist” party, Namboodiripad was in the forefront of the moves to develop a bottom-up perspective on development long before the concept had entered the discourse of development. Intervening in the debate on the proposal by the Congress Partyappointed Agrarian Reforms Committee for “bureaucratic collectivization,” Namboodiripad argued in 1954: Those who are serious about carrying out agrarian reform should . . . depend not so much on the merits and demerits of a particular schemes of land reform as on the question of which schemes are those that have been evolved and are being implemented by the mass of peasants. It may be that the mass of peasantry would like to have a particular scheme of land reforms which, from a scientific point of view, is not so good as some other scheme worked out by certain intellectuals; that, however, should not lead any revolutionary, who is serious about carrying out real agrarian

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reform, to the rejection of the scheme evolved by the peasants themselves, based on their own experience and understanding.89 Again, it is a demonstration of the contradictory elements in the communist project, the developmentalist, progressivist and vanguardist elements mixing with those which stand as their critique. So, a one-sided understanding which sees the project as simply a modernist one would miss these dissonances. The scientific rationality of a particular scheme was not the sole criterion for its effectiveness; it had to be simultaneously in accord with the “commons sense” of the peasantry. Moreover, development is not something conceptualized and administered by intellectuals from above. Even the best intellectuals of the socialist tradition, as Agnes Heller argues, “coupled their overt contempt for capitalism with covert contempt for the empirically existing working class.”90 However, as we have seen, the peasantry is not just a backward-looking reactionary force which needs to be led and liberated by the organic intellectuals and the industrial working class; it is, as Gramsci had argued before, imbued with a critical consciousness. According to Namboodiripad, the details of the land reforms must be left to the “innate, revolutionary common sense of the peasants themselves, organized in their own associations and committees.”91 It is interesting to note that Namboodiripad was arguing the 1950s what postcolonial and post-developmentalist theorists were to advocate later, to: conceive of the peasantry in terms of not lacks but possibilities, that is, as a social sector in its own right [which] in turn requires an effective respect for peasants in terms of establishing new rules of the game to satisfy peasant demands.92 For knowledge created for development to be useful, the gap between the knowledge creators (researchers), knowledge users (planners) and the beneficiary community (peasants, for example) need to be reduced and this can happen if peasants’ self-understanding is taken into account.93 However, again, keeping in line with progressivist tendencies and the incomplete national-popular, this understanding of the potential of traditional knowledges was contradictory. Namboodiripad considered the Dalit laborers as backward, and not yet a proletariat, and did not acknowledge the “possibilities of their existing dispositions and skills.”94 The only difference between Namboodiripad and other Communists, and the postcolonialists was that the former insisted on the bottom-up perspective meeting with the top-down one simultaneously. The various landreform bills introduced by the Communists were the result of deliberations by the people who were to benefit from them. The karshaka sanghams were again the catalysts in this process, synthesizing the demands and views of the peasantry at the various study classes, meetings and conferences organized 306

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by them.95 The Fourth Congress of the Communist Party of India asked for the institution of democratically elected committees of farmers to oversee the agrarian reforms.96 The land-reform provisions since the first bill introduced in 1957 had a component of people’s participation (through representatives) in the implementation process in the form of Land Tribunals and a Land Board, which adjudicated on matters removed from the purview of courts.97 The former would have members elected by the local bodies while the latter would have one member elected by the State legislature. This was a blow to the traditional power structures.98 The Congress and other parties mounted a strong opposition to the inclusion of popular elements in the implementation process. The communist government, before tabling the draft legislation, had also engaged in a wide consultative process to involve a vast section of the masses.99 Another notable policy of the communist government was that of divesting the police of powers to intervene in conflicts between the workers and peasantry on the one side, and the bourgeoisie and landlords on the other. It reduced the powers of the police to ordinary crimes.100 This took away one of the main arms of the “Repressive State Apparatus”101 from the traditional role of suppressing the peasantry and workers. There were also instances of the police helping the poor peasants to get their share of land and crops.102 The contrast with the role of the police before during colonialism and even during the initial years after independence (Chapter 3) is stark. This demonstrates that coercive institutional mechanisms of modernity, contra postcolonial theory, can be significantly shaped through democratic struggles.103 Herring argues that even though the first communist ministry could not implement the agrarian reform, it provided for “novel forms of nonofficial participation.”104 At the same time, as noted before, it is important to keep in mind the contradiction of the communist movement wanting to extend the participation of the marginalized classes even when being hostile to those sections of civil society which are opposed to it. By the time the final version of the bill was passed in 1969, the popular struggles for over a decade had ensured that the bureaucracy’s power in the implementation and the power of judiciary in adjudication would be whittled down. There was a clear recognition among the Marxists that the judiciary is one of the main instruments of class rule.105 This is borne out in an emphatic and unconcealed manner in one significant judgment on the 1969 Land Reform Act: the court commented that it was not “reform” because it was not a “change for the better” and not in the “general interest.” It was obvious on which side the sympathies of the court lay: The produce from the land is not solely of the tenant’s own making. The landlord provides the capital asset necessary for the purpose, 307

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namely the land, and it cannot be in the interest of the general public to deprive him of his due share of the produce.106 The 1957 bill passed by the communist ministry was declared ultra vires by the Supreme Court in 1961.107 About the inclusion of popular participation in the implementation of land reforms, the courts had the following to say: “The very association of an extraneous body such as a popular committee with the discharge of the statutory functions of the Tribunal is noxious and strongly to be deprecated.”108 The Communist Party, on the other hand, was demanding from the late 1950s a tribunal in every panchayat.109 It wanted to institute provisions like a Land Review Board with six non-official members, which had the role of supervising the implementation machinery. Also, popular committees were to be constituted to help land boards in the distribution of excess lands.110 The Land Board itself was to be decentralized by the establishment of taluk boards which had a majority of non-official members. The Communist chief minister of the CPM-led ministry of 1967 was of the view that the administration could not be expected to function until “the people organised and shook the bureaucrats.”111 If the ministry did make departures from its earlier commitment to popular participation in implementation, it was not due to a reversal to the belief in top-down development but due to the constraints imposed by the central government which was thoroughly opposed to the idea of popular participation.112 To sum up, even before the local bodies enjoyed any kind of substantive powers, they were being used by the Communists in an effective manner. Kathleen Gough’s study in the 1960s had pointed out that these became the instruments of class struggle “among people without power or property against men who have property and power.”113 Thus, the efforts toward the democratization of the state had begun years before the People’s Plan had come into effect through the process of the formulation and implementation of land reforms. There were also informal activities conducted through the local channels of the Communist Party and its mass organizations, and not through the institutionalized legal channels. Nevertheless, it was a question of democracy percolating down to the local level, albeit with the contradiction of the deleterious tendency to control the political space. The main difference between West Bengal (the other state where communism was strong) and Kerala is the fact that in the former Communists were able to link the land reforms with the project of decentralization and the reforms were implemented by the panchayats themselves.114 What we see here are multifaceted engagements of the subalterns with the state and the judicial system in an effort to mold them. Thus, this is in contrast to Partha Chatterjee’s argument that such engagements with the state are only of a recent vintage.115 The subalterns do not just remain confined to political society as we will see in the following. At the same time, they are also not averse to using violence. Thus, the civil society/political society binary breaks down.116 308

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With the victory of the Left in the 1987 elections, the stage was set for the new initiatives regarding decentralization. We already saw the context which hastened the turn away from older forms of administration. The popular developmentalists now were finally in a better position to push forward their agenda of creating preconditions for meaningful democracy. If land reforms eliminated one of the major forms of extra-economic oppression, it did not mean that all forms of patronage and nepotism had ended even though their feudal-like foundations had been eroded. The attack on these could be mounted only by an ideological struggle and also a material one to improve and democratize the welfare state.117 One of the biggest campaigns undertaken by the Left government under the impetus of the popular developmentalists was the Total Literacy campaign. It involved nearly 800,000 volunteers and was successful in making the state completely literate. It was a significant achievement, especially considering the history of literacy programs in India. The intention of the program was to empower people by making them aware of their rights and thus creating the successful preconditions for democracy. The program in this particular longer goal, that is the transformation of literacy centers into stages for wider developmental activities, was not immediately successful.118 However, it does have longterm effects and is definitely a requisite factor in the effective functioning of local democracy. In that sense, the criticisms that have emerged from within the Left itself about the bourgeois nature of programs like literacy campaign are problematic.119 The other initiatives undertaken during the period were group farming and local resource mapping. In the post-land-reform dispensation and in a context in which big capital in agriculture was looked down upon, group farming was encouraged by the state in increasing agricultural production and also a method to decentralize agricultural development. Similarly, mapping of key physical resources from the village up through people’s participation was again to serve the twin purposes of improving economic development and fostering peoples’ participation. Both these programs were also not successful in its intended goals mainly because of the fact that they failed to become a mass program and remained a state initiative. This was because these programs were not linked with a decentralized administration, for decentralization in the form of District Council Act could be passed only by the fourth and final year of the Left rule. Not surprising considering the stiff opposition to the idea from within the CPM itself and also the bureaucracy.120 Nevertheless, what is interesting, contra, postcolonial theory, is the emergence of new participatory initiatives from within the interstices of state. The inputs for these initiatives were provided by groups within civil society like the Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishath (KSSP—Kerala Science and Literary Movement). The Group Approach for Locally Adapted and Sustainable Agriculture, an enhanced version of group farming, had its main goal in the “development of local infrastructure, institutions and policies” 309

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and for this purpose it wanted to “mobilise the rural resources and manpower with the active collaboration of all rural development agencies.”121 The attempts from the 1950s to democratize the state shows that the popular consent for the state is not something that has materialized in the 1990s as Chatterjee contends, but something that has a longer history.

The People’s Plan campaign This philosophy was carried forward into the People’s Plan when it was implemented starting in 1996, the first year of the new CPM-led government. The state-led initiative was, again, deriving its resources from civil society. For example, the People’s Plan drew a lot from the micro-level experiments in participatory planning already conducted by Left-dominated panchayats with the help of KSSP.122 However, what is significant is the role played by the bureaucracy, the State Planning Board, in pushing forward the entire process. There was no great demand for decentralization from the people when it was launched. It would not have been possible without the State Planning Board, many members of which were supporters of CPM.123 First of all, the Plan, dramatically involved the devolution of 35–40% of total plan outlay of the state budget for the local bodies. Thus, Kerala became “the most fiscally decentralized state in India and second only to Colombia in the developing world.”124 It was a huge sum considering the kind of finances that they controlled before.125 The Congress government immediately before the Left government, for instance, had allocated only 1/60th of the amount now available to the local bodies. Such massive devolution at least ensured that the finances would act as a spur toward a politics of participation, for ideally no administrative body would like to renounce the financial, administrative and political power enjoyed by it.126 The entire process of planning was to start from the village-up. The grama sabha (the village assembly consisting of all the voters in the village) was the primary unit of planning. It had to convene itself once in three months and the quorum could be fulfilled only if 10% of the voters were present. It had the main responsibility of formulating plans and identifying the beneficiaries for its plans. The order of priority for beneficiaries and plans decided by the gram sabha could not be revised by the panchayat, the elected representative body of the village.127 That was the power vested on the sabha. Any information sought by any voter regarding the functioning of the local bodies has to be provided by them. The basic idea was to promote mass participation in the formulation of plans and not just by elected representatives. The people would be assisted in the task by nonofficial experts and volunteers in the preparation and formulation of reports and the drafting of plans. The whole process itself was a detailed one going through many phases.128 In the first year, for example, gram sabhas (and ward conventions in urban areas) met to identify the needs of the people. Of course, it was not practical 310

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from the deliberation point of view to gather all the people of the village in a single meeting (typically, each village constitutes about 25,000 people). Therefore, after a brief common gathering, the participants dispersed into smaller groups each one dealing with a particular development sector. In the second phase, participatory studies were conducted with the objective of making an assessment of the human and physical resources in each locality. The idea was to create a judicious blend between the local needs and the resources available in the locality. The resource mapping was similar to the one we have already seen in the previous Left government. Not only natural resources were mapped, but local history was also surveyed using oral testimonies and available records. This was to understand popular tradition and heritage in the area, earlier social movements, etc., so that these could be used creatively in the present participatory planning program. It is an attempt to move away from conceptualizing development as a merely technical process—the discourse of development that has been dominant since its emergence in the 1940s: “the fact that development is about growth, about capital, about technology, about becoming modern, nothing else.”129 The result of the participatory studies was the preparation of development reports for each panchayat, which were discussed in development seminars. In the next phase, task forces (with 10 persons in each one, and 12 task forces for different sectors in each panchayat) were constituted to prepare projects on the basis of the recommendation of the development seminars. In the two phases after this, meetings of elected representatives took place to formulate plans in the higher tiers. In the final phase, meetings of expert committees were held to appraise and approve the plans. The expert committees did not have the power to reject project proposals, only that they could suggest financial and technical improvements. Voluntary experts were recruited from the retired professionals (and they committed to give at least one day in a week for plan evaluation). The constitution of the expert committees through volunteers was an important step in the de-bureaucratization of the plan process.130 The plans of the higher tiers like the Block and District Panchayats were to begin preparation of their plans only after the preparation of the village panchayat plans so as to promote integration of various tiers and prevent duplication at the higher tiers. These in a gist were some of the main features of the People’s Plan as originally instituted.

Political society More than just the material achievements per se, it is important to see if the Plan has contributed to the extension of popular sovereignty. The fundamental question that the communist project was grappling with was how to move from an administrative system in which some (ideally) able administrators ran the people’s government for the people to one in which the people themselves governed their government for themselves.131 Popular 311

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sovereignty, of course, is the founding premise of modernity—the conception of every individual as a citizen with a bundle of rights. Freedom and equality are the bases of the modern nation state. However, in practice, they have been violated more often than protected and enforced. Nevertheless, the promise of equality and freedom has driven and continues to drive many of the struggles in the world. The People’s Plan demonstrates how resources for the deepening of democracy can be generated within the so-called traditional societies of the Global South. It also questions many of the fundamental assumptions of postcolonial theory. According to it, in much of the world popular sovereignty is systematically eroded. Partha Chatterjee, borrowing from Foucault’s notion of “governmentalization of the state,” argues that the contemporary regime of power: secures legitimacy not by participation of citizens in matters of state but by claiming to provide for the well-being of the population. Its mode of reasoning is not deliberative openness but rather an instrumental notion of costs and benefits. Its apparatus is not the republican assembly but an elaborate network of surveillance. . . . It is not surprising that in the course of the present century, ideas of participatory citizenship that were so much a part of the Enlightenment notion of politics have fast retreated before the triumphant advance of governmental technologies that have promised to deliver more well-being to more people at less cost.132 However, this formulation, as Subir Sinha, argues, surprisingly ignores the fact of the continuing role of “the state as an active agent of primitive accumulation” and appearing only as “dispensing welfare to the excluded and the dispossessed to legitimate accumulation.”133 If the idea of the citizen carries the “ethical connotation of participation in the sovereignty of the state,” the concept of population means does not mean anything more than a “target” for the government’s policy—in the various spheres of administration. With the increasing depoliticization of societies, especially in the West, this whittling down of popular sovereignty in favor of the “management” of sovereignty has serious implications: governance is not matter of politics but one of administrative policy, something to be run by experts and not political representatives.134 We have already seen this mode of functioning in non-state organizations like the World Bank. In postcolonial states like India processes like planning “depended increasingly on the monologic instruments of the state and its bureaucracy rather than dialogical, movement-like forms.” The collapse of the Gandhian language which acted as the mediator between elite and subaltern politics contributed to the widening gap.135 This disjunction is posing a serious threat to the extension of popular sovereignty. 312

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According to postcolonial theorists, there is needed a better theoretical vocabulary to understand societies like that of India characterized by a modernity different from that of its trajectory in its original location. For example, one of the concepts that is highly inadequate is civil society. Civil society refers to those “characteristic institutions of modern associational life originating in Western societies that are based on equality, autonomy, freedom of entry and exit, contract, deliberative procedures of decision making, recognized rights and duties of members, and other such principles.”136 Most of the institutions of the South do not conform to these standards. Therefore, Partha Chatterjee theorizes about another domain of politics in the postcolonial states—that of political society. Most of the Indian citizens are right bearers only in name, and they are not considered by the state as full members of civil society. This does not mean that they are excluded from the purview of the state. They have to be looked after and even controlled by the government agencies, and thus are in a certain political relationship with the state. Also, the government and political parties make instrumental use of these sections for they can vote in the elections.137 Basing himself on the example of the illegal squatters (in the city of Calcutta) on public land and their forming of concrete associational forms to resist governmental action to evict them, he argues that these collective forms cannot be categorized as civic associations nor are they a replication of kinship organizations, even though they talk in the language of community. Since they are illegal, the state cannot recognize them, at the same time, it cannot ignore them too, considering there are many such settlements and organizations all over the country.138 The terrain on which the: community of squatters have managed to conduct their struggle for survival is not that of a civil society of citizens dealing with a state in whose sovereignty they participate but rather that of a political society where claims and benefits can be negotiated between governmental agencies responsible for administering welfare and groups of population that count according to calculations of political efficacy.139 What Chatterjee finds unique about the survival strategies of such marginal groups is the “way in which the imaginative power of a traditional structure of community, including its fuzziness and capacity to invent relations of kinship, has been wedded to the modern emancipatory rhetoric of autonomy and equal rights. . . . These strategies . . . are not available within the liberal space of the associations of civil society transacting business with a constitutional state.” According to Chatterjee, since the majority of the people in the postcolonial states do not have the “basic material and cultural prerequisites of membership of civil society,” they are denied the “normative status of the 313

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virtuous citizen.”140 Therefore, for them “communities are some of the most active agents of political practice.” The biggest lacuna of Western political theory is its ignorance of community in the theorization of civil society and state. Chatterjee does not deny that the “desire for democratization” is the most important feature of the politics of communities in the East. However, unlike the trajectory of democracy in the West, the notions of autonomy and representation are being claimed on “behalf not only of individuals but of communities [and also] that these democratic claims are being made in relation to a state whose governmental functions already encompass the bulk of the population well before the latter have been socialized into the institutions of civil society.” The “politics of democratization” must therefore be carried out not in classical transactions between state and civil society but in the “much less well-defined, legally ambiguous, contextually and strategically demarcated terrain of political society.”141 Here Chatterjee rightly questions the absence of community in Western theory (until the emergence of communitarianism) and the need to understand the specificity of political practices in Eastern postcolonial societies. He finds that the sharp distinction posited between civil society and state in European thought has the disadvantage of considering the civil society as a depoliticized domain or the other extreme of considering all civil institutions as political.142 Since civil society is restricted to only a small section of “citizens,” it is imperative that theoretical vocabulary be found for the political practices for the vast majority of the people. Chatterjee decries the common approach adopted in such a scenario—to posit a division between tradition and modernity—which not only essentializes “tradition” but also fails to see the strategies adopted by the so-called traditional domain to cope with the modern which fails to conform to the standards of modern civil society. To understand these Chatterjee uses the concept of political society as a domain “lying between civil society and the state.”143 It should be noted that Chatterjee is also moving away from the early conceptualization of Subaltern Studies of the subaltern (in the pre-colonial era) as a rebel, and located outside the state. However, now, Chatterjee contends that “the deepening and widening of the apparatuses of governmentality has . . . transformed the quality of mass politics in India in the last two decades.” As a result, the subaltern is no longer in a relationship of negation with the state. Instead, she “makes claims on governmental authorities over services and benefits.”144 The formulation of political society is relevant, and Chatterjee’s contribution is important. Yet, the proposal of new theoretical frameworks like political society to keep up with changing historical conditions is problematic and has deep continuities with the earlier framework of Subaltern Studies. As before, what emerges in Chatterjee is also a certain tendency to valorize the community as the essence of political practice in the East. This, as we have seen, draws a wedge between two essentialized categories of the East and the West and ignores the commonalities between the two, for example, 314

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the discourse of individual rights, which is increasingly gaining importance in the former. A similar binary is drawn between civil society and political society. Moreover, it does not allow us to understand the kind of movement that the Communists built in Kerala which simultaneously negotiated different levels of exclusions, not all which can be reduced to that of the community. The narratives that are part of this research show that the emergence of the conception of the individual as a citizen and a bearer of rights was also one of the important consequences of the communist struggles even though communism itself is based on collectivities like class. Of course, this does not mean that community is not important in my argument. As we saw before, the community that is imagined is a new kind of community, not just a preexisting primordial community.145 The strategies that Chatterjee describes as a part of the political practice of the illegal squatters—the array of connections made outside the community with other disadvantaged groups, privileged groups, employers, government functionaries, political leaders and so on—resemble rational-purposive/strategic action in the Habermasian sense.146 The community itself is built from scratch in a thoroughly secular fashion and its main goal is to secure autonomy and equal rights. Therefore, it is not clear as to why Chatterjee privileges the community when other elements are equally present too. I will argue that if the civil society/state binary is hardly sufficient to understand the politics of the Global South, Chatterjee’s recreation of a new binary in civil society/political society is also ridden with difficulties. It glosses over the multifarious ways in which the binary is being bridged on the ground.147 Chatterjee’s further forays into the subject reinforce the binary by postulating another one. According to him: Civil society is where corporate capital is hegemonic, whereas political society is the space of management of non-corporate capital . . . the logic of accumulation . . . holds sway over civil society—that is to say, over the urban middle classes.148 Here, again, we see a clear demarcation of spheres which cannot capture the complexity of social reality. For instance, it ignores that corporate capital which inhabits civil society often colludes with the state in a manner which can hardly be called “civil” in any manner.149 It also provides a reductionist understanding of both civil society and the middle classes. Moreover, political society itself is a vague notion which encompasses almost everything: “parties, movements, nonparty political formations.”150 Importantly, the most relevant question here is how the present conjuncture, the majority of the population having to resort to survival strategies through inventive community actions in political society has come about. It is not only due to the fact that the states have encompassed the bulk of the population before it develops adequate skills for membership in civil society, but also due to the 315

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fact that a particular kind of state was established following the anti-colonial struggle which was hegemonized by the bourgeoisie and the feudal classes. This hegemony has perpetuated itself in the post-independence era, except when it has been substantially questioned in states like Kerala. While there are inherent characteristics of modern institutions like the state, the authority of the state is not inexorably destined to be the “technologies of power” as implied by Chatterjee. Of course, it is no one’s case that “coercive, violent or repressive application of state power has disappeared from India.”151 Nevertheless, the nature of the state is determined by the kind of social forces that are behind it and the state–society relationship that is extant in a society. While postcolonial theory’s diagnosis that there has been a gradual governmentalization of the state is correct, the reasons adduced for the same, and also the remedies prescribed warrant critical re-examination. The initiation of the People’s Plan by the state in Kerala is evidence of the fact that the nature of the state needs to be determined historically, not essentially. Corbridge et al. have argued that spaces of citizenship are opened up even within the new “technologies of rule” invented by the state.152 Therefore, it is all the more conceivable that the state in Kerala, which is significantly different from that of other Indian states, has resisted governmentalization more than the others. As Isaac argues: it was not the state in the abstract, but a state government under the control of the left, that took the decision to decentralize and to launch the [People’s Plan] Campaign. These were political acts. The explanation for the Campaign has to be sought primarily in the evolution of the political strategy for democratic decentralization.153 While Chatterjee notes that the “ideas of republican citizenship have sometimes accompanied the politics of national liberation,” he does not explore the mechanisms through which they have been substituted by the “governmental technologies” of the development state. The scuttling of the democratic revolution and its substitution by passive revolution is not something that is seen to have some consequence for the governmentalization of state. Nor is the role played by the “pre-modern” feudal landed classes in maintaining the base of the “modern” development state taken into account. He, instead, resorts to the argument that the fuzziness and contextuality of the traditional community has been eroded by the “legal administrative classifications and statistical techniques of enumeration” of the modern state.154 This also glosses over the caste hierarchies of the traditional community and moral economy. Here, the state becomes a cultural entity, and questions of political economy are obfuscated. This, of course, follows the general tenor of the “cultural turn” in postcolonial theory.155 The dominant tendencies of Indian sociology which followed the Western foundational dichotomies of gemeinschaft/gesellschaft (community/society), 316

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West/East and culture/economy,156 have been replayed in the postcolonial schema. Similarly another proposition that is difficult to accept, which in my view, is at the root of the problems generated by Chatterjee’s framework is the dichotomy posited between modernity and democracy—“modernity is facing an unexpected rival in the form of democracy.”157 This dichotomy leads into the associated one of civil society versus political society, which we have already examined: civil society is associated with modernity and political society with democracy.158 Modernity/civil society is the domain in which the elites are active while the masses are confined to democracy/ political society. In reality, these dichotomies are being bridged and need to be bridged if democracy has to be institutionalized. The People’s Plan, and the multifarious struggles launched under the communist movement that we have seen so far, have put a question mark on this dichotomy. If at all Kerala shows a different trajectory from other Indian states, it has been precisely because of the fact that every victory of the working classes and the peasantry was institutionalized and made part of the rational-legal order. With each successive mobilization and struggle of the rural poor the state was forced to democratize itself.159 Bureaucratic reason and “technologies of rule” were substantially circumvented because of the pressure exerted by the mass mobilizations. Postcolonial theory locates democracy in the popular assertions of the masses but does not take into account that these struggles also draw upon the ideals of modernity and make claims on their basis. Moreover, the struggles have been to attain and extend citizenship, not to remain as manipulable instruments of political society. Critics of Chatterjee have correctly noted that the concept of political society is very vague: it encompasses both strategic and contextual struggles for survival along with radical political movements without necessarily distinguishing between them. As a result, the concept does not understand that “while it is democratic to recognise the strategies for survival, it is struggles that lie beyond survival strategies that are imperative for any meaningful idea of democratization.”160 However, what the critics have missed out is that this non-recognition stems from the dichotomy between democracy and modernity that Chatterjee resorts to: “the framework of democracy, on the other hand, will pronounce modernity itself as inappropriate and deeply flawed.”161 This eagerness to dismiss any European ideas of modernity as somehow alien to a postcolonial consciousness makes it imperative to resurrect a democracy sans civil society and modernity (both apparently European in origin) leading to a whole lot of contradictions. The main lacuna in Chatterjee is the lack of distinction between different types of civil society. Curiously, going back to some older discussions on civil society does help in eliminating some of the problems of a one-sided understanding of civil society inherent in Chatterjee’s framework. Some of the fundamental explorations made by Gramsci are very useful here. What is 317

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missing in Chatterjee is precisely the dialectical nature of civil society seen in Gramsci, that is, as “both [a] shaper and shaped, an agent of stabilization and reproduction, and a potential agent of transformation.”162 Instead, Chatterjee’s notion of civil society as only the domain of corporate capital resembles early Marx’s formulation (derived under totally different material circumstances), which associated civil society as the sphere of the bourgeoisie.163 At the same time, Chatterjee moves to equating civil society with modernity, a Weberian construction, as Whitehead argues. Thus, it becomes a culturalist understanding rather than one which includes also material social relations as in Marx.164 At the same time, to counter Chatterjee, we cannot resort to the popular understanding of civil society in the present which sees it as an autonomous sphere which is above all kinds of material and power interests. Civil society cannot be romanticized. According to Cox, this is an understanding which had become dominant since the Eastern European revolutions against communist dictatorships. However, this view negates the fact that the state and the market have significant influence on civil society. Moreover, this view ignores how the most important conflicts within society are replicated even in popular struggles and social movements. It is therefore necessary to distinguish between the “bottom-up” and “top-down” conceptions of civil society, the first one as emancipatory and the second as status quoist. It is “itself a field of power relations; and forces in civil society relate, in support or opposition, to powers in state and market.”165 Thus, civil society in the South cannot be reduced to its origins in colonial modernity as Chatterjee does. Postcolonial theory rightly questions the efficacy of using concepts like civil society alone in understanding the Global South. In that sense, political society is a useful concept. It is easy to see that the social transformation brought about by the Communists in Kerala was not always the result of actions in the civil society. And it is also true that the distinctions between civil society and political society are very blurred in the context of societies like that of Kerala. In fact, as we have seen, violence, or rather more importantly, the threat of violence underpinned social transformation both in the colonial and the postcolonial phase.166 However, this is only one side of the story for the communist movement was also a participant in the struggles of the subalterns to enter into and constitute civil society organizations and a communicative rationality (Chapter 3), which was not allowed to remain merely the domain of elites. The dualisms that characterize postcolonial theory fail to understand this dimension. Civil society as much as political society was responsible for the democratization process. The classic example in the recent years is the organization KSSP, which was one of the moving forces in the state’s adoption of the People’s Plan. The recruitment of experts, technical personnel and volunteers from civil society in the Plan is another example of this. The Plan is an attempt to legalize and institutionalize popular participation and sovereignty. 318

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The character of civil society is shaped by the struggles launched in society. We cannot see it merely as trying to rein in political society within the parameters of liberal norms and as the domain of the elite in a pedagogical relationship with the rest of the society, or see political society as always violating these norms. This ignores the complex and diverse ways in which civil society and political society both contribute to, and hinder democracy. This conception reinstates the tradition/modernity dichotomy that Chatterjee had sought to criticize earlier.167 This is a position that is generally true of postcolonial theory. Similarly, Chakrabarty, while he acknowledges the “practical utility of left-liberal philosophies” and also “the importance of the languages and competencies—of citizenship, of democracy, of welfare—be made available to all classes, particularly those subordinated and oppressed,” argues that these put into question the pedagogic drive that is invariably associated with these.168 Again, this denies the aspirations of the subalterns to citizenship, democracy and welfare and merely posits the latter as an imposition from above. The basic point postcolonial theory wishes to make is that the paralegal political society is not a pathological condition of modernity, but its inevitable product, a product of the “constitution of modernity in most of the world.”169 This formulation does not allow one to move beyond this specific conjuncture to one in which members can attain full citizenship, rather than rely on temporary solutions provided through the mediation of political representatives. Instead, it valorizes the “squalor, ugliness and violence of popular life” even though it is very aware of the conservative nature of popular politics, and also the fact that it has a “dark side.”170 This is similar to the tendency that we saw in the last chapter to romanticize everyday resistance rather than argue for structural transformation in society.

Beyond binaries The People’s Plan has achieved mixed results. There have been some notable successes, but equally failures too. The greatest success was that what bureaucracies decided earlier through opaque processes has now been taken over by participatory institutions. Thus, there has been a “commendable expansion of the democratic space, in terms of electoral competition as well as more direct avenues of participation.”171 It has also led to better implementation of programs and accountability.172 However, the question marks are about the denting of power relations in a more structural manner. Even in these failures, what emerges is that the Plan and its unfolding clearly bridges the various kinds of binaries set up by Chatterjee. The state-led initiative, contra Chatterjee, was deriving its resources from civil society. For example, the People’s Plan drawing upon the experiments of civil society groups like KSSP. In fact, the Plan would not have been possible if it were not for the help from such examples.173 The KSSP is one of the most important NGOs 319

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in India which has played a significant role in Kerala’s social transformation through its motto of “science for social revolution.”174 At the same time, the KSSP cannot be classified as a completely oppositional force to the state, rather it can be termed as being a part of a state-centric civil society.175 Or in Cox’s terminology, it will fall somewhere between emancipatory and status quoist. KSSP, even while being closely affiliated with CPM, had begun critiquing its development ideology from a global oppositional civil society space in the 1980s, which, even with limitations, was a significant moment.176 And later from the 1990s through the People’s Plan it became a part of the state-led civil society.177 Thus, KSSP is marked by contradictions and complexities which cannot be mapped by postcolonial theory’s dichotomies of modernity/tradition, West/East and political society/civil society.178 Similarly, what is striking is the emergence of new participatory initiatives from within the interstices of the state. Interestingly, the bureaucracy, the State Planning Board (SPB), played a big role in pushing forward the entire process. There was no great demand for decentralization from the people when it was launched. It would not have been possible without the State Planning Board, many members of which were supporters of CPM and the KSSP.179 Again, this shows that unlike the postcolonial narrative the role of the bureaucracy cannot be determined one-sidedly. Here, there is another kind of bridging of the state/civil society binary. The potential of the Plan is in terms of democratizing the state and civil society. It makes possible the transition from Chatterjee’s “temporary, contextual and unstable arrangements arrived at through direct political negotiations” to the “framework of stable constitutionally defined rights and laws.”180 Of course, this can actualize itself only if the Plan becomes a part of larger and radical social transformational struggles. The Plan is a threat to the patron–client like relations that had developed outside land relations, mainly on the state terrain. The stagnation in the productive spheres had led to the hardening of this tendency. So, it was precisely in the sphere of political society that exploitative forces like the regulative rentier class—the politicians, bureaucrats and village leaders and so on who monopolize public administration grew.181 One of the main modes of patronage and corruption was in the selection of beneficiaries for state-sponsored programs and resources. The other was in the form of extracting a rent for publicly owned and funded resources. The Plan rules stipulated that the grama panchayats gave the maximum publicity to the process of the selection of beneficiaries and the prioritization of projects. Notices for the projects and the criteria of selection had to be displayed in public places and also printed and circulated. Unlike the earlier system where public works were allotted to private contractors, in the Plan works were to be supervised and administered by the people themselves through the new system of beneficiary committees. Of course, on the ground, these do not work as intended. The engineers and contractors colluded to make things difficult for the beneficiary committees, 320

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which suffered from the lack of skills needed to undertake the works. The engineers, for example, refused to give technical advice to the committees, deliberately prepared wrong estimates, refused to supervise the works and so on.182 As a result, in many cases, even though beneficiary committees were in existence, the actual work was (illegally) done by contractors or the committees were filled with nominees of contractors who were masquerading as beneficiaries.183 Again, the terrain of domination and resistance does not mirror the civil society/political society divide. In fact, it bridges them. As the Government Report on the evaluation of the People’s Plan puts it: “A strong and long-standing collusion has developed between the local political class, contractors, engineers and civil servants.” So, elements of the state, civil society and political society have developed a nexus which perpetrate a class rule. It has to be remembered that public works constitute almost more than 50% of the plan outlay for public bodies.184 Therefore, there is a substantial amount of resources that is diverted by the public–private collusion. And thus it cannot be argued, as Chatterjee does, that non-corporate capital which is active in the sphere of political society is not interested in the logic of accumulation. Even though the CPM with its massive influence in the bureaucracy was able to secure its cooperation, it was clear that the latter was clearly against the novel features of the plan.185 Administrative positions like the District Collector, relics from the colonial period, continue to maintain their power and status and they have tried hard to reinforce their power within the spaces of the new dispensation. What is interesting is the emergence of new bureaucracy–political society nexus in which democratic decentralization has been recast as being all about learning rules and procedures, and the technicalities of these rules are in turn used by the nexus to deny access to people.186 The People’s Plan still has to go a long way in eliminating the vestiges of the old order, for it to completely achieve its aims. One of the problems with the Plan was that it devolved power too soon before it actually had installed the machinery to implement the projects. One of the main areas which lagged behind was the support system and the expertise required, despite the voluntary expert committees.187 This lacuna helped the bureaucracy to wriggle itself back to contention. Besides, the expert committees themselves were co-opted by converting them into regulatory wing of the government, thus negating the purpose of participation.188 Needless to say, groups like bureaucrats and contractors are not always dichotomous with the category “Communists”; cadre-turned-mass parties like the CPM invariably have members from these groups and they also act as a pressure group against attempts at democratization.189 Thus, it demonstrates once more the inadequacy of the binary. However, the Plan has the potential to break the nexus between the bureaucrat, contractor, politician and the engineer if there are social forces which can take it beyond its institutionalization. The way new spaces of democracy are being opened up is 321

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by the recognition among the subalterns about the sources of exploitation and the opportunities provided by the Plan to overcome them.190 It is significant that despite all the resistance mounted by various vested interests 25% of the beneficiary committee system worked well.191 Despite the fact that there are considerable liberal individualist welfare tendencies in the Plan, it still retained the older language of redistribution in many ways.192 There was a pro-poor tilt in the plan implementation and success in the provision of “housing, sanitation, drinking water supply .  .  . electricity to the poor, improving connectivity.”193 One of the largest studies conducted (based on 72 panchayats) about the Plan in its first decade showed some broad trends. In five out of 13 categories from primary health care and housing for poor to income and job generation, more than 40% of the respondents, across the political spectrum, found (despite the highly partisan politics in Kerala) that there was a “significant improvement” in service delivery and development, the biggest success being road construction, childcare and housing for the poor.194 Almost all the respondents were of the opinion that the main beneficiaries of the Plan were the “socially and economically disadvantaged,” which demonstrates that elite interests were not able to subvert the Plan. There was also an overwhelming unanimity about the lack of influence of “powerful private interests,”“caste or social status” and political connections in project selection or beneficiary selection. Further, nearly three-fourths of respondents felt that corruption had decreased. Importantly, a large number also thought that women, Dalits and Indigenous people were brought into the public sphere because of the Plan campaign.195 In another study based on a survey of 462 Dalits of different castes, political affiliations and income and age groups, 18.7% said that it was “completely true” that local democratic institutions contribute to Dalit empowerment and another 65.3% said that it was “true to some extent,”196 indicating some level of satisfaction with People’s Plan. Recent ethnographic work also confirms how Dalits and other historically marginalized communities found some significant new political spaces and voices in the power structure with decentralization.197 Besides, the expansion of the welfare state in terms of provision of water, electricity and roads to Dalit settlements and colonies was also seen.198 This demonstrates the potentialities of state action and the need to go beyond political society in order to democratize society further. The big success of the Plan is that it was institutionalized and the mechanisms of such an elaborate program of decentralized governance were put in place. The Plan is no longer in the campaign mode which generated a lot of enthusiasm in the initial phase. Nevertheless, attendance levels until a decade after the initiation of the Plan did not drop. In fact, there was evidence of substantial rise in the participation rates of the subordinate groups like women, Dalits and indigenous groups.199 However, here it is important also to go by the meaning of participation for the participants, and not just 322

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by the physical numbers.200 Also, the increasing signs of participation fatigue and the lack of adequate participation by the middle classes201 are worrying trends. The major reason is that the middle and upper classes feel that they have no benefits to gain by participating unlike the lower classes.202 While Heller and Chaudhuri’s study noted the rising participation rates of subordinate groups, it does not explore the nature of this participation, or acknowledge that Plan does not do much about addressing structural inequities/ systemic power relations despite its pro-poor orientation, or the fact that there is an increasing market orientation of the main agents of the Plan, the Left. The study also has a fundamental problem when it argues that civil society has been substantially integrated into the decision-making process under the Plan thus making breaking the top-down bureaucratic control.203 It does not see that only a certain type of civil society, like the KSSP, that has been integrated. This civil society excludes groups which are not statecentric in their orientation.204 The question is whether the Plan can give space to those kinds of social movements and civil society groups that are not merely acting as an instrument in the democratization of the state but also as counter-hegemonic forces in society. These movements, for example, formed around hitherto marginalized groups like women, Adivasis, Dalits, fisher folks are not interested in the capture of state power but are for the transformation of non-sovereign forms of power.205 The answer until now is in the negative. Therefore, a distinction has to be made between the different kinds of civil society which Heller and Chaudhuri’s study, like Chatterjee’s, does not make. Therefore, the political society/civil society binary again breaks down. For example, in present-day Kerala, it is certain sections of civil society (of course, often adopting techniques of political society) that are fighting for welfare as a right as opposed to the political parties of the Left which want to restrict it to minimum entitlements or convert political questions into development ones. So, ironically, the struggle for the completion of the struggle of the class agenda of the Left is being waged by civil society groups outside the formal political spectrum.206 This is evident in the explosive struggles for land waged by the landless, a majority of whom are Dalits and Adivasis, and the absolutely reactionary role played by the organized communist trade unions against them.207 This is a continuation of the communist hostility to civil society organizations which were opposed to the movement that we noted before. Non-governmental organizations were termed as “agents of imperialism” in this class discourse208 without making a differentiation between the different kinds of civil society organizations. This is where we need to go beyond the binary to understand the various ways in which both political society and civil society can aid as well as deter democratization. Chatterjee ignores the negative side of political society. Since the marginalized populations who constitute political society are focused on immediate 323

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survival, they are negatively placed in fighting for long-term structural transformation. This hinders community and collective interests and gives way to individualized interest-based politics.209 What the oppressed need is not the permanent insecurity of the machinations of political society but a politics which brings them together with similarly oppressed groups.210 Chatterjee thus excludes the possibility that political society can be counterproductive to the goal of democratization.211

New horizons One big shift in communist politics occasioned through the People’s Plan was the new attention paid to pan-class issues like gender and ecology.212 Of course, the discourse of ecology has only emerged after the 1970s in a systematic fashion. There was an increasing awareness in the Left of the need to engage with ecology and gender213 because of the increasing strength of these movements. This is important considering that on the gender issue the communist movement’s record has only been slightly better than conservative forces214 and it had adopted confrontational stances toward feminist and environmental movements in the past. The Plan gave special emphasis to gender in the formulation and implementation of development projects. In this light, the presence of women, through reservations, in local democratic institutions is a significant development. Yet, what is crucial is the nature of quality of this presence, and if the Left has been able to radicalize the gender discourse. Besides, as studies indicate, it would take a long time to alter the entrenched patriarchal common sense and practical aspects like gendered nature of work and so on.215 The attempt to extend the traditional class discourse has been seen with regard to ecology. In some of the significant struggles launched in the recent times like the one against illegal encroachment of forests, the use of harmful pesticides, the mining of minerals and the drilling of groundwater by corporations, the Left had joined forces with the ecological groups.216 Yet, the relationship is a very fraught one. The initiatives for these struggles have originated from ecological movements and groups outside the mainstream Communist parties, and the latter joined the former only when the struggles acquired a popular character.217 The Left’s attitude toward them has also varied with various governments. While the 2006–2011 CPM-led government was relatively more open to ecological and other struggles of the marginalized, the regime from 2016 went the furthest in terms of openness to big capital [including from non-resident Keralite capital] and the subversion of environmental regulations.218 There was opposition within the communist movement to expand beyond the class discourse when the People’s Plan was being conceived.219 The tradeunion wing was very concerned about the loss of job opportunities for the workers as a result of ecology concerns.220 For the Left, this is not an easy 324

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debate to resolve. On the one hand, there is the increasing domination of the market in public discourse. On the other hand, there is the strengthening of various people’s movements like in the field of ecology and gender. These trends affect the Left with contradictions and dissonances as the main motif in the present.221 Even before, high modernism and economic reductionism were not the only tendencies in the party. The party and movement always had different ideological positions contesting with one another. For example, environmentalism [like of the KSSP] has coexisted with an instrumental attitude to ecology in the communist movement.222 These contradictions have to be understood instead of a homogenization of capitalism and socialism with regard to the ecology as in Chakrabarty’s argument.223 Even the trade-union faction before did not have an unbridled faith in modernism. It had adopted a Luddite stance whenever mechanization threatened the livelihood of labor224 even if it was motivated by economism. In that sense a Polanyian logic was at work. Now, the greatest threat facing Kerala development is ecological destruction. There is a massive degradation of natural resources caused by activities like quarrying.225 As anti-quarrying activists argue, these thrive precisely because of the illicit alliance between quarry owners, politicians and bureaucrats.226 In response to such destruction of the environment, the Left government in 2007 undertook the biggest evictions of encroached government forestlands which saw the demolition of a large number of unauthorized holiday resorts constructed on illegally acquired lands. They were hailed as an unprecedented attack against bourgeois interests, which in the eyes of the people, had wrought tremendous havoc to the ecological balance of the hill region of the state. The Communist Chief Minister, V. S. Achuthanandan, the person behind the drive, acquired a mythical superhero status. However, beyond the veneer of the communist government rising up for the poor against the establishment interests, there were certain anti-democratic implications. The sequence of events that brought about the conjuncture of state acting against illegal encroachments has to be examined to understand this. For years, the process of regularizing illegal encroachments and illegal constructions was undertaken by the state bureaucracy in connivance with the political elites. However, later the state turned against private individuals who have thus acquired land and built structures on it to delegitimize them. The terming of some individuals as criminals for acts in which the state was equally culpable (and giving them no time to defend themselves) put question marks on the rational-legal authority of the state. Here, the bureaucracy and the political masters go unpunished.227 This again breaks the civil society/political society binary that we saw before. The binaries set up by Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory fail to capture these complexities and contradictions. One of the biggest contributions of the Plan was the intention to empower the grama sabhas in areas like the granting of licenses to industries operating 325

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in the village. This has led to the ability of the people to exert more pressure on government decisions when it comes to extractive industries with harmful consequences.228 Yet, the Plan’s focus on environmentalism was limited and veered to a sustainable development model rather than a more comprehensive ecological thinking.229 Moreover, there was a constant dilution of the powers of the elected local bodies and the grama sabha, especially with regard to industrial and quarrying licenses.230 This has led to quarries, even within close proximity to ecologically protected zones, re-starting operations after being closed by the government post two successive floods in 2018 and 2019. Here, the Left government which ruled the state from 2016 favored the quarry mining lobby by altering environmental regulations.231 Along with the attempt to expansion into other areas of politics, the Plan also generated new resources within civil society. Self-Help Groups (SHGs) are examples of how new initiatives were created in civil society consequent to the introduction of the People’s Plan. These translated into Neighborhood Groups (NHGs) or ayalkoottams consisting mainly of “Below Poverty Line” (BPL) Households. These send their representatives to Area Development Societies (ADS) and they, in turn, to Community Development Societies (CDS), completing a three-tier structure. These community-based participatory organizations together form a network called Kudumbashree and is built on micro-credit, entrepreneurship and empowerment.232 The network is very closely linked to the local government, yet retains the leverage of an NGO.233 The network has expanded tremendously in the last 23 years and is very successful in building microenterprises, asset and credit. In March 2019, it had 2, 91, 507 NHGs and 43, 93, 579 members.234 As a woman Municipality councilor put it: “Kudumbashree is everything.”235 Another woman councilor who has worked in Kudumbashree for 17 years points out how in the beginning there was hardly any interest among women participants, but it is drastically different now.236 Here what is seen are “state fostered associations,”237 a unique conjuncture in which the state actively encourages groups and associations in civil society. Social movement theorists have argued that engagement with the state would inevitably affect the autonomy of the movement and increase in state intervention would be inimical to the vitality of associational life.238 Here, there is a different context in which the state versus civil society binary collapses. While the contribution of Kudumbashree to poverty reduction and asset building among the economically deprived is now evident, what is more important is that the project has contributed to the building of social capital among women, especially from lower classes and castes, and also their political empowerment.239 Thus, “it constitutes the most important platform through which Kerala’s lower middle class women learn the ropes of local governance and public life.”240 There is a remarkable 326

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transformation of women who were largely apolitical and confined to the private sphere as homemakers into political agents.241 A woman councilor sees the People’s Plan as absolutely critical in the empowerment of women and cites her own example as illustrative of this transformation. Yet, this should not be seen as a simple and linear democratization. The presence of women in local politics in terms of numbers alone does not tell the whole story. The Plan led to the paradox of “seeking to empower women within local governance while keeping high politics largely out of bounds to them.” Further, the radical feminist critique of “sexual norms, family structures and women’s lack of control over their own bodies” was ignored, or appropriated within the mainstream discourse of femininity.242 This also stems from the conservatism in sexuality that we identified much before during the cultural struggles waged by communism in the formation years, even though there were more critiques of dominant notions of gender relations then compared to now. Despite the significant numbers of women in local bodies, communist parties tended to use party discipline as a means to control their functioning as elected representatives.243 Despite this, as argued, what will be key is what escapes this control mechanism and the forging of resistances as a resultant of the new social capital emerging out of democratic decentralization.244 Rather than Chatterjee’s modernity versus democracy, the Plan generated intense contestations within the Left drawing from both sides of the divide. Both, in any case, are intrinsically linked. One of the important shifts from earlier modes of development sought to be brought about by the Plan was to initiate a non-partisan approach. The intensely polarized political atmosphere of Kerala had prevented a consensus on even basic issues confronting society. What the Plan envisaged was the cooperation of the different political parties in the implementation process and to create a new “development culture.”245 According to Namboodiripad: [b]reaking down the watertight compartmentalization that has become entrenched in Kerala . . . [i]s absolutely necessary for the advancement of the left. To keep the people divided forever is bourgeois politics. The politics of people’s democracy must unite the people.246 The biggest success stories of the Plan in terms of material development goals have been the ones which have gone beyond narrow political partisanship in the implementation process.247 Some termed the call for a new development culture beyond political partisanship as an “apolitical” move. Namboodiripad argued that that it was not so. According to him, becoming apolitical and anti-party partisanship are not the same. Even while cooperation was sought for the new development culture, the ideological struggle among parties would continue.248 The shift to an attention to pan-class 327

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concerns and the seeking of a new development culture beyond party politics caused tremendous ideological debate within the communist movement between those who continued to argue for orthodox politics and class primacy and the others who wanted to broaden the movement with the changing times. The KSSP, and one of its leading ideologues M. P. Parameshwaran, especially came under attack from the former for its “revisionist” ideas.249 The Plan was criticized as privileging civil society, NGOs and social movements over class, trade unions and the state.250 The space that was sought to be created by the KSSP was supposedly a “‘village space’ independent of the state” and which hijacked the decentralization program by promoting an apolitical approach based on class cooperation.251 Another viewpoint criticized both orthodox, and reformist views, for being not radical enough, and especially the party for being completely deradicalized.252 The clash of views, despite its raucous nature, raised some pertinent questions about the future of the Left Project. The Plan Campaign tried to resolve the debate in such as a manner as to incorporate the pan-class concerns without fully abandoning the entrypoint of class. Effectively, the CPM tried to adopt a position which avoided both the extremes.253 However, as we have seen, the expansion beyond class was limited and instrumental, and the deepening of class stunted. Parameshwaran’s views, for example, had taken a Putnamian hue with a conception of civil society primarily based on private voluntary associations. His emphasis on “neighborhood groups” was an example of this.254 As in Putnam, the conception of politics was sans power and conflict and couched in the language of trust and reciprocity. It could be said that it was based on the harmony model of power in which “the poor and powerless could acquire tools for self-reliance that would ensure their empowerment without radically transforming power structures in society.”255 Despite its many failures in deepening democracy, the Plan, in its intentions, cannot be termed as merely seeking a “village space.” Instead, it was trying to forge a new space that was at once mediating between the local and the extra-local. The response to new phase of capitalist modernity was not to take a position which rejected the global to take refuge in the local. The coordination between the different tiers of panchayats and their plans, at the village, block and district levels, and all these tied to the state demonstrated this. What the Plan sought was not completely decentralized units but a “‘coordinated decentralization’ in which articulation between levels allows for resource coordination, the diffusion of innovation, and information feedback” which went along with “the maintenance of a bounded aggregated authority—the state—to provide nonlocal public goods (including regulatory frameworks) and to aggressively redress regional inequalities.”256 Heller has argued that successful initiation of decentralization requires three prerequisites: a strong state, a well-developed civil society and “non-Leninist left-of center political parties” with social movement characteristics and a 328

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strong commitment to decentralization.257 Many of these elements came together in the Kerala case. The Subalternist emphasis on an autonomous subaltern space, or its later evolution to focus on political society, is opposed to larger social transformation. The Campaign was under no illusion that the local alone—to the exclusion of the global—can be a site of subaltern liberation. Instead, it was aware that such a viewpoint would only lead to the manipulation of the local by global capital which by virtue of its nature “commands a more comprehensive vision of global totality.” Therefore, for the local to be a meaningful site for resistance, it has to be trans-local at the same time.258 Political society does not have such an attribute, for Chatterjee negatively associates such trans-local consciousness with the domain of global civil society and modernity.259 On the other hand, the Plan Campaign displayed some aspects of this consciousness. The national and international attention that the Plan attracted, the resultant exchange of ideas, and the active way in which the architects of the Plan have sought inputs and knowledge from similar experiments elsewhere went in this direction.260 Yet, there was a wide gap between the stated goals, and the actual outcomes of the Plan in democratically mediating between the local and the global. From the Left point of view, it was claimed that the Plan was not only a way to democratize the state but also simultaneously an instrument to counter imperialist globalization.261 This form of globalization is seen as striking at the decision-making capacity of the people at the local level, especially with regard to the control of vital areas like health and education. In an era when the national government was increasingly ceding its powers to international market forces, the Plan was intended as a local/regional resistance against capitalist globalization. Such local-level resistances have national and global importance. More importantly, the people’s resistance and participatory struggles were seen by some Communists as a bulwark against new developments like the withdrawal to the private sphere and the emergence of conspicuous consumption as a part of global capitalism.262 Moreover, as village level studies showed, even within the first decade of economic liberalization, the consumption of day-to-day goods was determined by multinational or big national capital which produced a vast majority of these goods.263 In this sense there is no pure “local” in existence as insisted by many postcolonial/post-development theorists. Global capitalism “represents an unprecedented penetration of local society globally by the economy and culture of capital.”264 This relationship cannot also be posited, as in postcolonial theory, as an “analytical opposition between a universal modernity and a non-Western culture,” or defining the global as macroand political-economic, and the local as “situated, culturally creative, and resistant.”265 This, as Ong stresses, “does not quite capture the horizontal and relational nature of the contemporary economic, social, and cultural processes that stream across spaces.”266 Thus, as Philip Kelly argues, this is 329

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not a simple binary of global capital versus local labor, which ignores the variety of actors at local level who shape this relationship.267 Yet, this is not a democratic relationship devoid of power relations; the forces of global and national capital are far superior to that of local/regional capital or labor. Further, the smallness of the industrial proletariat, the informalization of work, the expansion of financial capital and a fragmented labor force on the basis of caste, tribe, gender, region, etc., render it weak.268 Neoliberal globalization is not an automatic process, but one that results from deliberate policy action of powerful states like that of United States of America in conjunction with the corporate sector and the intelligentsia.269 From the Left point of view, the need to intervene in the sphere of production for an alternative system which promotes local capital without compromising labor was an imperative. However, the efforts for this have been weak. The People’s Plan undertook programs for the local production of goods hitherto bought from multinational companies. One example was cooperatives of women in panchayats producing toilet soaps.270 By 2005, there were more than 50,000 micro-enterprises under Kudumbashree.271 They are involved in production, livelihood and service. Starting with micro-financing and poultry-farming, they later moved to a variety of areas like “organic farming, tailoring units, catering units, household-waste management” and travels. By the mid-2010s, Kudumbashree’s contributions to eradicating poverty were very evident.272 There are efforts like collective farming also in which around 320,000 women are a part of 59,478 farm collectives and have contributed to livelihood security.273 Nevertheless, the Plan is confronting the huge challenge of the expansion of national and global capital. As Harilal points out, “While local plans have fared well in the service sector and triggered some notable success stories in agriculture, their overall impact on the goods-producing sector has been rather dismal.”274 This is partly because in economic terms, the rules are framed by national and international actors.275 And the Plan has not been successful in forging new growth patterns that can break the development stalemate.276 Crucially, the Plan has not been able to reverse the decline or devastation faced by agriculture in the state, especially by the food-growing sectors. Agriculture had a negative growth rate in 2018–2019.277 One of the important barriers is the increasing disjuncture between the atomization of farming and the globalization of agriculture.278 There is increasing privatization and commercialization, even in the rural nonfarm sector, and a move to export orientation and restructuring of labor–capital relations in favor of capital. The agricultural sector has been particularly affected with trade liberalization because 80% of agricultural produce in Kerala is dependent on national/international market.279 While the Plan has staggered and mitigated the effects of capital, the Left rhetoric of the Plan as a strong counter to imperialist globalization has not translated into reality.280 In this kind of a conjuncture, it is difficult to argue, 330

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as Chatterjee does, that corporate capital and the logic of accumulation are holding sway only over civil society or that the resistance to it is only emanating from political society. It also has to be asked as to how permanent the democratization processes engendered by political society are if they are not institutionalized as a part of civil society and the state.

A new state I started by noting the fact of the state-initiated decentralization program. The major feature of the Plan was the way it tried to strengthen the state by democratizing it. This is also significant considering that prominent anti-statist discourses like New Social Movements theory emphasize the autonomy of civil society281 without a creative engagement with the state. Postcolonial arguments like that of Chatterjee are only variants of this except for the fact that they question the very efficacy of concepts like civil society. Further, postcolonial theory sees liberal democratic state as synonymous with modernity. There is no reference to socialist, social-democratic or any other form of state.282 The People’s Plan showed that the state can foster civil society, but not the most radical kinds of civil society. Against Putnam’s conception of social capital which implies path dependency and culturalism, here, social capital can be the result of not initial endowments but of recent mobilizations in the political sphere and also by state action.283 It is important to ask at this juncture what the role of the state is in the democratization process. The Plan is an example of the fact that new avenues of democratization can be opened up, albeit more in an unintended manner. The state has become a fundamental feature of modernity and to believe that resistance can be mounted against oppression by circumventing the state would be negating reality. State is also the entity that enforces the present [neoliberal] capitalist order as it was during Marx and Engels’ time. They had termed the state as the “concentrated and organized violence of society.”284 So, the critique of capitalism has to involve the transformation of the state as well. All the civil society-centered social theories, by remaining at the sub-state level, abandon hegemony to global capitalism and this was obvious even in the early days of neoliberalism.285 The importance of the state in the Global South is all the more accentuated. A democratized state has the power to stand up (within limits) to the power of international capital,286 which is true even in the recent period when neoliberalism has consolidated despite crises, and post-neoliberalism has been imagined through a “return of the state.”287 In that sense, the state in Kerala (despite being a subnational entity, and despite its own capitulation to the pressures of neoliberal capital) demonstrates the possibilities of struggles around the state. Postcolonial theory, with its endeavor to recognize and construct differences rather than totality, is wary of admitting of knowledge forms related to state. It asks whether we should not remain at the level of the “fragmentary 331

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and episodic” without dreaming of “the whole called the state” or “knowledge-forms” tied to it. Can we imagine another moment of subaltern history, where we stay—permanently, not simply as a matter of political tactics—with what is fragmentary and episodic, precisely because that which is fragmentary and episodic does not, cannot, dream of the whole called the state and therefore must be suggestive of knowledgeforms that are not tied to the will that produces the state?288 While thinking of alternatives beyond the state is absolutely needed, the position above does not suggest any ways to deal with the concrete reality. The insistence on imagining, in a permanent way, the fragmentary and the episodic is fraught with problems. Besides, it ignores the fact that in the age of global capitalism, the fragmentary and the episodic are themselves shaped by its mechanisms—that there is hardly any pristine fragmentary/episodic that emerges unscathed from its incursions. The threat that local democracy in Kerala faces from the increasing hegemony of a market discourse is evidence of this. So, any kind of resistance which seeks to overcome hierarchical relations will have to contend with this reality without reducing social reality entirely to the machinations of a monolithic capitalism.289 Thus, decades of communist imaginary ensures that even in the present, as surveys indicate, there is substantial public support to labor organizations like trade unions and some opposition to privatization and foreign capital.290 The obfuscation of questions of political economy and totality in postcolonial theory does not allow us to coherently theorize about the fragmentary. So, the struggle for ending non-sovereign forms of power has to go along with the one for extending popular sovereignty and citizenship by overcoming instruments of governmentality. Curiously, it is only in more recent work there is some recognition in Chatterjee that “just as the indiscriminate worship of state power led to many disasters, so can the instinctive horror of state power prevent us from recognising political traps as well as political opportunities.”291 This is totally contradictory to the general tenor of most of his earlier work. As Agnes Heller argues, if the utopia of the complete abolition of state power has to be abandoned, and, at the same time, state tyranny has to be avoided, difficult questions have to be asked about the relationship between state and civil society. If the state is a reality, questions have to be asked as to what kind of state it should be.292 The communist project in Kerala posed such questions. Of course, the answers have not been, by any imagination, completely satisfactory. Nevertheless, they have to be asked in the present conjuncture of capitalist modernity. Importantly, the Plan is relevant for an area, state–civil society relations, about which the original Marxian theory, premised on the abolition of state, had nothing much to say. The distinction 332

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between the state and civil society needs to be maintained, without one appropriating the other, leading us back to the Gramscian formulation that we saw about state being situated on a plural and dynamic civil society and the former promoting such a diverse civil society.293 Thus, a strong and independent civil society and political pluralism can only be achieved with the existence of an effective and democratic state, not by its abolition.294 The Campaign inaugurated a partnership of the state and civil society, but as noted, it was not the most critical versions of civil society. While civil society organizing and movements still remain strong, their ability to contribute to an alternative political formation remains limited.295 Therefore, romantic notions of the Plan, like recent assessments which see it as deepening democracy without making a distinction between the different kinds of civil society, are problematic.296 Yet, it was a significant achievement initially to have implemented a program of such proportions without at all involving private consultants in the planning process,297 something which is becoming a reality in the present with such pressures on the Left government with regard to development policies. The state is the critical agency in providing the conditions necessary for the functioning of civil society.298 The important question in the present, especially for the Global South, is whether it can eliminate the acute misery and deprivation that characterizes it even after many decades of the development regime. To that extent, what is the role of the state in this task and whether it can recapture some of its past glory of the post-Second World War era, in which it was noticeably successful in de-commodification,299 are some of the questions that are pertinent here. This is especially so considering the wave of re-commodification,300 and accumulation through “extractive capture of nature”301 that has been sweeping much of the South under neoliberal capitalism. And a strong and democratic state to counter this would not be possible if it were not located in the larger societal context of a “high-energy democracy,” in contrast with the “low-energy democracy” that prevails in much of the developed Western world or what can be called as “thick democracy,” instead of a “thin democracy.”302 From the perspective of the marginalized groups and classes, state power, contra Chatterjee, rather than being denied, needs to be transformed into “permanently mobilised deliberative-democratic grassroots forms.” Instead of valorizing mobilization without institutions, the participation of the most disadvantaged sections of the population has to be institutionalized. The idea is to go beyond the brief democratic moments of specific outcome-oriented and campaign-based social movements or the same in the predominant electoral competitions.303 The Plan Campaign was another example of the way in which the communist movement tried to negotiate social transformation, this time on the terrain of the state and politics. Workers already imbued with the consciousness that political struggles are an inalienable part of the struggle for 333

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equality believed in initial period that this would be transformed into a new radical level through the Plan.304 This has not translated into reality. Of course, the Campaign was not merely a political project but also an economic (and cultural) response to the latest phase of development as well as communism’s own de-radicalization and waning hegemony. It nevertheless did have some understanding that economic condition of the most disadvantaged classes cannot be improved only through an economistic solution, but only through the extension of democracy in its widest sense. In this perspective, the reforms sought by the Campaign tried to approximate to what Archon Fung and Erik Olin Wright termed as Empowered Participatory Governance: “participatory because they rely upon the commitment and capacities of ordinary people to make sensible decisions through reasoned deliberation and empowered because they attempt to tie action to discussion.”305 The Plan, despite its failures, can be seen as a contribution of the “periphery” to the evolution of a global modernity. Instead, “postcolonial critiques continue to deny the coevality of Indian modernity; modernity remains an external, substantially western phenomenon, albeit eventually adapted, transformed and made ‘Indian’.”306 The irony is that the party which is governed by the principles of democratic centralism was the one undertook decentralization. The Campaign showed how far the Communists have come from their early years in which it was argued that they were not interested in anything but a total revolution. This also reflects the reality of electoral politics. It also strikes at what Roberto Unger has described as “institutional fetishism”: the conception that “political values have a unique, single and necessary institutional expression.”307 This fetishism had combined with the admiration of the West had produced a subservience to “derivative discourses” which prevented postcolonial elites from charting a new path. In this latest phase of negotiating social transformation through the People’s Plan, the communist project chose over centralization and autonomous decentralization what could be termed as a coordinated decentralization.308 All the theories inspired by post-modernism have generally argued for a completely autonomous decentralization. Patrick Heller categorizes them as the anarcho-communitarians who reject all traditional vehicles of popular mobilization like parties and trade unions and also are opposed to any kind of state intervention. What this line of thinking does is to reify “mobilization at the expense of institutions.” It believes in the utopia that democracy can completely do without bureaucracy.309 This tendency is marked in the postcolonial writings that we have examined so far. One of the fundamental problems of Chatterjee’s framework is the binary of modernity versus democracy. While the critique of governmentality has to be carried out relentlessly, postcolonial theory ignores that certain forms of enumeration and fixity cannot be avoided in modern governance which goes beyond faceto-face communities. Thus, we cannot only remain at the level of recovering 334

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“autonomous forms of imagination of the community” or “the imaginative possibilities afforded by the fuzziness of the community.”310 Therefore, along with the focus on the community in political society, fostering of what Nancy Fraser has called a counterpublic is also necessary. As she argues, community is based on: the affective language of love . . . on assumptions of authenticity, homogeneity, and continuity, of inclusion and exclusion, identity and otherness. The notion of a counterpublic, by contrast, [is based on] forms of solidarity and reciprocity that are grounded in a collective experience of marginalization and expropriation, but these forms are inevitably experienced as mediated, no longer rooted in face-to-face relations, and subject to discursive conflict and negotiation.311 The other view that is totally opposed to the communitarians is the technocratic one which believes in the power of science and rationality and is characterized by institutional fetishism. In its conception of democracy, politics not only does not a find a place but is also something to be afraid of. Mere institutional design (that too narrowly conceived) is thought to be the key to improving democracy.312 Even when this vision envisages decentralization, it is a conceived as an “agency for stabilizing the social and political status quo.”313 If People’s Plan has to fulfill the vision of popular sovereignty, it has to incorporate elements of a counterpublic.

Conclusion The entire enterprise of converting peasants into citizens or the democratization project in the Global South definitely has to acknowledge the domain of political society, and the intense and often violent contestations within it for democratic rights and entitlements. The great merit of postcolonial theory’s framework is in highlighting those aspects of politics which do not necessarily fall under notions of state–civil society relationship which have come down to us from Western theory and praxis. There is thus a definite need to go beyond established notions of democracy. However, in not casting enough light on the negative aspects of political society, Chatterjee and postcolonial theory ignore the anti-democratic tendencies within it. To believe that the contextual and impermanent gains made by the subaltern classes and marginalized groups in political society, without the legal institutional backing of the state and civil society, are sufficient for democracy is to contribute to the erosion of citizenship and popular sovereignty. The People’s Plan does not achieve anything revolutionary. However, it has deepened the state, especially in its welfare provision function and decentralized state institutions have played a critical role in handling disasters like natural 335

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disasters and pandemics.314 The Plan is an attempt at opening up spaces which go much beyond the democratization attempts through political society. The prospects and problems associated with the Plan and the struggles around it demonstrate in no uncertain terms the breakdown of the political society/civil society and the modernity/democracy binary. And conditions which generate this are not unique to an exceptional case like Kerala, but exist in various forms in other locations of the South. Modern social formations display the pervasive dominance of what Foucault has characterized as “biopower,” the development of knowledge and regulatory controls associated with the production and optimization of life, the inalienable component of which is the governmentalization of social life—the domination of every aspect of life by state.315 However, unlike in Foucault and postcolonial theory, such power can be overcome and the discourse of democracy is always not another mechanism of power, but can inherently generate criticism.316 It is the extension of democracy and popular sovereignty that puts a stop to the imposition of ideas only from above, and takes into account the subaltern’s vision, her ideas and promotes “people’s needs.”317 Dirlik argued that the emergence of the local was due to the fact that it has been suppressed or marginalized in various ideologies of modernity: Modernist teleology has gone the farthest of all in stamping upon the local its derogatory image: as enclaves of backwardness left out of progress, as the realm of rural stagnation against the dynamism of the urban, industrial civilization of capitalism, as the realm of particularistic culture against universal scientific rationality and perhaps most importantly, as the obstacle to full realization of that political form of modernity, the nation-state.318 The communist project built its hegemony, as we have seen, through principles which were at variance with this, despite the fact that it was imbued with modernist aspects as well. With the People’s Plan, the local assumed a new importance in the communist lexicon. However, this local, as in the period of the construction of the national-popular, is not one posited against the national. Yet, it is not strong enough to resist global forces of capitalism. Of course, democratization of the state alone does not end biopower. That can only be overcome if non-sovereign forms of power in society are also eliminated. The Plan can contribute to such an endeavor only if it moves from being a reform in development administration and mechanism for enhanced participation in governance to one which can go onto becoming a mechanism for the development of alternative institutions and politics, the questioning of structural inequities and power relations and the redistribution of critical material resources.319 The powers of the grama sabha have to be restored to what was originally envisaged, especially considering the 336

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recent recurring human-made disasters like floods and the increased need for people’s participation not only in disaster relief but also in environmental reconstruction. It remains to be seen if the recent initiatives to include local communities and citizens through the Local Self Government Institutions as a part of the Rebuild Kerala Development Programme in the postflood scenario will be successful.320 The Plan has to become, as J. Devika argues, a “refurbished People’s Planning” based on expanding citizenship rights, and incorporating the multifarious struggles of the marginalized, like Dalits, Adivasis, widows, sex-workers, victims of industrial disasters, sexual minorities, etc.,321 the various axes of social oppression, if the communist project seeks to construct a deeper national-popular. It has to move from being a mechanism of problem-solving with the intention of reforming government and deepening the state to a mechanism for the “empowerment of the poor and social justice, and with the goal of social transformation and rupture.”322 Even though, the Plan has not reached there, it cannot do so until the various binaries articulated by postcolonial theory and Subaltern Studies are bridged.

Notes 1 I will also trace the lineages of the program. 2 Vivek Dhareshwar, “Postcolonial in the Postmodern: Or, the Political after Modernity,” Economic and Political Weekly 30, no. 30 (July 1995): 109. 3 Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 11. 4 Patrick Heller, K. N. Harilal and S. Chaudhuri, “Building Local Democracy: Evaluating the Impact of Decentralization in Kerala, India,” World Development 35, no. 4 (2007):643–644. 5 Nivedita Menon and Aditya Nigam, Power and Contestation: India since 1989 (London: Zed Books, 2007), 108. 6 Nissim Mannathukkaren, “The Conjuncture of Late Socialism in Kerala: A Critique of the Narrative of Social Democracy,” in Development, Democracy and the State: Critiquing Kerala Model of Development, ed. K. Ravi Raman (London: Routledge, 2012). 7 Lin Chun, “The Language of Class in China,” Socialist Register 51 (2015): 24–53. 8 Nissim Mannathukkaren,“Enjoying Life: Consumption and Its Changing Meanings in Kerala, India,” (Unpublished manuscript, 2020); Pulapre Balakrishnan, “Kerala Model Is Unsustainable,” The Hindu, August 22, 2019, www.thehindu. com/opinion/op-ed/the-kerala-model-is-unsustainable/article29213883.ece. 9 Rajan Gurukkal, “When a Coalition of Conflicting Interests Decentralises: A Theoretical Critique of Decentralisation Politics in Kerala,” Social Scientist 29, nos. 9–10 (2001): 62. 10 K. N. Harilal, “Confronting Bureaucratic Capture: Rethinking Participatory Planning Methodology in Kerala,” Economic and Political Weekly 48, no. 36 (September 2013): 52; K. N. Harilal, “Planning as an Instrument of Politics? Rethinking the Methodology of Local Level Participatory Planning in Kerala,” (RULSG Occasional Papers 2012:1, Research Unit on Local Self Governments Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, June 2012).

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11 A. P. Sreeraj and Vamsi Vakulabharanam, “High Growth and Rising Inequality in Kerala since the 1980s,” Oxford Development Studies 44, no. 4 (2016): 378. 12 Heller argued that the bargaining capacity of the labor increased even after labor quiescence. For example, the membership of the agricultural labor union increased from 47,700 in 1970 to over one million in 1990. The increase in the collective bargaining power of labor was reflected in the fact that no serious reversals of real wage levels had taken place in spite of, for example, the decline in the price of rice, which was even more remarkable because of the decreased demand for labor and increase in its supply (Patrick Heller, The Labor of Development: Workers and the Transformation of Capitalism in Kerala: India (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), 89, 90–93). 13 Ibid., 155. 14 Barrie M. Morrison, “The Embourgeoisement of the Kerala Farmer,” Modern Asian Studies 31, no. 1 (February 1997): 61–87. 15 Heller, Labor of Development, 86. 16 The communist parties are wary about using the market even in areas of potential for the state because of its capitalist implications. At the same time, they welcome the profits from it (Bharath, senior bureaucrat, interview, December 2010). This leads to contradictions and ambivalences (see Mannathukkaren, “Conjuncture of Late Socialism.”) 17 Nisha Velappan Nair and John S. Moolakkattu, “Why Do Women’s Cooperative Societies Languish? A Study of Selected Societies in Kottayam, Kerala,” Asian Journal of Women’s Studies 21, no. 2 (2015): 107. 18 Benny Kuruvilla, “Kerala’s Web of Cooperatives: Advancing the Solidarity Economy,” in Public Finance for the Future We Want, ed. Lavinia Steinfort and Satoko Kishimoto (Amsterdam: Transnational Institute, 2019). 19 Sudarshana Bordoloi, The Political Economy of Uneven Rural Development: The Case of the Nonfarm Sector in Kerala, India (London: Springer Nature, 2020), 10. 20 Ibid., 177. 21 The feeling of inevitability is seen among Left supporters who are politically very conscious and have been active union workers (field notes, December 2011) as well as people who are actively trying to contest big capital on behalf of small and medium capital (Ajmal Chakkungal,* President, Muvattupuzha Merchants’ Association, interview, August 2017). 22 John Harriss and Olle Törnquist, “Comparative Notes on Indian Experiences of Social Democracy: Kerala and West Bengal,” (Simons Papers in Security and Development, No. 39/2015, School for International Studies, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, 2015), 5, 7. 23 Syed Bashir, “Migrant Labour from Assam, Bengal Increase in Kerala,” North East Now, May 4, 2019, https://nenow.in/north-east-news/assam/migrantlabour-from-assam-bengal-increase-in-kerala.html. 24 K. P. M. Basheer, “Kerala’s Scheme for Migrants,” Business Line, February 16, 2015, www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/variety/keralas-scheme-formigrants/article6902317.ece#. 25 Jajati K. Parida, Merry Elizabeth John and Justin Sunny, “Construction Labour Migrants and Wage Inequality in Kerala,” Journal of Social and Economic Development, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1007/s40847-020-00104-2. 26 Jens Lerche and Alpa Shah, “Conjugated Oppression within Contemporary Capitalism: Class, Caste, Tribe and Agrarian Change in India,” Journal of Peasant Studies 45, nos. 5–6 (2018): 938. 27 M. Luke, “Globalisation and the Re-Articulations of the Local: A Case Study from Kerala’s Midlands,” (working paper no. 481, CDS, Thiruvananthapuram, 2018).

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28 Pulapre Balakrishnan, “Bracing for the Status Quo in Kerala,” The Hindu, April 29, 2016, www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/lead-article-by-pulapre-balakrishnan-onkerala-political-situation-bracing-for-the-status-quo-in-kerala/article8533354.ece. 29 Sreeraj and Vakulabharanam, “High Growth,” 379–380. 30 In 2016–2017, Kerala was 3rd in a group of 21 major states (constant prices). Its per capita income was around 57% higher than India’s per capita income (Government of India, State-Wise Data[New Delhi: Central Statistical Organisation, 2018], 14). 31 The service/tertiary sector contributed 62.24% (at constant prices) to the Gross State Value Added while the agricultural/primary sector contributed only 11.58% in 2015–2016 (Government of Kerala, Economic Review 2016, vol. 1 [Thiruvananthapuram: State Planning Board, 2017], 11). Kerala has only 27.3% of its households engaged in agriculture, whereas the national average is 57.8% 2017 (Bordoloi, Political Economy, 38). 32 Sreeraj and Vakulabharanam, “High Growth,” 380. 33 Balakrishnan, “Kerala Model.” Kerala has the highest per capita borrowing among Indian states. Large remittances also lead to tendencies like conspicuous consumption and conversion of land as a speculative commodity (Balakrishnan, “Bracing for the Status Quo.”). 34 K. Ravi Raman, “Kerala Model: Situating the Critique,” in Development, Democracy and the State: Critiquing Kerala Model of Development, ed. K. Ravi Raman (Routledge: London, 2010), 13. 35 Joseph Tharamangalam, “Human Development as Transformative Practice,” Critical Asian Studies 42, no. 3 (2010):385–386. This also affects the performance of government health facilities (Sulaiman, daily-wage worker turned petty businessman, interview, December 2010, and woman councilor, Muvattupuzha Municipality, interview, August 2017). 36 “The PSU Score Card: Cheers to Bevco, Thumbs Down to Supplyco,” Onmanorama, June 29, 2016, www.onmanorama.com/business/news/keralagovernment-bevco-supplyco-finance.html. 37 Richard Sandbrook, “Polanyi and Post-Neoliberalism in the Global South: Dilemmas of Re-Embedding the Economy,” New Political Economy 16, no. 4 (2011): 432. 38 Ibid., 438. 39 Sreeraj and Vakulabharanam, “High Growth,” 368, 381. 40 Of course, as we have observed, the structural conditions only set limits, they do not completely determine the politics that arises out of them. 41 While this has given a new respectability to the communist parties and movement, it has led to the moving away from the working classes (P. Govinda Pillai,* prominent Marxist ideologue, interview, July 2010; Rajan, nationallevel CPM leader, interview, March 2013). 42 Muralidharan,* Secretary, CPM Muvattupuzha Area Committee, interview, August 2004. There was also the assumption that since material issues like land reforms and labor rights have been won, it is imperative that the Left take up other vital issues and also the concerns of the middle classes (Santhosh,* lowerlevel CPM activist, interview, August 2004). 43 J. Devika et al., Gendering Governance or Governing Women? Politics, Patriarchy, and Democratic Decentralisation in Kerala State, India (Thiruvananthapuram: Centre for Development Studies, 2008), 14, 187. 44 J. Devika and A. K. Rajasree, “Widow’s Organizations in Kerala State, India: Seeking Citizenship Amidst the Decline of Political Society,” in Reframing Democracy and Agency in India: Interrogating Political Society, ed. Ajay Gudavarthy (New Delhi: Anthem Press, 2012), 201–231.

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45 Archon Fung and Erik Olin Wright, “Thinking about Empowered Participatory Governance,” in Deepening Democracy: Institutional Innovations in Empowered Participatory Governance, ed. Archon Fung and Erik Olin Wright (London: Verso, 2003), 35. 46 Fung and Wright, “Participatory Governance,” 35. 47 Jos Chathukulam and M. S. John, “Five Years of Participatory Planning: Rhetoric and Reality,” Economic and Political Weekly 37, no. 49 (December 2002): 4918. 48 Kristian Stokke and Giles Mohan, “The Convergence around Local Civil Society and the Dangers of Localism,” Social Scientist 29, nos. 11–12 (2001): 6. 49 Mihir Shah, “Structures of Power in Indian Society: A Response,” Economic and Political Weekly 43, no. 46 (November 2008): 80. 50 Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe quoted in Anna Marie Smith, Laclau and Mouffe: The Radical Democratic Imaginary (London: Routledge, 1998), 7. 51 Stokke and Mohan, “Convergence,” 3. The formulators of the People’s Plan themselves were clearly aware of the kind of initiatives attempted under the aegis of the World Bank. T. M. Thomas Isaac argued before that the Plan differs from the World Bank design in four crucial ways: “One, for the World Bank, decentralisation is a part of downsizing the state. For People’s Planning it is a question of deepening and widening the state. . . . Secondly, for the World Bank decentralisation is a .  .  . prelude to privatisation and marketisation. On the other hand, for the People’s Plan Campaign, the central fulcrum around which the whole programme revolves is local-level planning. It does not deny the market. But there is a social regulation by the community of the market forces to the extent possible. Thirdly, to the World Bank, decentralisation is an instrument to pass the burden of government responsibilities to the community. Through the People’s Plan Campaign, along with the transfer of responsibility, proportionate transfer of the funds of the government also takes place. Therefore, if there is any additional burden, it is not on the local community but on the State government. Finally, when the World Bank speaks about participatory development, it means the participation of NGOs (non-governmental organisations) . . . For the People’s Plan, more than the NGOs or even individual citizens, the focus was upon the participation of mass and class organisations. . . . In short, the World Bank agenda is to create an efficient local government system, which is complementary to globalisation. Our attempt is to create an efficient and participatory local government system that will become an instrument of popular resistance to the unbridling of the globalisation processes” (R. Krishnakumar, “People’s Plan Is Different from World Bank Programme,” Frontline, August 15, 2003, www.frontline.in/static/html/fl2016/stories/20030815003004300.htm). While resistance to globalization and the regulation of market by community have not borne out, the other contentions are not fully off the mark (T. M. Thomas Isaac is a Marxist economist and one of the architects of the People’s Plan. He was the head of the State Planning Board during the 1996 Left Government; and was the finance minister of the CPM-led Government, 2016–2021). 52 The program for deliberative democracy itself was undertaken after decades of militant mobilization and conflict in which the power of the dominant classes was regulated. Therefore, the process of deliberation, while it seeks to deepen democracy, is already premised on the organized power of the workers and peasants backed by a political party. But this power itself is being threatened by the incursion of capital. The traces of militant mobilization and radical political consciousness are still present (field notes, December 2011). 53 T. M. Thomas Isaac, interview, May 2003.

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54 Harilal, “Planning as an Instrument,” 5. 55 As Santhosh, who also served as a Municipality councilor puts it, “through People’s Plan, power . . . has reached the hands of the people at the bottom” and there is no going back to the earlier system of governance (interview, July 2016). 56 Judith Whitehead, “Au Retour a Gramsci: Reflections on Civil Society, Political Society and the State in South Asia,” Journal of Contemporary Asia 45, no. 4 (2015): 661, 669. 57 Smith, Laclau and Mouffe, 63. 58 Antonio Gramsci quoted in Norberto Bobbio, “Gramsci and the Concept of Civil Society,” in Civil Society and the State: New European Perspectives, ed. John Keane (London: Verso, 1988), 86. 59 Cox, “Civil Society,” 8; Bobbio, “Gramsci,” 90. 60 Bobbio, “Gramsci,” 90. 61 N. Krishnaji, “Agrarian Relations and the Left Movement: A Note on Recent Trends,” Economic and Political Weekly 14, no. 9 (March 1979): 517. 62 Ronald J. Herring, “Dilemmas of Agrarian Communism: Peasant Differentiation, Sectoral and Village Politics,” Third World Quarterly 11, no. 1 (January 1989): 94. 63 Ibid., 96, 98. Since the CPM had been in the forefront of agrarian struggles against the (mainly Christian) landed interests, this view is especially strong among the latter and the party representing such interests, the Kerala Congress and its various factions. (Johnson, Kerala Congress (Joseph) leader, interview, June 2003). 64 Anil Varughese, “Democracy and the Politics of Social Citizenship in India,” (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Toronto, Toronto, 2013), 225. 65 T. M. Thomas Isaac and S. Mohana Kumar, “Kerala Elections, 1991: Lessons and Non-Lessons,” Economic and Political Weekly 26, no. 47 (November 1991): 2695. 66 A. V. Jose, “Wage Rates of Agricultural Labourers in Kerala,” Economic and Political Weekly 8, nos. 4/6 (February 1973):288. 67 K. K. Easwaran, “Re-Emergence of Land Leasing in Kerala: The Case of Kuttanad,” Social Scientist 18, nos. 11–12 (November–December 1990): 64–80; field notes, July 2010. 68 Olle Tornquist, What’s Wrong with Marxism?, vol. 2, On Peasants and Workers in India and Indonesia (New Delhi: Manohar, 1991), 27. 69 C. T. Kurien, “Kerala’s Development Experience: Random Comments about the Past and Some Considerations for the Future,” Social Scientist, 23, nos. 1–3 (January–March 1995): 50–69. 70 K. P. Kannan and K. Pushpangadan, “Dissecting Agricultural Stagnation in Kerala,” Economic and Political Weekly 25, nos. 35–36 (September 8, 1990): 1991–2004. 71 K. K. Subramaniam, “Industrial Strategy for Kerala: A Perspective,” in International Congress on Kerala Studies-Abstracts (ICKS-A), vol. 2 (Trivandrum: A. K. G. Centre for Research and Studies, 1994), 19–20. 72 Mridul Eapen, “Employment and Unemployment in Kerala: An Analysis of Recent Trends,” in International Congress on Kerala Studies-Abstracts (ICKSA), vol. 2 (Trivandrum: A. K. G. Centre for Research and Studies, 1994), 66. 73 P. R. Gopinathan Nair, “Broad Trends in Migration to the Middle East: A Note,” in International Congress on Kerala Studies-Abstracts (ICKS-A), vol. 2 (Trivandrum: A. K. G. Centre for Research and Studies, 1994), 75–76. 74 As we saw, economic stagnation itself was overcome. Despite that some of the problems like lack of growth in commodity-producing sectors low agricultural

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75 76 77 78

79 80

81 82 83 84

85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94

growth, the fiscal crisis of the state, and the culture of rent-seeking persisted (K. P. Kannan, “Kerala’s Turnaround in Growth: Role of Social Development, Remittances and Reform,” Economic and Political Weekly 40, no. 6 (February 2005): 548); Balakrishnan, “Kerala Model.” Isaac and Kumar, “Kerala Elections,” 2695. Tornquist, What’s Wrong with Marxism?, 31 and 39. Patrick Heller, “Moving the State: The Politics of Democratic Decentralization in Kerala, South Africa, and Porto Alegre,” Politics and Society 29, no. 1 (March 2000): 149. There was also the context of the decline in the quality of public infrastructure, and the delivery of public services. Primary Health Centres were being neglected, and schools were in dilapidated condition. Thus, there was a need to intervene from the bottom up (Paul, former CPM member involved with People’s Plan, interview, March 2013). Herring, “Agrarian Communism,” 105; Tornquist, What’s Wrong with Marxism?, 33, 37. In one senior bureaucrat’s view, even in the 2000s, Communists were diffident about economic innovation (Bharath, interview, July 2010). These concerns persist until now in the party among those who see development as modernization, especially in technology (Annie, municipality-level Communist activist, interview, August 2017), although there are changes in the business climate as attested by business owners (field notes, December 2011; John Kuriakose,* owner of a leading dental products firm, interview, August 2017). Olle Tornquist, The Next Left? Democratization and Attempts to Renew the Radical Political Development Project: The Case of Kerala (Copenhagen: NIAS, 1995), 25–26. T. M. Thomas Isaac and E. M. Sridharan, eds., EMSum Adhikara Vikendrikaranvum [EMS and the Decentralization of Power] (Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha Publishers, 2002), 90. Report of the Administrative Reforms Committee, 1958, vol. 1, parts I & II (Trivandrum: Government of Kerala, 1958), 2. Tornquist, Next Left?,40, 52. Heller argues that even though the CPM historically did not have any affinity to decentralization [based as it is on democratic centralism], “there was always a strong grassroots democratic faction in the party” which he calls as the social movement faction (Heller, Labor of Development, 149). E. M. S. Namboodiripad, Sampoorna Kirtikal [Collected Works], vol. 6, 1945– 46 (Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha Publishers, 1999), 344. Administrative Reforms Committee, 26–27. Isaac and Sridharan, EMSum, 95. PathramWeekly, July 16, 2003. Quoted in Ronald Herring, Land to the Tiller: The Political Economy of Agrarian Reform in South Asia (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1983), 169. Agnes Heller, “On Formal Democracy,” in Civil Society and the State: New European Perspectives, ed. John Keane (London: Verso, 1988), 132. Quoted in Herring, Land to the Tiller, 164. Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 151. Escobar, Encountering Development, 152. J. Devika, “The Capabilities Approach in the Vernacular: The History in Kerala,” Economic and Political Weekly 45, nos. 26/27 (June–July 2010): 273.

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95 See, for one example, working committee of the KKS held at Trivandrum in May 1957 which discussed the Agrarian Relations Bill at length (Mathrubhumi, May 18, 1957). 96 Draft Political Resolution, Communist Party of India, Fourth Party Congress, 1956, cited in C. H. Kanaran, Vegam Pora [Not Fast Enough], vol. 1, ed. Andalat (Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha Publishers, 1978), 68. 97 Herring, Land to the Tiller, 173. 98 In a discussion on the Kerala Village Courts Bill in 1960, E. P. Gopalan, the Communist Member of the Legislative Assembly (M. L. A.) argued that democracy should percolate down to the lowest levels. Instead of nominating judges, the CPI called for the direct election of the members of the Village Courts (Proceedings of the Kerala Legislative Assembly, vol. 10, no. 7 (September 23, 1960)). 99 Sathyamurthy, India, 195, 207. After the communist ministry fell, Namboodiripad criticized the Congress government’s amendments to the land reforms bill which reduced the powers of the elected officials in favor of the bureaucracy (Proceedings of the Kerala Legislative Assembly, vol. 10, no. 9 (September 26, 1960). 100 Prakash Karat, “E. M. S: Marxist Vazhikatti” [EMS: Marxist Path-Breaker], in E. M. S.: Vakkum Samuhavum [EMS: Words and Society], ed. K. Gopinathan (Thrissur: Current Books, 1998); Herring, Land to the Tiller, 1983. 101 See Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (New York: Monthly Press, 1971). 102 Bhabani Sengupta, Communism in Indian Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), 317. 103 Frederick Cooper, “Conflict and Connection: Rethinking Colonial African History,” The American Historical Review 99, no. 5 (December 1994): 1542. This is evident in interviews with senior police officers of the Kerala cadre. 104 Herring, Land to the Tiller, 174. 105 See E. M. S. Namboodiripad, “Marxism-Leninism and the Bourgeois Judiciary,” in Therenjedutha Prabandhangal [Selected Essays] (Thrissur: Kerala Sahitya Akademi, 1990), 297–315.He quotes the CPI assessment of the judiciary: “The judiciary, which is an important organ of state power, is weighted against workers, peasants and other sections of the working people. The laws, procedures and the system of justice, though holding the rich and poor equal and alike in principle, essentially serve the interests of the exploiting classes and uphold their class rule” (305). 106 Herring, Land to the Tiller, 198–199. 107 P. Eashvaraiah, The Communist Parties in Power and Agrarian Reforms in India (New Delhi: Academic Foundation, 1993), 130. 108 Ibid., 197. 109 Deshabhimani, January 31, 1961; Deshabhimani, November 12, 1961. 110 A. K. Gopalan, In the Cause of the People: Reminiscences (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1973), 140. 111 T. V. Sathyamurthy, India since Independence: Studies in the Development of the Power of the State, vol. 1, Centre-State Relations: The Case of Kerala (New Delhi: Ajanta Publications, 1985), 259. 112 Herring, Land to the Tiller, 189–190. 113 Quoted in G. K. Lieten, The First Communist Ministry in Kerala, 1957–9 (Calcutta: K. P. Bagchi, 1982), 20. 114 Isaac and Sridharan, EMSum, 101. The fact that the West Bengal Communists were in government from 1977 until 2006 without a break had helped in initiating and consolidating the decentralization program.

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115 Alf Nilsen takes such efforts at state-making further back to the early 19th century by looking at the Adivasi rebellions of colonial western India (Alf Gunvald Nilsen, “Subalterns and the State in the Longue Durée: Notes from ‘The Rebellious Century’ in the Bhil Heartland,” Journal of Contemporary Asia 45, no. 4 (2015): 574–595). 116 Such a combination of seeking justice through violent means as well as through the judicial system was seen later in the anti-land acquisition struggle in Singur, West Bengal, in the 2000s (Kenneth Bo Nielsen, “Law and Larai: The (De) Judicialisation of Subaltern Resistance in West Bengal,” Journal of Contemporary Asia 45, no. 4 (2015): 618–639). 117 Tornquist, Next Left?, 51. 118 Ibid., 58. 119 T. K. Ramachandran, scholar, interview, May 1999. Similarly, Paul Cammack sees education and health programs as delivering workers to capitalism, creating the “infrastructure necessary for capitalist production, but not actually produced by capitalists themselves [although he is referring specifically to the World Bank-sponsored anti-poverty program]” (“Attacking the Poor,” New Left Review 13 (January–February 2002): 127). Such one-sided interpretation would foreclose the critical potentialities of a general improvement in health and education of the poor in any part of the world. 120 Tornquist, Next Left?, 65, 80–82. 121 Quoted in Tornquist, Next Left?, 65. 122 Chathukulam and John, “Five Years.” 123 Ibid. Again, this shows unlike the postcolonial narrative, the role of bureaucracy cannot be one-sidedly determined. 124 Heller, Harilal and Chaudhuri, “Building Local Democracy,” 631. 125 For an example from the micro level, the Thirumarady Panchayat in Muvattupuzha Taluk and Ernakulam district was allotted a sum of Rs. 28 lakhs in 1995, when it had a capacity of generating on its own an income of only Rs. 3.5 lakhs (M. J. Jacob,* President, Thirumarady Panchayat, interview, July 2004). 126 Shobha Raghuram, “Kerala’s Democratic Decentralisation: History in the Making,” Economic and Political Weekly 35, no. 25 (June 2000): 2105–2107. 127 P. Govindapillai and P. G. Padmanabhan, Janangalkku Vendi Janangalal [For the People, by the People] (Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha Publishers, 2000), 9. 128 The information in the following including the next paragraph relies on T. M. Thomas Isaac, “Campaign for Democratic Decentralisation in Kerala,” Social Scientist 29, nos. 9–10 (September–October 2001): 13. 129 Escobar, Encountering Development, 162. 130 Instead of scientific personnel acting as “experts” in an autonomous domain, now they were supposed to cooperate with the people in the preparation and implementation of plans (E. M. S. Namboodiripad, “Puthiya Anubhavam” [New Experience], in Thomas Isaac and Sridharan, EMSum, 70). 131 E. M. S. Namboodiripad, “Udyogastharude Bharanathilninnu Janangalude Bharanathilekku” [From the Rule of the Administrators to the Rule of the People], in Thomas Isaac and Sridharan, EMSum, 8. 132 Partha Chatterjee, The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 34. 133 Subir Sinha, “On the Edge of Civil Society in Contemporary India,” in Reconceptualising Subaltern Politics in India, ed. Alf Nilsen and Srila Roy (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2015). 134 Chatterjee, Politics of the Governed, 35. 135 Sudipta Kaviraj, “On State, Society and Discourse in India,” in Rethinking Third World Politics, ed. James Manor (London: Longman, 1991), 90.

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136 Partha Chatterjee, “Beyond the Nation? Or Within?,” Social Text 56 16, no. 3 (Fall 1998): 60. 137 Chatterjee, Politics of the Governed, 38. 138 This would apply to all other kinds of organizations representing groups of people whose very livelihood includes the violation of law (for example, the illegal use of water or electricity) (Chatterjee, Politics of the Governed, 40). 139 Partha Chatterjee, “Community in the East,” Economic and Political Weekly 33, no. 6 (February 1998): 281. 140 Ibid., 282. 141 Ibid. 142 Chatterjee, “Beyond the Nation,” 60. 143 Ibid., 27. Here it should be noted that in Gramsci, political society is equated with the state (see Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, ed. and trans. Quentin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International, 1971), 12). But for Gramsci, civil society, political society and the state are not fixed, immutable categories. They are dialectically inter-linked and their boundaries change in different social formations (Whitehead, “Au Retour a Gramsci,”669–670). 144 Partha Chatterjee, “After Subaltern Studies,” Economic and Political Weekly 47, no. 35 (September 2012): 46, 47. 145 This is evident in the relations between workers and former patrons. Some workers like the unionized CPM head-load workers (workers who load and unload goods) indulge in intimidatory and extortionist practices like not allowing others to load and unload the goods or charge nokkukooli (wages charged for just looking at others doing the job). In one instance, the workers (belonging to lower castes) demanded nokkukooli from a former upper-caste patron, for the latter unloaded the goods himself. Since they are known very well to the patron, at first, they are deferential, and talk in a tone of pleading: “Sir, you cannot do this to us. We have been doing very badly in the last few days because of the rains and so on. If you, of all people, do this, what will we do?” But then the tone also becomes mildly threatening. Finally, they agree for Rs. 300 (where they would have made Rs. 1,500 if they did the work themselves) (field notes, August 2012). What is to be noted here is that this is a modified patron-client relationship in which the semblance of older community remains, but it goes into a contract mode when hierarchies of the past do not accept the changed conditions of empowered and politicized workers. 146 Jurgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 1, Reason and the Rationalization of Society, trans. T. McCarthy (London: Heinemann, 1985), 285. 147 See Nielsen, “Law and Larai”; Nilsen, “Subalterns and the State.” 148 Partha Chatterjee, “Democracy and Economic Transformation in India,” Economic and Political Weekly 43, no. 16 (April 2008): 58. 149 Amita Baviskar and Nandini Sundar, “Democracy versus Economic Transformation,” Economic and Political Weekly 43, no. 46 (November 2008): 88. 150 Chatterjee, “Beyond the Nation?,” 64. 151 Partha Chatterjee, “Classes, Capital and Indian Democracy,” Economic and Political Weekly 43, no. 46 (November 2008): 93. 152 Stuart Corbridge et al., Seeing the State: Governance and Governmentality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 5, 7. 153 Isaac, “Campaign,” 17. 154 Chatterjee, “Community in the East,” 280. 155 For a critical understanding of the intellectual lineage of postcolonial theory, see Vivek Chibber’s earlier article, “On the Decline of Class Analysis in South

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156

157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166

167

168 169 170 171 172

173 174 175 176

Asian Studies,” Critical Asian Studies 38, no. 4 (2006): 357–387 and, also, Vivek Chibber, Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital (London: Verso, 2013). See Carol Upadhya, “The Concept of Community in Indian Social Sciences: An Anthropological Perspective,” in Community and Identities: Contemporary Discourses on Culture and Politics in India, ed. Surinder S. Jodhka (New Delhi: Sage, 2001), 32–58. Chatterjee, Politics of the Governed, 41. Chatterjee, “Beyond the Nation,” 65. Heller, Labor of Development, 85. Ajay Gudavarthy and G. Vijay, “Antinomies of Political Society,” Economic and Political Weekly 42, no. 29 (July 2007): 3051–3052. Chatterjee, “Beyond the Nation,” 68. Robert Cox, “Civil Society at the Turn of the Millennium: Prospects for Alternative World Order,” Review of International Studies 25, no. 1 (1999): 5. Ibid., 10. Whitehead, “Au Retour a Gramsci,” 664. Cox, “Civil Society,” 10–11. Dilip Menon argues that “the idea of violence as a revolutionary act that generated the law of the people” is a distinct product of the communist movement, and so is the “idea of the martyr . . . as central to the politics of revolution” (Dilip Menon, “A Pre-History of Violence? Revolution and Martyrs in the Making of a Political Tradition in Kerala,” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 39, no. 3 (2016): 675. This has deleterious consequences in the present when violence has degenerated into the instrumentality of party politics. Chatterjee had argued before that “the identification of all modern institutions of state and politics with the ideology of Western individualism and their conflict with the traditional communities of the East collapses the opposition once more into the familiar terms of modernity versus traditionalism, with the exception that this time it is tradition and primordiality which are privileged over modernity” (Chatterjee, “Community in the East,” 281). Dipesh Chakrabarty, “Radical Histories and the Question of Enlightenment Rationalism: Some Recent Critiques of Subaltern Studies,” Economic and Political Weekly 30, no. 14 (April 1995): 756. Chatterjee, Politics of the Governed, 75. Ibid., 74. Harilal, “Confronting Bureaucratic Capture,” 59; Santhosh, interview, July 2016; Paul, interview. Harilal and Easwaran, “Agrarian Question,” 41. Santhosh, interview, July 2016. As he puts it, even a single individual can raise questions, and ensure compliance with the rules laid down in the running of the democratic bodies. Therefore, there is fear among elected representatives to flout procedures. He also cited instances when complaints were filed against representatives with the Lok Ayukta (Ombudsman). K. P. Kannan, “People’s Planning: Kerala’s Dilemma,” Seminar 485 (2000): 92–97. KSSP’s significance can be gauged from the fact that it had grown from 139 units and with 3,313 members in 1978–1979 to 2,190 units with 66,093 members in 1991–1992 (Tornquist, Next Left?, 70). See Devika et al., Gendering Governance, 13, 198. J. Devika, “Pinarayism,” Facebook, December 2018, www.facebook.com/ jay.d.3139/posts/378755099556339.

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177 Ibid. 178 For example, KSSP while using science as an instrument to raise the social consciousness of people and promote “rationality,” was, at the same time, trying to promote a development that was not entirely modernist in tenor. In fact, it has been one of the main forces pushing the Left to adopting an environmentally sustainable approach to development. KSSP, for instance, was opposed to atomic plants (T. T. Sreekumar, Civil Samoohavum, Idathupakshavum [Civil Society and the Left] (Kozhikode: Olive Publications, 2007), 32). Of course, this has generated a lot of conflict within the communist movement, especially drawing opposition from the trade union wing within it which had alleged that the KSSP is anti-industrialization (The Hindu, 23 September 2003). But according to the KSSP, it had “been opposing only those industries that are polluting, energy-intensive and less labour generating” (The Hindu, September 25, 2003). 179 Chathukulam and John, “Five Years.” 180 Chatterjee, “Democracy and Economic Transformation,” 57. 181 Tornquist, What’s Wrong with Marxism?; Ramachandran Nair*, retired government employee and Communist activist, interview, July 2004. Namboodiripad was vehemently against the allotment of huge funds to the parliamentary and assembly representatives (to be used at their discretion), which was, in his view, totally against the concept of democratic decentralization (Deshabhimani, April 21, 1997). 182 Chathukulam and John, “Five Years,” 4924. 183 T. V. Thomas,* contractor, interview, May 2003. Government of Kerala, Report of the Committee for Evaluation of Decentralised Planning and Development (Thiruvananthapuram, 2009), 85. 184 Government of Kerala, Report, 86, 85. 185 P. M. Ismail,* CPM leader and Chairman, Muvattupuzha Municipality, interview, July 2004; Kannan, “People’s Planning.” The main reason was that the lower bureaucracy’s power was threatened by the new layer of elected representatives (Santhosh, interview, July 2016). 186 J. Devika and B. Thampy, “Between ‘Empowerment’ and ‘Liberation’: The Kudumbashree Initiative in Kerala,” Indian Journal of Gender Studies 14, no. 1 (2007): 47, 57. 187 M. K. Das, “Kerala Decentralised Planning,” Economic and Political Weekly 35, no. 39 (December 2000): 4300–4303. 188 Harilal, “Planning as Instrument,” 23. 189 In the setting up of benami (fraudulent) beneficiary committees many contractors (and engineers) have benefited, some of whom have been Communist Party members/sympathizers, K. G. Nair,* Communist activist, interview, June 2003. 190 According to a Dalit daily wage laborer, it is the vesting of power in the bureaucracy that leads to patronage. He feels that scope for favoritism has been reduced with the People’s Plan (Joykunju,* interview, July 2004). With the formation of beneficiary committees, the number of complaints by people had increased as they now exactly knew how much money was being spent under what heading. The Plan Campaign has demonstrated, especially in the areas where it has been successful, that the bureaucracy can be bent if adequate political will is there, especially with the new powers enjoyed by the gramasabha in the initial years (M. J. Jacob, interview). Santhosh describes how unprecedented the shift has been to grant power to elected representatives compared to before when bureaucracy when ruled (interview, July 2016). 191 Government of Kerala, Report, 60. 192 Devika and Thampy, “Between ‘Empowerment’ and ‘Liberation,’” 49.

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193 Chathukulam and John, “Five Years,” 4920; Government of Kerala, Report, 60. 194 Heller, Harilal and Chaudhuri, “Building Local Democracy,” 632–633. 195 Ibid., 638, 641. There were, of course, attempts to game the new system as well by learning the loopholes (T. V. Thomas,* contractor, interview, May 2011). 196 Tomy Joseph, “Empowerment of Dalits and the Role of Dalit Movements in Kerala: A Study of Kottayam District,” (Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Political Science, St. Thomas College, Pala), 263. 197 Luke, “Globalisation,” 47. 198 Ibid., 46. 199 Shubham Chaudhuri and Patrick Heller, “The Plasticity of Participation: Evidence from Participatory Governance Experiment,” (ISERP Working Paper 03–01, Columbia University), www.iserp.columbia.edu/research/working_ papers/downloads/2003_01.pdf; Heller, Harilal and Chaudhuri, “Building Local Democracy.” The entry of women into local institutions of democracy was substantive and significant. (Paul, interview)). 200 Report of the Committee, 71. 201 Ibid., 87. On many occasions, only the number for the quorum was met (Santhosh, interview, July 2016). There were also practical problems like the distance involved in traveling to the place where the sabha is convened (Selvan, lowerlevel Communist activist, interview, May 2003). 202 Santhosh, interview, July 2016. 203 Harilal and Chaudhuri, “Building Local Democracy,”643. 204 Government of Kerala, Report, 25. 205 Devika and Thampy, “Between ‘Empowerment’ and ‘Liberation’”; T. T. Sreekumar and G. Parayil, “Interrogating Development: New Social Movements, Democracy and Indigenous People’s Struggles in Kerala,” in Kerala: The Paradoxes of Public Action and Development, ed. J. Tharamangalam (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2006), 215–257. 206 Devika et al., Gendering Governance, 18. 207 R. Kuttoor, “Trade Unions Strengthen Blockade at Chengara,” The Hindu, September 15, 2008. See also next chapter. 208 Sreekumar, Civil Samoohavum, 40, 93. 209 Gudavarthy and Vijay, “Antinomies of Political Society,” 3056. 210 Ibid. 211 In the present, a de-radicalized communist movement also adopts techniques of political society, not for further democratization or for class struggle, but for shoring up a waning party hegemony. Thus, older forms of protests like hartals (strikes) become routinized and are manned by cadre who are hardly schooled in the ideology, or those hired on wages. And violence is resorted to not for larger transformational struggles (field notes, August 2012; July 2010; July 2011; T. V. Thomas, interview, May 2011; Paul Zacharia,* writer, interview, July 2010). Extortionist practices like nokkukooli still survive (G. Ragesh, “Nokku Kooli Protest Goes Viral after Artist Destroys Work,” Manorama, April 4, 2015, http:// english.manoramaonline.com/in-depth/biennale-2014/artist-destroys-worksin-protest-against-trade-unions.html; “‘Nokku Kooli’: CITU Leader Arrested,” The New Indian Express, July 7, 2014, www.newindianexpress.com/states/ kerala/Nokku-Kooli-CITU-Leader-Arrested/2014/07/07/article2317935.ece) despite the attempts by the government and the Communist Party to regulate it (“‘Nokkukooli’ Can’t Be Stopped Overnight,” The New Indian Express, January 16, 2014, www.newindianexpress.com/states/kerala/article223068.ece; “Ernakulam Is Now Nokku Kooli-Free,” Times of India, January 15, 2012, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kochi/Ernakulam-is-now-Nokkukooli-free/articleshow/11492754.cms).

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212 Devika argues that the decentralization project was “attempt by the mainstream political left to renew itself under perceived hostile conditions” which included the challenge from new forms of politics based on gender and ecology. Thus, it was a “long-term strategy to refurbish hegemony” (J. Devika, “Participatory Democracy or ‘Transformative Appropriation’? The People’s Planning Campaign in Kerala,” History and Sociology of South Asia 10, no. 2 (2016): 119–120). While this contention is correct, it ignores the links of the People’s Plan with past attempts at decentralization. 213 Muralidharan, interview. He also underlined the dialogue that was going on in initiatives like the World Social Forum. 214 J. Devika, scholar, interview, July 2003; see also her “Modernity,” 14. 215 See KRPLLD Report No. 5, 177–178. 216 B. Ekbal, Puthiya Keralam, Puthiya Rashtriyam [New Kerala, New Politics] (Kottayam: DC Books, 2004), 41. 217 This was the case in the momentous struggle in Plachimada against Coca Cola for the extraction of groundwater. The Coke bottling units had caused the contamination and depletion of groundwater sources and the consequent agricultural ruin (R. Krishnakumar, “Resistance in Kerala,” Frontline 21, no. 3 (January–February 2004): 12–13). The initial permission for the Coca Cola plant was given by the Left government. When a people’s struggle was launched against Coke, it was initially opposed by the mainstream parties including that of the Left (see C. R. Bijoy, “Kerala’s Plachimada Struggle: A Narrative on Water and Governance Rights,” Economic and Political Weekly 41, no. 41 (October 2006): 4334). There emerged a trade union bourgeoisie as the communist movement began to enjoy state power which made it a strong interest group within the party (K. T. Rammohan,* economist, interview, June 2003; see his “Kerala CPI (M): All That Is Solid Melts into Air,” Economic and Political Weekly 33, no. 40 (October 1998): 2579–2582. 218 Devika, “Pinarayism”; J. Devika, “Requiem for the Undead: On Kerala’s Sixtieth Birthday,” Kafila, October 16, 2016, https://kafila.online/2016/10/26/ requiem-for-the-undead-on-keralas-sixtieth-birthday/#more-34118. 219 M. A. Baby, CPM leader, interview, August 2004; Isaac, interview. 220 Ekbal, “Puthiya,” 141. This was seen in the Left’s opposition to the implementation of the proposals for the conservation of the Western Ghats, an ecologically sensitive region (M. Suchitra, “Western Ghats Conservation Now a Poll Issue in Kerala’s Idukki,” Down to Earth, March 19, 2014; The KSSP, interestingly, took a stand against CPM, and for conservation (“KSSP Supports Gadgil Report,” The Hindu, November 21, 2013, www.thehindu.com/news/cities/kozhikode/ kssp-supports-gadgil-report/article5375369.ece). Similarly, while the Left government passed a bill to establish a special tribunal for the adjudication of disputes regarding Coca Cola’s operations in Plachimada, there were apprehensions regarding the effect of the bill on the industrial climate and employment opportunities (R. Krishnakumar, “Plachimada Betrayed,” Frontline, March 4, 2016, www.frontline.in/the-nation/plachimada-betrayed/article8244816.ece). 221 See Mannathukkaren, “Conjuncture of Late Socialism.” 222 Rammohan, “Kerala CPI (M),” 2580. 223 Dipesh Chakrabarty, “The Climate of History: Four Theses,” Critical Inquiry 35, no. 2 (Winter 2009): 217. 224 See T. K. Oommen, Social Structure and Politics: Studies in Independent India (New Delhi: Hindustan Publishing Corporation, 1985), 175; Sathyamurthy, India, 244. 225 In 2012, it was estimated that there were 18,000 quarries in the state of which only 8,000 were licensed (K. S. Hari Krishnan, “Caught between Quarries and

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226 227 228 229 230 231

232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241

242 243 244

Sea Erosion,” IPS, September 28, 2012, www.ipsnews.net/2012/09/caughtbetween-quarries-and-sea-erosion/). Increased mining, construction and development activities on ecologically sensitive mountain ranges in the state played a part in the devastating floods of 2018, the worst in 100 years in Kerala (T. V. Padma, “Mining and Dams Exacerbated Devastating Kerala Floods,” Nature, September 3, 2018, www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06145-2). Krishnan, “Quarries and Sea Erosion.” K. Venu, “Munnar: Sarkar Dhavalapathram Irakkanam,” (Munnar: Government Should Issue a White Paper); Mathrubhumi, June 24–30, 2007. The benefit of empowering local bodies is seen in examples like Plachimada where the panchayat under which Plachimada falls had cancelled the Coke license. Devika, “Participatory Democracy,” 125. J. Devika,“Healing Kerala: Thoughts after the Second Warning,”Kafila, August 16, 2019, https://kafila.online/2019/08/16/healing-kerala-thoughts-after-the-secondwarning/. “Government to Look the Other Way as Shut Quarries in ESZs to Resume Operations,” Manorama, February 21, 2020, https://english.manoramaonline. com/news/kerala/2020/02/21/quarries-to-resume-operations-at-ecologicallysensitive-zones.html. www.kudumbashree.org/?q=homepage; eight women councilors, Muvattupuzha Municipality, interviews, August 2017. Shoba Arun, “Transforming Livelihoods and Assets through Participatory Approaches: The Kudumbashree in Kerala, India,” International Journal of Public Administration 34, no. 3 (2011): 171–179. www.kudumbashree.org/pages/171. Interview, August 2017. Ibid. Rob Jenkins, “Civil Society: Active or Passive?,” in Politics in the Developing World, ed. P. Burnell and V. Randall (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 275–285. Heller, “Moving the State,” 153. Arun, “Transforming Livelihoods.” As Arun documents, in 2005, 3,200 members contested the elections for the local bodies. Almost all the women councilors that I interviewed had experience in Kudumbashree. J. Devika, “Don’t Let the Magic Fade: Thoughts on Kudumbashree’s Sixteenth Anniversary,” Kafila, August 16, 2014. Interview with women councilors. As one woman put it, it was intimidating in the beginning, but now politics has become “exhilaration.” According to her, “When people ask, ‘why do you go for political activism if you do not get material benefits out of it,’ I say, that is not the point.” In her view, there are “only losses” (in income and family time) but it still worth it. The self-respect and confidence that they have got is tremendous. Before they were known as only somebody’s wife, but now have their own identity. Further, there are friendships that are made through politics. Another woman councilor said that she cried in fear while being approached for contesting the local body elections. Devika, “Participatory Democracy,” 131–132. Jos Chathukulam and M. S. John, “Empowerment of Women Panchayat Members: Learning from Kerala (India),”Asian Journal of Women’s Studies 6, no. 4 (2000): 66–101. The biggest change has been mobility for women, and the freedom to travel on their own, and even to other towns and cities for official work. In case of the

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245

246 247

248 249 250 251

252

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254 255 256 257 258

Communist Party activists, there is the inter-locking and multiplying nature of political interactions. Thus, the entry into local government has also meant that they are now active participants in the party organization, including women’s association within it. There are the regular study classes and meets, some of which are held in other towns and even outside the state. There are instances when Muslim women have given up wearing a purdah for a headscarf after spending more than decade as a local people’s representative. E. M. S. Namboodiripad, “Vikasana Samskarathinte Arthashashtravum, Rashtriyavum” [The Economics and Politics of Development Culture], in Thomas Isaac and Sridharan EMSum, 46; also, Deshabhimani, July 18, 1996; Muralidharan, interview. Also, partisanship could be avoided because of the powers vested in the grama sabha, the assembly of all village electors (Ramachandran Nair, interview). Quoted in J. Devika and C. Gouridasan Nair, “Fears of Contagion: Conflict over the ‘Political’ in Contemporary Kerala,” (Draft Manuscript, 2005), 11; also, Deshabhimani (February 13, 1990). M. J. Jacob, interview; see also, Deepika (March 30, 2000). Thirumarady Panchayat won the best panchayat award twice in the state. It is also the first panchayat in the whole of India to achieve total housing and total sanitation (The Hindu, (January 9, 2000)). On the Thirumarady story see also Mangalam (April 5, 2000), Deepika (February 13, 2000) and Malayala Manorama (March 28, 2000). Namboodiripad, “Vikasana,” 46. See Azad, “Parishattinte Rashtriyam, Parameshawarante Rashtriyam” [Parishat’s Politics, Parameshwaran’s Politics], Mathrubhumi Weekly, November 21–27, 2004, 22–26. P. J. James,“CPM: Pratisandhi Rookshamavum” [CPM: The Crisis will Harden], Mathrubhumi Weekly, February 8–14, 2004, 44–46. S. Sudheesh, “America Keralattil Nadappilakumbol” [Realizing America in Kerala], Mathrubhumi Weekly, January 2–8, 2005, 29–30; Azad, “Sastrasahityaparishattinte Putuvazhi” [The New Way of People’s Science Movement], Mathrubhumi Weekly, November 16–22, 2003, 14–16. N. M. Pearson,* activist and writer, interview, August 2004; see also his “Sastrasahitya Parishat: Corporate Agendayude Ira” [People’s Science Movement: A Victim of Corporate Agenda], Mathrubhumi Weekly, November 21–27, 2004, 16–21. The former chief minister and Communist leader E. K. Nayanar claimed that “decentralisation of power is part of class struggle and conflict of class interests, precisely for that reason a polarisation is taking place between those supporting and opposing it. This polarisation is actually a manifestation of class struggle. Making people’s plan campaign a success is thus part of the effort at strengthening class struggle” (The Hindu, January 5, 1999). Devika and Nair, “Fears of Contagion,” 13. For Robert Putnam’s classic statement see Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993). Stokke and Mohan, “Dangers of Localism,” 6. Heller, “Moving the State,” 138. The need for such a bottom-up perspective meeting the top-down one was strongly recognized by Communist leaders (Muralidharan, interview). Heller, “Moving the State,” 139. Arif Dirlik, The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1997), 101.

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259 Chatterjee, “Beyond the Nation?,” 67. It is only with the climate crisis that Dipesh Chakrabarty “calls for a global approach to politics without the myth of a global identity” (“Climate of History,” 222). 260 Three seminars of international scope were held in the first 10 years in which a significant amount of literature was generated on development in general and decentralisation in particular by activists and academics. International attention also acted as a spur to extend and strengthen democratization initiatives. International groups, governmental and non-governmental, visited Muvattupuzha Municipality to study some of the success stories (P. M. Ismail, interview, July 2004). 261 Thomas Isaac, interview. There were criticisms in the beginning of the Plan, again from within the Left, about the desirability of decentralizing the state when global capitalism is increasingly penetrating the local and even speaking in its language. Such criticisms alluded to the role of the World Bank in the devolution of administrative power and the need for maintaining centralized control (S. Sudheesh, “Sannaddha Sanghangal, Asootranam: Ariyappetathe Pokunnathu” [Voluntary Groups and Planning: What Goes Unknown], Mathrubhumi Weekly, December 14–20, 2003, 8–11. Such orthodoxy ignored the tremendous crisis that the nation-state was undergoing (and its need for reinvigoration, contra postcolonial theory), and also the need to diversify the Left project into incorporating the burgeoning pan-class concerns). 262 Kunhananthan Nair, “Panchayati Raj Adhikara Vikendrikaranam: Marxist Veekshanam” [Panchayat Rule and Decentralization of Power: A Marxist View], in Thaddesha Swayambharanavum Adhikaravikendrikaranathinte Prashnangalum [Local Self-Governing Bodies and the Problems of Decentralization of Power] (Kannur: Patyam Gopalan Smaraka Patanaanveshana Kendram, 1995). 263 Kerala Research Programme on Local Level Development (KRPLLD) Report No. 5, 2000–2001 (Thiruvananthapuram: Centre for Development Studies, 2001), 107. 264 Dirlik, Post-Colonial Aura, 90. 265 Aihwa Ong, Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999), 4, 34. 266 Ibid., 4. 267 P. Neethi, “Globalization Lived Locally: Investigating Kerala’s Local Labour Control Regimes,” Development and Change 43, no. 6 (2012): 1241. 268 Lerche and Shah, “Conjugated Oppression,” 929, 942. 269 John Harriss, “Globalisation and World’s Poor: Institutions, Inequality and Justice,” Economic and Political Weekly 36, no. 23 (June 2001): 2034–2037. 270 Isaac, interview. Isaac’s Assembly constituency was one of the areas which successfully experimented with these ideas. 271 A. K. Pat, “Kudumbashree: A Poverty Eradication Mission in Kerala,” Economic and Political Weekly 40, no. 48 (November 2005): 4989–4991. There is also the problem of the low survival rates of micro enterprises begun as a part of decentralization (Harilal, “Planning as an Instrument,” 14). 272 M. Varier, “The Kudumbashree Story: How Kerala Women’s Grassroots Scheme Grew into a Multi-Crore Project,” The Newsminute, October 15, 2016, www.thenewsminute.com/article/kudumbashree-story-how-kerala-womensgrassroots-scheme-grew-multi-crore-project-51420. 273 Kuruvilla, “Kerala’s Web of Cooperatives.” 274 Harilal, “Confronting Bureaucratic Capture,” 53. 275 Harilal, “Planning as an Instrument,” 14. 276 Harriss and Tornquist, “Comparative Notes.”

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277 PTI, “Kerala’s GDP Recorded Higher Growth Rate at 7.5% in 2018–19,” Financial Express, February 6, 2020, www.financialexpress.com/economy/ keralas-gdp-recorded-higher-growth-rate-at-7-5-in-2018-19/1859133/. 278 Harilal and Easwaran, “Agrarian Question,” 3–4, 42. 279 Bordoloi, Political Economy, 38. The Vanilla India Producer Company functionary describes how the prices of vanilla came down almost 100 times from the time of the international vanilla boom in the 2000s (field notes, December 2011). 280 Thus, the very optimistic prognosis as seen in the early days of the Plan like in M. P. Parameswaran, Nalaam Lokam: Swapnavum Yatharthyavaum [The Fourth World: Dream and Reality], 2nd ed. (Kottayam: DC Books, 2004) and Ekbal (Puthiya), is turning out to be wrong. 281 See, for classic statements, Escobar, Encountering Development; E. Laclau and C. Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (London: Verso, 2001). 282 Whitehead, “Au Retour aGramsci,” 666. 283 Stokke and Mohan, “Dangers of Localism,” 11–12. 284 Quoted in Bobbio, “Gramsci,” 75. 285 William Graf, “The State in the Third World,” Socialist Register 31 (1995): 157. 286 Ibid., 159. 287 Jean Grugel and Pia Riggirozzi, “Post-Neoliberalism in Latin America: Rebuilding and Reclaiming the State after Crisis,” Development and Change 43, no. 1 (2012): 1–21. M. Boden, “Neoliberalism and Counter Hegemony in the Global South: Reimagining the State vs Government: 2006–2011,” in Social Movements in the South, ed. S. C. Motta and A. G. Nilsen (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). 288 Chakrabarty, “Radical Histories,” 757. 289 See Susan Parnell and Jennifer Robinson, “(Re) Theorizing Cities from the Global South: Looking beyond Neoliberalism,” Urban Geography 33, no. 4 (2012): 593–617. 290 H.Ahmed,“Lokniti-CSDS Post-Poll Analysis: The Nuanced Perspective of Kerala’s ‘Leftist’Voter,”Indian Express,March 23,2016,https://indianexpress.com/article/ explained/kerala-assembly-polls-results-ldf-congress-bjp-pinarayi-2814271/. 291 Chatterjee, “Classes, Capital and Indian Democracy,” 93. 292 Heller, “On Formal Democracy,” 142. 293 Cox, “Civil Society,” 7; however, in the long run, Gramsci too envisioned the abolition of the state. 294 Heller, “Formal Democracy,” 142.” 295 Harriss and Törnquist, “Comparative Notes,”5, 25. 296 M. Williams, “Practising Democratic Communism: The Kerala Experience,” Socialist Register 54 (2017): 27–33. 297 Heller, “Moving the State,” 146. 298 Heller, “Formal Democracy,” 142; Gurpreet Mahajan, “Civil Society and Its Avtars: What Happened to Freedom and Democracy?,” Economic and Political Weekly 34, no. 20 (May 1999): 1188–1196. 299 John Keane, Civil Society and the State: New European Perspectives (London: Verso, 1988), 7. 300 See William D. Graf, “Democratization ‘for’ the Third World: Critique of a Hegemonic Project,” Canadian Journal of Development Studies 17, no. 4 (1996): 37–56; Susanne Soederberg, “Recasting Neoliberal Dominance in the Global South? A Critique of the Monterrey Consensus,” Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 30, no. 3 (July 2005): 325–364.

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301 I.S. Radhuber, “Extractive Processes, Global Production Networks and Inequalities,” (working paper 89, International Research Network on Interdependent Inequalities in Latin America, Berlin, 2015); Ilias Alami, “Money Power of Capital and Production of ‘New State Spaces’: A View from the Global South,” New Political Economy 23, no. 4 (2018): 512–529. 302 Roberto Unger, “Towards a High-Energy Democracy,” Seminar 506 (2001):36– 39; Peter Evans, “Development as Institutional Change: The Pitfalls of Monocropping and Potentials of Deliberation,” Studies in Comparative International Development 38, no. 4 (2004): 30–52. 303 See Fung and Wright, “Participatory Governance,” 22–23. 304 Field notes, May 2003. In the initial phases of the Plan, I found that the enthusiasm for the Campaign was quite high even among the most disadvantaged in the initial stages (Joykunju, interview). There was unanimity among those who were interviewed that the Plan was a great idea which only needed improvement in implementation. Pearson was in the forefront of a local initiative called Janakeeya Koottayma (Popular Collectivity) which undertook significant development projects at the panchayat level (interview). As Evans argues: “When systems of deliberation are seen as actually shaping real outcomes, ordinary citizens tolerate their messiness and invest the time and energy required to make them work” (Evans, “Development,” 42). 305 See Fung and Wright, “Empowered Participatory Governance,” 5. But later, unlike the early years, it was striking that the Plan was mainly defined as providing “benefits” to the poor (interviews, Sebin, lower-middle-class youth, and Santhosh, July 2016). How this idea of benefits has gained ground was reinforced by the interviews with the eight women councilors in Muvattupuzha Municipality, which suggest that there is a huge demand among the people for such benefits. So, economically weak sections are seeking assistance for house maintenance, goat rearing or provision of goods like “Grow Bags” for vegetable cultivation, instruments for school education and so on. Further, women’s self-help groups like Kudumbashree (see in the following) give easy access to loans for amounts like Rs. 10,000 (August 2017). Very perceptively, an Ezhava worker recognizes how “handouts” like goats for farming pacify people and prevent them from asking bigger things (Mohan, interview, December 2010). 306 Filippo Osella and Caroline Osella, Social Mobility in Kerala: Modernity and Identity in Conflict (London: Sterling, 2000), 259. 307 Yogendra Yadav, “A Radical Agenda for Political Reforms,” Seminar 506 (October 2001): 6. 308 See Fung and Wright, “Participatory Governance,” 21. 309 Heller, “Moving the State,” 136. 310 Chatterjee, Nation and its Fragments, 11, 225. 311 Nancy Fraser quoted in Miriam Hansen, foreword to Public Sphere and Experience: Toward an Analysis of the Bourgeois and Proletarian Public Sphere, by Oscar Negt and Alexander Kluge (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), xxxvi. 312 Yadav, “Radical Agenda,” 7. 313 Cox, “Civil Society,” 11. 314 Shilpa Shaji,“COVID-19: Local Self Governments, SHGs Key to Tackling Pandemic in Kerala,Says Former Chief Secretary,”News Click,April 22,2020,www.newsclick. in/COVID-19-Kerala-Local-Self-Governments-SHGs-Tackling-Pandemic. 315 Escobar, Encountering Development, 229. 316 For Foucault, discourse of any kind always produces “domains of objects and rituals of truth” (quoted in ibid., 104).

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317 Field notes, May 2003; Aliyar Kunju,* Communist activist and retired worker, interview, August 2004. Ibrahim,* CPM activist, and councilor, Muvattupuzha Municipality, interview, July 2004. 318 Dirlik, Post-Colonial Aura, 86. 319 See Gurukkal, “A Theoretical Critique,” 60. 320 S. Anil Radhakrishnan, “LSGIs to Draft Disaster Management Plans,” The Hindu, November 26, 2019, www.thehindu.com/news/national/kerala/localbodies-to-prepare-disaster-management-plans/article30088624.ece. 321 J. Devika,“Kerala: People’s Planning Once Again, Please,” Kafila, May 20, 2020, https://kafila.online/2020/05/20/kerala-peoples-planning-once-again-please/. 322 Gianpaolo Baiocchi, “Participation, Activism, and Politics: The Porto Alegre Experiment,” in Deepening Democracy: Institutional Innovations in Empowered Participatory Governance, ed. Archon Fung and Erik Olin Wright (London: Verso, 2003), 69.

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8 THE INCOMPLETE NATIONAL-POPULAR

Despite the tectonic changes brought about by the communist movement, there was no linear or progressive march to democracy and freedom. Thus, the national-popular that was constructed by the Communists, as we have seen, was incomplete. The question of substantive equality for Dalits and Adivasis remains, and communism is confronted by independent Dalit and Adivasi movements, arising from the marginalization of these groups within it. Importantly, the failures of the communist movement themselves are not fully explicable by the framework of postcolonial theory and Subaltern Studies. The assertion of Dalits and Adivasis happens in the context of the recent reality of an increasingly dominant Hindutva movement which has captured state power at the national level (and in many states). This movement is seeking to unite Dalits, lower castes and Adivasis under a completely different ideological project,1 which is also displaying authoritarian tendencies.2 It also takes place in the material context of the increasing pressures of global capitalism which envelop a de-radicalized communist movement as well. This is something that postcolonial theory and Subaltern Studies, with their disavowal of the economic and fear of economic reductionism, will find difficult to theorize without incorporating new analytical tools. The de-radicalization of the communist movement also leads to disenchantment which speaks to the incomplete national-popular.

Caste: material and symbolic exclusion Javeed Alam, from a Marxist point of view, had argued that the Indian communist movement, at the national level, looked at the “build-up of the revolutionary potential in Indian society only by, or at least primarily through, working on the state, its institutions, processes and dynamics.” This, in his view, “led to a withdrawal of attention from society as such—its institutions, values and particular modes of articulation—as direct targets of revolutionary focus.” The sum result of such a strategy of revolutionary politics is a “non-hegemonic conquest.”3 This is also similar to the argument of the “logic of the failed revolution,” as we saw, made by Aditya Nigam. 356

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Alam also argues that such a state-centered strategy led to the ignorance of questions of culture, the need to bring about changes in popular consciousness of the masses, etc. Even when it mobilized the masses successfully, it could not “enter into their world as it was, or on their terms, and to engage them in a constant dialogue that could have been instrumental in bringing about attitudinal changes and altering value orientations.”4 Instead, the success of communism in Kerala in building hegemony, in the period till it won power specifically, and later until the 1970s, was due to the fact that it avoided, comparatively, a state-centered strategy of social transformation. The intense cultural engagements led to the significant achievement of the alteration of the consciousness of the masses with regard to political and economic rights, class and the idea of dignity. The major failure was in terms of changing consciousness about the complete destruction of caste despite the ending of blatant and overt caste oppressions perpetrated by feudalism and the elimination of feudal landlordism. Of course, the capture of state power would change the orientation to politics, especially electoral politics, at the expense of cultural transformation. Thus, caste [and gender] questions were “submerged under the earlier socio-cultural consensus generated by the hegemonic Malayali national popular shaped by the communists”5 until they emerged by the 1980s. The politically conscious term “Dalit” and a full-fledged Dalit critique appeared in Kerala very late, compared to the other states, primarily because of the trajectory of the Renaissance6 that, as we have seen, silenced the discourses of the Dalit movements which were a part of the Renaissance as well as the specific absence of caste in the communist-led Progressive Literature Movement and struggles in culture. The incomplete struggles against caste would mean that the communist movement end up affirming a “refurbished caste elitism” which selectively appropriates aspects of the traditional exclusionary upper-caste culture as “high culture,” and which also posits a “developmental modern” self that excludes the question of caste oppression. Thus, “even as traditional caste servitude was challenged, upper-caste culture and social norms were not only largely spared, but actually reclaimed as the ‘unifying core’ of Kerala’s national culture.”7 For the Dalit critiques that emerged later when the communist nationalpopular began to unravel, the language of class created a mirage that “liberation had only one form: the struggle against class exploitation”8 through the philosophical resources of a determinist Marxism.9 They argue that the “immediate reality of caste” was obfuscated by a “combination of savarna nationalism and universal humanism.”10 Contra Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory, the failure to deliver a death blow to caste and its hierarchies11 is not a result of an unadulterated modernism or developmentalism, of the belief that caste would melt away under the impact of economic and political modernization, even though such elements were definitely present, as we have seen, and are even part of the Communist ideologues’ 357

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self-analysis.12 Rather than Chakrabarty’s understanding that Indian Marxists failed only because of their disenchanted and hyper-rationalist13 views about religion or because of their unsophisticated understanding of culture, in Kerala, I have argued that the failures have to be located more on the terrain of practice and in the “persistence” of traditional ideologies of caste. Of course, these have taken new insidious and secular forms under modernity. One of the ways in which the latter materialize is how the claim of a modern, secular identity can hide hitherto existing forms of exclusions, or older, and traditional exclusions being justified in modern terms. Thus, according to Lukose, the “secular and modern language of the communist Left elides and transforms caste relations.”14 Even Left projects elsewhere did not theorize adequately the “racial/ethnic hierarchies” that underpinned European colonialism as well as the presentday world’s “coloniality of power.”15 However, caste and its specific nature of exploitation is not a product of modernity, even when it is shaped by it. Further, there is a material basis to the persistence of the marginalization of the formerly untouchable castes and the Indigenous people (which is usually glossed over in culturalist analysis). And that is the incompleteness of the land-reform process. While it was indeed the most radical reforms undertaken in India, and to that extent altered the basis of caste hierarchy, they, as we have seen, did not provide land to all of the actual tillers, which includes the Dalit agricultural laborers, who were the critical constituents of the struggle.16 As Rammohan argues, the land “reforms of the 1970s sought to address, even if partially, the class aspect of the land question. The present situation demands addressing its caste and community aspects.”17 Although in the post-land-reform phase, due to the pressures of accumulation, the communist parties pursued class compromise while trying to protect the bargaining power of the working class, the agrarian labor legislation, KAWA was also essentially a product of class compromise. So, KAWA was an explicit measure to mollify the agrarian labor—the significant base of the communist parties—for the retraction from the radical class agenda. Of course, until the implementation of the land reforms, the Communists did not emphasize the class division among the peasantry. The abolition and redistribution of the “rent fund” collected by the landlords became the mechanism to unify the landless laborers and inferior tenants with the superior tenants, even when their objective class interests were different.18 It is only with the abolition of landlordism that the implication of this division completely unraveled. Under the class compromise of KAWA, the Dalit agricultural laborers were to be given all the rights required for modern citizenship: minimum wages, access to health and education.19 However, they were still not recognized as tillers of the soil or as peasants who needed access to land. This strategy was also partly governed by exigencies of practical politics (in a bourgeois democracy) in which the preservation 358

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of the agrarian coalition by the Communists required the moderation of the demands of the lowest tier constituted by agricultural labor. The severity of this exigency can be understood by the fact in the only other major Indian state where communism was dominant, West Bengal, the Communists emphasized peasant and worker unity, while in Kerala, the CPM encouraged labor militancy. Thus, in the former, the agricultural labor was not organized into a separate union but was a part of the peasant union.20 Similarly, in Uttar Pradesh, a Dalit party, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), focused on caste oppression, succeeded while the Communists failed, because of what Jens Lerche calls as the “absence of adequate communist practical policies” and the strategy that focused on a broad democratic alliance of the peasantry (including rich and middle peasants) and the agricultural labor against landlordism. This led to a moderation of the fundamental demands of the lower caste and Dalit labor: wage struggles, land reforms and ending caste oppression, because the middle and rich peasantry (who were wage employers and caste oppressors too) would be alienated from the broad agrarian coalition.21 There were huge constraints on class-action and tremendous opposition by the landed classes in Kerala as observed before. While the first two objective of the land reforms, conferring of ownership of lands to cultivating tenants and homesteads to labor were successful, the redistribution of surplus land failed as only 10% of it could be notified for surrender.22 The 0.4 million acres of land that were transferred by the landed classes through bogus means, mainly in the period between the dismissal of the Communist Party– led government and the formation of the next one, was a critical factor in the availability of excess land for redistribution. Ultimately, this is what led to Dalits getting merely the right to their home plots, as we have seen.23 Thus, the land-reform movement which began with the concept of the “land to the tiller” in the 1950s moved away from it later.24 The biggest impediment to further redistribution is the very large amounts of land that are controlled in the plantations by Indian big capital and the inability of the communist movement to confront it. This again reinforces the point that if at all capital, unlike in the narrative of Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory, is blocked in its universalization, it is not mainly because of the existence of the particularities in the form of race, nation, religion, caste and so on, but in terms of active resistance forged by the unity of the particularities and an internal critique of these at the same time. And the weaknesses of even an organized and dominant communist movement to confront capital in the present show the immense hurdles that exist in the present for the liberation of the most marginalized sections of the population. Yet, the argument of scarcity of land would not be tenable, and alternative avenues of land without affecting the small and medium land holders and innovative institutional cooperative forms like “collective leases” would have to be explored by the communist movement in the face of the rising Dalit and Adivasi assertion.25 359

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There were some iconic struggles by the Communists against feudalism and the horrific caste atrocities perpetrated by it. This had completely altered rural social relations, as we saw, by provoking defiance by the lower castes against established hierarchies. The Communist leaders mainly belonging to upper-caste, landlord families, as a part of their political mobilization, broke caste barriers by visiting untouchable households and sharing food with them.26 Thoppil Bhasi, in Gramscian fashion, had understood that no ideology or movement could penetrate the masses without going down to their consciousness and common sense and learning not to look down upon them: “One who cannot learn cannot teach.”27 Krishna Pillai and others’ attempts to declass themselves won the faith of the untouchables.28 This was revolutionary for the times. Usually, the caste elites never entered untouchable households, they only asked the lower castes to come out even when the former were seeking votes.29 Joykunju describes how he grew up with tales of untouchability from his parents. In his view, Communists worked for the most against it and his father will “die for communism.”30 Dalit activists describe how leaders like A. K. Gopalan never treated anyone as an inferior.31 Nevertheless, the untouchables or the Dalits were on the margins of the communist movement. This is unlike the Ezhavas/Thiyyas, who have gradually risen to prominent leadership positions within the movement and as a result have been able to substantially overcome their former untouchable status.32 Therefore, in response to questions about the upper-caste domination of leadership, cadres, who are Ezhava, point to such important leaders from the caste and also that many of them rose from the working classes, reinforcing the point about subaltern political mobility. In the economic sphere, in the coir industry, for example, Ezhavas have transformed in the post-land-reform phase from being workers alone to employing classes also.33 Thus, the communist movement’s engagement with caste has to be broken down to understand its differentiated effect in which some lower castes were empowered much more than the lowest of castes. Keeping in line with the anti-Brahminism in the cultural critiques that we have seen, with land reforms there was the upward mobility of Ezhavas/Thiyyas and that of the religious minorities, and the economic and political decline of the highest caste, the Namboodiris. However, the political and economic mobility of the Ezhavas/Thiyyas does not mean the organizing power of the upper castes in shaping societal norms has ended. Thus, the cultural worldview of upper-caste Nairs would become the idealized norm across Kerala society even though landlordism and the control of extensive amounts of land by Nair tharavadus would end. Many terms associated with their culture, language and speech became common sense and a part of general language and culture of Kerala.34 Thus, it is “Nair subjectivity and its epistemological programming that constitute what is known as the Malayali sensibility.”35 As Rekha Raj, scholar and Dalit activist notes, despite Dalit women (and men) being “major participants” in communist struggles, they remained 360

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invisible.36 There were many instances of communist leadership and activists breaking caste barriers in their personal lives, like in the sphere of marriage,37 especially in the initial period. However, the complete destruction of caste as a separate program was never taken up seriously by the party.38 The Dalits were always to be “led” by the upper-caste Communist leaders in their struggles,39 not themselves reaching major leadership positions within the party and the movement.40 Shashi, the Dalit RSS and KPMS activist, critically points out the confinement of Dalits to lower levels of the party leadership.41 The organizing framework of mobilization was that of paternalism.42 This is despite the fact that many of the Dalits and Indigenous people had completely placed their hopes on communism as a liberator—and had sacrificed everything for the movement,43 and continue to do so. This was the reason for the construction of the communist national-popular. As Govinda Pillai argues, there is a contradiction between communist politics and the upper-caste coding of the party. While the party [CPM] has attracted new upper-caste/-class members and gained acceptance and respectability, that precisely was the weakness as well. It is not a communist development which should be focused on the working classes. The party, according to Pillai, began to recognize this weakness, especially the Dalit and Adivasi dimension of it. Therefore, it started to organize them separately within the party [quite belatedly] against the avowed class principle.44 Class identity, hitherto, was also stressed to prevent a division of classes on the basis of caste and religion and to create a new identity. However, this had to change in response to the rising independent mobilization of the Dalits and also to prevent Dalit members leaving the party.45 The dilemmas of this are also seen when Shashi points out how earlier a Dalit activist would be theoretically equal to a “comrade.” However, now with the separate wing for the Dalits in the party, they could again be ghettoized as a Paraya or Pulaya.46 Here, one can see that the erasure of caste identity by the oppressed castes can also be a mechanism to assert equality (that is precisely why being a Communist comrade was attractive to many). It is not just a form of “passing” to emulate the upper castes, but is a more complex phenomenon involving “desire, transgression, critique and complicity.”47 Namboodiripad’s recognition that caste, religion or tribe-based parties are also representing a politics of the oppressed and the Communists could work with them while acknowledging reactionary elements in them,48 remained theoretical and instrumental rather than transformational. Thus, while the communist movement could legitimately argue about the immense constraints imposed by the Indian nation-state and the organized power of the landed classes, under which legislations which alter the class structure like even modest land reforms are difficult, there were far less limitations when it comes to undertaking programs to destroy caste hierarchies in the sociocultural sphere even within an ostensibly class-centric agenda. On the one hand, the communist movement’s attempts like not revealing 361

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one’s caste identity can be equated with the “unspeakability” of caste in the SNDP movement because of the philosophy of Sree Narayana Guru and the critique of caste.49 On the other hand, the “explicit erasure of caste as a form of social criticism is entangled with the ways in which the secular represses caste.” Thus, caste is not really erased, it is “marked without being named.”50 While the unspeakability of caste within the communist movement does not eliminate caste unless accompanied by other structural changes, the bigger problem is that the unspeakability of caste (by the erasure of caste names, for example) was incompletely achieved by the upper-caste Communists.51 Therefore, caste hierarchies are not eliminated not only because caste is not named under a secular modernity, but also precisely because it is named and asserted just as it was under “tradition.” The theory of equality is being violated here. Communism, unlike other secular ideologies, has the avowed principle of the rule by the proletariat. This is where communism hits a barrier in using the modern and secular language to elide caste oppression, for the discrepancy between its goal and the reality is too stark. Therefore, the Dalits and Adivasis, who constitute large numbers of the working classes, not being represented in the highest leadership of the movement, or not securing the class goals, cannot be justified using modernity. That is why Namboodiripad had to defensively respond to the fact that Dalit agricultural labor did not get tillable land (despite the party’s slogan, “land to the tiller”) with the argument that Dalits were able to secure “a sense of self confidence in getting organized in the struggles against injustices.”52 Osella and Osella, on the basis of their ethnography of the late 1990s, argue that the principle of hierarchy has been challenged and discarded only “among everyday categories of friends, lovers, the young and comrades; and in states and conditions which are highly temporary, limited and idealized.” Or the challenge to hierarchy has been restricted to public demonstrations called by the Left parties.53 However, “everyday reality remains suffused with values and manifestations of hierarchy, of which caste is but one.” There are many areas like gender, food, housing and marriage where hierarchy is still very pronounced.54 Despite the comparative advancement and achievements of class-based struggles, caste is a barrier to class consciousness and hinders the unity and working of class organizations like agricultural unions.55 In industries like coir, there is caste-based stratification of work and Dalit castes are largely confined to wage work and do not own small enterprises like the Ezhavas.56 Even among upper-caste (and Ezhava) Communist activists, deprecating views about Dalit castes are not uncommon.57 Ritty Lukose argues that such assertions of hierarchy are exercised by using the “modern state category” of Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe (SC/ST) and not their traditional caste names, and that the person asserting the hierarchy “does not think of himself as ‘upper caste’ in terms of a traditional caste hierarchy” but in terms of a “modern, secular outlook.”58 On the contrary, it was found that traditional caste names of Dalits are often 362

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used as marker of inferiority (in private discourse) and also that the terms SC/ST are used not because of their modernity, but because of the fact that they are common terminologies in a state where the word “Dalit” came very late into the public discourse. Further, as research has shown in other Indian ethnographic contexts, while the upper castes can disavow caste and assert merit as a part of a universal modernism, there can be a simultaneous “re-articulation of caste as an explicit basis for merit and the generation of newly consolidated forms of upper-casteness,” especially when their own privilege is brought to the fore by lower-caste assertion.59 Interviews with present-day upper-caste or Ezhava CPM activists, including women, demonstrate that there is denial of Dalits being treated differently; they attribute different reasons for the latter’s departure from the communist movement, which includes them achieving mobility and thus no longer needing the help of communism, being influenced by the media, or by the educated youth of the community and so on. This theme of denial of discrimination or inequality is a persistent one. Thus, the communist failure in countering caste has less to do with theoretical reductionism or the uncritical application of alien theories and categories. The dominant notion of a denial of discrimination is sometimes internalized even by Dalit Communist activists themselves. There are only a few exceptions like the acknowledgment that the slotting of Dalits as Scheduled Castes even within the party can be humiliating, or the presenting of an alternative narrative that Parayas and Pulayas are the real “children of the soil” [referring to the incomparable skills they have when it comes to agricultural work] and that their honesty and integrity are unquestionable.60 The Osellas also contend that “individual assertions of empowerment” by formerly untouchable castes “are generally subject to (often violent) reprisals.”61 However, unlike in many other states, violence is not the main mode of contesting Dalit (or Adivasi) claims to equality. The incidence of crime against Dalits in Kerala (per 100,000 Dalits) in 2018 was 29.2—which is higher than the national average of 21.6—and against the Adivasis, it was 28.5, which was 4 times the national average.62 These figures have to be understood in their context. Kerala has the highest human development indicators and has consistently ranked as the best state in law and order in surveys.63 Therefore, there is a high registration and recording of crimes. In 2018, in terms of cognizable crimes under national and state laws, Kerala’s share was 10.1% of the national total despite having only 2.5% of India’s population. And under state laws, the incidence of crime was 6 times the national average.64 Here, a more relevant measure is the comparative position of Dalits within Kerala rather than across states in India. Here, the number of crimes against Dalits has gone up by around 70% (and Adivasis by 30%) in a 10-year period (2008–2018) in Kerala.65 Total crimes under national laws went up by 66% and crimes under both state and national laws went up by 50%,66 showing not very different rises. 363

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Violence has not been obliterated, but the communist movement’s struggles against caste hierarchy, while not dismantling it, have led to it acquiring less egregious and less violent forms. It becomes more insidious and subtle. This also leads to the impression among upper castes that caste hierarchies are not salient. The nature of hierarchy has undergone changes and because of the allegiance of many Dalit castes to the Communist parties, there has been some protection against upper-caste landed classes. Shashi, even though is a staunch critic, accepts that communism has given some recognition to Dalits and that many do not want to leave the movement as they are still “filled with communism.”67 And this is affirmed by survey numbers. Despite the Dalit disenchantment with the communist movement, among mainstream parties, the communist parties are still considered by the most to be beneficial for protecting Dalit interests.68 Subaltern Ezhava Communist sympathizers who are cognizant of the oppression perpetrated on Dalits historically refer to new consciousness of rights among them through communism and the material change in circumstances.69 However, even this minimal advancement has led the upper-caste elites to complain in private about the recalcitrance of, and the lack of respect among, the lower castes and Dalits and how they have gained mobility through the communist movement.70 This becomes almost a “hidden transcript”—something that cannot be openly declared.71 As we saw, the greatest social change in Kerala has been the elimination of forms of personal rule that characterized the lord–serf and upper caste–untouchable relations: “An element of personal terror invariably infuses these relations—a terror that may take the form of arbitrary beatings, sexual brutality, insults, and public humiliations.”72 And despite the lack of substantive material equality, Dalits have, of course, made gains in comparative national terms. The impressive progress made by Kerala in human development through a social democratic welfare state has also become generalized across marginal communities like the Dalits in at least some of the indicators. However, this is also a function of the overall social development status of a particular state.73 By 2001, the literacy rate for Dalits had reached 82.66% compared to the national rate of 54.69%.74 Substantial improvements in literacy happened in the postindependence era, especially under the aegis of the Left governments and the very large gap that existed between the Dalits and the upper castes was narrowed considerably.75 Dalit and Adivasi children in Kerala have the lowest amounts of malnutrition in India. The proportion of underweight children among Dalits is slightly less than that of upper-caste children in Kerala and substantially less than that of the upper-caste numbers for India. And the proportion of Adivasi underweight children is less than that of upper-caste children percentage for the whole of India.76 The sex ratio amongst Dalits was 1,048 in 2001 compared to the national ratio of 936. The proportion of married girls and boys below the age of 18 and 21 is also substantially lower than the national figures.77 The fertility rate for Dalit women in Kerala is, 364

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remarkably, lower than even the general population in Kerala. This has been attributed to the rise in social status of Dalits made possible by land reforms and education.78 The 2011 census figures show that in terms of asset ownership of basic consumer durables, Dalits in Kerala (and two other states) are better off than OBCs (other backward classes) and upper castes in the rest of India.79 While the land reforms was a big retraction from the radical class agenda of the Communists, the security provided even by the tiny parcel of land (ranging from 3 to 10 cents—one cent is hundredth of an acre) containing the hutments, along with other social democratic measures like high wages for manual labor, contributed a lot to the reduction of poverty among the Dalits. Despite high income-poverty among agricultural labor households [agricultural and non-agricultural workers had the lowest consumption levels80], they enjoy a higher standard of living than similar households in other states. This is because of the high value of land, better access through the state to credit, social security programs, subsidized food, grants for sanitation and housing,81 again, gains of a social democratic welfare state. The human development status of Dalits in Kerala is in marked contrast to Dalits in many other states in India. Prerna Singh points out that Dalits in Kerala are far better off than Dalits in Uttar Pradesh despite the fact they have been the “primary beneficiaries of social schemes” in the recent period [because of Dalit party–led governments],82 a condition that does not exist in Kerala. Nevertheless, this comparison cannot be the best measure to understand the position of Dalits and Adivasis in Kerala. I have argued that the communist national-popular was distinctive when we look at it in national and global comparative terms. However, comparison has to be made externally as well as internally. And the latter is absolutely vital to understand the relative progress of various communities within a state/region. Therefore, the comparison between Kerala, the state topping the Human Development Index (HDI) in India, and Uttar Pradesh, which is very low on the HDI rank, would be misleading as the latter has vastly different socioeconomic and political conditions. The gains the Dalits have made still happen in the overall framework, contra Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory, of a material hierarchy and class stratification in which Dalits bring up the last in Kerala. This is reflected in statements like the one made by a Dalit manual laborer (whose forefathers were agrestic slaves): “we are still worms” compared to the upper-caste elite in society.83 Here, the most relevant comparison is the position of Dalits with the rest of the society and in terms of structural features which prevent equality and mobility.84 Only this can give an understanding of the incomplete nature of the communist national-popular. Thus, the land reforms were radical in ending landlordism and its overt and violent caste-based indignities and providing minimum security to the Dalits initially. However, in the changing 365

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material context of further capital penetration, cultivable land, fragmented by land reforms, itself became commoditized and a part of a speculative real estate business. Adoption of technology in agricultural work and decline of agricultural work drastically affects the Dalits.85 This left the Dalits, with possession of marginal amounts of land, further behind. Besides, their small plots themselves would be subject to fragmentation with passage of time. In terms of land ownership, Dalits and Adivasis own only 2.7 cents of land per capita, while Christians and Hindu upper castes own 126 cents and 105 cents respectively. Even other backward castes own 63 cents and Muslims, 77 cents.86 The position of Dalits with regard to the land question is a result of, as C. R. Yadu and C. K. Vijayasuryan argue, “triple exclusions”: the historical denial of land ownership under feudalism, being excluded under land reforms and being left out of the capitalist land market.87 Thus, the conjugated oppression of caste and class of the Dalits from the feudal era becomes “integral and systemic to capitalism.”88 In terms of categories like poverty, possession of household durables, housing quality, remittances per household, surveys indicate89 that Dalits and Adivasis and Dalit Christians constitute the last of all communities in Kerala. Only in educational level, Dalits are ranked second from the last. While 24.4% of Kerala households live in “poor” houses, the percentage among Dalits and Adivasis is 52.6%.90 And in the category of remittances, which are a crucial mechanism for mobility as well as reducing inequalities, Dalit households’ figure is only Rs. 14,612, while it is Rs. 149,253, Rs. 102,246 and Rs. 63,449 for Muslims, Christians and Ezhavas/Thiyyas, respectively.91 This is combined with the gaps in landownership. Land is a critical category and has a cascading effect on an individual’s economic and social status. The absence of marketable land [combined with relative backwardness in higher educational and professional degrees] has led to widening economic inequality.92 Besides, the Christian, Nair, Ezhava and Muslim communities own through the Church and various community organizations around 70% of schools and colleges whereas the Dalits and Adivasis do not own any.93 The cumulative effect is that the class position of Dalits and Adivasis has not changed while religious minorities and backward castes like Ezhavas have made “considerable progress in property ownership.”94 The gap is wide and cannot be bridged without a radical restructuring of relations and structures of power, which as we saw, cannot be achieved by the People’s Plan in its current form. Dalits and Adivasis, thus, more than being violently prevented from achieving equality or challenged when attempts at mobility are made, like in many other parts of India, are structurally denied the avenues for material empowerment and equalization of life chances with the upper castes. This leads to the persistence of caste stigma, especially affecting the lowest rungs of the hierarchy.95 Thus, those who were oppressed before under a traditional order, again, through a breaking of the tradition/modernity binary, become 366

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under modernity, the new “abjects.”96 Their abjection, which is “social, moral [and] ecological” and “which is never completely reducible to exploitation, discrimination or marginalization even as it involves all of these” is justified in this case, not in terms of caste, but modern and secular terms like hygiene, cleanliness, and law and order.97 What is important to note that the association of these subalterns with the militant communist movement did not prevent the present denouement of abjection.98 In Kerala, officially there are 26,198 Dalit colonies, many of which have poor living conditions and where a substantial number of Dalits live.99 The People’s Plan and decentralization have brought about the extension of welfare benefits.100 However, Dalit scholar Maya Pramod describes starkly the psychosocial impact of this ghettoization on the basis of caste in what is basically government wastelands on uninhabitable terrain.101 Non-Dalit Communist activists, ironically, have claimed the buildings of these colonies, which began in the 1970s, as a welfare achievement. Therefore, it is very important to understand the selfunderstanding of Dalits as far as empowerment is concerned. Here a study from 2010, which surveyed 600 Dalits across castes and occupations, found, unsurprisingly, that almost all considered themselves as not empowered, and the main reason proffered was socioeconomic backwardness.102 And in the changed material context, even the land reforms are considered by 70% of the respondents as not beneficial.103 However, the pressures on the welfare state to deliver have led to the communist government elected in 2016 to push for “secure housing for all in the state” by building (or completing partially built) 400,000 homes. To this end, 226,490 houses have been built by August 2020.104 This is still an ameliorative measure which does not confer equality and which still faces the peril of ghettoization. Thus, these are mechanisms which are visibly discriminatory, and then there are others which are imperceptible, through which caste oppression becomes hidden under modernity, even under liberatory movements like that of communism. In fact, it can get glossed over under the veneer of radical progressivism of the communist movement. Here, postcolonial theory and Subaltern Studies’ critique of modernity is definitely apposite in showing its infirmities. At the same time, they ignore that this oppression, as I have argued so far, is not a simply a product of modernity, but only takes new forms under it and are interlinked with material and class processes. Upper-casteness itself can be re-asserted as a part of modernity. Thus, the compartmentalization or binarization of “tradition” and “modernity” and the valorization of the first category does not address the problem. Further, as noted, there are limits to using categories of modernity to justify inequalities of castes within communism, which is committed in theory to the substantive equality of the working classes. However, a simple recourse to the Enlightenment framework, as Chibber does, would not suffice either. As Benita Parry argues with regard to Chibber’s postulation of Enlightenment universals: it “does not go beyond the well-presented 367

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but relatively undemanding defence of reason.” Following Horkheimer and Adorno, she contends that “Enlightenment values in themselves are not automatically progressive since the liberating process of moving toward human freedom, as posited by Hegel and Marx, is undermined by our enslavement within the totality of capitalist social relations.”105 At the same time, the criticism modernity of cannot be reduced to a criticism of capitalism only.

Communist theory and caste The criticism of Communists being responsible for a “refurbished caste elitism,” or for reinstating upper-caste values, albeit couched in the language of Marxism, draws upon not just practice but also communist theoretical excursus like the writings of Namboodiripad, the main articulator of theory in the movement. Namboodiripad, for example, had argued that the superiority of the Namboodiris or the Brahmins had derived from the fact that they had the caste system. The caste system, like slavery in Greece and Rome, helped in moving human society from an uncivilized state. It, in his view, brought in specialization of occupations and thereby expertise which could be handed down to generations. Besides, the cultural forms that were being celebrated as the best of Kerala culture would not have been possible without the caste system, and postulating otherwise or just remaining at the level of moral castigation would be unscientific.106 He also pointed out the classical forms of art and literature, while being upper caste, “laid the basis for the creation of a style and technique that go beyond all castes and communities; they are truly national.”107 Feudal landlordism based on caste played a revolutionary economic role at one point of time too, especially in Kerala, where Namboodiripad argues the notion of private property existed before colonialism. The division of labor helped not only the advancement of the arts, but also science and administrative techniques.108 Similarly, Namboodiripad commends the idealist philosophical contributions of Adi Shankara, the eighth-century AD sage, theologian and philosopher from Kerala, one of the most important figures of Hinduism. This does not take into account the role played by Shankara in consolidating the hegemony of Brahmanical Hinduism109 (against the materialist traditions of Hindu religion as well as Buddhism which afforded the lower castes sources of critique of caste). Namboodiripad’s take on the history of Kerala was argued to be an attempt at negotiating his “Nambudiri identity at a time when brahmins were under siege in South India as malevolent parasites.”110 Thus, in this narrative, his work “recovers a role for the Nambudiri as the prime mover in the economic and social transformation of the region.”111 If initially Namboodiripad argued that the Brahmins in Kerala were from outside the region, later he changed that position to establish that they were native.112 Namboodiripad ignored, as we noted, the contributions of the Dalit revolutionary Ayyankali in the tracing of Kerala history,113 a very serious and 368

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inexplicable omission by any standard. In the chapters on culture, it was seen how the critiques of Brahminism had not dismantled upper-caste hegemony itself, which was also a legacy of the Renaissance. These incomplete struggles against caste meant that upper-caste values crept back to become the cultural norm in society. While the imbrication of even the communist movement in upper-caste ethos is evident, we have to analyze the problem in a more comprehensive manner as well. Thus, to see Namboodiripad’s or other theoretical interventions of a similar kind as only a conscious reestablishment of older forms of caste hierarchy can become reductionist and can ignore contrary tendencies. For, caste socialization works not just in conscious ways as a conspiracy but also in unconscious ways as well. Further, in the conspiracy narrative, Marxism itself becomes irrelevant, but only an instrument to pursue goals of caste dominance. Here, the attraction to Marxism and communism as a liberatory ideology which could deliver a society from the traditional oppressive structures seemingly plays no role. Communist theorist-politicians like Namboodiripad were also following teleological versions of Marxism in which each stage progressively gave way to a higher and developed stage.114 This mechanical understanding made them see caste system as an initial necessary stage in the development of human society. It also led to the naive modernist belief that the growth of industry and scientific agriculture would lead to the growth of science which in turn would lead to the erosion of caste system and other superstitions.115 Nigam argues that the Communist self that emerges: is modern and in its self-perception, thoroughly purged of its traditional, caste socialization. Often, it sincerely believes that the best way to be modern is to erase all thought of caste and religion from its mind. It is thus the truly liberated self that in looking beyond the narrow confines of sectarian particularisms, actually becomes blind to their continuing salience in a myriad new ways.116 The theoretical lacunae in understanding caste because of class reductionism are definitely something that would accord with the Subalternist critique of Marxism/communism. The communist movement in Kerala, like all other communist movements elsewhere, was immersed in the Enlightenment ideas of reason and progress and belief in industrialization, science and so on117 and thus older forms of social formations, and social groups, especially like the Dalits and Adivasis, would be “backward.” Besides, “the absolute prioritization of ‘class’ made caste oppression unspeakable”118 other than contesting its overt violence and discriminations. At the same time, as I have argued so far, there are contradictory elements in the communist project, in which there were different kinds of engagements with tradition and religion: pragmatic, instrumental, creative as well those which stopped short of tapping the most radical currents within them. 369

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Communism in Kerala did not integrate the Dalit and Adivasi cosmologies with a Marxist framework like that of the Zapatistas in Mexico later where, as Mignolo argues, Marxism is “appropriated by Amerindian epistemology, but then transformed and returned.”119 Curiously, when Namboodiripad draws the history of Kerala, he terms both the non-Brahmin upper-castes like Nairs and lower castes like Thiyyas/Ezhavas as civilized and developed culturally, economically and politically, and the Dalit castes and Adivasis as uncivilized and undeveloped.120 When there were arguments that Ezhavas Thiyyas originated from outside Kerala, Namboodiripad argued that they were native to Kerala.121 Modernism and developmentalism mix with elements that go against them, just as all lower castes are not assumed to be backward. Namboodiripad acknowledges the revolutionary role of Ezhava reformers like Sree Narayana Guru and K. Ayyappan. In 1948, Namboodiripad had argued that if the effects of caste discrimination were somewhat lessened, that was due to the anti-caste struggles led by Sree Narayana Guru and leaders of other oppressed castes (following which there were other caste-reform movements within the upper castes). In his view, Guru had dealt the biggest blow to the caste system until then. And his spiritual work yielded material benefits like social equality, political rights and ideas of liberty, equality and fraternity in the manner of the Enlightenment.122 Simultaneously, Namboodiripad invisibilized Ayyankali despite the fact that he was a revolutionary far beyond his times in fusing together recognition and redistribution, decades before communism and the era of mass politics. Further, Namboodiripad considered Dalit demands like separate electorate put forward by B. R. Ambedkar as “a great blow to the freedom movement. For, this led to the diversion of the people’s attention from the objective of full independence to the mundane cause of the upliftment of the Harijans [Dalits].”123 Here, the privileging of the anti-colonial struggle can be seen in which Dalit liberation was considered as mundane obscuring the gravity and severity of caste oppression. In fact, the fundamental reason for the hostility shown by the Communists toward Ambedkar was that, he, in their view, was “the reformist and separatist leader” who believed that the “lot of untouchables could be improved by reliance on imperialism.”124 Instead, the Communists while recognizing that “Hindu India has oppressed [the Scheduled Castes] for years and that oppression must be ended,” “this cannot happen unless the untouchables make their demands an integral part of the struggle for freedom.”125 However, this critique anyway was rendered void after India’s independence. We have noted the savarna Shudra critique outlined by T. T. Sreekumar in which there is a challenge of Brahminism by the upper castes below the Brahmin like the Shudra-origin Nairs, which nevertheless does not accept the lower-caste and Dalit challenge from below them. According to him, there is an “internalization” of this critique by the Communists.126 However, Namboodiripad seems to accept even the importance of former untouchable 370

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castes like Ezhavas/Thiyyas, but not the Dalit castes below them. Nevertheless, on the ground, the hierarchies which resent the rise of the Ezhavas/ Thiyyas within the communist movement are clearly visible, the hierarchies which are, ironically, replicated by the Ezhavas toward the Dalits. Thus, the SNDP eventually reinterpreted “Narayana Guru’s universalism as a selective egalitarianism which seeks for Izhava equality with savarna castes while excluding—if not actually marginalizing—lower status communities, including the adivasis.”127 It is important to note a parallel in the Dravidian movement in Tamil Nadu where E. V. Ramasamy’s radical critique of religion and propagation of science and rationalism, in many ways, went much further than the communist movement.128 Despite the movement’s “remarkable contribution to social reforms,” it has been accused of representing “the interests of those who came next, after the Brahmins, that is the intermediate castes on the caste social ladder,” and not focused on the liberation of the Dalits.129 In many places, Namboodiripad follows faithfully the classical Marxian position of seeing every social formation as a mixture of progressive and reactionary elements. He wrote that in contrast to his critics who argue that Brahmin culture was reactionary right from the beginning, his attempt is to show that it did have progressive elements also, especially in the initial period.130 At the same time, he recognized that later “it was the caste system under Brahminical domination that led Indian history .  .  . to backwardness.”131 As we saw, he called the Brahminical myth of Parashuraman and the origins of Kerala as “irrational and absurd.” And it is on the backbreaking toil of Shudras and untouchables in a “murderous system” that the upper castes were able to build their wealth, conquer territories and produce science, religious epics and art.132 Despite the fact that the caste system led to social and economic revolutions, even in the beginning people revolted as the system was a dictatorship of the small minority over the large majority.133 The latter, in Namboodiripad’s view, was deliberately kept “uncivilized” and ignorant by denying all avenues of knowledge and denigrating their cultural productions.134 Thus, if the feudal-caste complex, despite the huge human suffering it caused, initially led to an advancement over the previous social system, later began to hold back further social progress while continuing to exploit the majority.135 The teleology seen here echoes Engels who argued: It was slavery that first made possible the division of labour between agriculture and industry on a larger scale, and with it the glory of the ancient world, Hellenism. Without slavery, no Greek state, no Greek art and science; without slavery, no Roman Empire. . . . It is very easy to inveigh against slavery and the like in general terms and pour out of the vials of one’s lofty moral wrath on such infamies. . . . But it does not tell us one word as to how these institutions arose, why they existed, and what role they have played in history.136 371

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It was only British colonialism that unwittingly started eroding the foundations of the feudal-caste complex that was prevalent in India for centuries and had become thoroughly reactionary.137 This was reflected in the sphere of arts and literature when it began to come out of the confines of the uppercaste cultural framework and become more accessible to the people as a whole. Namboodiripad here follows the initial Marxian formulation of colonialism as a progressive force which aids in the breaking down of moribund relations of production. However, he recognized the reactionary aspects of colonialism which shored up certain aspects of feudalism as well. Therefore, it expanded the economic rights of the landlords to collect as much as agricultural rent as possible and to evict peasant tenants as and when they please, contrary to the limits imposed by moral economy before colonialism.138 The tradition/modernity binary breaks again when Namboodiripad notes that upper-caste elites of the pre-colonial society like Nairs, who served the feudal rulers, adapt now to serve the British under colonialism by picking up new forms of education and working in new occupations like clerks, lawyers, police officers, judges, etc.,139 and traditional privilege transmutes into privilege under modernity but remains masked under the category of “merit.” Rather than modernity and modernism (that too understood only culturally without its material underpinnings) being the source of all oppression and exploitation like in Subaltern Studies/postcolonial theory, there is a recognition that is a combination of the legacies of feudalism (with its caste hierarchies) and capitalism that subjugates the already-marginalized populations. Thus, some clear understandings of the way in which caste operates and transforms from feudalism to capitalism can be seen (just as the elements of naïve modernism and blindness toward caste could be seen in other places). Against Nigam, one can argue that Communist theoreticians like Namboodiripad, along with the urge to build modern universal identities of class against traditional particularities of caste, showed a keen sense of the “hybrid” nature of modernity in which “the very forms of articulation of the modern with the traditional . . . laid the foundations” of “the domination of the brahminical upper castes over the modern state institutions”140 as well as the various depredations and disadvantages that the untouchable castes face. Despite this theoretical recognition, if Namboodiripad has failed in articulating a cogent critique of caste, his position can be termed as selective egalitarianism where there is a conscious or unconscious unwillingness to acknowledge the equality of Dalits, albeit with the contradictions that I have noted so far. The communist project of eliminating caste failed because of multifarious reasons, rather than a single one. The theoretical awareness of the dialectics of caste was present, even if partial. However, more than a theoretical lacuna of class reductionism and caste blindness,141 which was also motivated by the necessity of preserving class unity, it was more on the terrain of practice and in actual anti-caste struggles that the communist movement 372

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failed in bringing about a revolutionary change in consciousness. As one Communist activist put it, caste was not taken up separately as a category because activists did not believe in caste distinctions and tried to implement that in practice through inter-caste marriages and so on in the period till the 1960s.142 Thus, instead of just modernism or blindness at work, it was also the inability to get rid of caste socialization (which works both consciously, as a conspiracy, and unconsciously) in its totality. Here, the intellectual and non-intellectual realms also have to be distinguished. Blindness is not a product of modernity and universal identities of class alone, but also of traditional hierarchies of privilege as well of attempts to deflect complicity in oppression. Unlike in the Subalternist narrative, caste and religious consciousness are not immutable, but varies according to different material and historic contexts. Thus, if there was a stronger stance against caste and religion taken in the initial period,143 the 1959 Liberation Struggle against the communist government by casteist and religious interests of various communities saw a revival of communal identities in the aftermath.144 The split of the Communist Party in 1964 had a serious effect on class struggles and the development class consciousness. The alliance with confessional and communal political parties from 1967 further dented the radical agenda of building secular, class politics from below at the expense of communal mobilization from above. Thus, Communists were not just blind or “unrepentant” modernists,145 but were also incomplete moderns in some senses who did not, for ideological as well as practical reasons, challenge the entire framework of tradition and use its most critical and utopian aspects. The entrenchment in electoral politics meant also the fear of alienating upper-caste voters through a radical discourse based on the most oppressed castes and their cultural symbolisms. This was also the reason for the partial critiques against caste in the cultural sphere and the contradictions and silences of progressivism. Further, communism’s cultural hegemony began to wane from the 1970s with the consolidation of the culture industries. The intense struggles in the cultural sphere and the emergence of the popular began to give way to mass culture. Products like pulp fiction captured the reading market and communism could not develop a forceful critique of mass culture.146 While class consciousness came about in the economic sphere, and caste barriers were broken in economic struggles to a far greater extent than other regions, they remained, especially in the social sphere. This was compounded by the material and class aspects of the incompleteness of the land reforms. Therefore, the hegemony of the traditional ideology of caste, both as hierarchy and separation, has persisted despite huge material changes and despite the fact that Kerala has gone among the farthest in the country in terms of the elimination of traditional forms of untouchability.147 The structural features of the caste system like endogamy remains strong in the present as evident in the field. In the cultural sphere, festivals like Onam and the 373

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Mahabali myth, which have a strong anti-Brahmanical association as well as multiple subversive meanings in practice, are a big threat to the upper-caste and homogenized cultural imagination of Hindutva and a powerful symbol of secularism in the multi-religious society of Kerala.148 At the same time, the incomplete nature of communism’s cultural resistance means that Onam in practice has acquired upper-caste symbolisms.149 As noted, the icons, linguistic and art forms that are characteristic of upper-caste Nairs have become the cultural markers of what constitutes “Keralaness” and “Malayaliness.” From the 1990s, in the sociocultural sphere, an “ultra-conservative backlash” could be observed marked by a “pronounced idealization of the feudal past . . . [an] unconcealed male-chauvinistic and sexist bias . . . pathological dread of people’s movements and [a] strident revivalist rhetoric.”150 And in the face of a rising cultural and political domination of Hindutva in the Indian national sphere, and its significant cultural presence in Kerala, the communist movement also vacillates between its professed secular ideology and an “over-accommodation of religious sentiments, rituals and practices.”151 As a result, it is not able to mount a full-fledged resistance to the Hindu rightwing and the resurgence of Brahminical values, for example, in matters like gender rights and the Sabarimala Temple despite launching a movement on the basis of recovering the progressive values of the Renaissance.152

Resistances The struggle by Dalits and Adivasis in Kerala in the present could be seen as a classic representation of the Subalternist portrayal of the struggle of the “fragments” against universalizing and abstract categories like class or against modernity, even though it cannot be characterized only as such. Subalternists themselves have not focused on the Dalit or the caste question and its linkages with materiality and capital accumulation. Subaltern Studies does spend a lot of time on the subaltern quest for equality. On the subaltern resistance to caste hierarchy, Chatterjee argues: “the very universality of dharma [moral order] as the ideality of caste is not generally acknowledged by every part of the system of castes.” Also, the subalterns have the “desire for a structure of community in which the opposite tendencies of mutual separateness and mutual dependence are united by a force that has a greater universal moral actuality than the given forms of a dominant dharma.”153 However, this universal is still an incomplete one, for Chatterjee does not abandon the East–West dichotomy. He is seeking to construct a non-Western idea of equality in which the authority of the caste system was not questioned but only the validity of the hierarchical structure in the caste system.154 We also saw how Chatterjee stressed on the unified peasant community based on subsistence for all despite noting the differential position of the lowest castes who did not have any rights on land. That is why Kaiwar 374

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argued before that when Subaltern Studies affirms tradition it refers to the Brahminic Hindu tradition and the privileging of the elite. If Chakrabarty had argued that workers acted out of cultural notions that are pre-bourgeois and not necessarily on the basis of economic utility, Dalits and other oppressed castes were active participants of liberatory struggles like that of communism from the beginning. Rather than the Subalternist focus on the pre-capitalist community as a critique of capitalism and modernity, Dalits and others consistently were willing to challenge the moral economy of feudalism for the struggle against caste and class oppression. Even when they seek a past, it is a past before caste divisions arose. They and other lower castes were willing to break caste socializations, unsurprisingly, substantially more than the upper castes. A Dalit Christian laborer recounts that he was attracted to communism because his friend, a Communist from the Muslim community, married a Dalit woman. He was also inspired to marry somebody from outside his caste and religion.155 The Dalit and Adivasi struggles are not just to remain as particularities, but to attain substantive equality and citizenship as a part of the project of universal emancipation. Here B. R. Ambedkar’s combination of the Enlightenment framework with a re-interpreted Buddhist universalism is a classic example.156 Ambedkar conceived his ideal society as based on “‘liberty, equality, fraternity,’ insisting on their simultaneity.”157 It is the failure of Dalits to achieve this within and through the communist movement is what made them look for resistances outside it. Therefore, we need a more dialectical understanding of the relationship between particularity and universality than a simplistic universalism which is a tendency in Chibber. Thus, the latest phase of the struggles for equality in Kerala, which have spanned decades, is seeking to complete the incomplete nature of the communist national-popular. From the 1980s, Dalit movements started gaining ground through a different understanding of caste than the communist movement and being influenced by Ambedkarite thought. Various organizations began to emerge like the Indian Labour Party, Indian Dalit Federation, Kerala Dalit Panthers, Dalit Aikya Samithy, Dalit Students Movement, Dalit Human Rights Movement, Dalit Service Society, etc., as well as branches of national Dalit parties.158 Older organizations like Kerala Pulaya Mahasabha also acquired greater visibility. There are also no homogenous or essentialized Dalit or Adivasi subjects or communities but they are characterized by differences, including caste and ideological divisions within. Some of the organizations that emerged initially tried to combine both Ambedkarism and Marxism in theoretical frameworks. Some others gave up Marxism and adopted Ambedkarite thought. In an act of rupture, Dalit houses began to replace photos of Communist leaders with Ambedkar.159 Importantly, the organizations sought to build a Dalit identity beyond internal divisions of caste and religion.160 The fundamental demands that these organizations made were the completion of the land reforms, 375

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allotment of agricultural land to the landless, reservation in jobs, protection of Dalit human rights, etc., demonstrating, as I have emphasized throughout, dimensions of materiality and class in a strong fashion. There were attempts by Dalit leaders like Kallara Sukumaran to build separate trade unions, and like in the communist past, to integrate them under one centralized union.161 Especially in the initial phase of the Dalit struggle, Dalit identity resembled “the idea of class.”162 The land reforms excluded the Indigenous people, who constitute only 1% of the Kerala population and thus ignored by the dominant groups in the struggle for societal transformation. However, there is increasing resistance as well. Even in the pre-colonial era, Dalits fostered their own resistances, including through religion. As Sanal Mohan argues, “In the context of colonial Kerala, for the oppressed Dalits it was religion that opened up an early site of social and political praxis that helped negotiate the structures of dominance.”163 This was agency exercised outside the “secular” space. On the other hand, just as the critical attitude fostered by the inversion of hierarchy in symbolic acts like teyyattam were carried over outside the ritual spaces,164 the communist cultural and political struggles instilled political consciousness in the Dalits and the Adivasis even though they were at the margins of communist mobilization. Thus, they cannot be seen as mere victims of the communist movement. These are the democratizing effects, intended as well unintended, of the struggles for equality by the communist movement.165 As Nilsen argues, “the subaltern claims for democratic inclusion can animate the emergence of the emotional dispositions and practical skills that constitute the kernel of oppositional political subjectivities and agency.”166 However, the Communists cannot restrict themselves to claiming this achievement alone without envisaging substantial equality for Dalits socioeconomically and politically. The view that the upper-caste Communists exercised pastoral power over the lower castes167 while true in some senses, also adopts an instrumental attitude toward ideology and the place of communist ideology for the lower castes. Besides, it downplays the resistances by the marginalized groups even within an upper-caste hegemonized communist movement by looking at power as unidirectional. The emergence of the Indigenous leader C. K. Janu is an example of this. Janu was a Communist activist before turning to independent organization of the Adivasi people. Thus, ironically, while the communist movement in the present has, by and large, turned into a conservative force, the Dalit and Indigenous subalterns who were politicized by the movement have started asserting themselves against their marginalization, both within the communist parties and outside them like in social movements and organizations that we noted. As Mala, the protagonist in the play Ningalare Communistakki (Whom Have You Made a Communist?), a satire written in the early 2000s by Civic Chandran on the iconic Ningalenne Communistakki (You Made Me a Communist): “That flag is red because of 376

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our blood. It belongs to us. But we have lost in the struggle. Lost.”168 The play alludes to the remarkable dexterity of the upper castes to adapt to different ideological and social systems without losing their privileges.169 As a Dalit character in the play asserts, “We will not let the red flag be snatched away. We will hoist the red flag ourselves, by standing in the very front.”170 Thus, new and richer imaginings of the national-popular emerge like when the Dalit poet Kavikkad envisages a new nation with Dalits as its inheritors.171 He argues that he does not use Dalit dialect in his poetry because it “limits us. It does not allow us to make a claim on the nation or think of ourselves as inheritors of the earth.”172 This is a different historical memory that is being mobilized for a new future from the Subaltern Studies’ understanding of a traditional community. Similarly, as another Dalit poet Raghavan Atholi argues, “what I mean by nationalism is a shared identity of oppressed communities. Oppressed groups all around the world constitute a ‘nation’.” Thus, he envisages his poetry as “universal.”173 This demonstrates again the point the Dalit resistance is not just to remain as “fragments,” or particularity but which seeks to be in a dialectical relationship with universality. And Adivasi culture, instead of being a sign of backwardness, is imagined as the model for the rest of the society to emulate.174 Here, communism cannot become really hegemonic or establish a complete national-popular unless it adopts (and not instrumentally like the folk arts that were used before in the cultural struggles) some of the techniques of the Dalit resistance through religion in the pre-colonial era which took “recourse to the history of slavery and its imaginative recovery through expressive cultural practices.”175 The subaltern claims for democratic inclusion do not stop at a homogenous and an essentialized Dalit identity either. If initially the Dalit resistance was focused on such an identity, later from the 2000s, Dalit movements began to move to the conception of a Dalit self based on gender, religion and sexuality, producing new vibrant critiques which began to appear in the mainstream of society.176 There has been a systematic alienation and expropriation of Indigenous lands since the 1940s, a process which has accelerated in the last couple of decades. While the number of Adivasis offering themselves in the labor market has increased substantially, “the number of landless families alone increased from 3,549 to 22,491 in a 25-year period (1976–2001) despite a ban on land transfer—a seven-fold increase”177 This triggered off the second wave of struggles for the democratization of land ownership by those sections of the population marginalized in the first wave of struggles. The resistances of the Indigenous people in the present have closely mirrored the struggles for land in the first phase. The Indigenous people mobilized beyond their ethnic differences to construct a grand coalition of groups which includes even non-Indigenous groups like the Dalits. They even adopted participatory democratic practices to build consensus among the various communities.178 The pent-up anger of these marginalized people resulted in direct actions like 377

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the occupation of expropriated lands.179 The struggle used militant methods, like in the early phase of communism. The CPM leadership termed it, ironically, as “gibberish radicalism.”180 It also used innovative methods like Nilpu Samaram (Standing Protest).181 Elsewhere in contemporary India, Adivasis, for example, have adopted complex, creative and strategic ways as well as means of violence or illegality, in resisting the state while making their own selves and communities.182 This cannot only be understood by the notion of subalternity.183 The accounts of Dalits and Indigenous people in Kerala clearly demonstrate, again, contra Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory, the combination of the striving for material interests and cultural recognition, critical appropriation of modernity and tradition and the breaking of the binary of political society and civil society. Thus, in the Dalit intellectual and activist Sunny Kappikad’s words: the “new Kerala would be one in which the social agency of all marginalized groups including Dalits and Adivasis are recognized. We must reconstruct our sense of citizenship. Kerala needs to be turned into a physical and cultural space that includes all sections of society.”184 Shashi is clear that the Dalit fight is for land, education and employment. At the same time, he refers to the “glorious” culture of the Dalits, the need to resuscitate it as well as “protect our dignity.”185 Similarly, as Janu asserts: Now we know that without rights over resources and land we cannot even survive. We are raising the simplest of demands: right to live and die in the lands where we were born. This is the most fundamental right for adivasis. . . . Our land is the source of our beliefs, culture and rituals.186 Rather than yearn for the moral economy of feudalism, the struggle here is for citizenship, for land as well as for culture. Here material and class realities are critical. Adivasis identify poverty as defining their lives, and land rights have become paramount for Dalits and Adivasis.187 Further, the “Adivasi,” identity [like the Dalit one] is not an essentialist or a homogenous one, but one that is constructed by uniting different and sometimes unequal tribal groups.188 This construction of identity is also not just ideational but located in material changes like the decline in agriculture, decline in demand for agricultural labor (following land reforms and KAWA), the neoliberal shift to agriculture as a speculative business,189 and the erosion of the welfare state. All these had severe consequences for Adivasis who worked in large numbers as agricultural labor.190 These wider structural changes in the nature of capitalism and the communist participation in some of these 378

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processes, Steur argues, provided the context for the rise of indigenism and the criticality of land rights in it. Further, as Steur rightly contends, a shift to an indigeneity as an identity from class, which has been hegemonized by the communist movement, does not mean it can succeed in the liberation of Adivasi subalterns under conditions of neoliberalism without a broader emancipatory alliance,191 the kind of larger political movements and the extra-local linkages that were seen critical to the strength of the communist movement through the book. This is why the communist engagement with the new social movements is all the more vital. Besides, the withdrawal of the state has adverse effects on the Dalits too, as they are the “worse victims of the strategy of state minimalism and market maximalism.”192 This again shows the importance of the struggles around reconstituting the state that we saw in the last chapter. The greatest impediment that faces Dalits is that in terms of a new political coalition, it is virtually impossible to achieve an electoral breakthrough in basically a two-front coalition system led by the Communists and the Congress. This leads to a contradictory situation in which large numbers of Dalits realize the importance of having Dalit parties but at the same time are dissatisfied with the existing parties.193 Further, Dalits themselves identify the divisions amongst them on the basis of caste as a major barrier to empowerment.194 The lack of political power leads to a focus on education and sociocultural movements as a means of empowerment. However, what is crucial and important from the perspective of our argument is that the struggle by the Dalit and Adivasi subalterns, unlike in Chatterjee’s political society, does not seek to remain with the temporary and precarious arrangements of political society, but to attain full citizenship. Moreover, rather than reject the ideals of the European Enlightenment, these subalterns appropriate them in an attempt to complete their liberatory potential. One of the slogans adopted in the struggle for land was “Vakku Palikkal Oru Janadhipatya Maryadayanu” (“Keeping Promises Is a Democratic Etiquette”).195 Ravi Raman, looking at three subaltern land and ecological-livelihood struggles in Kerala argues that it is the “substantive democracy and egalitarian assertions conceived and practiced by the subalterns that make modernity possible and universally relevant.”196 Importantly, these struggles are marked by what Raman calls “transverse solidarity,” a solidarity forged across the Global North and the South and informed by “cross-border fusion of knowledges” and “intercultural and intercontinental translation.”197 Again, postcolonial theory with its various binarisms would find it difficult to theorize such struggles which bridge them. Thus, the relative success of the first phase of land reforms thus does not mean that there was a simplistic or uncomplicated transition to a more democratic and egalitarian society.198 In fact, the success itself has generated many contradictions which have tended to go against further democratization. The embourgeoisement of the tenants after land reforms and 379

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the de-radicalization of the communist parties and the organized working classes and peasantry have generated serious fissures and ambiguities in the communist and socialist imaginary. The hostile action by organized trade unions, across political ideologies, against land struggles by the landless Dalits and Adivasis, as noted, is a stark example of the reactionary role played by the unions and communist parties which once sought to shake the feudal order. The attack of plantation communist trade unions against the land struggle was also motivated by the allegation that workers would lose jobs if the plantation land was redistributed.199 Ironically, the unions were supported by the plantation management against the landless Dalits.200 And it has also happened that the management would use the migrant Adivasi labor from other states to weaken the Dalit labor agitation.201 This also shows the intra-subaltern conflicts and the complexities of subalternity rather than a simple subaltern versus elite binary. The new kind of class configurations that have emerged in the post-land reforms has also sought to reverse the achievements of land reforms. There is the emergence of new classes of owners of “star hotels and bars, gold and jewellery merchants, forest product and timber contractors,” quarries, etc.202 Big regional and national capital have developed interests on land as well as real estate. This has led to the violation of land ceiling regulations and also the emergence of illegal tenancies, again, in violation of the Land Reform Act.203 Even communist governments participate in the acquisition of land, including which is ecologically sensitive, for purposes like promoting tourism industry, building Special Economic Zones and to attract big global and national capital.204 Thus, the trajectory of social transformation depends on the strength of the various social actors and the material limitations of the particular historical context.

An escape from the present? How does postcolonial theory understand the disenchantment of the subalterns with the postcolonial present? Even when it documents the urges of the subaltern classes, it derives conclusions which run contrary to the realization of the same. An example is Chatterjee’s examination of interviews with peasants who participated in the national struggle against the British. The peasants were asked as to why they joined the struggle. Their answers were of this nature: the urge to get freedom, for equality of all, to be free from oppression, servitude and basic wants, for a better life for their children, for the good of the country and happiness of the people. Of course, now (the interviews were conducted in the 1970s) there was total bitterness that these aspirations had not been fulfilled. The general refrain was that “What have we come to? . . . This is not the country we had dreamed about and fought for.”205 The sense of betrayal by the leaders and organizations among the masses in this scenario was totally understandable. However, from this 380

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Chatterjee’s conclusion that the disenchantment with the present leads to an urge to escape from it to the past does not follow. Chatterjee’s definition of non-Western modernity and the present as a “site from which we feel we must escape” is a generalization that does not match the views of the peasants seen earlier. Such a characterization is truer of the landed classes and other elites who have lost their power under modernity.206 The caste and class coding of the desire to escape the present is not explored by Chatterjee. The oppressed castes, especially the Dalits who experienced slavery, do not desire to escape the present to a feudal past. While he rightly notes the disenchantment and cynicism that have become the norm among the subordinate classes in the postcolonial state, he attributes them to the failed project of cultural modernization in India undertaken by the elite. The failure arises from the latter’s desire to: replicate in its own society the forms as well as the substance of Western modernity. It was a desire for a new ethical life in society, one that is in conformity with the virtues of the enlightenment and of bourgeois freedom and whose known cultural forms are those of secularized Western Christianity.207 Again, the present predicament of the poor and the marginalized is attributed to the ignorance of traditional social practices and the imposition of Western modernity. Despite the recognition that this may lead to “dehistoricizing and essentializing ‘tradition’,”208 Chatterjee’s position slips into tradition/modernity dichotomy and consequently modernity/democracy and political society/civil society. What is surprising is that the peasants’ and agricultural labor’s craving for equality, freedom, liberation from material want, good of the nation and people and a better future are all considered as having no relation with (Western) modernity. Modernity is merely, and onesidedly, associated with governmentality. If for the modernist, traditionalists are “blind worshippers of the past, paranoid of disagreement and conflict, irrational and sunk in hierarchical social practices antithetical to individual freedom,” traditionalism faithfully replicates the dualism by seeing the modernists as “value-less anarchists who move from one ephemeral desire to another, deify instrumental rationality and are blind to the larger, deeper significance of their lived world.”209 State and civil society are the domains in which the elite act, whereas masses act in the sphere of political society which consists of parties, movements and non-political formations. If the form through which the former relates to the population is the function of welfare, the latter takes the form of democracy.210 These are very problematic dualisms, as we have seen, and which have little salience, at least in the case of the communist struggles and the Dalit and Adivasi struggles. Postcolonial theory sees the predicament of the postcolonial state in the increasing tussle “between 381

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the demands of modernity and the compulsions of democracy”211 which resolves in favor of the former through the governmentalization of society. However, this attribution of the scuttling of democracy to modernity, other than being one-sided, ignores, as I have noted, the efficacy of pre-modern history in the shaping of the present, especially the role of economic and cultural capital acquired over centuries of hegemony of the upper castes and the dominant classes. It avoids a critical examination of “tradition” and the role of the feudal propertied classes in the hollowing out of democracy in India. The momentous struggles launched against feudalism in Kerala are demonstrative of the fact that postcolonial theory’s analysis of the disenchantment with the present among the marginalized classes and castes has failed to fully account for the mechanisms that animate social reality.

Why communism? If the disenchantment with communism in the present has to be made sense of, then it is vital to understand why communism appeared on the horizon in the first place of many as a possible way of organizing society. The struggle for equality—for recognition and redistribution—has been the fundamental driving force of the social transformation that accompanied the communist movement and is driving the present struggles of the Dalits and Adivasis. Like the Ezhava caste-reform organization, SNDP, which in the early part of the 20th century, based itself on pre-existing local discourses of egalitarianism while, at the same time, appealed to Western science,212 the communist movement tried to mediate between the universal and the vernacular. As the Osellas argue: “Indian modern practices based upon universalistic notions of justice, equality and individual agency are neither western imports nor ‘traditional’, but arise instead through a series of debates and engagements between local and external universalist ideals.”213 The alienness and externality of modernity is the central problematic of postcolonial theory. However, this research reveals that people select and appropriate many of the external values on the basis of their worthiness to their own lives, just as they reject others on the same criteria. Thus, one of the most important discourses, which emerges unanimously here, is that of equality, especially in subaltern accounts. Modernity is evaluated on this count rather than on alienness which is the main focus for the Subalternists and postcolonial theory. Communism or Marxism is not considered as “alien,” for the fact that it fulfills a need to end oppression in society. “Almost 90% of the things we use are foreign, so there is nothing wrong if communism is foreign. . . . The idea of equality is a great one. It does not matter as to where it came from.”214 Even many religions come from outside. Also, the idea of equality is posited to arise in every society and is a universal concept. Communism thus becomes a means of gaining equality.215 The idea of inside versus outside is negated.216 Materialist 382

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philosophies have supposedly arisen in every society. Marxism is seen as a continuation of the indigenous ideas of equality like that of Mahabali and the social reform movements.217 In the pre-modern era, the authority of the upper castes was not unlimited and sometimes they had to “atone” for their excesses by deifying lower castes put to death by them and worshipping them alongside upper-caste gods. It could be said that the landlords’ power was not one sided and they were “as much under the sway of lower caste spirits and gods.”218 However, such reversals of hierarchy are not a denial of hierarchy. These temporary reversals and covert resistances did not address the central problem—the lack of equality. Moreover, such transgressions, by providing safety valves, reinforce hierarchy.219 The attraction toward the communist movement was precisely because of the fact that it went beyond the cult of the minor spirits which curbed the power of the upper castes but provided only a “ritual compensation for the lower castes.”220 While postcolonial theory does not provide an explanation for the attraction of modernity for the subordinate classes, instrumental reasons like the attempt by the hitherto ruling classes and castes to use communism to reinforce their waning hegemony, while important, are inadequate and a one-sided explanation which hardly captures the “structure of feeling” of a generation which was captivated by the promise of Marxism, a promise which continues to exert its influence even in the de-radicalized present. Many term the attraction to the movement as a result of the sacrifices made by the Communists and the willingness to give their lives for the cause and so on,221 which is also reinforced in the subaltern narratives in the research here. The days of suffering of leading an underground life, trying to avoid capture by the state, were testing times for the activists, but they were all borne in the hope that a “good tomorrow” will be the result.222 The reasons put forth by the peasants in Chatterjee’s account find resonance in Kerala too where many Communist activists were drawn to anti-imperialist struggles because they believed that colonialism was one of the main reasons for their oppression, and liberation from it would guarantee them a better future.223 Like the narratives that emphasize the localist or the fragmentary rendering of communism, it is imperative that the universalist underpinnings are also recognized, especially the new aspirations then created by the Russian Revolution.224 Communists like Nayanar and others were captivated by the book Notes from the Gallows written by Czech Communist Julis Fucik, put to death by Nazi Germany for his role in the anti-fascist resistance, and John Reed’s work Ten Days that Shook the World on the Bolshevik Revolution.225 Lawrence recounts that he was influenced by reading the Communist Manifesto, the Malayalam biography of Marx written in 1912, writings on the Russian and Chinese Revolutions and interactions with Communist activists.226 The revolutionary heroism of Bhagat Singh and others, “the self-sacrificing spirit” of early Communist leaders, acted as a motivator for 383

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many Communist activists.227 At the same time there was also the urge, in Gopalan’s account, to get himself rid of middle-class traits of “false pride, self-conceit and desire for power.”228 The kind of universal influences that shaped the ideological formation of the Communist leaders like Namboodiripad is seen in the four tracts he wrote in jail after being incarcerated for the Civil Disobedience Movement of 1930. They related to the French and Russian revolutions, Sun Yat Sen’s Three Democratic Principles, Egyptian nationalist revolution and Trotsky’s history of the Russian revolution.229 Similarly, it was during the same time Gopalan was also exposed to socialist ideas and the necessity of understanding India’s problems by linking them to issues beyond. Leaders like N. K. Madhavan were attracted to communism mainly because of the Soviet Revolution rather than local issues.230 While, especially now, there are many who are attracted to the communist parties for purposes which are purely instrumental, the following description of Communist cadres at the local level in the 1950s by non-communist newspaper Mathrubhumi gives some reasons for the communist imbrication in society in the early period: Deep-rooted in the soil of Kerala and tended by constant care and attention of its activists is the Communist Party of Kerala. In every remote village there are Communist activists who are closest to the most downtrodden of the people and who have identified these sections. It might be that he goes about like a vagabond. But in his village, he keeps contact with all individuals. And he takes the message of the party to every heart. He has an objective which keeps him inspired. And to achieve that objective he devotes his self-sacrificing endeavors. The better tomorrow may perhaps be a mirage, but to him it is the complete truth. And he means to achieve his aims he finds in the Communist Party. The party is his body and soul.231 Ismail describes the account of P. M. Makkar, a beedi laborer, who rose up the ranks of the party to become an important district-level leader in the 1950s. He used to travel only by a bicycle and lived in a small hut on government wasteland.232 Such accounts, and even of prominent Communist leaders living in party offices, were quite common in the early period of communism and are acknowledged by informants across class and caste. So, along with other instrumental reasons, these aspects of ideology have to be accounted for in a substantive way. The former can coexist with the latter as well.233 In later-day activists too, attraction to communism stemmed from the latter’s dedication to ordinary people’s problems and the willingness to intercede on their behalf. Among the poor, it was the direct experience of oppression and the hope that communism would put an end to it and that it was the only movement that helped the workers and peasants.234 For Ibrahim, once a headload worker, who rose up the party ranks to become a 384

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councilor of the Municipality, the attraction to communism stemmed from the fact that Communist activists used to eat in the houses of the Dalits.235 In the 70-year-old Ezhava worker and Communist sympathizer’s account, it was the direct experience of exploitation by owners that attracted him to communism, and in his view, “communism is always good for the poor.”236 Among the students, it was the struggles launched by the Communist Party for democratization of education, the selflessness of leaders and the honesty and dedication of lower-level activists.237 Or for others like a present-day lower-caste woman activist of the CPM, the most attractive element in the communist movement is “secularism,” and what she sees as not discriminating against any religion or caste.238 Again, dichotomies like tradition/ modernity have little relevance when we examine accounts of a Dalit female agricultural worker from the 1990s: The party [Communist Party] prepared the way for a new life. When my parents were young we were not allowed to walk in the streets or wear good clothes. Untouchability was everywhere. And nowadays, is there still untouchability? No, there isn’t, is there? We can go everywhere. In the old days, we weren’t allowed an education. We had to wear torn dirty clothes. Wasn’t there untouchability then? Haven’t we changed that? If only the party grows, then we can live.239 It is the incompleteness of the realization of equality that has led to the Dalits going beyond communism. And yet, these minimal achievements of the past also still lead, as we saw, many Dalits to continue to support the communist parties. In contrast to this is the postcolonial narrative which interprets modernity one-sidedly: There is no promised land of modernity outside the network of power. Hence one cannot be for or against modernity; one can only devise strategies for coping with it. . . . The same historical process that taught us the value of modernity has also made us the victims of modernity.240 Here, while the constraints on agency are correctly identified, the citizens of the colonized world are bereft of agency; they are mere subjects: The bitter truth about our present is our subjection, our inability to be subjects in our own right. And yet, it is because we want to be modern that our desire to be independent and creative is transposed on to our past.241 As we have seen, the caste and class coding of this imagination is generalized: the longing for the past among the elite classes stands in as a general 385

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characteristic of “our modernity.” Here, Chatterjee’s own account of peasants looking toward the future free of oppression and colonialism is ignored. “At the opposite end from ‘these days’ marked by incompleteness and lack of fulfillment, we construct a picture of ‘those days’ when there was beauty, prosperity and a healthy sociability, and which was above all, our own creation.”242 The subalterns’ account of the past is more nuanced and layered. True, they also reject many aspects that come along with modernity as noted before. However, this generally did not translate into a blanket romanticization and idealization of the hierarchical past. The attraction to communism was its promise of an equal society in the future.243 There is no nostalgia for feudalism, in which “most of the people were poor.” Despite the recognition of inadequacies, there is some kind of security for everyone in the present.244 Education, healthcare and electricity are considered as a sign of progress by the most disadvantaged sections of society like the Dalits and the economically poor.245 The relation to the past is governed by one’s social location. For those who lived under slavery, the past is not one of beauty and prosperity as in Chatterjee’s account: the villages “teemed with healthy, happy and robust people, who spent their days mainly in sports.”246 On the contrary, in a Cheruma stonecutter’s view: The entire history has become an affair which makes us angry and rebellious. It has all got to be changed. We only have the minimum. Our health is not improving. We have no education or art of our own, no culture, no work, no money, nothing.247

Disenchantment The decline in ideological commitment and values associated with communism has been the most important tendency in the recent years. Every communist account part of this research, of subalterns, leaders and others, talks about the degeneration of the party and the movement. The post-1990s is especially considered as the turning point. I had contended before that this current conjuncture of communism can be called as “late socialism” which is a condition characterized by “contradictions and paradoxes generated by the clash of socialist ethics and ideals, and capitalist ideologies and practices.”248 Lingering revolutionary dreams do not accord with the material context. The growth of communist parties itself meant a lot of members being inducted without proper training. The process of getting membership became easier and the procedures and rules followed before have been diluted substantially.249 These changes are located in the material context of a growing elite and middle class, declining agricultural labor and marginal peasantry and the ideas of the old proletariat. This leads to communist parties focusing on middle-class bureaucrat unions and not working-class unions.250 386

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The burgeoning tertiary sector, where most communist rank and file are employed, is marked by “individuated nature of work and flexible working hours, have implications for political training and consciousness.” Further, the newly recruited cadre is characterized by a “fuzzy class location.” The new speculative economy also gave opportunities for “lumpen accumulation” and many from the lumpen classes became party members as well.251 These lumpen members also now participate in communist-organized hartals (strikes) which are now called routinely for politically partisan purposes rather than for the advancement of class agenda.252 Further, there are tendencies like the increasing association of the communist parties with criminal gangs with serious implications for democracy.253 This is the dark side of “political society” that Chatterjee does not explicate.254 Depoliticization, especially among the youth, is a global phenomenon which has had its effects in Kerala and on the communist movement too.255 Again, this transformation has a material basis. Students, according to a national-level Communist leader, did not have before the same economic burdens when they are saddled with high educational debts or social pressures as now. So, according to him, students cannot be blamed in a simplistic fashion without understanding the changing context of intensified capitalism, urbanization, nuclearization of families and so on.256 Factionalism in communist parties, like in other “bourgeois” parties, is real phenomenon for some decades now. Years of following the parliamentary path has led to a premium being placed on winning elections and the resultant jockeying for governmental positions and power. Organizational wings of the party got devalued in the process. And party membership does not have the same value as before as narrated by subalterns and others.257 As Achin Vanaik has argued, the communist parties’ terms in office in West Bengal and Kerala “have corrupted them programmatically, bureaucratically, socially and morally.”258 This was more pronounced in Bengal. Another great impediment to the party becoming a stronger democratic force is in the inability to destroy the Stalinist shell that it always has been encased in when it comes to dissent within and criticism from outside. Thus, even the smallest of criticisms or those made with the intention of strengthening the movement have been met with a heavy hand and “punished” as the emphasis is on discipline.259 The party becomes like a religious church and dissidents within are “excommunicated” and those outside are treated with hostility. The belief that the party leadership is infallible and that there should be such infallibility should change in Govinda Pillai’s view.260 Thus, it is a challenging proposition to criticize the party. The receptivity to gender, Dalit/Adivasi, ecological, human rights movements can occur only when the party is thoroughly democratized and that can happen only through sustained pressures from a radical civil society.261 The irony is that the CPM and the CPI still have the most elaborate and institutionalized procedures for intra-party decision-making, election of leadership at all levels of the party, 387

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and accountability of leadership unlike the individual or dynasty-based leadership model of most parties in India.262 However, what is missing is the culture to facilitate a deeper democratic discussion on what a communist party of the 21st century should look like.263 The communist parties “have been consistently unprepared to offer a public repudiation of Stalinism” without which a new [democratic] socialist imagination cannot be built.264 One of the greatest challenges for the socialist project in Kerala is to meet the ideological inculcation unleashed by the culture industry under capitalist globalization (as well as in the present that of the Hindu nationalist forces). However, the communist parties themselves are imbricated in these processes. If the Communist Party, as we saw in Chapter 3, was funded entirely by small contributions from members, activists and well-wishers, from the 1990s the party itself has become an “absolutely cash-rich party” which collects funds in buckets.265 Thus: with money pouring in from global migrants and grease money from dubious economic interests, the party set up multi-specialty hospitals, television channels, tourist resorts, and IT and amusement parks. Party offices began to wear the look of corporate cabins, and party officials enjoying a range of perks—like vehicles on command, governance of economic undertakings, networking with the moneyed elite, and regular foreign tours to raise funds from the global migrants.266 In workers’ accounts, there is also a drastic difference in the way lowerlevel Communist leaders and activists used to interact with the masses before and now. While the leaders were in the forefront of helping workers before, now they would tarry giving various excuses, or even demand money to get things done.267 The intense involvement in civil society in helping the poor dissipated and the voices of the lower levels of the party which used to be taken into account by the leadership now are ignored and the latter imposes itself.268 The leadership itself, as a result of these factors, has shown alienation from the cadres and the program of the parties for quite a while.269 As the 90-year-old Lawrence comments, “the old mooring of the party is no longer there.”270 In Bengal, it was the abandonment of class struggle and the notion of social citizenship and the adoption of developmental capitalism that led to the decline of communism after a long hegemony271 demonstrating the criticality of the domain of practice. Much of what has been noted previously also has to be read in the material and ideological context of the sheer difficulty of building socialism in a subnational arena when completely surrounded by capitalism, in both the national and global arenas.272 The ascension to governmental power of the Left through popular mobilizations in various Latin American bourgeois democracies in the 2000s, and setbacks later273 show precisely the immense constraints faced by Left projects globally. 388

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Nevertheless, the communist decline in Kerala obviously leads to the kind of disenchantment documented by the peasants in Chatterjee’s account. However, the crucial difference is that this does not make the subaltern automatically crave for a bygone past. The relative success of communism was that it demystified revivalist ideologies.274 Unlike the Subalternist narrative, the subaltern Communists question religion and they are not prisoners of it even when it is not a generalized phenomenon.275 There is a recognition of the instrumentalism in the communist movement’s informal accommodation of religion while formally being atheistic.276 Some go to the extent of antagonizing family and community in their critical interpretation of religion.277 Even believers make a distinction between practicing a communist ideology and believing in religion, and are able to navigate both.278 Muslim workers and peasants make strong criticisms of religious-based parties like the Muslim League and argue that religious communalism has comparatively not strengthened in Kerala because of communism.279 (In Bengal, even when ensconced in “Hindu majoritarian ethos,” the communist movement “was able to maintain communal harmony and peace.”)280 Communist Ezhava workers similarly undertake critiques of the SNDP.281 The cadres resist secular mythologies that are sought to be constructed (even within the Marxist project) as well. The deviation from the ideals of communism is subjected to a scathing criticism by at least a section of the followers.282 The critique of domination is an ongoing phenomenon and is strengthened also as an unintentional consequence of the vocabulary of rights inaugurated by communism. Here, the subordinate classes undertake the process of making myths transparent, of exposing the discrepancies between what has been promised and what has been actualized in reality.283 These discrepancies act as the driving force of the struggle for social change. Interviews with Communist cadres reveal tendencies, at least in private, of a non-deferential attitude to the leadership, a by-product of decades of resistance against feudalism and its forms of personal rule. In their view, leadership does not have any independent existence other than as a means for fulfilling the program of the party. In the mid-1970s, K. Damodaran had stated that despite failures, the big asset that served the communist movement was the thousands of dedicated activists committed to the cause of socialism.284 In the present as well, there are accounts which are critical of the party but which still hold onto the communist ideology strongly.285 This comes from the pragmatic recognition that “something is better than nothing,” or from the unrealized aspiration of equality. Thus, there are assertions that communism will never be abandoned despite the awareness that the communist movement which fought for the laboring class is no longer with it,286 or that the cadre is unflinching in its belief in socialism while the leadership vacillates.287 The cadre wants to see that the promise of communism is fulfilled and to eliminate the forms of exploitation that arise in modernity. As a Dalit Communist laborer put it, the subalterns now know 389

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more about social reality than the elite. Therefore, they relentlessly examine what is right and wrong.288 This is affirmed in larger survey numbers. A majority of Dalits perceive the decline in the communist protection of Dalit interests as well as the reduction of Dalits to a vote bank.289 Then, there is recognition and critique of caste even within the movement and the fact that Ezhava Communist leaders were denied the chance to become chief ministers in the 1980s.290 The process of demystification undertaken by the dependent classes to counter the mythmaking of the dominant classes spans across both tradition and modernity.291 The myth of a golden past based on culturalist solutions replacing the disenchantment with the present is not inevitable, but depends upon available and contending political projects. Nationally, Hindu Nationalism has emerged as a major force through electoral victories and increasing ideological domination and is trying to appropriate Dalit icons as well as resistance nationally.292 And in Kerala too, it is trying to make serious inroads considering that it is one of the few states that it has not had any electoral presence. It also mobilizes imaginaries beyond the local which are unlike the communist national-popular. Thus, the disenchantment with communism and de-radicalization have led some of the cadre to join communal organizations like the BJP/RSS or work exclusively for the SNDP.293 Dalits and Ezhavas/Thiyyas have been the backbone of the communist vote. However, a shift away from the communist movement has also been seen. The most clear-cut evidence of a vote-shift to the BJP was seen in the 2016 Assembly Elections.294 Further, as noted, the disenchantment can lead to autonomous organizing by Adivasis and Dalits who were initially with the communist movement. Unlike in Subaltern Studies, the failure of communism, and distinct class, material and political processes, rather than an unshakeable primordial loyalty, are at work here. As a Dalit Communist activist who left the movement points out: I used to see things in class terms. But around 1990 the middle class started to infiltrate into the party. And then we lost our voice. We held on to the party believing in the ideology. But in fact with such a preposition [sic] the party was working against the SC and the ST. Because we were not supposed to spread communalism, we could not mobilize the Paraya and the Pulaya. And we followed those beliefs blindly. But the Ezhavas and the Nairs inside the party at the same time started getting organized on their own in terms of caste. . . . if we would try to do that, the party would punish us. A communist Ezhava can participate in the SNDP.295 Again, the importance of the domain of practice rather than only a failure caused by imitation of alien theories, and the discrepancy between promised classless equality of modernity and its violation is very evident here. The 390

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critique also shows the limits of using modern categories by communism to gloss over this inequality. The Dalits and Adivasis have been very receptive to embrace new egalitarian ideologies of class by breaking pre-existing communities marked by hierarchies of caste. However, the incomplete application of the new categories and the persistence of the traditional distinctions based on caste are what lead to the disenchantment. The primordial identities are also fractured, as we have seen, with class divisions among them. Further, community identity is used to paper over these divisions. Thus, the Ezhava employers in the coir industry use caste and kinship ties and “discourses of obligation and well-being” to reduce the wages of Ezhava workers.296 Unlike in Chibber, there are no common material interests of unequal members upon which these communities (especially in ones like the Hindu Nationalist RSS) are built although some material interests of the members may be met by the organization. Rather than a linear transition to secularism and class, and despite the successes of communism—largely in the past—in fostering a materialist understanding of society, increasing religiosity and communalization is a part of many accounts, of both Communists—leaders and cadre, and others. This is also a result, as I have noted, of the electoral compromises of communist parties, in an extremely fragmented and fractious polity, with communal and confessional parties. In any case, class consciousness was differently realized in different parts of Kerala. Communists from the Muslim community in Muvattupuzha point out how Muslims in North Kerala were more conservative and less attracted to communism because of the presence of the Muslim League.297 Among Hindus, even people who were associated with communism have transformed in the present to take on activities like temple building, and Communist leaders self-critically point out the failures in countering increasing religious affiliations, which are also linked to capitalist processes, and national and global political factors.298 Just as ideologies of class and universalism that I have documented, local, caste and religious issues have always been salient, but they simmer especially when communism is on the decline.299 Thus, in the 1970s, if sections of the Islamic discourse, portrayed communism “as a humanly constructed jahiliya (ignorance) ideology” and a Communist as “a murthaddu (deviant),”300 in the recent period Communists have occasionally (covertly) aligned with extreme communal ideologies in the Muslim community to break the hold of the moderate Muslim League (even when they have aligned with it in the past). On the other hand, in some communal conflicts in Muslim areas, CPM workers have been on the same side as those of the RSS in the attacks against Muslims,301 just as the party has tried to court the majority Hindu community on occasions.302 However, with the rise of the BJP, there is an increasing attempt by the party to seek Muslim and Christian votes and has succeeded in it too.303 Such increasingly instrumental electoralism has had deleterious effects on advancing secular, class 391

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and programmatic politics. Ironically, in the 1970s, the RSS was supported by wealthy businessmen (including Christians) and traders to counter the Marxist labor unions. This shows also the secular, class interests which contribute to the growth of religious organizations.304 Not only the binaries like class/community and secular/communal, but those of postcolonial theory also collapse here. Further, the move away from, class-based organizations, and back to religious and caste-based organizations with political goals and freedoms not conducive to working-class rights contradict what Chibber had posited: “workers may well be inclined to pursue economic interests alone, but insofar as this pursuit calls for a certain broadening of political liberties, they will be forced also to pursue these liberties” (my emphasis).305 The imperative to struggle for political rights and progressive expansion of rights of all the exploited sections does not realize itself automatically.

Conclusion The incomplete national-popular and the disenchantment with communism indeed generates urges to escape the present like what Chatterjee documents; yet it is different. When many disenchanted Communist subalterns seek to escape the present, they go back to a more immediate past, the 1940s and 1950s—the “glorious days” of communism.306 Or the subalterns have a conception of a glorious past before feudalism and before the emergence of caste and class. For the Cherumas in Kerala—one such period was the rule of the Chera kings.307 In the Cheruma discourse: In the old days, there were no Pulayas, Parayas, Christians, no castes. . . . The people themselves made caste and religion. It was self-serving, they only made the castes out of self-interest. Because if you boil the rice in your pot, then you want to eat it yourself, don’t you? And what if there is only one religion, just one caste, who do you give it to? Who receives your rice? So people made the castes out of self-interest.308 Again, the discourse of equality and a different kind of community are evident here. Here, religious and secular narratives seamlessly merge: “Sri Krishna said at the end of time there will be only one God, and only one caste and religion. So, at the end of time, communism will triumph.” The unrealized aspirations of tradition are carried forward to modernity: “The red colour, the red flag was the Chera’s. Now it’s our communist flag.”309 The flag of communism is seen as the return of the Chera flag, it is the return of justice and equality. The goal of liberation is paramount. The glorious past and what was lost will be achieved in the future. However, the greatest crisis in the present is 392

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that it would be really difficult to substantially realize these aspirations of the Dalits/Adivasis and the other marginalized groups through a de-radicalized communist movement and leadership. The critiques that we saw have not acquired a systematic and critical mass character to create alternative political formations, which could build a richer and a more complete nationalpopular. In the absence of that, the critical elements become submerged by the anti-democratic tendencies within the party, which act as a reactionary force against democratic struggles of the marginalized outside the party framework. The relatively more symbiotic relationship between the vanguard and the masses and the advancement of the class agenda that we saw in the earlier phases has largely disappeared with the leadership now unable to go beyond protecting the party interests, and the communist governments courting capital.

Notes 1 Anand Teltumbde, “Deconstructing Ambedkar,” Economic and Political Weekly 50, no. 18 (2015): 11. 2 Alf Gunvald Nilsen, “Authoritarian Populism and Popular Struggles in Modi’s India,” Open Democracy, November 22, 2018, www.opendemocracy.net/en/ authoritarian-populism-and-popular-struggles-in-modi-s-india/. 3 Javeed Alam, “Communist Politics in Search of Hegemony,” in Wages of Freedom: Fifty Years of the Indian Nation-State, ed. Partha Chatterjee (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 180. 4 Ibid., 81. 5 J. Devika, “Contemporary Dalit Assertions in Kerala: Governmental Categories vs. Identity Politics?,” History and Sociology of South Asia 7, no.1 (2013): 1. 6 K. E. N., “Varenya Navothanathinte Athirukal: Varenya Samudayangalile Navothanavum Malayala Sahityavum” [The Limits of Elite Renaissance: Renaissance in Elite Communities and Malayalam Literature], in Nammude Sahityam, Nammude Samooham, vol. 2, ed. M. N. Vijayan (Thrissur: Kerala Sahitya Akademi, 2000), 107. 7 J. Devika, “Egalitarian Developmentalism, Communist Mobilization and the Question of Caste in Kerala State, India,” Journal of Asian Studies 69, no. 3 (2010): 808. 8 M. Dasan, “General Introduction,” in The Oxford India Anthology of Malayalam Dalit Writing, ed. M. Dasan, V. Prathibha, P. Pampirikunnu and C. S. Chandrika (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012), xiv. 9 S. Kappikad, “Kerala Model: A Dalit Critique,” in No Alphabet in Sight: New Dalit Writing from South India, ed. K. Satyanarayana and Susie Tharu (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2011), 465. 10 P. Pampirikunnu, “Nationalism, Modernity, Keralaness: A Subaltern Critique,” in No Alphabet in Sight: New Dalit Writing from South India, ed. K. Satyanarayana and Susie Tharu (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2011), 559. 11 Rajan, a national-level CPM Leader, claims a fifty percent advancement in ending caste oppression (interview, March 2013). 12 As P. Govinda Pillai argues, the party conceived the Dalit problem as an economic one. Now, culture has emerged as a theoretical tool (interview, July 2010).

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13 Lawrence, at the age of 90, contends looking back at his life: “I was a dedicated Communist, believing in dialectical materialism. It is not a faith, it is science. The world can only be changed according to those principles” (News18 Kerala, “Exclusive Interview with Lawrence,” YouTube, June 14, 2019, www.youtube. com/watch?v=bfSLlgug-es). 14 Ritty Lukose, “Re (Casting) the Secular,” Social Analysis 50, no. 3 (2006): 46. 15 Ramón Grosfugel, “Decolonizing Post-Colonial Studies and Paradigms of Political-Economy: Transmodernity, Decolonial Thinking, and Global Coloniality,” Transmodernity: Journal of the Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World 1, no. 1 (2011): 29. 16 Govinda Pillai argues that the root of Brahminism was control of land which was what the Communists attacked (interview). But this makes the failure all the more glaring. 17 K. T. Rammohan, “Caste and Landlessness in Kerala: Signals from Chengara,” Economic and Political Weekly 43, no. 37 (September 2008): 16. 18 Ronald Herring, “‘Fanaticism,’ Jacquerie, Movement, Party: Ratchet Politics and Peasant Mobilization in South India, 1836–1956,” (paper presented at the Power, Agrarian Structure and Peasant Mobilization in Modern India Symposium, Charlottesville, May 25, 1997, 6). 19 Devika, “Egalitarian Developmentalism,” 803. 20 Anil Varughese, “Democracy and the Politics of Social Citizenship in India,” (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Toronto, Toronto, 2013), 263. 21 Jens Lerche, “Politics of the Poor: Agricultural Labourers and Political Transformations in Uttar Pradesh,” The Journal of Peasant Studies 26, nos. 2–3 (1996): 223–225. 22 C. R. Yadu and C. K. Vijayasuryan, “Triple Exclusion of Dalits in Land Ownership in Kerala,” Social Change 46, no. 3 (2016): 399. 23 Kappikad, “Kerala Model,” 479. Therefore, the argument that Communists did not discriminate against the Dalit labor because the former was targeting landlordism and land, the basis of Brahmanism (Govinda Pillai, interview.) is difficult to sustain. 24 K. Satyanarayana and S. Tharu, “M. Kunhaman,” in No Alphabet in Sight: New Dalit Writing from South India, ed. K. Satyanarayana and Susie Tharu (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2011), 506–507. 25 Rammohan, “Caste and Landlessness,” 16. 26 Thoppil Bhasi, Olivile Ormakal [Memories in Hiding], 5th ed. (Thiruvananthapuram: Prabhath Book House, 1999). This elite background of the Communist leadership, as we saw, played a big role in mobilizing the lower castes/classes. 27 Bhasi, Olivile, 44. 28 Paul Manalil, Kalathinte Kannadichillukal [Glass Splinters of Time] (Kottayam: Current Books, 2002), 125. 29 M. Kunhaman, “Asthamikkatha Sooryan” [The Sun That Does Not Set], in Lal Salaam [Red Salute], ed. C. Anoop (Kottayam: DC Books, 2001), 103. 30 Dalit Christian laborer and Communist activist, interview, August 2004. 31 Luisa Steur, “Indigenist Mobilization: ‘Identity’ versus ‘Class’ after the Kerala Model of Development?,” (Ph.D. Thesis, Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, Central European University, Budapest, 2011), 136. 32 This is because of factors like the strength of the Ezhava/Thiyya social movements, the acquisition of economic wealth through trade and small-scale production, English education (Yadu and Vijayasuryan, “Triple Exclusion,” 397; Filippo Osella and Caroline Osella, “Once Upon a Time in the West? Stories of Migration and Modernity from Kerala, South India,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological

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Institute 12, no. 3 (1999): 571) and the empowerment through the communist movement. The Left government had 10 Ezhava/Thiyya ministers out of a total of 20, a 50% representation, which is unprecedented. But in terms of MLAs, Ezhavas/ Thiyyas had a representation of 29.8% in CPIM/CPI (above their 21.5% population percentage), while the Nairs had 27.27% (more than double their population percentage of 12%). Upper castes were over-represented among the Left MLAs, but overall there has been a decline in the last three decades (Nissim Mannathukkaren, “Ezhava Representation in Kerala: Questions and Conundrums,” (paper presented at Ashoka University, Sonipat, December 23, 2018)). Sudarshana Bordoloi, The Political Economy of Uneven Rural Development: The Case of the Nonfarm Sector in Kerala, India (London: Springer Nature, 2020), 92. Pampirikunnu, “Nationalism, Modernity, Keralaness,” 565; Dasan et al., “Short Fiction,” xix. Dasan et al., “Short Fiction,” xix. Rekha Raj, “Dalit Women as Political Agents: A Kerala Experience,” Economic and Political Weekly 48, no. 18 (May 2013): 56.When M. M. Lawrence describes his work in organizing the thottis, manual scavengers or sanitation workers (who used to manually clean the dry toilets of Ernakulam city), in the early 1950s, and their miserable social status and working conditions, he does not mention that the workers were overwhelmingly from the Dalit castes (M. M. Lawrence, “Municipal Thozhilalikal,” (Municipal Workers), Facebook, January 18, 2019, www.facebook.com/MMLawrenceCPIM/posts/1017738265225058). Brijesh, senior journalist and upper-caste Communist sympathizer, interview, November 2016. Bhasi, Olivile, 140. N. K. Jose, “Vayalar Samaram-Dalit Munnettathinte Nanni” [Vayalar Rebellion: A Prelude to Dalit Movements], in Avarnapaksha Rachanakal, ed. Cherai Ramadas (Ernakulam: Dooth Books, 1997), 45; Manalil, Kalathinte. V. Prabhakaran, “Marxist Partiyum Columbusum” [Marxist Party and Columbus], in Avarnapaksha Rachanakal, ed. Cherai Ramadas (Ernakulam: Dooth Books, 1997), 53. Interview, December 2018. Luisa Steur, “Adivasis, Communists, and the Rise of Indigenism in Kerala,” Dialectical Anthropology 35 (2011): 72. T. K. Anilkumar, “Keezhala Sannidhyam Swathanthryananthara Malayala Sahithyathil” [Subaltern Presence in Post-Independence Malayalam Literature], in Nammude Sahityam, Nammude Samooham [Our Literature, Our Society], vol. 3, ed. M. N. Vijayan (Thrissur: Kerala Sahitya Akademi, 2002), 246. Interview. Ibid. Ibid. Lukose, “Re (Casting) the Secular,” 50, 58. Chintha, August 24, 1979. Lukose, “Re (Casting) the Secular,” 49. Ibid. Pampirikunnu, “Nationalism, Modernity, Keralaness,” 562. Sanal Mohan, “Caste and Accumulation of Capital,” in The Oxford India Anthology of Malayalam Dalit Writing, ed. M. Dasan, V. Prathibha, P. Pampirikunnu and C. S. Chandrika (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012), 272. Filippo Osella and Caroline Osella, Social Mobility in Kerala: Modernity and Identity in Conflict (London: Sterling, 2000), 221, 250.

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54 Ibid., 221, 250. Also, lower castes can be seen adopting upper-caste customs and mores (especially pernicious ones) in arenas like marriage and sexuality (Marion den Uyl, Invisible Barriers: Gender, Caste and Kinship in a Southern Indian Village (Utrecht: International Books, 1995), 200, 215, 222). 55 Osella and Osella, Social Mobility, 212. The non-Communist subaltern classes have disparaging views about the assertion of Dalits castes. As Koya, a Muslim man, driver by profession, comments, “earlier the Pulayas would never dare to come in front of you, now they will ride roughshod over you” (interview, June 2014). 56 Bordoloi, Political Economy, 174. 57 Field notes, July 2004; Joykunju, interview. 58 Lukose, “Re (Casting) the Secular,” 54. 59 A. Subramanian, “Making Merit: The Indian Institutes of Technology and the Social Life of Caste,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 57, no. 2 (2015): 291. 60 Molly, upper-caste-woman CPM member, interview, August 2017; Devaki, Ezhava, daily-wage laborer, 68, interview, August 2017. 61 Osella and Osella, Social Mobility, 251. One egregious example which attracted attention was the violence targeted at Chitralekha, the first Dalit woman to drive an autorickshaw, by Communist activists (Himadri Ghosh, “Why Crime Is Rising against India’s Lowest Castes and Tribes,” India Spend, July 4, 2016, www.indiaspend.com/cover-story/why-crime-is-rising-against-indias-lowestcastes-and-tribes-29049. 62 National Crime Records Bureau, Crime in India, vol.2 (New Delhi: Government of India, 2018), 509, 605. 63 T. K. Devasia, “Kerala Ranks First in Law and Order among States,” Khaleej Times, November 8, 2012, www.khaleejtimes.com/displayarticle.asp?xfile= data/international/2012/November/international_November282.xml§ion= intern ational&col=. 64 National Crime Records Bureau, Crime in India, vol. 1, 10, 11. 65 Ibid., vol.2, 509, 605; National Crime Records Bureau, Crime in India (New Delhi: Government of India, 2008), 106, 112, 50. 66 National Crime Records Bureau, Crime in India, 18; National Crime Records Bureau, Crime in India, vol. 1, 9. 67 Interview. 68 Among 600 respondents, over 37% chose the communist parties compared to the 16% for the Congress (Tomy Joseph, “Empowerment of Dalits and the Role of Dalit Movements in Kerala: A Study of Kottayam District” (Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Political Science, St. Thomas College, Pala), 325, 330). 69 Vijayan, interview, May 2014. He describes the changes that have happened in his locality and how Dalits of the present generation have managed to move away from difficult manual labor to lower-level government jobs, and that some have become engineers as well. The horizon of agricultural laborers has changed drastically with their next generation focused on attaining mobility through education (field notes, July 2010). Besides the percentage of agricultural labor has also declined as we have seen. 70 Sebastian, retired professional, interview, August 2004. In a Christian Kerala Congress leader’s (from a landed family) view, the former (untouchable) serfs have the audacity to share public spaces like cinema theaters with the upper castes. He also feels that in disputes involving the Dalits and upper castes, police tend to favor the former because of the fear of the communist parties. Besides, he narrates how Ezhava Communist leaders talk about the feudal oppressions perpetrated by Christian landlords (field notes, June 2003).

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71 J. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990), xii. There is active defiance by the lower castes as well in challenging the earlier forms of symbolic humiliation. Thus, while the communist parties played an active role in questioning derogatory forms of address directed at the lower castes, the latter themselves now address former upper-caste patrons in informal ways (field notes, June 2011). 72 Scott, Domination, xi. On the other hand, in terms of actual power, the supposed loss of power is also an imagined one for the upper castes. 73 M. Kunhaman, “Socio-Economic Development of the Dalits in India: A Macroeconomic Overview,” in No Alphabet in Sight: New Dalit Writing from South India, ed. K. Satyanarayana and Susie Tharu (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2011), 519. 74 Government of India, “Kerala Data Highlights: The Scheduled Castes, Census of India 2001,” Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, 2001, http://censusindia.gov.in/Tables_Published/SCST/dh_sc_kerala.pdf. 75 S. Pallakadavath and C. Wilson, “A Paradox within a Paradox: Scheduled Caste Fertility in Kerala,” Economic and Political Weekly 40, no. 28 (2005): 3087. 76 S. Rukmini, “SCs in TN Better Off than FCs in Jharkhand,” The Hindu, July 7, 2015. 77 Government of India, “Kerala Data Highlights.” 78 Pallakadavath and Wilson, “A Paradox.” 79 R. Srinivasan, “Standard and Poor? SCs, STs in Kerala, Tamil Nadu Better Off than Others,” The Times of India, May 6, 2012, http://articles.timesofindia. indiatimes.com/2012-05-06/india/31597294_1_upper-castes-scs-durables. 80 A. P. Sreeraj and Vamsi Vakulabharanam, “High Growth and Rising Inequality in Kerala since the 1980s,” Oxford Development Studies 44, no. 4 (2016): 380. 81 R. Ramakumar, “Public Action, Agrarian Change and the Standard of Living of Agricultural Workers: A Study of a Village in Kerala,” Journal of Agrarian Change 6, no. 3 (2006): 336. 82 Prerna Singh, “Subnationalism and Social Development: A Comparative Analysis of Indian States,” World Politics 67, no. 3 (July 2015): 547. 83 Field notes, July 2010. 84 Thus, while the Dalit agricultural laborers’ children have given up manual labor, as we noted, and are educated than their parents, the educational level, for the most part, is not sufficient to get white-collar jobs. Instead, for example, they become employed as auto-rickshaw drivers and so on (Paul, former CPM member and development activist, interview, March 2013). In the field too, this is clearly evident. While the Dalit youth are clearly not following their parents’ occupations, and even have college education, they clearly lag behind in acquiring professional degrees, which is the key to social mobility, nor do they have the material resources to acquire them; the exceptions are only a few (field notes, July 2010, field notes, August 2017; Ammini, a Dalit woman and a CPM activist, interview, August 2017; Shashi, interview; Oommen, “Growth.” 85 Mohan, “Caste,” 271. 86 Maya Pramod, “As a Dalit Woman: My Life in a Caste-Ghetto of Kerala,” Caste: A Global Journal on Social Exclusion 1, no. 1 (2020): 115–116. 87 Yadu and Vijayasuryan, “Triple Exclusion,” 394. 88 Jens Lerche and Alpa Shah, “Conjugated Oppression within Contemporary Capitalism: Class, Caste, Tribe and Agrarian Change in India,” Journal of Peasant Studies 45, nos. 5–6 (2018): 933. 89 K. C. Zachariah, “Religious Denominations of Kerala,” (working paper 468, Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, 2016), 48.

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90 This is again visible in the field in Muvattupuzha. Dalits have not managed to build the good or luxurious housing that Ezhavas have managed to. For Radha, a 50-year-old Dalit worker, who lives in a dilapidated house in a colony, building a decent house has been a dream (interview, August 2018). 91 Zachariah, “Religious Denominations of Kerala,” 41. 92 Barrie M. Morrison, “The Embourgeoisement of the Kerala Farmer,” Modern Asian Studies 31, no. 1 (February 1997): 86. 93 Kappikad, “Kerala Model,” 472; Shashi; interview. 94 Kappikad, “Kerala Model,” 472. 95 This also leads to phenomena like suicide among Dalits who are unable to compete or fit in into “mainstream” society. 96 J. Devika, “Aspects of Socioeconomic Exclusion in Kerala, India: Reflections from an Urban Slum,” Critical Asian Studies 48, no. 2 (2016): 210–211. 97 Ibid. 98 Ibid. 99 Oommen, “Growth,” 189. 100 Radha, the Dalit worker, describes the assistance that she got from the Panchayat for building her small house in the colony. Most of the houses in the colony were not of a great quality (interview December 2018). 101 Pramod, “As a Dalit Woman,” 115. 102 Joseph, “Empowerment of Dalits,” 250. 103 Ibid., 261. 104 Newsclick,“Amid Allegations, Kerala’s Life Mission Project Provides a Lifeline to the Homeless,” September 29, 2020, www.newsclick.in/Allegations-Kerala-LifeMission-Project-Provides-Lifeline-Homeless). 105 Benita Parry, “The Constraints of Chibber’s Criticism: A Review of Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital by Vivek Chibber,” Historical Materialism 25, no. 1 (2017): 202. 106 E. M. S. Namboodiripad, Sampoorna Kritikal [Collected Works], vol. 9, 1948 (Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha Publishers, 2007), 80–84. 107 E. M. S. Namboodiripad, Kerala, Society and Politics: An Historical Survey (New Delhi: National Book Centre, 1984), 46. 108 Namboodiripad, Sampoorna Kritikal, vol. 9, 89. 109 T. T. Sreekumar, Civil Samoohavum, Idathupakshavum [Civil Society and the Left] (Kozhikode: Olive Publications, 2007), 62. 110 Dilip Menon, “Being a Brahmin the Marxist Way: E.M.S. Namboodiripad and the Pasts of Kerala,” in Invoking the Past: The Uses of History in South Asia, ed. Daud Ali (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), 65. 111 Ibid. 112 B. R. P. Bhaskar, “Vargamenna Mithyayum, Jathiyenna Yatharthyavum” [The Myth of Class and the Reality of Caste], in Lal Salaam [Red Salute], ed. C. Anoop (Kottayam: DC Books, 2001), 210. 113 Pampirikunnu, “Nationalism, Modernity, Keralaness,” 559. 114 Aditya Nigam, “Secularism, Modernity, Nation: Epistemology of the Dalit Critique,” Economic and Political Weekly 35, no. 48 (November 2000): 4256–4268. 115 See E.M.S. Namboodiripad, EMSinte Sampoorna Kritikal [Complete Works], vol. 6, 1945–46 (Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha Publishers, 1999), 346. Caste in this view can be seen as a “super-structural effect of landlordism” (Pampirikunnu, “Nationalism, Modernity, Keralaness,” 563). 116 Nigam, “Secularism,” 21. Nigam also argues that taking recourse to the universal history of class also helped the upper-caste Communist “to forget his/her ‘shameful past’ as oppressor or person of privilege” (Ibid., 20).

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117 See, for example, Namboodiripad, Sampoorna Kritikal, vol. 6, 346. 118 Nigam, “Secularism,” 20. 119 Walter D. Mignolo, “The Zapatista’s Theoretical Revolution: Its Historical, Ethical, and Political Consequences,” Review (Fernand Braudel Center) 25, no. 3 (2002): 245–275. 120 Namboodiripad, Sampoorna Kritikal, vol. 9, 97, 101. 121 Bhaskar, “Vargamenna Mithyayum,” 212. 122 Namboodiripad, Sampoorna Kritikal, vol. 9, 174, 288–289. 123 Quoted in Nigam, “Secularism,” 6 (emphasis added by the author). 124 Communist Party of India quoted in Anand Teltumbde, “The Early Indian Communists’ ‘Unremitting Criticism’ of B. R. Ambedkar,” The Caravan, November17,2017,https://caravanmagazine.in/vantage/early-indian-communistsunremitting-criticism-ambedkar. 125 B. T. Ranadive, Communist leader, quoted in ibid. Of course, there was the pragmatic aspect also that the Dalit laboring class, that Ambedkar was mobilizing, was the main constituency for the Communists too. 126 T. T. Sreekumar, Charithravum Adhunikathayum [History and Modernity] (Kottayam: Current Books, 2001), 107. 127 Osella and Osella, “Stories of Migration,” 574. 128 ‘Periyar’ E. V. Ramasamy advocated that the Dalits should leave the Hindu religion and that all markers of caste identity be destroyed (Karthik Ram Manoharan, “In the Path of Ambedkar: Periyar and the Dalit question,” South Asian History and Culture 11, no. 2 (2020): 136–149). 129 B. Kolappan, “The ‘Patronising’ Dravidian Movement,” The Hindu, March 3, 2020. 130 Namboodiripad, Sampoorna Kritikal, vol. 9, 14. 131 Namboodiripad quoted in N. V. P. Unnithiri, “EMSinte Bhashanirikshanangal [EMS’ Observations on Language],” in Lal Salaam [Red Salute], ed. C. Anoop (Kottayam: DC Books, 2001), 524. 132 Namboodiripad, Sampoorna Kritikal, vol. 9, 81. 133 Ibid., 90. 134 Ibid., 119. 135 Ibid., 122. 136 Friedrich Engels quoted in Wilfred Nippel, “Marx, Weber and Classical Slavery,” Classics Ireland 12 (2005): 37. 137 E. M. S. Namboodiripad, Therenjedutha Prabandhangal [Selected Essays] (Thrissur: Kerala Sahitya Akademi, 1990), 242. 138 Namboodiripad, Sampoorna Kritikal, vol. 9, 173. Namboodiripad also distinguished between the older feudal lords and the newer class of unproductive lords created by the British colonial system which acquired land (by buying it from older lords who are in decline or small tenants who are unable to pay rent on state-owned lands in Travancore and Cochin, etc.), and in many cases was more rapacious than the older landlords (Namboodiripad, Sampoorna Kritikal, vol. 9, 204). 139 Ibid., 239. 140 Nigam, “Secularism,” 17. 141 Writers like B. R. P. Bhaskar also argues that Namboodiripad’s ignorance of the caste question stemmed from his following of the Marxian framework (“Vargamenna Mithyayum,” 208). 142 Andalat,* Communist activist, interview, July 2003. 143 Sreekumar, Charithravum, 32. 144 Andalat, interview. 145 Nigam, “Secularism,” 11.

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146 T. K. Ramachandran, Kazhchayude Koyma [The Hegemony of Seeing] (Kozhikode: Mathrubhumi Books, 2006), 18. 147 According to the India Human Development Survey (IHDS-2), the largest non-government household survey in India, 27% respondents practiced untouchability in some form nationally. Kerala had the second least number with 2% after West Bengal while the highest number was in Madhya Pradesh with 53% (Seema Chisthi, “Biggest Caste Survey: One in Four Indians Admit to Practising Untouchability,” Indian Express, November 29, 2014, https:// indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/one-in-four-indians-admit-topractising-untouchability-biggest-caste-survey/). 148 P. K. Yasser Arafath,“The Nadapuram Enigma: A History of Violence and Communalism in North Malabar (1957–2015),” Economic and Political Weekly 51, no. 15 (2016). 149 NidhinShobhana,“Onam:RealBrahmanismandMythicalSecularism,”RoundTable India, September 20, 2013, https://roundtableindia.co.in/index.php?option=com_ content&view=article&id=6911:onam-real-brahmanism-and-mythical-secularis m&catid=119:feature&Itemid=132). 150 T. K. Ramachandran, “Imagined Identities, Fabricated Memories: The Fascist ‘Hindutva’ Ideology and the Cultural Life in Contemporary Kerala: A Question of Contexts,” (Unpublished Manuscript,1999), 10. 151 S. Harikrishnan, “Communicating Communism: Social Spaces and the Creation of a ‘Progressive’ Public Sphere in Kerala, India,” Triple C 18, no. 1 (2020): 280. 152 Sunny Kapikkad, “Sabarimala Protests Are a Reminder of the Role of Caste in Kerala’s Enlightened Society,” interview by T. A. Ameerudheen, Scroll, January 3, 2019, https://scroll.in/article/904875/interview-sabarimala-protests-remindus-of-the-role-of-caste-in-keralas-enlightened-society. 153 Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 180, 197–198. 154 See, ibid., 173–199, 220–239. 155 Joykunju, interview. 156 For Buddhist universalism, see Nalin Swaris, The Buddha’s Way to Human Liberation: A Socio-Historical Approach (Pondicherry: Navayana Publishing, 2011). 157 Teltumbde, “Deconstructing Ambedkar,” 11. 158 Joseph, “Empowerment of Dalits,” Chapter 5; Rekha Raj, “Politics of Gender and Dalit Identity: Representation of Dalit Women in Contemporary Dalit Discourses in Kerala,” (Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Mahatma Gandhi University, 2015), 120–127. 159 Raj, “Politics of Gender,” 109, 121. 160 Ibid., 121, 124. 161 Joseph, “Empowerment of Dalits,” 184. 162 Raj, “Politics of Gender,” 122. 163 Sanal Mohan, “Narrativizing Oppression and Suffering: Theorizing Slavery,” South Asia Research 26, no. 1 (2006): 5, 32. 164 Dilip Menon, “The Moral Community of the Teyyattam: Popular Culture in Late Colonial Malabar,” Studies in History 9, no. 2 (1993): 197. 165 Similarly, despite the Communist Party’s instrumental use of culture, cultural initiatives from a Left perspective independently arose outside it right from the beginning. The high point of this was reached in the emergence of the radical Left (outside parliamentary communism) and the vibrant cultural productions associated with it. This had an impact on the popular (P. Muhammed, “Cinema, Politics and Historical Consciousness: The Left and the Production of a Modern

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170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191

Subjectivity in Kerala, 1950s-1980s” (Ph. D Thesis, Department of Cultural Studies, English and Foreign Languages University Hyderabad, Hyderabad, 2017), 18). Of course, these had their lacunae as well. Alf Gunvald Nilsen, “‘Real, Practical Emancipation’? Subaltern Politics and Insurgent Citizenship in Contemporary India,” Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, no. 76 (2016): 41. Devika, “Egalitarian Developmentalism,” 806. Civic Chandran, Ningalare Communistakki? (Kozhikode: Haritham Books, 2002). The playwright here, despite the criticism of communism, does seem to see communism as the only hope for the Dalits. Chandran, Ningalare, 41; see also S. Kappikad, “The Dalit Presence in Malayalam Literature,” in The Oxford India Anthology of Malayalam Dalit Writing, ed. M. Dasan V. Prathibha, P. Pampirikunnu and C. S. Chandrika (New Delhi: Oxford University, 2012), 262. Chandran, Ningalare Communistakki?, 37. K. Satyanarayana and S. Tharu, “Sunny Kappikad,” in No Alphabet in Sight: New Dalit Writing from South India, ed. K. Satyanarayana and Susie Tharu (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2011), 487. Ibid. K. Satyanarayana and S. Tharu, “The Poet with a Forest Fire Inside,” in No Alphabet in Sight: New Dalit Writing from South India, ed. K. Satyanarayana and Susie Tharu (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2011), 343. Steur, “Adivasis,” 71. Mohan, “Narrativizing Oppression,”35. Raj, “Politics of Gender,” 162, 138, 139. C. R. Bijoy and K. Ravi Raman, “Muthanga: The Real Story; Adivasi Movement to Recover Land,” Economic and Political Weekly 38, no. 20 (May 2003): 975–982. Bijoy and Raman, “Muthanga,” 1976; Steur, “Adivasis,” 63, 65. Bijoy and Raman, “Muthanga”; R. Kuttoor, “Trade Unions Strengthen Blockade at Chengara,” The Hindu, September 15, 2008. Rammohan, “Caste and Landlessness,” 15. Raj, “Politics of Gender,” 131. Uday Chandra, “Beyond Subalternity: Land, Community, and the State in Contemporary Jharkhand,” Contemporary South Asia 21, no. 1 (2013): 58–59. Ibid., 53. Sunny Kappikad, Public speech. Trans. J. Devika. Kafila. June 14, 2008, http:// kafila.org/2008/06/14/beyond-just-a-home-and-a-name/. Interview. India Environmental Portal, “Tribal Leaders Are Mere Pawns in Politics,” July 30, 2003, www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/content/22192/tribal-leadersare-mere-pawns-in-politics/. Steur, “Adivasis,” 60, 74; Luisa Steur, “An ‘Expanded’ Class Perspective: Bringing Capitalism Down to Earth in the Changing Political Lives of Adivasi Workers in Kerala,” Modern Asian Studies 48, no. 5 (2014): 1336. Steur, “Adivasis” and “‘Expanded’ Class Perspective.” D. Munster, “‘Ginger Is a Gamble’: Crop Booms, Rural Uncertainty, and the Neoliberalization of Agriculture in South India,” Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, no.71 (2015): 100–113. Steur, “‘Expanded’ Class Perspective,” 1340–1347. Luisa Steur, “Adivasi Workers’ Struggles and the Kerala Model: Interpreting the Past, Confronting the Present,” in Development, Democracy and the State:

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Critiquing Kerala Model of Development, ed. K. Ravi Raman (Routledge: London, 2012). Kunhaman, “Socio-Economic Development,” 519. Joseph, “Empowerment of Dalits,” 229, 329, 333. Ibid., 267. Raj, “Politics of Gender,” 132. K. Ravi Raman, “Subaltern Modernity: Kerala, the Eastern Theatre of Resistance in the Global South,” Sociology 51, no. 1 (2017): 93. Ibid., 100. See Nissim Mannathukkaren, “The Conjuncture of Late Socialism in Kerala: A Critique of the Narrative of Social Democracy,” in Development, Democracy and the State: Critiquing Kerala Model of Development, ed. K. Ravi Raman (Routledge: London, 2012). Raj, “Politics of Gender,” 134. Rammohan, “Caste and Landlessness,” 15. Lerche and Shah, “Conjugated Oppression,” 938. Sreeraj and Vakulabharanam, “High Growth,” 382. S. Mohammed Irshad, “Bhoosamaravum Bhoosamrakshanavum” [Land Struggle and Land Protection], Malayalam Weekly, August 1, 2008; R. Krishnakumar, “The Land Question,” Frontline, January 18, 2008. Rammohan, “Caste and Landlessness,” 15. Partha Chatterjee, “Introduction: The Wages of Freedom: Fifty Years of the Indian Nation-State,” in Wages of Freedom: Fifty Years of the Indian NationState, ed. Partha Chatterjee (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 1–5. An excellent example is the feudal lord living in the dream state of his past glories in Ningalenne Communistakki (the film, director, Thoppil Bhasi, 1970). Chatterjee, “Introduction,” 13. On the other hand, there is definitely disenchantment (generalized across classes) with certain processes of modernization like creeping instrumental rationality, the breakdown of community, the destruction of nature and habitats, the adverse effects of modern medicines and food, and so on (field notes, July 2010; June 2011; December 2011), which is not a result of a failed cultural modernization by the elite, but largely a result of the incursion of capitalist modernity and the various kinds of alienation engendered by it. But postcolonial theory’s ignorance of the economic processes makes it weak in theorizing it. Chatterjee, “Introduction,”11. Rajeev Bhargava,“Alternative Modernities” (Unpublished Manuscript, 2001), 3. Chatterjee, “Introduction,” 15. Ibid., 17. Osella and Osella, Social Mobility, 260. Ibid. Joykunju, interview. Basheer,* lower-level Communist activist, interview, August 2004; Kochavan,* Muslim small farmer, interview, July 2004; Aliyar Kunju,* Communist activist and retired worker, interview, August 2004; Ibrahim,* CPM activist, and councilor, Muvattupuzha Municipality, interview, July 2004. P. M. Ismail,* CPM leader, interview, July 2004. Guruprakash,* Ezhava, lower-level Communist activist, interview, May 2003. Dilip Menon, Caste, Nationalism and Communism in South India: Malabar, 1900–1948 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 46–47. Osella and Osella, Social Mobility, 242. Kathleen Gough, “Palakkara: Social and Religious Change in Central Kerala,” in Change and Continuity in India’s Villages, ed. K. Ishwaran (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), 139.

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221 Bhasi, Olivile, 210. 222 E. K. Nayanar, Olivukala Smrithikal [Reminiscences of Life in Hiding], 2nd ed. (Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha Publishers, 1999), 19. A description of the extremity of hardships suffered in underground life comes up again and again (interview, Pachu Ashan). 223 A. V Anilkumar, C (Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha Publishers, 2002), 82. 224 Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century (London: Michael Joseph, 1995), 54–84. 225 Ibid., 125, 36. 226 Pravasi Bharathi YouTube Channel, “M. M. Lawrence Interview: Pravasi Bharathi 810 AM Radio, Abu Dhabi-UAE,” YouTube, May 1, 2018, www. youtube.com/watch?v=2CU9w2fY6UI. 227 A. K. Gopalan, In the Cause of the People: Reminiscences (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1973), 15, 118. 228 Ibid., 84. 229 M. Kabir, “Peasants and Politics in Malabar,” Economic and Political Weekly (May 3, 1997): 950. 230 N. M. Pearson,* activist and writer, interview, August 2004. Further, others joined the party influenced by travels and work stints outside. P. P. Esthose, the most important of the early Communist leaders in Muvattupuzha and from a small peasant family, was working as a sailor in the Royal Indian Navy in Bombay when the sailors revolted in 1946, a significant event in India’s independence struggle. The Communist Party had supported the mutineers. When he came back home, he joined the Communist Party influenced by the party’s stand against the excesses of the princely state in Travancore (Esthose’s son Surjit Esthose,* CPM activist, interview, March 2017). 231 Quoted in Bhabani Sengupta, Communism in Indian Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), 182–183. This is affirmed emphatically in the narratives about the past during field research. 232 Interview, December 2018. 233 K. G. Nair,* Communist sympathizer, interview, July 2003. 234 M. J. Jacob,* President, Thirumarady Panchayat, interview, July 2004; P. M. Ismail, interview, December 2018; Basheer, Kochavan and Devaki, interviews. 235 Interview. 236 Vijayan, interview, June 2014. 237 Saju,* lower-level CPM activist, interview, August 2004; Ramachandran Nair,* retired government employee and communist activist, interview, July 2004; Rajan, interview. 238 Usha, interview, August 2017. 239 Quoted in den Uyl, Invisible Barriers, 249. 240 Partha Chatterjee, Our Modernity (Rotterdam/Dakar: SEPHIS and CODESRIA, 1997), 19. 241 Ibid., 20. One of the troubling contradictions of Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory is that it alternates between the extremes of this conception of victimhood and a full-blown voluntarism which does not take into account the material context. 242 Ibid. 243 Pearson, interview. Of course, there are a few exceptions when people internalize older notions of community laden with feudal hierarchies (Suhara, 80-year-old Muslim woman from a lower-class family, interview, December 2011). 244 Kochavan, interview. 245 den Uyl, Invisible Barriers, 131. But the subalterns also make a distinction between a material and technical progress, and cultural or moral decline (Devasia,

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246 247 248 249

250 251 252

253

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Christian daily wage laborer, interview, August 2012; Subeida (Muslim woman whose father was a headload worker and a Communist sympathizer), interview, June 2013). Motilal Ghosh (founder of Amrit Bazar Patrika, famous nationalist daily in Bengal) describing about the 1850s, quoted in Chatterjee, Our Modernity, 6. den Uyl, Invisible Barriers, 132. Mannathukkaren, “Conjuncture of Late Socialism.” While People’s Plan has radicalized the entry of people from the lower socioeconomic strata into politics and administration, the paucity of candidates, especially among women, has led the Left to give space to people who are not ideologically committed (field notes, August 2017). A woman CPM activist contends that the party study classes, while regular, have become routine in its content and not innovative enough to counter the political thrust of rightwing Hindutva (Annie, interview, August 2017). Paul, interview. K. T. Rammohan, “Contemporary Politics: Horrors and Hope,” Seminar 637 (2012). Field notes, July 2012. They use physical coercion, and when not using violence, indulge in verbal abuses (Sabu, daily-wage worker, interview, July 2010). He ironically comments that the party does not want its cadre to get good jobs and progress for there will be nobody left to do these activities. Field notes, March 2013. The disenchantment is exacerbated by acts like the horrific murder of a breakaway CPM local leader T. P. Chandrasekharan by CPM activists, allegedly with the blessings of the party leadership. In one worker’s account, “it’s all finished” and the party is only interested in money (field notes, September 2012). The state of degeneration of the movement is evident from the extraordinary efforts taken to defend such killings in ideological terms. Then there is the feature of persistent violence between the CPIM and the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak (RSS cadres) for 40 years, which has killed 200 people (from both sides) in northern Kerala, in the communist strongholds. Dilip Menon argues that violence which was exalted as a part of revolutionary tradition in the colonial era now becomes carried over to the postcolonial era even after adopting parliamentary communism. Here, justice becomes separated from the “realm of law” and “violence generated its own law.” This kind of violence is an integral part of an “intimate community” and is a “form of sovereignty that stands outside the politics of elections and parties” (Dilip Menon,“A Pre-History of Violence? Revolution and Martyrs in the Making of a Political Tradition in Kerala,” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 39, no. 3 (2016): 676–677). While the idea here that democracy and violence are consistent at times, or that it is a “form of subaltern politics that refuses to be subsumed in the mere idea of the citizen or cast in developmental discourse as the simple recipient of the state’s largesse” (Ibid.) is valid, this emic perspective tends to ignore the changing nature of violence. If violence before was directed against the state and landlord/capitalist classes, the violence now largely is directed towards subalterns belonging to the same class. As much this violence embodies a sense of individual sovereignty and agency outside law and parties, it is also tied to the changed nature of communist parties as electoral machines seeking state power. In this discussion, de-radicalization and the dilution of class agenda has to play an important part. Further, this protracted violence, which is largely confined to a certain geographical region, and violent acts elsewhere, also have to be placed in the context of the expansion of communicative rationality, as well as the recent expansion of political participation through the People’s Plan that we have looked at, even if it is showing signs of involution.

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255 Field notes, July and December 2010, August 2012. A les engaged citizenry focused less on the public sphere and a tectonic shift among the youth in terms of political activism is a running theme of many interviews. Developments like the proscribing of political activity in college and university campuses is very much part of this shift (interviews, Gopalan, cartoonist, May 2013, Stephen, newspaper editor, May 2013, Sriram, national-level CPM leader, March 2013, Sebin, lower middle-class youth, 2016, Tom, college professor, July 2016). Then there is anti-politics, a conjuncture which sees politics and politicians as responsible for the lack of “development.” 256 Rajan, interview. 257 Pearson and Kochavan, interviews; Selvan, lower-level Communist activist, interview, May 2003. 258 Achin Vanaik, “Subcontinental Strategies,” New Left Review 70 (July–August 2011): 102. 259 Govinda Pillai, interview; Paul Zacharia, writer and intellectual, interview, July 2010. 260 Interview. 261 T. T. Sreekumar, “Swayam Thottukondu P. G. Padippicha Padangal” [The Lessons That P. G. Taught by Defeating Himself], Mathrubhumi, April 14–20, 2013. 262 Vanaik, “Subcontinental Strategies,” 107. In the larger Indian context, interestingly there is also the tendency for the voter to prefer decisive individual leadership over collective decision-making through a politburo as in the CPM (Ruhi Tewari, “The Party Is Over and There Isn’t Much Left of the Left in India,” The Print, October 13, 2018, https://theprint.in/politics/the-party-isover-and-there-isnt-much-left-of-the-left-in-india/133456/). It is only in the recent times, from 2016, that the Kerala unit of the CPM has shown tendencies of an individual leader becoming bigger than collective leadership or the party. 263 Govinda Pillai, interview. 264 Vanaik, “Subcontinental Strategies,” 107. Govinda Pillai, interview. He also says a critical analysis of China’s transformation to capitalism is missing. 265 Roy, middle-rung national-level CPM leader, interview, May 2013. In the early eighties, even Rs. 2–5 would be collected by CPM, but now the demand would be to the tune of tens of thousands (Yohannan, businessman, interview, May 2011). 266 Rammohan, “Contemporary Politics.” The CPM thus has become an institution with multiple interests in business through cooperative enterprises and employs thousands of members. This has led to analysts terming it as the “corporatization” of the party (Ramesh, senior journalist, interview, November 2012; Roy, interview. Local Communist leaders describe visits to China to procure equipment for a party-managed hospital in Muvattupuzha (field notes, December 2018). 267 Devasia, interview; Sibin, autoworker, interview, December 2010; Sreekala, Ezhava woman, CPM activist, August 2017. 268 Rajendran, lower-level CPM activist, interview, July 2004. 269 In a veteran Communist’s words, people like him are consigned to the waste bin just like the garbage outside (field notes, December 2010). According to Sebastian, a former CPM worker and driver by profession, there is no difference between the Right and the Left now (interview, December 2010). In one young man’s (who is a medical nurse and a past activist of the student wing of the party) account, he has lost faith in the party and his father who was a committed activist is disenchanted now. This is due to the corruption in values. But, crucially, he is still committed to the ideology, even if not the party (field notes, June 2011).

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270 Pravasi Bharathi YouTube Channel, “M. M. Lawrence Interview.” 271 Basu and Majumder, “Dilemmas of Parliamentary Communism,” 170. See also, Tanika Sarkar and Sumit Chowdhury, “The Meaning of Nandigram: Corporate Land Invasion, People’s Power, and the Left in India,” Focaal: European Journal of Anthropology 54 (2009): 73–88. 272 Communist leaders have always recognized this: “While striving to make a genuinely peaceful constitutional transition from the regime of exploitation to the regime of the hitherto exploited people, we cannot afford to delude ourselves, or delude the people with the idea that the exploiting classes will stand idly by and allow this peaceful constitutional process to go so far as to put an end to the exploitation of the common people” (E. M. S. Namboodiripad, “MarxismLeninism and the Bourgeois Judiciary,” in Therenjedutha Prabandhangal [Selected Essays] (Thrissur: Kerala Sahitya Akademi, 1990), 314); Similar views have been expressed by communist parties other than the CPM: Dipankar Bhattacharya,* General Secretary, Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation, interview, August 2003. 273 Steve Striffler, “Something Left in Latin America: Venezuela and the Struggle for Twenty-First Century Socialism,” Socialist Register 53 (2016). 274 Even in the present stage of de-radicalization, one can see top Communist leaders in public meetings addressing predominantly the working classes stressing how communism avoids a religious understanding, and instead, follows a “historical materialist” approach to social problems (M. M. Mani, Minister for Power, CPM-led Kerala Government, Pampakuda Panchayat, near Muvattupuzha, August 5, 2017, field notes). 275 Lower-level cadres are able to identify the Brahminical-led religious homogenization sought by the Hindutva project (field notes, May 2003). 276 Guruprakash, interview. 277 Saju, interview. Andalat describes how he refused to perform the religious rites on the death of his parents (interview). 278 Selvan, Kochavan, interviews. 279 Basheer, Kochavan, interviews. 280 Subho Basu and Auritro Majumder, “Dilemmas of Parliamentary Communism,” Critical Asian Studies 45, no. 2 (2013): 191. 281 Selvan, interview. 282 Field notes, August 2004; field notes, September 2012; In an Ezhava worker’s account, people are less interested in communism now because party leaders have become millionaires (Vijayan, interview). 283 Jayant Lele, Elite Pluralism and Class Rule: Political Development in Maharashtra (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981), 42. 284 Damodaran, “Memoir,” 58. 285 Field notes, June 2011. 286 Joykunju, interview. 287 Guruprakash, interview. 288 Joykunju, interview. 289 Joseph, “Empowerment of Dalits,” 324. 290 Vijayan, interview; Joykunju, interview. 291 Lele, Elite Pluralism, 42. 292 Teltumbde, “Deconstructing Ambedkar.” 293 Pushpa, Ezhava woman, CPM activist, interview August 2017. But here the shift is occasioned by the cadre feeling that the communist movement not being the same force in terms of its ideology and because of its bourgeosification. There are clear material interests too involved when SNDP offers monetary support

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295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302

303 304 305 306

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to those in need. These are functions that were undertaken by the Communists before. The SNDP also focuses extensively on spiritual and cultural activities which become a point of attraction (Kuttayi, former CPM supporter and union activist, now with the SNDP, interview, August 2012). The Ezhava/Thiyya vote for the Left reduced from 64% (in 2011) to 49% in 2016, while it increased for the BJP from 7% to 18%. The Dalit vote for the Left came down from 64% to 51% while it increased for the BJP from 8% to 23% (Mannathukkaren, “Ezhava Representation.”). Quoted in Luisa Steur, “Indigenist Mobilization: ‘Identity’ versus ‘Class’ after the Kerala Model of Development?” (Ph.D. Thesis, Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, Central European University, Budapest, 2011), 136. Bordoloi, Political Economy, 92. Ismail, Aliyar Kunju and Kochavan, interviews. Sriram, interview. Kuttayi, interview. Arafath, “The Nadapuram Enigma,” 52. The view that Communists had no god is prevalent in non-Communist subaltern accounts (Koya, interview). Arafath, “Nadapuram,” 53. Anand Kochukudy, “CPI (M) in Kerala Is Communalising Politics to Evade Gold Smuggling Probe Heat,” Moneycontrol, September 23, 2020, www. moneycontrol.com/news/opinion/cpim-in-kerala-is-communalising-politics-toevade-gold-smuggling-probe-heat-5873571.html. In 2016 Assembly Elections, 35% of Muslim and Christian communities voted for the Left (Mannathukkaren, Ezhava Representation,” 7). Nissim Mannathukkaren, “Communalism Sans Violence: A Keralan Exceptionalism?,” Sikh Formations (2017), DOI: 10.1080/17448727.2017.1289680, 10. Vivek Chibber, Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital (London: Verso, 2013), 202 fn. 48. Thus, the decline of communist values in terms of the “bourgeois” tendencies of the present generation of Communist leadership, compared to the “ascetic” personal lifestyles and integrity of the leadership of the fifties and sixties is a constant theme (N. M. Pearson, “Garvishtamayoru Kalathinte Sayahnam” [The Evening of a Glorious Era], Malayalam Weekly (June 1, 2001): 23–24. Saji James, “Evar Pradhana Prathikal” [These Are the Main Culprits], Malayalam Weekly (May 18, 2001): 13–15. There are examples when election losses of the Left were attributed to the masses’ ire at the dilution of communist ideology, like in the 2001 Elections (M. Shankar, “Idathu Munnaniye Vetti Nirathi” [The Left Front Was Hacked Down], Malayalam Weekly (May 18, 2001): 23–24. A. Sreedharamenon, “LDF Sarkarinte Pathanam” [The Fall of the LDF Government], Malayalam Weekly (June 1, 2001): 18–19). The moral force of communist ideals, especially in the earlier period, is acknowledged even by the elite classes (field notes, May 2003; field notes, December 2018). Scholars are of the opinion that Cherumas were the original owners of the land until they were forced out by later invaders (den Uyl, Invisible Barriers, 113). Cheruma woman agricultural laborer, ibid., 111–112. Krishna is the main Hindu deity. Ibid., 112.

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The question of class It is one of the most curious phenomena that a society like India, which after more than 70 years of independence from the colonial yoke, suffers from some of the worst forms of class-based inequities and deprivations, has not generated a politics based on class and materiality which could substantially challenge dominant relations of production. We saw the emergence of class consciousness as a distinctive quality in the first decades of the communist movement. This became more evident later in the struggle for land reforms and labor rights after the election of the first communist government. As Desai contends: despite the tumultuousness of the anti-colonial movement, and the mobilization and radicalization of all sectors of Indian society, it is a salient feature of Indian political life that workers and the lower peasantry have failed to make a dent in patterns of accumulation and distribution. That they have done so in Kerala is of much comparative interest.1 Despite the close caste–class correspondence in Kerala that was pronounced in the colonial, pre-land-reform phase, especially among the castes at the top and the bottom, communities are not homogenous wholes, but are increasingly riven by class also. Capitalist development, transnational migration, land reforms, reservation in government jobs, etc., contribute to this process of class formation. Like the class division in the Ezhava/Thiyya community that propelled the communist movement, the resistance against land reforms and workers’ legislation was also undertaken by the propertied among the Nairs, Christians and Muslims. The latter, as we saw, evoked religious symbols to mobilize working and marginal peasant classes among their communities against the communist government. Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory were in the forefront of the academic movement away from class. Of course, this was a part of the larger 408

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“cultural turn” that has characterized social sciences since the 1970s. What is surprising is that despite the claims to being a radical critique, postcolonial theory “has evinced not only a suspicion of class theory and the Marxist tradition, but an outright hostility to it.”2 However, even before the “cultural turn,” Indian studies was marked by an Orientalism that saw India as an exotic “other” and the consequent focus on culture.3 This manifested in the emphasis on caste and the overshadowing of class (which was considered as too simplistic a concept to understand something as complex as the Indic society) and material factors. Given the magnitude and severity of caste oppression, this is not surprising. However, the exclusion of class is also “puzzling” as there is a substantial class–caste correlation in India in which the lower castes tend to also occupy the lower strata of the class hierarchy.4 Of course, the extent of this would vary in different locations and it also has to factor in the class differentiation, to differing degrees, within various castes. Thus, it is imperative that the obfuscation of class by only focusing on caste (or religion) be examined. Instead, as we have seen, what is needed an analysis which is able to talk about caste (and other dimensions like gender, religion, rural/urban divide) simultaneously with class and the ways in which they interact/diverge.5 This book contributes to the debate on class as a method of analysis in India. By demonstrating the limitations of the culturalist analysis of social relations and social transformation like that of the Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory, it will hope to counter their ahistoric and reductionist tendencies which have deleterious consequences for the subjects that it is claiming to speak for. The aim has been to restore the political economy approach in studying social change. At the same time, I have argued, it cannot be a traditional political economy approach which takes a reductionist approach to class without seeing class relations as “co-constituted” by relations of other axes of oppression like caste, race, gender, etc.6 The argument here is not to substitute cultural reductionism with material/class reductionism, but a political economy analysis which will have as its core understanding the social relations of production and reproduction and the institution of property and the mechanisms of power generated by it.7 Cultural aspects and social oppressions like caste would be intertwined with the above. As Don Kalb argues, there is need to develop an “encompassing, relational, dynamic and comprehensive class concept,” and “a more open, less deductive, and more contingent form of social class analysis.”8 He further contends that rather than mystify culture and meaning by studying it as sui generis, a better method to understand culture would be to adopt a “materialist idea of class.”9 This “expanded class concept” does not look for pure capitalism, but seeks to understand how “global patterns of accumulation” interact with “multiple and interlinked local and regional trajectories of development.” Such a concept presumes understanding both geographical and historical relationships.10 And oppressions and marginalizations on the 409

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basis of caste and tribe, like that of the Dalits and Adivasis we have examined, would become a part of this analysis. At the same time, the emerging conjuncture of resistances mounted by them for the completion of the incomplete land reforms of the communist governments, and the new forms of class exploitation in Kerala, shows the need to fuse caste with a classbased analysis. Class cannot bracket out the “truth of caste” here by arguing, for example, that Dalits do not have the right over property because they are merely agricultural workers with “only their labour to sell.”11 This analysis would also be able to explain, for example, how caste-based social networks have played a big role in the accumulation of capital in India,12 and how traditional caste hierarchies translate into cultural capital under modern conditions. And since: caste, as a social institution, continues to configure the labour market and determine relations between labour and capital, then it would be too restrictive an interpretation to exclude “caste” politics, outside the workplace, as being irrelevant to the politics of labour.13 This analysis would accord with, what Sumit Sarkar had called for before, a non-determinist historical materialism with an understanding of subalternity within it. On the other hand, in the changed context of neoliberalism becoming the common sense across the globe, and with Asian countries and postcolonial nations emerging as economic powerhouses,14 the answers provided by Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory, which were inadequate in the time frame that they arose, seem even more problematic with a disavowal of the economic and the material. Therefore, the virulent defense of the Subaltern Studies framework—as witnessed in the debate that ensued following the publication of Chibber’s Specter of Capital15—might not be the best course forward. Here, as Taylor suggests, Chibber’s critique gives the opportunity to ask,“What might a post-poststructuralist, materialist postcolonial studies look like, one attuned to the resurgence of emancipatory movements across the globe?”16 Taylor also argues for a new direction of postcolonial theory, especially a materialist and ecological one, and he cites recent scholarship of new strands of postcolonial theory in the 2010s that is moving in this direction.17 Yet, Dipesh Chakrabarty locates the ecological crisis in the “Anthropocene—‘the age of man’” and an undifferentiated Humanity, rather than the “Capitalocene—the ‘age of capital’” and “the endless accumulation of capital.”18 This kind of ecological thought “minimizes the planetary import of emancipation from capital.”19

Keralan exceptionalism? Kerala’s social transformation resembles the changes inaugurated in the classic cases of social democracy.20 The history of postcolonial societies shows 410

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that material struggles by the working classes and peasantry have been many a time subsumed by (often, catastrophically violent) struggles for culture and ethnic identity. This seems to affirm the culturalist thesis of Subaltern Studies/postcolonial theory that this book has sought to question. However, while the Kerala case is unique in some ways in terms of realized historical trajectory, the potential for the same transformation existed in many other societies, but could not be realized for various historic contingencies. As Tarrow argues, “land hunger and [peasant] resentment at landlord abuses were age-old.” However, whether they actually would translate this into action would depend on whether “windows of opportunity appear in the walls of their subordination.”21 James Scott’s thesis of the everyday forms of peasant resistance has the merit of demonstrating the limitations of collective action based on class and the channelization of class anger into those kinds of contestation which does not yield material benefits.22 However, Subaltern Studies/postcolonial theory tends to generalize theses like these (which have a particular historical context) as the universal framework of action for peasantry across the world. In explaining variation in social and political movements, what fail unequivocally also are structural explanations which merely focus on the class and caste structure of a society, without paying attention to the ways in which agents and actors make use of these structural possibilities. Desai argues that parties “are organizations that attempt such transformations, and the extent to which they succeed depends not simply on underlying cleavages, but on their ability to find the appropriate strategy and tactics of struggle.”23 It is not necessary that objective interests translate into a recognition of fighting for the same. They can be framed differently by various ideological formations.24 To understand this, we need to move from economic sociology to political sociology, from “class relations and dynamics to themes of class identities and consciousness.”25 Thus, the arguments that portray Kerala’s communist ascendancy to only the structural cause of a large percentage of landless agricultural labor or paddy cultivation miss many important aspects. The explanation, along with structural factors, has to incorporate political opportunity structures— features like influential allies, divisions within the elite, state’s capacity for repression26—cultural imagination and construction of identity, and as Lindberg argues, the “process of social interaction in the formation and reproduction of social movements.” Thus, what is needed is “a combination of structural, cultural, and interactional factors” in the analysis of social movements.27 In some crucial ways, the communist movement differed from other parts of the country. It was, for example, entering into a society that had already seen significant counter hegemonic anti-caste movements. Thus, the receptivity to radical ideas was of a different nature in Kerala. As we saw, the anti-caste and caste-reform movements of Ayyankali and Sree Narayana Guru were critical and laid the foundation of the communist 411

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national-popular, and the early success of communism was also in the struggle against caste oppression. Many Communist activists had also been activists in the anti-caste movements and they adopted the tactics and strategies of mass mobilization that had been practiced by them.28 The crucial aspect is that the Communist activists actively intervened to make the complex antagonisms in the social formation salient. As Reuschemeyer argues: The shared interests of a set of a people are not objective givens, existing like platonic ideas, to be realized or not. Instead . . . they are defined in the very process of organization, and so is the collectivity whose interests are being pursued. The collective interests actually pursued are historically constructed29 (original emphasis) This is closely tied to political consciousness, cultural imagination and identity formation. The Communists elsewhere could not build upon the anti-caste movements despite the fact that in regions like Maharashtra, for example, the anti-caste movement was potentially more radical than that of Kerala and even had linkages with the tenant movement.30 Another important difference in the strategy adopted by the Left in Kerala was the decision to work within the fold of the Indian National Congress in the initial period which gave it legitimacy and legality. In many other parts of the country, the Communists organized independently as a party had to work underground, as the Communist Party was illegal. Thus, the communist movement in other regions failed to establish the kind of early hegemony in Kerala. Despite this, there were early electoral successes in the 1950s in Punjab, Andhra and Bengal. The state of Bihar, which is amongst the poorest of the Indian states at the present, had a powerful peasant movement in the 1930s with the CSP membership standing at 250,000 in 1938. However, this dissipated because of various reasons including infighting and divisions within the party.31 Thus, class-based movements have not been confined to Kerala. And transformation governed mainly by the subordinated classes leading to some form of social democracy was not completely ruled out despite the severe limitations imposed by the colonial state on social and political movements. If it has not succeeded like the identity struggles or populist movements in post-Independent India, instead of the Orientalist thesis of culturalism, what needs to be explained is the waxing and waning of class movements of the poor or class-based voting decisions of the poor. Thus, nationally, for the 2009 and 2014 Lok Sabha Elections, the poor voted on the basis of class [without being a part of class-based parties] to a good extent, which was reversed in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.32 When caste-based analysis is resorted to as an explanation, caste is reduced to the religious and ritual realm and seen as being eroded by the market economy, rather than study 412

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it as being imbricated in economic and market relations,33 including the caste–class correspondence and the interlinkages that we have seen so far. Identity struggles based on social oppression are not just identity struggles. Caste-based political movements like that of the Dalits in Uttar Pradesh, which won governmental power, also have some class effects by the state reining in the violent power of the landlords in labor relations.34 However, they, while succeeding in bringing caste discrimination forcefully to the fore, by avoiding central class issues like land reforms, show the “limitations of a caste-based approach to class-based problems”35 (just as there cannot only be a class-based approach to the problem of caste) demonstrating again the need for movements which fuse recognition and redistribution, caste and class. Even when there is evidence of class-based contention and conflict scholarship has ignored it. Teitelbaum argues that “that the standard view of Indian labor as fragmented, weak, and dominated by political parties and the state does not stand up to scrutiny.” Against the received understanding that labor unions have been quiescent, he shows that in some decades the level of conflict was even more than that of many European countries.36 Besides, even informal workers in India’s neoliberal economy are conducting innovative struggles to demand citizenship rights and welfare benefits from the state.37 Further, government programs for social protection of the poorest classes crucially depend upon class politics for the effectivity of their implementation.38 And it is not just class conflict, but also class collaboration and class coalition among different social classes which affect the access to social programs.39 The poor in the states with low human development and education levels too have been receptive to class politics and the politics of the “material” in various ways.40 Right from the early decades of India’s independence, the lower-caste subalterns have not just been resisting caste oppressions but also material exploitation by refusing to work, etc., even outside organized political movements.41 By the mid-1990s, this acquired more strength and top-down caste and patronage-based politics was being challenged by one based on material concerns like economic benefits and access to political participation in North Indian villages.42 And one of the crucial factors in bringing about these changes is the role of education,43 besides the factor of universal franchise which has operated since Independence.44 However, caste or its hierarchies, as we have seen, do not just melt away in a straightforward fashion, as erroneously believed by modernization theorists. They coexist with capitalist globalization and modernity45 and are an “inseparable aspect” of exploitative capitalist relations.46 The scale of domination (and even reassertion) of the upper castes, for example, in political representation, even after 70 years of democracy, is substantial.47 Caste also becomes relevant according to new political and material contexts, and not always on the basis of large categories like Scheduled Castes or OBCs but on the basis of the jatis within them (which also have a class element)48 413

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and which strive for dignity and equality. There is discrimination within the Dalit community and the domination of the Dalit movement by certain Dalit castes placed higher in the hierarchy.49 Similarly, the Adivasi identity is also marked by hierarchies within. What is crucial is how these divisions are shaped by, and shape, material and political processes. The rise of OBCs in politics in India has been accompanied by the over-representation of very small number of dominant OBC castes within them, while large number of poor and small castes do not have any representation.50 And across castes, including the backward ones, it is the elite, especially the economic elite, who are the representatives for their castes.51 Just as the poor have been receptive to politics based on material interests, they have also, often, gone against their material interests by supporting parties which represent elite interests. The reasons, as recent work shows, cannot be reduced to ethnic/religious appeals or patronage alone.52 Other factors like social services, nationalism, populism, etc., also play a big role.53 A distinct political movement substantially focused on class politics of the marginalized, overcoming caste divisions, has not emerged, and the emergence of Hindu nationalism and populism as a powerful force would substantially affect such a development. The inadequacy of frameworks which emphasize only an immutable and unchangeable cultural essence is very evident. Instead, social transformation is contingent upon the kind of political projects that are imagined and the structural features they contend with and change. Ludden cogently argues that there is a similarity among Subalternist history, neo-classical economics and rational choice theory, in that “they all depict social actors who are driven by strict rules of behaviour and consciousness, established in theory.”54 What is missing in the Subalternist portrayals is social change and social mobility. Here, it is ironical that Chibber, as noted before, also relies on rational choice to counter the Subalternists.

Modernity The communist movement in Kerala is one of the most significant mobilizations of peasantry and the working classes in the Global South. However, as we saw, its comparative success lay in the way in which it was able to simultaneously address a variety of exclusions based on class, caste, national (in the colonial period), and linguistic identities, essentially constructing a nationalpopular, albeit incompletely. Rather than see them as “particularities” and “fragments,” it was able to build their unity and break the split between the subaltern and the elite. The book has contended that the movement puts into question the assumptions of Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory, especially its understanding of modernity as a merely alien and Western phenomenon, with the rest of the societies adapting themselves to it. The contribution of non-Western “peripheral” societies to the substantive 414

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content and practice of modernity is ignored here. And this is marked in the communist struggles, and also in the universal implications55 for modernity of the resistances and transverse solidarities56 forged by Dalits and Adivasis outside the communist movement. Parry had argued, as we have seen, about popular Marxist struggles and how they sought to go beyond the existing society to construct socialist imaginations. And this is what made liberation theory not simply a derivative, but an original project of modernity. Here, Chibber is right in arguing that “much of the progression of 20th- and 21st-century Marxism has occurred precisely through the reconstruction of theory derived from the West in light of the anomalies posed by the nonWestern world.”57 Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory argue that the present difficulties of the nation-state begin from the fact that the nationalists accepted the Orientalist construction of the Indian society.58 They see this acceptance, and also the tendency of passive revolution in colonized societies, as inexorable phenomena. This denies the trajectories which have challenged passive revolution like that of the communist movement in Kerala, and the agency involved in these processes. Cultural critic Geeta Kapur had posed a very relevant question before: Does the third world . . . as a place of aggregative self-representation and collective nemesis, become a revised anthropologically dictated narrative that excels in revenge histories about otherness but lacks the initiative on historical reflexivity for envisaging a future?59 If postcolonial theory has gone on the path of authoring such revenge histories, the communist movement in Kerala, compared to the bourgeois nationalist project, showed elements of historical reflexivity necessary for envisaging a different future, albeit with failures, severe limitations and contradictions. The contribution that the book seeks to make to the existing scholarship is in the exploration of the dynamics of this process, and the questioning of the influence of works which take a culturalist approach to problems of the Global South. It provides an empirical substantiation of the theoretical inadequacies of postcolonial theory and Subaltern Studies, while guarding against a mechanical universalism that Chibber’s arguments can lead to. This book also moves away from the predominant tendency to study communism solely through quantitative methods which are focused on the programs of the communist governments. Instead, this research has looked at the cultural and ideological aspects as well and their relation to the larger modernity project. Postcolonial theory draws a sharp distinction between modernity and tradition and sees a rupture between the two, thus ignoring the continuities that also exist. Colonialism is seen as rupturing “the self-relation of a society through time in such a fundamental way that it becomes difficult to imagine 415

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what would be right.”60 This does not take into account that colonialism constitutes not only a break but also a continuity. It reinforced many of the existing features. This means that colonial rule both introduced and arrested the flow of new values and institutions, and, also, that it both changed and froze their traditional counterparts. To say that it only subverted or froze the precolonial society is to be guilty of half-truths.61 This is what postcolonial theory implies. In positing the encounter with colonialism as a one-way affair, postcolonial theory misses the changes brought about on both sides as a result. By placing way too much importance on European colonialism, it ignores not only the present but also the complex pre-colonial history. However, of course, European colonialism was a very significant and immediate strand in the making of the modern society and state in India. Communist theorizing, even with its limitations, recognized the “dual character” of colonialism in the 1940s itself. British rule, according to it, was keen on only dismantling those aspects of feudal landlordism which stood as a barrier to the domination of the British Raj but not the entire structure.62 Yet, ironically, as it points out, the severity of caste oppression made the lower castes look at European colonizers, even if not as friends, but not necessarily as enemies,63 showing the need to understand a varied response to colonialism than a simple colonialism/nationalism binary. Gandhi, despite his tremendous success in bridging the divide between the modern and traditional discourses, and thus taking nationalism to the phase of mass mobilization, refused to engage with modernity: Gandhi did not seek an answer to the problems of the modern condition. He shrewdly refused to deal in modernity’s terms. His answer was not about how modern conditions can be brought under cognitive and moral control, but that modernity as a condition should be abjured. In a sense he embraced a deliberate obsolescence.64 This refusal to find a solution to the problems of modernity, and also the tendency to address historic problems like that of caste discrimination within the straitjacket of tradition, is what led the masses to the communist movement in Kerala which sought to overcome the material-symbolic split.65 Postcolonial theory and Subaltern Studies, despite their stated agenda of overcoming Enlightenment dualisms and recovering the ambivalences and hybridities of colonized societies, ultimately end up resolving these in favor of traditionalism. Their turn to Gandhi, after the initial critique, as a symbol of resistance against the disciplinary practices and institutions of modernity is an indicator of this. However, they do not engage in a productive dialogue between modernity and tradition, and undertake a critical understanding 416

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of both. Postcolonial theory and Subaltern Studies do not use the radical potential of Gandhi’s searing critique of modernity and modern liberal politics66 toward this purpose. They tend to ignore that the pre-modern language could not be brought back mechanically. Postcolonial theory’s focus on culture does not prevent it from adopting an acultural view of modernity. Modernity is ultimately viewed as an assault on traditional societies, with which they are not able to cope. This is where traditionalism, ironically, replicates modernism. Both have the same view on how pre-modern societies enter modernity—through essentially non-cultural processes.67

Beyond postcolonial misery If the Enlightenment had inaugurated modernity and emancipatory human projects, the immense human suffering unleashed by the very same projects in the first half of 20th century had generated an atmosphere in which the values associated with modernity came under scrutiny. For the postmodernists, nothing symbolized modernity more than Auschwitz and Stalin. The Enlightenment ideals of reason, liberty, equality and progress seemed increasingly unattainable (and, in any case, supposedly flawed from the outset), thus engendering an attitude of “incredulity towards meta-narratives.” Postmodern critique assumes that: it is sufficient to recite the disasters of the twentieth century in order to blacken the entire Enlightenment heritage . . . [but] this position appears to imply a denial of the meaningfulness of any counterfactual history, the belief that no epoch can contain possibilities other than those which have been actually realized . . . [it does not realize that] it is only in the light of the democratic and humanitarian aspirations of the Enlightenment that fascism and Stalinism appear in their full horror.68 Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory have adopted many elements of the above critique. The greatest merit of postcolonial theory has been to question the domination of Eurocentric knowledge categories and the need to understand the specificity of non-Western locations. Therefore, there is an increasing need to understand the way in which democracy, modernity, etc., are appropriated in various regions of the Global South. The communist struggles are examples of this. As Lucia Michelutti argues, “the moment democracy enters a particular historical and socio-cultural setting it becomes vernacularised.”69 However, I have argued that the universal element in what is being vernacularized also needs to be understood and that the Global South is shaping modernity and is extending many of the European concepts in new directions as well. For this, despite the intention of postcolonial theory, categories 417

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like political society and the whole set of binaries that we have looked at, which stem from the fundamental binary of modernity/tradition, would not suffice, for they replicate the Orientalist binaries of modernization theory. Chatterjee does recognize in places that the binary is inadequate: “it becomes necessary to suspend the totalizing structural contrasts between the modern and the premodern and focus instead on localized, contingent, and often transient changes in actual practices.”70 However, the focus on localized and contingent changes, for example, tends to ignore the immense pressures generated by the global market system. The local and the contingent has to be made sense of without losing sight of the global and the structural with which it is interlinked. Despite critiques of modernization in the academic realm and outside, the discourse of modernization and developmentalism itself is internalized by subjects on the ground.71 The convergence of varied cultures and nations around certain core features of modernization has to be recognized as well.72 Thus, both structure and agency, and the relationship between the two have to be accounted for according to the specificity of each location. The book has argued that the outcome of modernity is not pre-determined, but contested, and decided by the kind of social mobilization that is undertaken in a society. The peasantry, working classes and other marginalized groups have constantly crossed the binaries set up by Subaltern Studies/ postcolonial theory to appropriate and borrow different aspects of the division as they deemed fit. However, this does not happen in a vacuum. What postcolonial theory does not fully provide is a dialectical account of social reality, between objective and subjective processes. This is unlike the Marxian dialectic which affirms the “primacy of theory which is at one and the same time a recognition of the primacy of History itself.”73 Following Foucault, postcolonial theory sees modernity as an objectified process in which the metaphysics of power overrides any conception of agency. Reason is destined to turn into instrumental reason. While postcolonial theory rightly points out the oppressive aspects of modernity and the ill effects of bureaucratic administration of welfare and social justice, it does not recognize that: what is at stake here is not the central organizing principle of modernity, opposed to the ramshackle systems of pre-modern power, but rather a contradictory attempt, the expression of a classcompromise, to bring forth new and more egalitarian life-forms by legal and bureaucratic means [original emphasis].74 The communist movement, along with the direct challenges to power in the early decades, undertook such efforts. The radical demands for the ending of feudal landlordism were: paralleled by a more conservative ratchet politics, in which concessions wrung from the government are expanded both to make 418

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meaningful the previous concessions granted and to extend the agitation to a broader base. Expansion of the social base and retention of those for whom the ratchet had worked necessitated expansion of issues.75 As Ismail describes, even in the 1970s, the party used to take up any issue that confronted the poor and the workers: If a worker was dismissed from his job, we would protest. . . . Once a tobacco shop worker, who did not belong to the party, lost his job. Yet, we conducted an agitation for 382 days, even in heavy rains, in front of the shop.76 The communist movement’s relative success was in reconstituting popular common sense about the new vocabulary of rights and institutions and taking them into the vernacular.77 This did not remain only at the level of an “aesthetic redemption” or a “folklorisation” of the subaltern but “also incorporated [their] political redemption,” within the “instituted forms of politics,”78 and expanded those forms as well. And this is precisely what has been severely affected with de-radicalization, generating the intense disenchantment with the communist movement that we saw in the last chapter. Communist extra-parliamentary struggles and deep engagement with the civil society to change consciousness seen in the early decades have receded to the background. They have been replaced with instrumental politics of the electoral machine, which requires accommodation of conservative forces, political and social power structures and the dilution of class struggle itself. Therefore, the process of a radical deepening of democracy, claim-making on the state and the discourse of rights have now been taken up and extended, both in intended and unintended ways. This is by the “‘second-wave’ of Malayali public action,” by Dalits, Adivasis and all kinds of marginalized populations, not just outside the communist movement, but also against it,79 to realize its unrealized promise of equality. If postcolonial theory attributes the subaltern disenchantment with the postcolonial present to failed cultural modernization by the elite who, according to Chatterjee, sought to copy the Enlightenment and Western modernity, here, the most important discourse that emerges is that of equality. The struggles launched under the communist movement against material and class exploitation translated into fight for individual dignity and autonomy as well, and this cannot be termed as an imposition of bourgeois freedom as postcolonial theory does. Nor can it be said that peasant and subaltern politics is always characterized by the notion of collectivity and community and does not speak to individual interests. The book has sought to go beyond the polar opposites of the valorization of community in Chatterjee, and individual interests in Chibber. 419

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The opposition to instrumental rationality does not come from within pre-existing traditional forms alone, but within modernity too. This can be found in the “inherent resistance of social domains which are communicatively structured to commodification and bureaucratization. There is a dynamic of egalitarian solidarity which although damaged and repressed, is no less central to modernity than the functional dynamic of money or power.”80 At the same time, pre-existing forms of social cohesion are indispensable in political struggles of modernity.81 These were demonstrated in the mobilizations on the basis of caste before, and later as part of the communist movement. Nevertheless, unlike in Subalternist accounts, new forms of solidarity like class and party become important. The inauguration of a politics based on materiality and class was the distinctive contribution of the communist movement, which acquires a new criticality with the resurgence of a new religious majoritarian project under Hindu Nationalism and the attempts to vertically mobilize unequal castes and communities. However, the degeneration of the communist movement, its drastic decline as a cultural force—including its incomplete critique of caste and accommodation of religious orthodoxy, have rendered it weak. Rather than the postcolonialist hyper-rationalism toward religion, this is what has prevented communism’s robust ideological and secular response to Hindu Nationalism. As I have argued, it is a failure more to do with practice than one caused by modernist imitation of alien theories. The abandonment of communism by some subalterns for the project of Hindu majoritarianism also shows, against Chibber, that working classes may not automatically struggle for economic interests, or for the broadening of political liberties. Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory gloss over the structure of capitalism which is seen as being as blocked in its universalization by the fragments of race, caste, and religion. They ignore how these categories are also imbricated and reproduced in capital and the mechanisms which are required to resist the universalization of capital. They privilege philosophical questions of difference over egalitarian society and political democracy. This draws a false wedge between the two. More importantly, as we saw, it does not have much to say about economic differences or class. And even with regard to cultural difference, recently, under the influence of capitalism and globalization, concepts like Orientalism theorized by postcolonial theory have undergone changes and non-Western engines of capitalism like China are, in the new form of Orientalism, not the “other” marked by “essential difference,” but by “sameness.”82 What the communist movement was able to overcome relatively is the “cantonization of consciousness.”83 Postcolonial theory by focusing on the fragmentary and the local has fostered what Samir Amin, in a classic statement, termed as “negative attitudes to popular national demands . . . [by creating] the illusion of being able to do without the state level in the transformation of reality.”84 The Kerala experience shows that the state has achieved some success in “its presumed role as 420

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liberator, equalizer, modernizer and mobilizer.”85 That is why, it is important to distinguish between different kinds of the state, which postcolonial theory does not. However, the state itself has acted because of the immense pressure exerted on it by the public and the subalterns, both within and outside the communist movement. The Subaltern Studies’ project of recovering subaltern subjectivity is laudable. However, it has to move beyond an epistemological critique to contend with the political and the kind of political projects that are envisaged. Besides, merely a focus on subaltern subjectivity can lead to “an amoral politics of indifference . . . which craves no point of contact with forms of political practice which are connected to global issues and ostensibly ‘universal’ themes.”86 Therefore, subaltern politics cannot but engage with “moral questions—concerning rights and the question of justice—which themselves must have recourse to apparently abstract and generalized discursive claims.” And this is possible only by linking the local and the extra-local, and the specific and the universal in an inter-dependent world system.87 The communist movement’s success was in going beyond bourgeois nationalism and fostering such linkages and a consciousness associated with them, even if incompletely. Ironically, Communist activists and others identify the decline of universalism and the concern with world and extra-local issues as the significant change in the younger generations in the communist movement,88 especially after the collapse of the communist states. Of course, if these linkages have to be deepened, they have to address substantially the multifarious concerns and axes of social oppression that have fallen outside the ambit of the traditional Communist Party and class politics. The fostering of an extra-local consciousness and universalism was simultaneously characterized by breaks as well like sexual conservativism and the male domination of the movement. Communist politics also has to go beyond party vanguardism and envisage a thoroughly democratized party and movement. This would also mean that the party cannot stand in for class, and that it has to accept movements seeking to deepen democracy in civil society.89 As Aditya Nigam argues, Leninist politics, while relevant to its times, cannot become the beacon light for communist politics in the 21st century.90 Even before, during the period of the construction of communist hegemony, we observed how, despite the democratization of culture, the attempts to politically control the cultural sphere had prevented a deeper national-popular. Without a repudiation of Stalinism, communist politics would not be able to radicalize itself. And this, as we have seen, is not a possibility in the near future. In India, under new conditions of capitalism with a large informal labor force and in the absence of a traditional “working-class-in-itself” means there cannot be “simplistic notions of transformations to class-for-itself consciousness”91 in the present as before. Ecological crisis adds a further critical dimension to new forms of politics. And in Kerala, with economic 421

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characteristics like a changing class structure, an embourgeoisified peasantry and organized trade unions, large numbers of migrant labor from other states, predominance of the service sector, an economy dependent on the world market as well as global migrant remittances (including from nonelite emigrants) and a growing commodity culture, the nature of new class politics would be vastly different. The reality is also of a de-radicalized communist movement, largely reduced as an electoral force in India to merely Kerala, and not just confronting neoliberal capitalism from the outside, but also implicated in its processes. Competing for investment and development and solving problems like high levels of educated unemployment, etc., become an imperative here for the communist governments, albeit with the contradiction that they cannot be seen as allowing “primitive accumulation” or as corporate friendly like other parties in non-communist states.92 Some, as noted, have argued that the selective adoption of neoliberal policies is the only pragmatic course of action for Left projects, and that social democracy (rather than democratic socialism) is the most plausible route under capitalist globalization to combine market efficiency with equality,93 which also speaks to the immense challenges of building socialism in a capitalist world. However, there are two questions here: first, the long-term one of conceiving capitalism as the end of history and mitigating its effects through social democracy as the only realizable program, when utopian and seemingly unrealizable imaginations have always driven social transformations.94 And, second, in the immediate context of Kerala, whether it is possible to achieve substantial equality for Dalits, Adivasis, and other excluded groups, and address issues like that of massive ecological destruction, without the communist movement seeking to radicalize social democracy further, or think beyond social democracy, both economically as well as culturally. We saw the communist attempts to inaugurate a direct democracy and new forms of political sociability through the People’s Plan. Yet, the question of removing structural inequalities of the most marginalized remains, and even the gains of social democracy are being threatened by the incursion of neoliberalism. Bidwai envisages a New Left nationally which would include along with Left parties, “independent Marxist and Left-socialist groups, radical nonparty political formations . . . Dalit networks, feminist groups . . . environmental activists,” democracy activists and “all those non-affiliated groups and individuals who believe in a post-capitalist future.”95 It would very well be impossible for a de-radicalized communist movement in Kerala, with many anti-democratic tendencies within it, to transform itself in this fashion. However, the question is whether the disenchantment of those who still envisage an egalitarian future, and the presence of a radical civil society and its pressures can push the movement in new directions. Again, the central problematic confronting society, contra postcolonial theory, is not the alienness or externality of modernity or communism, but that of realizing substantively 422

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their original intent. Nevertheless, as Grosfugel argues, following thinkers like Enrique Dussel and Walter Mignolo, the problems of modernity cannot be overcome through a Eurocentric modernity, but through “transmodernity” and “critical thinking from the margins.”96 Rather than a simple universality, it is “diversality” where subaltern epistemologies from various cultures in the world are in critical dialogue with each other. And anti-systemic decolonization cannot be reduced to a struggle against the economic system, capitalism, alone but has to encompass all kinds of colonialities of power.97 The incomplete communist national-popular and the struggles by the Dalits and Adivasis show that the two contending universals of capital and labor that Chibber resorts to in countering postcolonial theory’s adherence to the particular would not suffice, and a better understanding of the linkages as well as the tension between the particular and the universal is needed. The communist movement in Kerala is an example of the fact that resistances in the Global South cannot be construed, as in postcolonial theory, as simply against modernity. The subalterns part of it also embodied, in many senses, the radical subjectivity of the subalterns that the Subaltern Studies wanted to recover. Of course, often, Marxist historiography has tended to, as Ranajit Guha rightly argues, reduce this to the “axis of a protracted campaign for freedom and socialism”98 only. Yet, what this book has sought to show is the substantial contribution of the subalterns to building the imagination of dignity and equality. The communist intervention, despite the contradictions and substantive failures that we have traced, contributed to the building of a social democracy, a rarity in the Global South. However, this crucially was made possible by going beyond the imagination of social democracy and adapting Marxism to a non-Western context, which was not simply, as Dipesh Chakrabarty asserts, about trying to recreate an “alreadytold European drama.” On the other hand, ironically, Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory, as Kaiwar points out, have participated in the “burial of socialism.”99 When critical theorists have recently come around to term even India’s flawed liberal and formal democracy as important in global terms,100 it is crucial to recognize that Kerala’s welfarism is of “world-historical significance,” for it shows that even poor regions “can remove chronic poverty and endemic deprivation . . . in a short period of time and at relatively low costs,”101 and go beyond a formal democracy. Despite the fact that it, and the communist movement, are increasingly capitulating to the pressures of capital and the discourse of the nation-state,102 as J. Devika argues, this “unique welfarism” of Kerala in the present “has repeatedly shown itself to be distinctly and stubbornly different from .  .  . the actually-existing Indian nation.”103 This raises prospects that Kerala, despite the immense challenges and barriers that I outlined, might be better placed than many other societies of the Global South in confronting the question of deepening democracy further under the present conditions. 423

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The task of any current theory and praxis is to understand the critical moments that made the democratic transformation possible, including the communist contribution to it, and thus move beyond the various binaries posited by Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory. And this achievement in a comparative sense should be read along with the fact that internally the communist project’s potential remained unrealized in achieving more radical anti-capitalist goals as well as those like the ending of caste. Also, there cannot be a simple defense of the Enlightenment like in Vivek Chibber. The exclusions and silences of grand narratives like nationalism, communism, class and secularism have to be recognized as well. Marx himself was a critic of the Enlightenment: Marxism wanted to “‘sublate’ the categories of Enlightenment thought: to identify their liberatory core and push them to their most radical conclusions.”104 The “notion of the outside of capital” in Subaltern Studies is valuable,105 and needs to be recovered. Despite the gale force of modernization, there are “diverse forms of off-modern or non-developmental modes of cultural and political economy that exist around the world,”106 which could be the building blocks of an alternative imagination and which will also synthesize the core of the Enlightenment. There is also an increasing need to go beyond the binary of “Marxism versus poststructuralism,” for the conditions which supported such a binary or other related binaries like “universal/particular” and “totality/fragment” are not the same anymore.107 However, going beyond such binaries would also require that we do not fail to look at the earlier attempts to do so, like the communist movement in Kerala and its successes and failures. The way out of “postcolonial misery” seems to lie in that.

Notes 1 Manali Desai, State Formation and Radical Democracy in India, 1860–1990 (London: Routledge, 2006), 9. 2 Vivek Chibber, “On the Decline of Class Analysis in South Asian Studies,” Critical Asian Studies 38, no. 4 (2006): 357–387. Chibber charts the intellectual lineage of the trend away from class in South Asian Studies. A more comprehensive treatment is found in Specters of Capital. 3 Ronald J. Herring and Rina Agarwala, “Introduction: Restoring Agency to Class: Puzzles from the Subcontinent,” Critical Asian Studies 38, no. 4 (2006): 323–356. 4 Ibid., At the same time, as we have seen, this feature is not the only determining factor in the communist success. 5 Scholars like Gopal Guru, John Harriss, Barbara Harriss-White, etc., have argued for an approach that integrates caste and class. See Gopal Guru, “Shifting Categories in the Discourse on Caste and Class,” Economic and Political Weekly 51, no. 47 (November 2016); J. Harriss, “Reflections on Caste and Class, Hierarchy and Dominance,” Seminar, May 2012, www.india-seminar. com/2012/633.htm; B. Harriss-White, India Working: Essays on Society and Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

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6 Jens Lerche and Alpa Shah, “Conjugated Oppression within Contemporary Capitalism: Class, Caste, Tribe and Agrarian Change in India,” Journal of Peasant Studies 45, nos. 5–6 (2018): 928. 7 Henry Bernstein, Class Dynamics and Agrarian Change (Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2010), 1. The four key questions of political economy, according to him, are, “Who owns what?”, “Who does what?”, “Who gets what?” and “What do they do with it?” 8 Don Kalb, Expanding Class: Power and Everyday Politics in Industrial Communities, the Netherlands, 1850–1950 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), 2. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid., 7. 11 T. M. Yesudasan, “Towards a Prologue to Dalit Studies,” in No Alphabet in Sight: New Dalit Writing from South India, ed. K. Satyanarayana and Susie Tharu (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2011), 616. 12 Sanal Mohan, “Caste and Accumulation of Capital,” in The Oxford India Anthology of Malayalam Dalit Writing, ed. M. Dasan, V. Prathibha, P. Pampirikunnu and C. S. Chandrika (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012), 274. 13 Nandini Gooptu and Barbara Harriss—White quoted in Indrajit Roy, “Class Coalitions and Social Protection: The Labouring Classes and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in Eastern India,” Journal of Development Studies (2020): 5, https://doi.org.10.1080/00220388.2020.1826446. 14 Valentina Romei and John Reed, “The Asian Century Is Set to Begin,” Financial Times, March 25, 2019, www.ft.com/content/520cb6f6-2958-11e9-a5abff8ef2b976c7; Kevin Gray and Barry Grills, “South-South Cooperation and the Rise of the Global South,” Third World Quarterly 37, no. 4 (2016): 557–574. 15 Thus, Partha Chatterjee writes that even when he accepts the problems within Subaltern Studies, he is not writing an elegy of it (Partha Chatterjee, “After Subaltern Studies,” Economic and Political Weekly 47, no. 35 (September 2012): 44–49). 16 Christopher Taylor, “Postcolonial Studies and the Specter of Misplaced Polemics against Postcolonial Theory: A Review of the Chibber Debate,” Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry 5, no. 2 (April 2018): 237. 17 Ibid., 246. According to him, Chibber can be termed as anthropologically prioritizing labor, which is seriously problematic in analyzing capitalism’s toxic effects on the environment (Ibid., 246). 18 Jason W. Moore, “The Capitalocene, Part I: On the Nature and Origins of our Ecological Crisis,” The Journal of Peasant Studies 44, no. 3 (2017): 596. 19 Taylor, “Postcolonial Studies,” 247. 20 Prerna Singh, as we have seen, moves away from class to focus on solidarity from an identity as a crucial variable for social welfare and development. So, she goes against conventional foci like the “strength of working-class mobilization” and “rise of social democratic parties” as variables for progressive social policy (Prerna Singh, “Subnationalism and Social Development: A Comparative Analysis of Indian States,” World Politics 67, no. 3 (July 2015): 506, 519). This, in my view, underplays the role of class in Kerala (which itself built on anti-caste movements) and its democratizing effects on struggles against other forms of exclusions. For, when Singh acknowledges class and its solidaristic nature, she argues it is because of its “embeddedness in a broader Malayali subnationalism” (“Subnationalism and Social Development,” 550). This ignores the immense confrontations that have taken place as a part of caste and class struggles, as well as the wider national-popular, rather than just a linguistic identity, that we have

425

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21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48

dealt with throughout this book. Of course, as Roy points out, class collaboration also plays an important role in the construction of a welfare state (“Class Coalitions,” 14). Sidney J. Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 78. Herring and Agarwala, “Introduction,” 334. Manali Desai, “The Relative Autonomy of Party Practices: A Counterfactual Analysis of Left Party Ascendancy in Kerala, India, 1934–40,” American Journal of Sociology 108, no. 3 (November 2002): 651. Herring and Agarwala, “Introduction,” 333–334. Bernstein, Class Dynamics, 116. Tarrow, Power in Movement, 76. Staffan Lindberg, “Farmers’ Movements and Cultural Nationalism in India: An Ambiguous Relationship,” Theory and Society 24, no. 6 (1995): 837–868. Namboodiripad, Sampoorna Kritikal, vol. 9, 1948 (Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha Publishers, 2007), 174, 291–292; Desai, “Relative Autonomy,” 641. Dietrich Rueschemeyer, “The Self-Organization of Society and Democratic Rule: Specifying the Relationship,” in Participation and Democracy: East and West, ed. Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Marilyn Reuschemeyer and Bjorn Wiitrock (Armonk: ME Sharpe, 1998), 14. Desai, “Relative Autonomy,” 645. Ibid., 647. Christophe Jaffrelot, “Class and Caste in the 2019 Indian Election: Why Have So Many Poor Started Voting for Modi?,” Studies in Indian Politics 7, no. 2 (2019): 1–12. David Mosse, “The Modernity of Caste and the Market Economy,” Modern Asian Studies 54, no. 4 (2020): 1225–1271. Jens Lerche, “Politics of the Poor: Agricultural Labourers and Political Transformations in Uttar Pradesh,” Journal of Peasant Studies 26, nos. 2–3 (1999): 225. Ibid., 226. Emmanuel Teitelbaum, “Was the Indian Labor Movement Ever Coopted?,” Critical Asian Studies 38, no. 4 (2006): 414–415. Rina Agarwala, Informal Labor, Formal Politics, and Dignified Discontent in India (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013). Roy, “Class Coalitions,” 2. Ibid., 3. See N. Jaoul, “Manju Devi’s Martyrdom: Marxist-Leninist Politics and the Rural Poor in Bihar,” Contributions to Indian Sociology 45, no. 3 (2011): 347–371. Lerche, “Politics of the Poor,” 203–204. Anirudh Krishna, “What Is Happening to Caste? A View from Some North Indian Villages,” Journal of Asian Studies 62, no. 4 (2003): 1171–1193. Ibid., 1179. Lerche, “Politics of the Poor,” 204. Anand Teltumbde, “FDI in Retail and Dalit Entrepreneurs,” Economic and Political Weekly 48, no. 3 (2013): 11. Lerche and Shah, “Conjugated Oppression,” 933. Christophe Jaffrelot and Gilles Verniers, “The Reconfiguration of India’s Political Elite: Profiling the 17th Lok Sabha,” Contemporary South Asia (2020): 1–13, https://doi.org/10.1080/09584935.2020.1765984. Jaffrelot, “Class and Caste.”

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CONCLUSION

49 Ravichandran Bathran, “The Many Omissions of a Concept: Discrimination amongst Scheduled Castes,” Economic and Political Weekly 51, no. 47 (November 2016). 50 Jaffrelot and Verniers, “India’s Political Elite,” 5. 51 Ibid., 11–12. 52 Tariq Thachil, Elite Parties, Poor Voters: How Social Services Win Votes in India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). 53 Ibid.; Jaffrelot, “Class and Caste,” 6, 9. 54 David Ludden, “Subalterns and Others in the Agrarian History of South Asia,” in Agrarian Studies: Synthetic Work at the Cutting Edge, ed. James C. Scott and Nina Bhatt (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), 212. 55 Luisa Steur, “Adivasis, Communists, and the Rise of Indigenism in Kerala,” Dialectical Anthropology 35 (2011): 64. 56 K. Ravi Raman, “Subaltern Modernity: Kerala, the Eastern Theatre of Resistance in the Global South,” Sociology 51, no. 1 (2017): 91–110. 57 Michael Levien, “Subalternists Scrutinized,” review of Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital, by Vivek Chibber, European Journal of Sociology 54, no. 3 (December 2013): 496. 58 Sudipta Kaviraj, “On State, Society and Discourse in India,” in Rethinking Third World Politics, ed. James Manor (London: Longman, 1991), 97. 59 Geeta Kapur, “Globalization and Culture: Navigating the Void,” in The Cultures of Globalization, ed. Fredric Jameson and Masao Miyoshi (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), 202. 60 Kaviraj, “On State.” 61 Jan Nederveen Pieterse and Bhikhu Parekh, “Shifting Imaginaries: Decolonization, Internal Decolonization, Postcoloniality,” in The Decolonization of Imagination: Culture, Knowledge and Power (London: Zed Books, 1995), 2. 62 Namboodiripad, Sampoorna Kritikal, vol. 9, 274, 194. This is similar to colonial/imperial interventions elsewhere like in China where the imposition of capitalism in 19th century went along with the shoring up of pre-capitalist social forms and the supporting of landlords, and in Africa where capitalism was introduced, but traditional hierarchies and indigenous ethnic-based power structures were buttressed at the same time (Benita Parry, “The Constraints of Chibber’s Criticism: A Review of Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital by Vivek Chibber,” Historical Materialism 25, no. 1 (2017): 190). 63 Namboodiripad, Sampoorna Kritikal, vol. 9, 151. 64 Kaviraj, “On State,” 96. 65 Ironically, many Communist leaders of the first generations were staunch Gandhians in their personal lives, adopting ascetism, etc., besides adopting Gandhian techniques of protest in politics. 66 Faisal Devji, “While Gandhi’s Thought Can at Times Seem Paradoxical, It Had an Extraordinary Resonance Among Indians and Indeed Many Others During His Own Lifetime,” South Asia @LSEBlog, October 16, 2017, https://blogs. lse.ac.uk/southasia/2017/10/16/while-gandhis-thought-can-at-times-seemparadoxical-it-had-an-extraordinary-resonance-among-indians-and-indeedmany-others-during-his-own-lifetime-dr-faisal-devji/. 67 Rajeev Bhargava, “Alternative Modernities,” (Unpublished Manuscript, 2001), 3. 68 Dews, Autonomy, 25. Check order. 69 Lucia Michelutti, The Vernacularisation of Democracy: Politics, Caste and Religion in India (New Delhi: Routledge, 2008), 3. See, for examples of studies of such processes in other locations, Lisa Wedeen, Peripheral Visions: Publics, Power, and Performance in Yemen (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2008).

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CONCLUSION

70 Partha Chatterjee, “Critique of Popular Culture,” Public Culture 20, no. 2 (2008): 325. 71 Nissim Mannathukkaren, “Enjoying Life: Consumption and Its Changing Meanings in Kerala, India,” (Unpublished manuscript, 2020); Pulapre Balakrishnan, “Bracing for the Status Quo in Kerala,” The Hindu, April 29, 2016, www. thehindu.com/opinion/lead/lead-article-by-pulapre-balakrishnan-on-keralapolitical-situation-bracing-for-the-status-quo-in-kerala/article8533354.ece. 72 V. H. Schmidt, “Modernity and Diversity: Reflections on the Controversy between Modernization Theory and Multiple Modernists,” Social Science Information 49, no. 4 (2010): 511–538. 73 Fredric Jameson quoted in Arif Dirlik, The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1997), 47. 74 Peter Dews, The Logic of Disintegration: Post-Structuralist Thought and the Claims of Critical Theory (London: Verso, 1987), 196. 75 Ronald Herring, “‘Fanaticism,’ Jacquerie, Movement, Party: Ratchet Politics and Peasant Mobilization in South India, 1836–1956,” (paper presented at the Power, Agrarian Structure and Peasant Mobilization in Modern India Symposium, Charlottesville, May 25, 1997, 29). 76 P. M. Ismail,* CPM leader, interview, December 2018. 77 Kaviraj, “On State,” 91. 78 Vivek Dhareshwar, “Postcolonial in the Postmodern: Or, the Political after Modernity,” Economic and Political Weekly 30, no. 30 (July 1995): PE-109. 79 J. Devika,“Kerala: People’s Planning Once Again, Please,” Kafila, May 20, 2020, https://kafila.online/2020/05/20/kerala-peoples-planning-once-again-please/. 80 Dews, Logic of Disintegration, 196. 81 Fredric Jameson, “Globalization and Political Strategy,” New Left Review 4 (July–August 2000): 68. 82 Daniel Vukovich, China and Orientalism: Western Knowledge Production and the PRC (London: Routledge, 2011). 83 The development of a consciousness that is able to link the local with the national and the global has been one of the results of communist activism. This is visible at the subaltern level even in the phase of de-radicalization (accounts of a laborer, head-load worker, and a marginal farmer, all male lower-level Communist activists, field notes, July 2004). But we can also see the increasing domination of the nationalist framework. One of the recent campaigns undertaken by CPM was about raising awareness about Captain Lakshmi Sahgal, freedom fighter and officer of the Indian National Army led by Subhas Chandra Bose, who joined the communist movement later (Pushpa, woman CPM activist, interview, August 2017). 84 Samir Amin, “Social Movements at the Periphery,” in New Social Movements in the South: Empowering the People, ed. Ponna Wignaraja (New Delhi: Vistaar, 1993), 96. 85 Rajni Kothari, “Masses, Classes and the State,” in New Social Movements in the South: Empowering the People, ed. Ponna Wignaraja (New Delhi: Vistaar, 1993), 62. 86 Stuart Corbridge, “Post-Marxism and Post-Colonialism: The Needs and Rights of Distant Strangers,” in Rethinking Social Development: Theory, Practice and Research, ed. David Booth (London: Longman, 1994), 97. 87 Ibid., 92. 88 Muralidharan, Secretary, CPM Muvattupuzha Area Committee, interview, August 2004; Rajan, national-level CPM leader (interview, March 2013).

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89 90 91 92 93

94

95 96

97 98 99 100 101 102

103 104

Before, even non-Communist and apolitical students would, for example, be influenced by the Communist student activism on American imperialism and “Third Worldism” (Stephen, newspaper editor, interview, May 2013). The remnants of universalism are visible even now: a lower-middle class Communist sympathizer, with 10th-grade education, speaks about socialist revolutions in Latin America and the need for liberation theology in Kerala (Ousep, interview, August 2017). The proscription of the use of any kind of force or violence to extend party domination would be a part and parcel of this politics. Aditya Nigam, “Logic of Failed Revolution,” Economic and Political Weekly 35, no. 5 (January 2000). Lerche and Shah, “Conjugated Oppression,” 930. Rajan, national-level CPM Leader (interview, March 2013). Richard Sandbrook,“Polanyi and Post-Neoliberalism in the Global South: Dilemmas of Re-Embedding the Economy,” New Political Economy 16, no. 4 (2011): 432, 438. According to Sandbrook, bureaucratic collectivism and state socialism have failed, and democratic socialism would find it difficult to compete in an overwhelmingly market economy controlled by corporations. Social democracy, on the other hand, is able to reconcile “egoism and material motivations of material behaviour” with “the altruism and solidarity of community” (Ibid., 438). For my critique of the endism of the social democracy narrative, see Nissim Mannathukkaren, “The Conjuncture of Late Socialism in Kerala: A Critique of the Narrative of Social Democracy,” in Development, Democracy and the State: Critiquing Kerala Model of Development, ed. K. Ravi Raman (Routledge: London, 2012). Praful Bidwai, The Phoenix Moment: Challenges Confronting the Indian Left (New Delhi: Harper Collins, 2015), 332–333. Ramón Grosfugel, “Decolonizing Post-Colonial Studies and Paradigms of Political-Economy: Transmodernity, Decolonial Thinking, and Global Coloniality,” Transmodernity: Journal of the Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World 1, no. 1 (2011): 9). Ibid. Ranajit Guha, “On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India,” in Selected Subaltern Studies, ed. Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 77. Vasant Kaiwar, The Postcolonial Orient: The Politics of Difference and the Project of Provincialising Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 22. Sudipta Kaviraj, “The Curious Persistence of Colonial Ideology,” Constellations 21, no. 2 (August 2014): 192. Joseph Tharamangalam, “Human Development as Transformative Practice,” Critical Asian Studies 42, no. 3 (2010): 94. Thus, the communist government, ironically, replicates the tactics of the bourgeois state and undertakes extrajudicial killings of “enemies of the state” like the Maoist revolutionaries outside the parliamentary system (The News Minute, “4 Maoists Killed in Kerala: Families Refuse to Accept Bodies, Seek Re-Postmortem,” October 31, 2019, www.thenewsminute.com/article/4-maoists-killed-keralafamilies-refuse-accept-bodies-seek-re-postmortem-111458). Devika, “People’s Planning.” Christopher Taylor quoted in Bill Crane, “On Vivek Chibber’s Critique of Postcolonial and Subaltern Studies,” That Faint Light, November 11, 2013, https://thatfaintlight.wordpress.com/2013/05/11/on-vivek-chibbers-critique-ofpostcolonial-and-subaltern-studies/.

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105 Dhritiman Chakraborty, “Gramci Is Alive! Hegemony and Subaltern Politics in Contemporary India,” Postcolonial Studies 20, no. 2 (2017): 266. The outside of capital would be the structures and practices which “do not lend themselves to the reproduction of the logic of capital” (Dipesh Chakrabarty, Habitations of Modernity: Essays in the Wake of Subaltern Studies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 71). 106 Ryan Rafaty, “Gayatri Spivak on Recent Criticisms of Postcolonial Theory,” Cambridge Review of International Affairs (blog), May 29, 2014, www.cria. polis.cam.ac.uk/blog/?p=97-. 107 Taylor, “Postcolonial Studies,” 248–249.

430

INDEX

“Aavi Vandi” 194 Abhinav Bharat Yuvak Sangh (ABYS) 92 abstention movement 99 Achuthanandan, V. S. 325 adivasis 3, 50, 56, 57, 60, 239, 282, 283, 302, 323, 356, 363, 366, 369, 374, 376–378, 380, 382, 390, 391, 410, 415, 419, 422, 423 agitprop 195, 234 Agrarian Relations bill 255 agrarian revolution 127 agricultural stagnation 303 Ahmad, Aijaz 33 Aikya Kerala (United Kerala) movement 5 Alam, Javeed 34, 157, 266, 356 Alleppey Coir Factory Workers’ Union 225 All Kerala Labour Conference 102 Ambedkar, B. R. 88, 156, 239, 370, 375 Amin, Samir 420 Amin, Shahid 106 Andalat 105 Anderson, Benedict 106, 139, 205 Anglo-American imperialism 194 anti-Constitution day 130 anti-quarrying activists 325 anti-repression day 122 Antony, P. J. 192 Appu, Madathil 123 Arnold, David 37 Asan, Kumaran 181–184, 201 Ashan, Pachu 105, 130, 259 Asian Development Bank (ADB) 296, 298 Atholi, Raghavan 377

autonomy 34; ambivalences and contradictions 200–202; bridging the divided 206–208; modernity and tradition 202–206; new sensibility 181–184; progressive literature movement (PLM) 184–196; questioning 176–219; renaissance 178–181; socialist realism 184–192; universal and particular 196–200 avant-garde movement 185 Ayyankali 180, 236, 368, 370, 411 Ayyappan, K. 179, 370 Azhikode, Sukumar 206 Bahl, Vinay 40 Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) 359 Balakrishna Pillai, Kesari A. 195, 197, 200 Balaram, N. E. 102, 138, 193 Bartolovich, Crystal 33 Basu, Subho 155 beedi trade union 149 beedi workers 149 Below Poverty Line 299 bhakti movement 182 Bhambra, Gurminder 28 Bhasi, Thoppil 132, 192, 201, 278, 360 Bhaskaran, P. 190, 191, 194 Bhattathiripad, V. T. 228 Bidwai, Praful 422 Bilgrami, Akeel 45 biopower 336 bourgeois consciousness 43 Brahminism 182, 184, 207, 235, 369, 370 Brahmin Namboodiris 179 Brahmins 146, 149, 236, 368

431

INDEX

Brennan, Timothy 42 British imperialism 146 bureaucratic collectivization 305 Cabral, Amilcar 143 capitalism 1, 6, 10, 12, 14, 23, 25, 28, 29, 31, 32, 37, 38, 39, 40, 59, 60, 85, 97, 139, 147, 177, 185, 201, 202, 222, 229, 262, 268, 269, 272, 296, 306, 325, 329, 331, 332, 336, 356, 366, 372, 388, 420–422 capitalist development 408 capitalist entrepreneurs 84 caste: communist theory and 368–374; discrimination 370; identity 44; material and symbolic exclusion 356–368; resistances 374–380 Chakrabarty, Anjan 268 Chakrabarty, Dipesh 24, 27–30, 40, 42, 43, 49, 59, 147, 202, 319, 325, 358, 375, 410, 423 Chandalabhikshuki 182 Chandu Menon, O. 181 Chatterjee, Partha 5, 25–28, 36, 42–44, 47, 49, 50, 59, 135, 140–142, 153, 177, 182, 185, 192, 196, 256, 257, 261, 263, 269, 270, 273, 295, 308, 312–321, 323, 324, 327, 329, 331–335, 374, 380, 381, 383, 386, 387, 418, 419 Chattopadhyay, Harindranath 187, 197 Chaudhuri, S. 323 Cherukad 192, 195 Chibber, Vivek 1, 22, 23, 28–30, 33, 36, 39, 41, 44, 46–48, 51, 60, 86, 141, 177, 242, 263, 268, 277, 279, 281, 283, 367, 375, 391, 392, 410, 414, 415, 420, 423, 424 Chirukandan 123 Christians 2, 4, 84, 99, 148, 149, 281, 408 Civil Disobedience Movement 86, 90, 102, 384 civil society 126, 140, 141, 145, 265, 307, 313, 314, 317–319, 323, 333 civil society organizations 4 class 2–4, 6, 7, 12, 13, 23–25, 27, 29, 30, 33, 34, 43, 44, 46, 48–50, 146–156, 204, 206, 209, 220, 225, 227, 228, 232, 256–260, 263, 268, 296, 297, 301, 323, 324, 326–328, 357–362, 408–410; consciousness 146, 150, 152, 373; reductionism 57

classicism 199 Coir Factory Workers’ Union 125, 134, 147 colonial capitalism 28 colonialism 54, 415 communism 2, 3, 22–76, 78, 122–175, 229, 253, 275, 279, 356, 361, 362, 382–386; class imagery 146–156; confronting the state 126–131; engaging the state 131–133; nationalpopular 141–146; “people’s” public sphere 133–141 communist developmentalism 279 communist intervention 4 communist movement 254 Communist Party 2, 53, 78, 84, 122, 124, 128, 130, 131, 139, 150, 188, 194, 233, 252, 254, 275, 308, 373 Communist Party of India (CPI) 101 Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM) 320, 321, 385 community, valorizing 42–46 Congress Socialist Party (CSP) 90, 91, 94, 97, 99, 101–103, 132 consciousness 42, 157, 373, 420 conservativism 4 Cooper, Frederick 89 Corbridge, Stuart 316 Cox, Robert 318, 320 Criminal Law Amendment Act 130 culturalism 241 culture 4, 242, 243 Dalits 2–3, 50, 57, 60, 88, 107, 140, 149, 179, 227, 237–239, 262, 276, 282, 283, 302, 322, 323, 356, 361–367, 369, 372, 374, 376, 378, 380–382, 385, 390, 391, 410, 422, 423 Damodaran, K. 94, 98, 124, 126, 133, 134, 136, 144, 154, 155, 184, 185, 228, 229, 389 decentralization 304 decolonial intervention 33 decolonization 177, 196, 201 democracy 4, 252, 256, 317, 335 democratization 303, 314, 317, 321, 324, 336, 377; of culture 207 depoliticization 312, 387 depression 81, 82, 85 de-radicalization 13, 53, 55, 278, 295, 299, 334, 356, 380, 383, 390,

432

INDEX

393, 404n254, 406n274, 419, 422, 428n83 Desai, A. R. 104 Desai, Manali 5, 91, 92, 107, 145, 148, 408, 411 despotic capitalism 268 Devadas, M. S. 193, 199, 200, 207 developmentalism 4 Devika, J. 18n30, 53, 72n251, 73n275, 174n261, 217n159, 248n114, 293n232, 339n43, 342n94, 346n176, 349n212, 350n230, 393n5, 398n96, 423 Dews, Peter 36 Dhareshwar, Vivek 40 Dirlik, Arif 40, 242, 336 disenchantment 386–392 Dramatic Performances Act 226, 229 Duravastha 201 Eagleton, Terry 203, 204 economy 79–86; material conditions 301–303 Elamkulam Kunjan Pillai 234 electoral communism 279 elite 34–36 embourgeoisement 263, 296, 301, 379, 422 Engels, Friedrich 371 English Novel Mathiriyilulla Oru Katha 181 Enippadikal 187 epistemic Eurocentrism 280 epistemological critique 50–51 Esthose, P. P. 130, 142 EuroAmerica 40 eurocentrism 27, 33, 38, 40 Evans, F. B. 82 evolutionism 31–33 excess land agitation 260 extra-rental levies 96 Ezhavas 2, 3, 84, 89, 99, 148, 149, 178, 180, 183, 360, 362, 363, 366, 371, 390 Fanon, Frantz 224 feudalism 199, 280, 372, 378 feudal landlordism 301, 368, 418 feudal levies 125 Forgacs, David 143 Foucault, Michel 37 fragments 30–31

Fraser, Nancy 95, 271, 335 Fucik, Julis 383 Fung, Archon 334 Gandhi, Mahatma 41, 86, 91, 100, 106, 416, 417 Gandhian nationalism 101; failure of 86–90 Ganesh, K. N. 201 George, K. C. 151 global capitalism 329, 332 Global South 5, 34, 261, 268, 300, 312, 315, 318, 331, 333, 335, 414, 415, 417, 423 Gopalakrishnan, P. K. 202 Gopalan, A. K. 87, 90, 97, 98, 102, 103, 106, 146, 228, 256, 257, 259, 260, 264, 360 Gopalan, K. P. R. 122, 129, 134 Gough, Kathleen 149, 308 Govindan Nair, Edassery 189, 192, 233 Govinda Pillai, P. 184, 361, 387 Gramsci, Antonio 23, 24, 35, 36, 49, 58, 86, 97, 99, 126, 136, 137, 141, 143, 154, 188, 189, 199, 240, 241, 251, 253, 278, 300, 301, 306, 317 Green Revolution 265 Grosfugel, Ramón 41, 423 Guha, Ramachandra 58 Guha, Ranajit 22, 23, 28, 33, 42, 49, 86, 99, 142, 151, 423 Guru, Sree Narayana 180, 362, 370, 371, 411 Gurukkal, Rajan 208 Guruvayur satyagraha 90 Hall, Stuart 38 Harijan (untouchable Dalit castes) movement 87 Harikrishnan, S. 140 Harilal, K.N. 330 Harindranath Chattopadhyay 186 Harris, V. C. 201 Harrison, Selig 53 Harvey, D. 39 Hegel, G.W.F. 368 hegemonic struggles 57 Hellenism 371 Heller, A. 282, 306, 323, 332 Heller, Patrick 5, 251, 334 Herring, Ronald 58, 82, 307 Hindus 154, 391

433

INDEX

historical materialism 49 Hobsbawm, Eric 24 Horkheimer 368 Hugo, Victor 198 Human Development Index (HDI) 365 hyper-rationalism 60, 200, 223, 304 imperialism 146 inclusive nationalism 101–106 Indian Criminal Law Amendment Act 131 Indigenous people 3, 322, 377, 378 Indulekha 181 institutional fetishism 334 institutionalization 295 insurgent citizenship 5 IPTA (Indian People’s Theater Association) 231 Isaac, Thomas 302, 316 Ismail, P. M. 134, 149, 153 Jacob, K. T. 142 Jameson, Fredric 203 Janu, C. K. 376 Japanese fascism 124 Jeevat Sahityavum Soundarya Bhodhavum 185 Jeffrey, Robin 85, 135, 275 Joshi, Chitra 43, 49 Joshi, P. C. 49, 123, 124 Kaiwar, Vasant 42, 43 Kalb, Don 409 Kanara, S. 97 Kannadi 184 Kannan, C. 228 Kappikad, Sunny 378 Kapur, Geeta 415 Karuppan, Pandit 181 Kaviraj, Sudipta 55 Kavumbayi struggle 127 Kayyur 123 Kelappan, K. 88 Kelly, Philip 329 Kendra Kala Samithy 231 Kerala Agrarian Relations Bill (KARB) 255, 257–259 Kerala Agricultural Workers’ Act (KAWA) 263–265, 276, 281, 358 Kerala Brahmins 2 Kerala Karshaka Thozhilali Union (KSKTU) 264

Kerala Land Reforms Act 258 Kerala People’s Arts Club (KPAC) 225, 230–232, 238 Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee 91 Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishath (KSSP) 319, 320, 328 Kerala Socialist Party 145 Kerala welfarism 4 Keraleeyan, K. A. 105, 106, 220 Kesavadev, P. 184, 186, 187, 201 Khilafat-Non-Cooperation Movement 86 Kluge, Alexander 140 Kochu, K. K. 239 Kolacheri Peasant Union 221 Krishna Pillai, P. 90, 94, 98, 102, 103, 106, 134, 135, 138, 144, 147, 153, 155, 157, 237, 360 Kudiyan Sangham 82 Kudiyozhikkal 190 Kunjan, K. K. 102 Kunju, Aliyar 149 “Kurekkoodi” 190 Kurup, G. Shankara 192, 197, 262 Kurup, K. K. N. 110n59, 111n66, 124, 159n10, 167n135, 213n46, 215n108, 243n11, 245n43 Kurup, O. N. V. 191, 198, 232 Kurup, Shankara 197 labor quiescence 296 laissez-faire 91 landlordism 303, 358; abolition of 261–263 Land Reform Act 307, 380 land-reform provisions 307 land reforms 251–294, 365; arduous road to 255–261; against governmentality 265–268; prelude to 253–255 Land Reforms Act Burning Day 257 Lawrence, M. M. 90, 113n124, 158n8, 164n82, 174n254, 286n80, 383 Lazarus, Neil 22 liberation theory 31 Lindberg, Staffan 411 linguistic identity 177 linguistic subnationalism 5 lively literature movement 186 Luddism 4 Lukose, Ritty 16n12, 18n37, 73n285, 74n303, 174n250, 211n19, 358, 362, 394n14

434

INDEX

Madhavan, N. K. 384 Majumder, Auritro 155 Makkar, P. M. 384 Malabar 80–84, 98 Malabar Aided Elementary Teachers’ Union 136 Malabar Special Police 129 Malabar Tenancy Act 83, 97, 254 Malabar Tenancy Committee 83 Malayalam language 227 Malayali subnationalism 53 Mappila rebellion 154, 182, 183, 223 Marx, K. 25, 59, 368, 424 Marxism 39, 58–60, 77, 90, 203, 369, 383, 424 Marxism–Leninism 139, 208 Marxist culturalism 203 Marxist historiography 23 Marxist scholarship 204 Mary, P. T. 90 Mathrubhumi 92 Mecca-Moscow axis 152 Menon, Dilip 3, 52, 81, 87, 101, 104, 151, 223, 278 Menon, Vallathol Narayana 181, 184, 203 Michelutti, Lucia 417 Mignolo, Walter D. 41, 370 modernity 26–28, 38, 40, 55, 382, 414–417 modernization paradigm 32 modernization theories 32 Mohan, Sanal 70n190, 73n270, 79, 212n26, 376, 395n52 Mohana Kumar, S. 302 monolithic capitalism 332 Moore, Barrington Jr. 2, 157, 282 moral economy 92–94, 238, 272 Muhammad, K. T. 192 Muhammed, P. 279 Munayankunnu struggle 129 Mundassery, Joseph 193 Muslim League 145 Muslims 2, 4, 79, 99, 148, 149, 281, 391, 408 Muvattupuzha 15, 100, 130, 132–134, 142, 149, 153, 164n91, 170n218, 225, 226, 259, 391 Nairs 2, 99, 146, 149, 179, 281, 360, 372 Nair Service Society (NSS) 151, 256

Namboodiripad, E. M. S. 58, 79, 85, 89–91, 93, 97, 100–104, 122, 132, 133, 146, 154, 179, 180, 183, 185, 188, 193, 196, 197, 203–209, 227, 230, 233–236, 240, 304–306, 327, 361, 368–372 Namboodiris 2, 105, 228, 360, 368 Namboothiri, K. P. G. 195 Nambudiris 79 Narayanan Nair, P. 97 Narayana Pillai, T. K. 130 nascent consciousness 147 nationalism 42, 88, 89, 99, 108, 123, 183; redeeming of 41–42 national liberation 86, 101 Nayanar, E. K. 87, 95, 136 Nayars 79, 276 Negt, Oscar 140 Nehru, Jawaharlal 103 Neighborhood Groups (NHGs) 326 neoliberal globalization 330 neoliberalism 297 new language 94–96 Nigam, Aditya 57, 356, 369, 372, 421 Nilsen, Alf 376 objectivity 32 October Revolution 180 “Odakuzhalum Lathiyum” 190 Odayil Ninnu 187 O’Hanlon, Rosalind 51 Omvedt, Gail 263 Oommen, T. K. 266 oppression 271 Orientalism 420 Osella, Caroline 276, 362 Osella, Filippo 276, 362 Other Backward Classes (OBCs) 2, 414 Paige, Jeffrey 252, 278 Pandey, Gyan 24 Pandey, Gyanendra 23, 93 Pandian, M. S. S. 3 Panglossian optimism 77 “Panimudakkam” 189 Parameshwaran, M. P. 328 Parameswara Iyer, Ulloor 181, 190 Parayas 187, 361 Parry, Benita 11, 31, 89, 367, 415 participatory institutions 319 party-society 141 passive revolution 86, 269–271

435

INDEX

Pattabakki 184, 228 Paul, M. P. 195, 207 peasant movement 78 People’s Plan campaign 295, 310–311; beyond binaries 319–324; new horizons 324–331; new state 331–335 personal cultivation 262 political activism 178 political resistance 47 political sociability 295 political society 300, 311–319 political strike 99 political subject: peasant as 24–26 popular culture 220–250; caste question, absence 238–240; de-sanskritization 234–236; new aesthetic 220–227; structural shift 236–238; theater movement 227–234 postcolonial liberation 31 postcolonial misery 5, 60, 417–424 postcolonial theory 11, 22–76, 143, 196, 317–319, 331, 379, 381, 408, 415–417, 419; universal and particular 46–48 poststructuralism 29 Pottekad, D. M. 195 poverty 81, 378 Prabhatham 92, 103, 105, 117n186, 125, 137, 138, 220 Praja Socialist Party 256 Prakash, Gyan 29 Pramod, Maya 367 primitive dictatorial ways 97 primordialism 177 Prison Notebooks, The 58 Priyamol, M. S. 94 progressive literature movement (PLM) 184–197, 201, 202, 205–207, 209, 210, 220, 229, 234, 238, 357 progressive plays 238 Pulayas 187 “Puthan Kalavum Arivalum” 189 “Puthiya Koothukal” 191 Puthupally Raghavan 90 radicalism 4 Rai Mehta Committee 305 Raj, Rekha 360 Rajeevan, B. 193 Ramachandran, T. K. 139 Raman, Ravi 379 Ramasamy, E. V. 203, 235, 371

Ramaswamy Aiyar, C. P. 99 Ramavarma, Vayalar 191, 231 Rammohan 358 Randidangazhi 187, 239 “Randu Kannukal” 190 Raveendran, P.P. 200 Rayarappan, K.P. 139 recognition 251–294 redistribution 251–294 reformism 143 religious consciousness 122 republican citizenship 316 Reuschemeyer, Dietrich 412 revolutionary nationalism 224 “revolutionary” party 131 romanticism 202 Roosa, John 144 Said, Edward W. 33 Salt Law 90 Sandbrook, Richard 4 Sankara, Thomas 242 Saraswativijayam 181, 239 Sarkar, Sumit 30, 35, 36, 42, 44, 45, 410 Satchidanandan, K. 184, 185 Sathyamurthy, T. V. 100 Scott, David 33, 50, 51, 156 Scott, James 272, 273, 411 Second World War 83, 85, 100, 101, 144, 225 Self-Help Groups (SHGs) 326 sexuality 199 Shekhar, N. C. 138 Shudras 2 Singh, Bhagat 92, 383 Singh, Prerna 5, 53, 146, 280, 365 Sinha, Subir 312 social citizenship 3, 303 social democracy 4, 298, 300 social injustice 271 social interaction 411 socialism 56, 108; stirrings of 90–92 socialist beginnings 77–121 socialist leadership 96 socialist realism 184–192, 202 social reforms 148 social transformation 51–61, 157, 281, 337 Specter of Capital 410 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty 23, 34–36, 41, 44, 47, 49, 60

436

INDEX

Sreekumar, T. T. 141, 179, 370 Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam (SNDP) 148–150, 152, 178, 180, 182, 362, 371 Sree Narayana movement 183 Stalinism 57 Stalinized framework 4 State Domestic Product (SDP) growth rate 302 Steur, Luisa 57, 74n309, 174n259, 293n230, 379, 394n31 stunted capitalism 28–29 subaltern 22–76, 85, 93, 99, 128, 131, 133, 140, 142, 149, 153, 176, 180, 189, 191, 192, 202, 209, 224, 234, 240, 252, 265, 267, 270, 314, 329, 376, 380, 414, 419 subalternity 8, 9, 23, 32, 34, 35, 36, 37, 41, 49, 62n17, 66n98, 67n113, 154, 252, 273, 378, 380, 410 Subaltern Studies 22–76, 242; communism and social transformation 51–61; context of 22–23; epistemological critique 50–51; linguistic and cultural turn 36–40; working class, curious case 48–50 Subrahmanyam, Sanjay 28 Subramanian Thirumumpu 152 Sugathan, R. 105, 125 Sukumaran, Kallara 376 Sun Yat Sen 384 Swamikal, Vaikuntam 178 Syrian Christians 2 Tagore, Rabindranath 186 Taluk Karshaka Sangham conference 96 Tarrow, Sidney J. 411 taxes 80 Taylor, Charles 95 Taylor, Christopher 30, 31, 33, 36, 46 Thakazhi 202, 239 Thalasseri Jagannatha Temple festival 222 Thalayodu 187

Tharamangalam, Joseph 143 Thirumumbu, T. S. 222 Thomas, C. J. 188, 228 Thomas, T. V. 125 Thompson, E. P. 24, 203 Thorner, Daniel 79 Thottiyude Makan 187 Three Democratic Principles 384 Thiyyas 2, 86, 112n100, 147, 148, 152, 173n242, 281, 360, 370, 371 Tornquist, Olle 303, 304 trade unionism 297 transformation 77 Travancore Labor Association 147, 149 Trotsky, Leon 25 Ulakka 187 unemployment rates 298 Unger, Roberto 334 untouchable castes 2 valorization 367 Vanaik, Achin 387 vanguardism. 143 Vasu, Ayinoor 152 “Vayalar Garjikkunnu” 191 Vayalar rebellion 191 Vijayasuryan, C. K. 366 violence 364 Washbrook, David 51 West Bengal 3 Western modernity 140, 177 Whitehead, Judith 300, 318 workers’ act 251–294 workers’ rights 263–265 workers’ strike 101 working-class movement 1 World Bank 296, 299, 312 World capitalist development 25 Wright, Erik Olin 334 Yadu, C. R. 366 Zook, Darren C. 230

437