Kerala and its Communists: Rethinking Democracy, Violence, and the Political

My research centres on the communist movement in Kerala and its engagement with democratic politics over several decades in the second half of the 20th century after India’s independence. Specific questions that the project seeks to pose at this point are a) how to comprehend the ‘ambiguous legacies’ of emancipation and violence of the communist movement in Kerala, b) how to account for the entrenchment of communist politics in the socio-cultural structures of Kerala and c) how to understand the violent potentials of everyday democratic practice. Through an ethnography of everyday politics of the communists, the project seeks to revisit the notions of ‘democratic politics’ and ‘the political’ and attempts to grapple with the ‘actualities’ of democratic practice in the post-colonial context.