Blasphemy Rewired: Communal Configurations of the Public Domain in Kerala

Abstract

French

From the punctuated invocations of legal clauses through the 20th and 21st centuries, to the post-2000 vilifications, attacks or murders of/on painters, scholars, students and social activists, allegations of blasphemy have often problematized public spheres across India. In this broad backdrop, nuanced tendencies have emerged (and continue to emerge) in Kerala, a state with a strong history of social reforms and political interventions on institutional networks of religion. The paper will focus on two trajectories: the narrative exclusions and communal vocalizations in select public performances as well as emergent institutional hegemonies that institute parallel orders in contemporary contexts of neoliberal state building.

Keywords

blasphemy public space offense hegemony public performance neoliberal state

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Aiya

(1906) The Travancore State Manual (3 volumes). Trivandrum: Travancore Government Press.

Asad

(2003) Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Baudrillard

(1995) Simulacra and Simulation. Trans. Glaser

Sheila Faria

. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

Beck

(1992) Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage.

Bose

(2015) (Re)construction of “the Social” for making a modern Kerala: Reflections on Narayana Guru’s social philosophy. In: Bose

Varughese

(eds) Kerala Modernity: Ideas, Spaces and Practices in Transition. Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan, pp. 59–74.

Comaroff

(2012) Reflections on the rise of Lega theology: Law and religion in the twenty first century. In: Kapferer

Telle

Eriksen

(eds) Contemporary Religiosities: Emergent Socialities and the Post-Nation-State. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, ch. 11.

Eco

(1986) Faith in Fakes: Travels in Hyperreality. London: Random House.

Elayidom

(2013) Veendeduppukal: Marxisavum Aadhunikathavimarshanavum (in Malayalam) . Trissur: Kerala Shastra Sahitya Parishad.

Elias

(1994) The Civilising Process. Oxford: Blackwell.

10.

Freitag

(1989) Collective Action and Community: Public Arenas and the Emergence of Communalism in North India. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

11.

Gurukkal

PMR

(1999) Historical Antecedents. In: Cherian

(ed.) Perspectives on Kerala History: The Second Millennium. Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala Council for Historical Research.

12.

Habermas

(1989) The public sphere: An encyclopedia article. In: Bronner

Kellner

(eds) Critical Theory and Society: A reader. New York and London: Routledge.

13.

Jaffrelot

(1999) The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics: 1925 to the 1990s. New Delhi: Penguin India.

14.

Jaffrelot

(2002) India’s Silent Revolution: The Rise of the Lower Castes in North India. New Delhi: Permanent Black.

15.

Jeffrey

(1987) Governments and culture: How women made Kerala literate. Pacific Affairs 60(3): 447–472.

16.

Kannan

(1988) Of Rural Proletarian Struggles: Mobilization and Organization of Rural Workers in South-West India. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

17.

Latour

(2005) Re-assembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. New York: Oxford University Press.

18.

Liang

(2016) Sedition and the Status of Subversive Speech in India. The Wire. Available at: http://thewire.in/21547/sedition-and-the-status-of-subversive-speech-in-india/ (accessed 27 November 2016).

19.

Lukose

(2006) Re(casting) the secular: Religion and education in Kerala. Social Analysis 50(3): 38–60.

20.

Mahadevan

(2016) Competition does not improve quality. The Hindu. Available at: http://www.thehindu.com/features/education/college-and-university/economist-prabhat-patnaik-on-setting-up-private-universities-in-kerala/article7952478.ece (accessed 1 December 2016).

21.

Mahaprashasta

Trivedi

(2016) In defence of JNU. Frontline, 18 March. Available at: http://www.frontline.in/cover-story/in-defence-of-jnu/article8298534.ece (accessed 27 November 2016).

22.

Menon

(1994) Caste, Nationalism, and Communism in South India: Malabar 1900–1948. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

23.

Mohan

(1999) Growth of social reform movements in Kerala. In: Cherian

(ed.) Perspectives on Kerala History: The Second Millennium. Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala Council for Historical Research, pp. 456–485.

24.

Namboothiri

(1999) Caste and social change in colonial Kerala. In: Cherian

(ed.) Perspectives on Kerala History: The Second Millennium. Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala Council for Historical Research, pp. 426–455.

25.

Panikkar

(1960) A History of Kerala, 1498–1801. Annamalai University historical series, 15. Annamalainagar: Annamalai University Press.

26.

Pattathanam

(1985) Matha Amritanandamayi: Divya Kathakalum Yatharthyavum (Matha Amritanandamayi: Sacred Stories and Realities), revised edn. Kollam, Kerala: Mass Publication.

27.

Ramachandran

(2013) Oru Mithyayude Bhavi: Essays on Fascism (in Malayalam). Calicut: Raspberry Books.

28.

Sreedhar

(2015) Attukal Pongala: Myth and modernity in a ritualistic space. In: Bose

Varughese

(eds) Kerala Modernity: Ideas, Spaces, and Practices in Transition. Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan, pp. 146–162.

29.

Srinivas

(2004) Landscapes of Urban Memory: The Sacred and the Civic in India’s High-Tech City. Hyderabad: Orient Longman.

30.

Turner

(1969) The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago, IL: Aldine.

31.

Turner

(1974) Dramas, Fields and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society. London: Cornell University Press.

32.

Varughese

Narayanan

(eds) (2015) Swayambharana College, Sankalpam, Yadharthyam (in Malayalam) . Kottayam, Kerala: Sahitya Pravarthaka Co-operative Society.

33.

Venkatesan

(2016) Sedition vs free speech. Frontline, 18 March. Available at: http://www.frontline.in/cover-story/sedition-vs-free-speech/article8299351.ece (accessed 27 November 2016).

34.

Visvanathan

(1993) The Christians of Kerala. Delhi: Oxford University Press.