To Survive or To Flourish? Minority Rights and Syrian Christian Community Assertions in Twentieth-century Travancore/Kerala

Abstract

The arrival of modernity not only constituted communities but also impelled them in competition against each other in Kerala. Modern politics of the state as a result is inextricably linked with intense community politics. The success of community politics for rights and resources varied across communities, so also did strategies of assertion. This article will focus on different instances of community assertions by the Syrian Christians in twentieth-century Travancore/Kerala. The confrontation of the community with the ‘Hindu state’ and the then Dewan in the 1930s, the ‘Liberation Struggle’ against the Communists during late 1950s and the anti-eviction movements of the 1960s testifies its lack of primordial adherences and openness to heterogeneous strategies as required by different historical circumstances. It moves freely from secular to non-secular, minoritarian to majoritarian and lawful to unlawful, with claims to a greater citizenship. The hegemonic developmentalist ideology to which the community subscribes, along with reiteration of a righteous and industrious citizen, ensured the transformation of the ‘unlawful’ into ‘lawful’. Using even state secularism as a route of sectarianism, Syrian Christian politics resorted to no permanent self-representation, resulting in unfixed community constellations. The article also suggests that the recent recourse of the community to minority rights may hint at an inherent crisis and a loss of moral weight it possessed earlier.