Glanced at through a telescope from Lutyens’ Delhi, the tiny planet of Kerala can trigger bouts of incomprehension. An outlier in spatial terms, it enacts that distance from the mainland every which way—including those cussed indices of political behaviour. Its slim corpus of 20 seats amounts to a piffling 3.7 per cent of the Lok Sabha, but they crackle with too much democracy. Indeed, if not for recalcitrant Tamil Nadu next door, Kerala might seem to comport itself with all the swag of that single Gaulish village which stood up to the Romans. So a sliver or three of that land carries as much symbolic weight as it did when, in mythic history, Vamana sought the exact same thing from King Mahabali. Those with a perceptive eye for nuance may remember: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 2019 victory speech had made it plain that a certain absence rankled, explicitly marking Kerala as a remaining frontier. The party’s eagerness to break a couple of coconuts here has only become keener since—and the fight scrappier. On April 5, controversially enough, Doordarshan telecast The Kerala Story. A tacky piece of cinematic agit-prop with caricatured villainy and oodles of reproach may seem an odd way to woo a people, but it did register the state’s prickly presence in the national consciousness. Kerala was on someone’s mind.
