Polyphonic Left, Proxy Islamophobia And Communal Engineering In Kerala

The recent political and ideological developments in the Kerala Left under the CPI (M) reveal some alarming trends, particularly as the state heads toward an Assembly election in the coming months this year. The political and social climate of the state is becoming increasingly vulnerable, marked by sustained communalisation, othering, Islamophobia, and a significant departure from the ideological and electoral positioning of the Left alliances under the leadership of Pinarayi Vijayan, the chief minister of the state.

In the wake of the massive setback the Left alliance suffered in the recently concluded local body elections, and with the forthcoming Assembly elections turning into a ‘do or vanish’ battle for the CPI(M), one can sense a palpable erosion of the progressive and secular elements in Left discourse. The discourse is increasingly dominated by themes such as ‘belief’ and ‘rituals’, while its public platforms are crowded with known divisive and communal figures with proven records.

 Local body setback

With a thumping electoral comeback of the UDF under the Congress in the local body elections, winning a majority of gram panchayats and municipalities, there is a palpable sense among the Left parties that securing a third consecutive term in the coming assembly elections under Pinarayi Vijayan will be a difficult task. This is because there is a growing perception that the election verdict reflects not merely electoral arithmetic but a significant erosion of political trust among minorities-Muslims and Christians-particularly toward the CPI(M). Together, voters from these minority communities constitute about 48 percent votes in Kerala.

Contrary to the manufactured images and TRP-driven news channels that thrive on polemics and spectacle, the elections revealed the limits of the narrative of an unending popular affection for the current government. In a society shaped by middle-class consciousness, the Bihar-style last-minute cash distribution undertaken by the government under the Pinarayi Vijayan just before the local body elections, along with welfare symbolism and performative governance, failed to override lived political experience, social fear and the communitarian anxieties of religious minorities. The secular concerns of non-partisan voters also reflected in the results. Similarly, the anxieties of Kerala’s middle classes and ordinary citizens-around policing, healthcare, education, the increasing communal divide, election-driven communal engineering, and everyday governance—run far deeper than the left leadership understands.

In Kerala, people across parties continue to question administrative failure in three domains that touch their daily life most directly: policing, public health, and higher education. Public unease with the functioning of the Home Department under Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan is now widespread. The growing perception of authoritarian policing has eroded the moral authority once claimed by the Left. Perhaps most damaging is the ecosystem of self-assurance surrounding the ruling front in the state; as party-aligned cyber ‘experts’, regional public intellectuals, and academics have reduced themselves to partisan loyalists and produce an echo chamber of misplaced confidence within the left circle. Rather than serving as critical, and correctional interlocutors, they function as ideological insulation, trapping the Left in a self-referential political enclosure.

Left Polyphony

“The PM SHREE agreement between Kerala and the Centre should be revoked” (Binoy Vishwam, CPI General Secretary, October 2025); “We will protect believers at Sabarimala” (Pinarayi Vijayan, various speeches in 2025).

The first statement came from the general secretary of the CPI, who publicly opposed the controversial agreement signed between the state government and the Centre. What shocked the people of Kerala was the fact of the Left’s relentless criticism of the programme and secret handshake with the Centre without informing any ministers or leaders from its alliances. The second came from the Chief Minister himself, who had once taken a firm stand in implementing the Supreme Court verdict on women’s entry into the Sabarimala temple, but now projects himself as the protector of long-standing rituals and prohibitions. These are only few examples from a wagonful of polyphonic and self-contradictory statements emerging from the CPI(M)-led LDF alliance in the state of Kerala in the wake of next assembly elections.

I use the term “Left polyphony” to describe the LDF’s strategic ability to produce multiple expressions on the same issues, articulated by different leaders from various organisations under its larger umbrella, directing at different demographic groups whose expectations shift over time.

Over the past few months, one can witness an aggressive, polyphonic Left in Kerala, making determined efforts to mobilise OBC communities such as the Izhavas under the SNDP, as well as upper-caste groups like the Nairs under the NSS, with the larger aim of engineering a majoritarian consolidation. In the past, Pinarayi Vijayan had described leaders of these organisations, such as Vellapalli Natesan and Sukumaran Nair, as proponents of communalism working against the idea of a progressive Kerala.  This polyphonic turn is the outcome of the massive erosion of support the Left received from minority communities such as Muslims and Christians in the recently concluded local body elections. Such polyphonic narratives also emerged as a major strategy for the left, thinking that palpable anti-incumbency in the state cannot be controlled by the usual language of secular politics, progressive ideology, and minority justice.

The left’s polyphonic narratives emerged as an established political strategy following the highly controversial interview of Pinarayi Vijayan in The Hindu, in which he described Muslim majority Malappuram district as a hub of smuggling and criminal activity in the state. This interview reinforced the long-standing allegations of a systematic attempt to “otherise” Malappuram for being the only Muslim-majority district in Kerala. Vijayan’s statements, his later retraction, and the denial of certain sections of the interview, saying they were included by the PR agency without his knowledge, triggered widespread criticism across the social and political sections. However, many believe that it was a clinical setting of a polyphonic field of competing narratives, counter-claims, and ideological repositioning to gather support from the voters from the majority community.

Proxy-Islamophobia

Contemporary Islamophobia increasingly operates through discursive displacement by avoiding direct references to Islam or Muslims while targeting Islamic organisations, symbols, metaphors, analogies, or institutional signifiers as proxies. This proxy Islamophobia, as I term it, functions through coded language that reframes prejudice as concern over governance, security, or legality, thereby securing moral legitimacy within liberal public discourse. By shifting hostility from religious subjects to organisational or analogical abstractions, Islamophobia becomes normalised, deniable, socially acceptable, and politically portable. This mode of articulation enables communal affect to circulate without overt communal speech, transforming anti-Muslim sentiment into an apparently secular critique while preserving its exclusionary logic.

Three recent statements by senior leaders of the CPI(M)party clearly reveal the Left’s operational logic of proxy-Islamophobia in Kerala. In a highly controversial remark, A.K. Balan, a former minister and a prominent OBC face of the party in the state, claimed that if the Congress-led UDF were to return to power, it would be Jamaat-e-Islami that would effectively control the Home Ministry. Absurd at best, the statement invoked an Islamist organisation with only a microscopic presence in the state: one that has, on several occasions, made electoral statements in support of the Left-as a discursive proxy to target Muslims as such, as widely noted by political observers. Following intense criticism from civil society, Balan was compelled to retract his remarks. Within days, Saji Cheriyan - who had earlier resigned from the ministry for ridiculing the Constitution of India - issued another irreparable proxy-Islamophobic statement, urging the public “to look at Malappuram and Kasaragod and see the names of the victorious UDF candidates.”

By insinuating about the Muslim-majority character of Malappuram and the significant Muslim presence in Kasaragod, Cheriyan conspicuously remained silent about electoral outcomes in districts such as Kannur and Kottayam, where Christians constitute dominant voting blocs. Even though the Muslim League, a UDF ally, fielded a substantial number of non-Muslim candidates in Malappuram, Cheriyan mobilised one of the most historically otherised regions in the country as a symbolic site for the reproduction of proxy Islamophobia. He apologised and retracted the statement after the intended political outcome had likely been achieved. 

In a further layer of proxy deployment, the party has increasingly relied on Vellapalli Natesan, the highly motivated and communally charged General Secretary of the Sree Narayana Guru Dharma Paripalana Sangam(SNDP). Long known for his sustained anti-Muslim and anti-Christian rhetoric, and implicated in several civil and criminal cases, Natesan has simultaneously projected allegiance to both Narendra Modi and Pinarayi Vijayan, a contradiction the CPI (M) has normalised without any discomfort. While he founded a political party and handed its leadership to his son to align with the NDA at the national level, in Kerala he has functioned as one of the most vocal supporters of the CPI(M) during Assembly elections, even while campaigning for NDA candidates in earlier parliamentary contests in the recent past.

Beyond Natesan’s opportunistic political positioning, his record includes more than 60 open communal statements within a single year, even as Pinarayi Vijayan publicly described him as an exemplary follower of Sree Narayana Guru. There is a widely shared perception in the state that the CPI(M) strategically deploys Natesan to articulate sentiments the party cannot express directly, using him as a proxy voice through which both coded and overt Islamophobia are circulated in the public sphere to consolidate majoritarian electoral consolidation.                               

 Can the Left remain Left?

Instead of proceeding along a misguided and irreparably dangerous path for the Left itself, political observers believe there is still time for it to reclaim the trust of minorities, particularly Muslims in the state.

An immediate end to proxy Islamophobia and a tangible distancing from overtly communal leaders of caste organisations would be the first steps toward the difficult task of winning back that trust, without which an electoral victory in the state this time would be impossible. In a state where everyone has friends from different communities and religions, sustained proxy minorityphobia will find few takers among young voters, who do not subscribe to the frustration cum fear driven statements of past: their-prime politicians and community leaders who have little to offer for the future, as they demonstrate every day.

Regardless of religion, a new generation of voters in Kerala — globally oriented yet locally grounded — will vote for the basic rights to friendship, mobility, education, health, food, and a life lived without fear. A Left devoid of representation, plural living, integrated sociality, and respect for democratic communitarian collectives will fail to engage these voters, whose worldviews are shaped by translocal aspirations and lived experiences in a technology-driven world.

P. K. Yasser Arafath is a historian and writer who engages with contemporary social and political issues. A Fulbright Scholar, he teaches at the University of Delhi.

Views expressed are personal