‘The green pastures and still waters’ in Malayalam cinema: Reflections on environmental legacies, Christianity, and minority politics

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe representational politics of Malayalam cinema post-1990s establish a normative Christian subjectivity predicated on cultural ecology and community identity. This is also a reiteration of the caste-community underpinnings of land politics and regionalism that have bearing on the modernity experiences of Kerala. The political and cultural premises within which Malayalam cinema construct this new mode of articulating the religious self is examined through select films produced in the period. This paper argues that this Green politics of Malayalam cinema is pivotal in structuring a legitimate Christian subjectivity; specifically the Syrian Christian self, in a way as to compliment the dominant imaginations of region, religiosity, and modernity. This discourse on the Christian interventions in the cultural public sphere also points to the contested genealogies of Christianities and the minority question in contemporary Kerala.