Abstract
This article combines political analysis with ethnographic fieldwork to theorise Communist party’s construction of political allegiance and their persistence of power in the democratic context at a local village level in the state of Kerala in India. We provide an inaugural scholarly conceptualisation of an empirical phenomenon, known in Kerala popular parlance as ‘party gramam’ or the ‘party village’, as the focus of analysis. As we explain, a ‘party village’ is an administrative unit where a particular political party dominates not simply electorally but in all lived experience. We posit that the concept of ‘party village’ is of specific value in our understanding of various forms of current (Communist) politics. The original ascendancy of communism in the village (as in many regions of Kerala) during the twentieth century was due to its progressive ideological challenge to feudal structures of class and caste oppression. However, in democratic post-independence India, the overwhelming dominance of Communist Party in the 'party village' presents the paradox of a party with an egalitarian ideology having adapted to a persistent Hindu caste hierarchy. After situating our work within the conceptual problematisations of political party competition, and in conversation with wider communist studies literature, we provide a background to the politics of Kerala and explain the unique phenomenon of ‘party villages’ in Kerala. We then provide an insight into the social and economic structures of one such village, explaining the salience of these structures in relation to political allegiances. Next, we illustrate the paradox of continued caste hierarchies in a Communist Party village, and the multiple ways in which Hindu religion and caste structures are important to performing individual identity in social settings. We dissect the various means through which the grassroots Communist Party apparatus in the village maintains its dominance by adapting itself to regressive caste hierarchies for political profit at the same time as laying claim to having challenged them. In our concluding section, we place our village observations in the longer frame of historical north Kerala village politics, noting the changes over time and offering theoretical perspectives upon them. In this sense, through a mix of empirical observation with historical context and theorisation, we highlight the importance and the implications of unconventional democratic dynamics more generally.
Highlights
This article combines political analysis with ethnographic fieldwork to provide an account — of political allegiance and the persistence of power — that is both descriptive and interpretive, addressing ‘what people do as well as why they do it’ (Herzog & Zacka, 2019: 764)
As we explain later, such gramams are only found in the Kannur district of north Kerala, and they are much more than standard political strongholds, in terms of how the Communist Party features in people’s lived experience
Having situated ourselves into the larger conceptual literature far, we want to zoom into Kerala electoral politics and the party village — in order to show why we study a village in the Kannur region of north Kerala where the Communist party dominates politics and life, and how they do so
Summary
This article combines political analysis with ethnographic fieldwork to provide an account — of political allegiance and the persistence of power — that is both descriptive and interpretive, addressing ‘what people do as well as why they do it’ (Herzog & Zacka, 2019: 764). Through an ethnography of a village in North Kerala called Che Puram, we investigate the ways in which the sustained and uninterrupted political and electoral dominance of Communist Party in this ‘party village’ has coexisted with Hindu caste hierarchical structures over time. In north Kerala — the region marked by the histories of caste oppression, concentration of land ownership with elite Hindu upper castes, peasant revolt and a mix of anticolonial, nationalist, and Communist mobilisation — the desire to succeed in electoral competition produced what have come to be known colloquially as party gramams This ‘party village’ is an administrative unit from where a particular political party dominates all lived experience and from where it does not, cannot, lose elections. The Namboothiri Brahmins in Che Puram do not have visible political loyalties, but
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
