Reading the Malappuram Debate: Postcolonial State and the Ethics of Place

The district of Malappuram was formed on the 16th demographics and led to intense debates and agitation in the state, with each side accusing the other of communalism and partisanship. This paper is an exploration of the discussions as it happened in the Kerala Legislative Assembly. The paper argues that the violence of the postcolonial state vis-à-vis defining a politics of place within the state is in its legitimizing the concepts of governmentality and sovereignty as the only modes in which a politics of place can be thought of. The paper argues then for a politics which will account for notions of a communitarian space that can be expressed outside the matrix of governmentality and sovereignty.