Back in the 1980s when serial scams drove national news, cartoonist O V Vijayan couldn’t tell leaders from dealers.

He drew an extraterrestrial alien stepping out of a flying saucer and asking a Congressman to “take me to your dealer”. Decades later, in poll-bound Kerala today, the air is thick with the D-word. Only, the alleged deals now are entirely political.

The state’s two broad-based veteran alliances in the fray are accusing each other of hobnobbing with not just the significant saffron player but every fringe Islamic group. In so many words, CPI(M) and Congress are acknowledging an election that is getting less one-sided. From the core of this anxiety springs the new aggression to run down the rival as the betrayer of the secular cause.

One has heard more measured versions of this competitive secularism before. In the 2024 Lok Sabha campaign, CM Pinarayi Vijayan warned Kerala against voting Congress. Like a risk analyst, he listed the national party’s post-poll deserters who walked across to the BJP. He was telling the state’s multi-faith electorate to make a defection-proof choice. That meant........

© Indian Express