I have long been an advocate of what I thought in the 1990s was an emerging shift in India from the politics of identity to the politics of performance. I took this as the hallmark of a maturing electorate, one that stopped voting based on “who we are” and chose instead to vote after assessing “what they do”. However, recent years have seen the resurgence of identity politics nationwide — and surprisingly, as I realised during the recent election campaign in Kerala, even in the country’s most progressive state.

Kerala has long been celebrated as a state where politics was defined less by identity and more by performance. Its high literacy rates, robust welfare systems, and history of alternating governments between the Left Democratic Front (LDF) and the United Democratic Front (UDF) have given the impression of a polity where governance, social development, and public accountability mattered more than communal or caste affiliations. For decades, Kerala stood apart from the national trend, resisting the pull of identity politics that swept across much of India. Yet recent years, and especially the most recent election campaign, suggest that this exceptionalism is eroding. Kerala, too, appears to be succumbing to the politics of social engineering, where community identity, bloc voting, and religiously defined interests are gaining prominence.

The shift is subtle but unmistakable. Campaign rhetoric, especially at the informal level, has increasingly been targeting specific communities, with parties seeking to consolidate support among religious and caste groups while pretending to appeal to the electorate as a whole. In constituencies across northern Kerala, contests have been framed in terms of Hindu–Muslim polarisation and “cultural nationalism”, and in central Kerala, fears are being stoked among Christians that a........

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