An unlikely phantom seemed to hover over me as I hung around the Government Women’s College at Thiruvananthapuram where this year’s Annual Conference of Indian Association of Women’s Studies was on last week. ‘Unlikely’, because the conference is usually a platform in which this spectre is thoroughly examined, counted, listened upon, critiqued, reimagined etc etc — and therefore one would imagine that it would not dare to tread in in such spaces.

This was none other than the spectre of (patriarchal) family loyalty. For sure, the deliberations at the Indian Association of Women’s Studies have been, since its very inception, spaces of exorcism in which presenters and listeners freed themselves equally from the spectres of patriarchal family values, including that of family loyalty, which haunt us all from birth. However, at least on three occassions in the three days of the conference that I attended, I was waylaid by it:


The first time, it leapt at me from the remark of a senior women’s studies academic from Kerala, a longtime voice of the CPM, who came up to me and hissed (playfully, but still) : “For that stuff you wrote on Kafila ….” She raised her hand (playfully, again) “…you need a good beating!” She was refering to an open letter that I had written as a dissident feminist to delegates before the conference laying out the dangerous state of politics and democracy in Kerala and establishment-feminist complicity in it. “If your people could,” I told her, equally cheerfully, “they would have beaten me and also actually burned all my books!” Unlike CPM cybertrolls on Facebook and their allies (prominent among the organizers of the regional panel discussion), she is more of a mother outraged by her child’s audacity and concerned about its apparent lack of family loyalty. Like most children who are exposed to power early on, I am not afraid.

The second time, it sneaked up from behind when another senior CPM-supporter feminist was asking others: “Why did she have to use the IAWS platform to air these grievances?” That was the matriarch’s voice — she who enjoys the masculinist, delegated and masked power of the patriarch. The IAWS meetings, then, are to be like kudumbayogams so popular nowadays among ex-joint families of oppressor-caste/communities in Kerala. In this joint-family apparently you come, have a good time, feel satiated and especially contented about being politcally correct and morally good, and go back to own spaces of privilege. The Kerala branch of the family which hosts others should be especially treated with consideration and certainly it would be bad manners to give one’s ear to any complaints about them.

To her, I can only say: I was hardly a child of this Kerala branch. If I decided to identify as feminist, it was not because of the celebrated senior feminists in Kerala but in spite of (some of) them. I began to warm to the identity of the feminist watching a spirited Susie Tharu thulping powerful bureaucrats and male academics when they tried to time-police her at a seminar at the Institute of English, University of Kerala, way back in 1985; I warmed to it even more watching Mary John in the early 1990s, fending off male academics at MGU, Kottayam who sought to consecrate her as an immobile, if worship-worthy ‘chechi’. In fact, Tina Turner’s voice and body radiating almost leonine power in the 1980s had a greater role in shaping my feminism than K Ajitha and her friends.


But I still was reluctant to call myself that even in the early 2000s in Kerala’s context in which the protests against sexual violence was becoming a pretext to reinforce state protectionism even more. But then I met so many Indian feminist academics, activists, artists, and writers who valued the authentic self in lived individual life, whose work was indistinguishable from their politics, and who struggled to hold politics and ethics together in public life — in struggle, even when not flawlessly so. In other words, I don’t belong to the Kerala family of feminists, which is patriarchal in an intensely, if silent, masculinist way. I am of the family of Indian feminism, which is not a patriarchal family hopefully, or at least less so. In it, daughters may speak relatively freely of without fear of judgment and expulsion and so I remain unapologetic. Or so I hope.

The third time, it emerged from the regional panel discussion on ‘New Movements in Kerala: Challenges and Resilience’ organized by C S Chandrika, and chaired by K M Sheeba. In this panel, patriarchal family loyalty that was merely a phantom hovering in the air till now, actually turned into a spirit that actually acquired bodies that it forged into an actual body politic! It ostensibly represented feminism in present-day Kerala, according to the organizers, but the spirit of family loyalty pervaded it so — that it seemed to work, however ephemerally, for a few hours, as its body politic.

I want to reflect on this achievement by the inveterate enemy of feminism — patriarchal family loyalty, at a platform that has, historically, been one on which we dissect this peril and rid ourselves from our fear of it. And since it has been audacious enough to incarnate on the dais of the IAWS conference, I suppose I must dissect the body politic it assembled out of the speeches in the regional panel — in order to exorcise it. It is interesting that unlike the caste-body politic which we are familiar with in which the hierarchy is clearly stated in your face, here the mask of equality between the different body parts is an insidious presence. But there is no mask that does not come undone even if for just a moment. And so it was this time too.

Let us then start with its head: always, the head speaks first. At the ‘New Movements …’ panel, two prominent feminists, representing two senior feminists who lead the major feminist NGOs in present-day Kerala. Like in any (patriarchal) joint family worth its name, the head represents tradition, dominant values, power. Not surprisingly, then, though the panel was titled ‘New Movements…’ , both parts of the head spoke much less of the present, and a lot more of the glorious past of the feminist movement in Kerala of the 1980s and 1990s when it fought power and collaborated with it responsibly. And exactly like patriarchal family heads who cannot bring themselves to admit loss of power and standing, they inflated past family glory while cringing in front of invisible power. Thus Adani Ports (at this rate, Thiruvananthapuram will soon be Thiruadanipuram) was condemned, but not the Kerala police which has been hounding activists, or the present government which rolls out the red carpet to it despite everything. And the feminist struggle against being blocked out by the dominant left in Kerala of the 1980s and 90s was recounted proudly, while total silence of the return of sovereign-style patriarchy through the present dispensation balanced it.

Then came the body — the representative of the powerful Kerala unit of the AIDWA spoke next. As one may expect from an organization that finds it convenient to milk feminist political credit dry, the emphasis was on its enormous role in sustaining the head (establishment feminism, of course). The role of twentieth century left politics (into which social reformism etc seems to have flowed)and the ‘Kerala Model’ achievements etc were highlighted, so also the immense strength and reach of the CPM and the AIDWA. The body seemed to have a clear and confident sense of its centrality to the body politic itself — and this became quite evident when the time-keeper tried to remind the speaker next. The manner in which she snapped back, it seemed, was the body reminding the head that it rested on its shoulders.

The arms and vital body organs came next. For establishment feminism in Kerala a certain kind of dalit feminism and a certain shade of queer feminism serves as arms and hands. An intelligent extra-terrestrial observing the human body from outside might wonder if human arms have a separate life because they move a lot, but we humans know that they don’t. Rather, the arms and hands are controlled by the head — they do the latter’s bidding. So I was not surprised that the speaker who spoke about dalit feminism in Kerala ‘forgot’ the name of Dalit Human Rights Movement and made just a cursory reference to C K Janu as though she were just an also-ran . Seleena Prakkanam till a few years back was also an important leader of the critical Chengara land struggle; both Seleena Prakkanam and C K Janu led large oppressed caste/community organizations. The DHRM’s unique effort at dismantling gender and marriage by tearing them away from brahmanical values was also ‘forgotten’, as also the horrendous violence against the DHRM activists which was sexual irrespective of the victim’s gender. Of course, the arm and hand are linked in not just complicated, but actually complex ways to the head. But the head and the body determines ‘in the last analysis’ how they move.

When the speaker who represented queer politics spoke, the mask of equality began to slip. The speaker gave thanks to the Kerala government of bestowing welfare on the transgender people and for being more tolerant of the LGBTQI+ people. Family loyalty resounded in whatever that was not spoken, that which was excised from the ‘glorious past’ of Malayali mainstream feminism presented by the head : the abhorrence of queerness quite common among leading establishment feminists until a preliminary green signal for change of attitude was received from the state in 2014; the issue of sex work in Malayali feminism and the feminist stake in the state’s moralistic sexual protectionism; the response of the CPM leadership and senior establishment feminists to the Kiss of Love protests; the fact that the LGBTQI+ people still reel under police violence; that the state has still not supported queer organizations’ efforts to ban forced conversion therapy; the accusations of nepotism are rampant in the transgender welfare bureaucracy.

But the mask of equality came off completely when the speakers representing sex workers’ activism in Kerala and the contemporary struggles of indigenous tribal communities spoke. Time is the most valuable resource in a panel discussion, and the time-keepers were cheerfully oblivious to the political implications of tapering time-availabilty in which the last speakers get the least time or feel the pressure to wind up quickly. This was the case here too. However, in the limited times they had and towards the end, these speakers spoke of the intense abjection that they faced in politics and development in Kerala — as sexualised or securitised figures — and the social oppression they fought on a daily basis. I have met her, said the young tribal woman leader, referring to a senior establishment feminist, I hope we will be able to work together for the good of tribal women. Clearly, she was not affirming some non-existent ‘glorious past’ but advancing hope for the future.

I wondered, really, at the political cost that these two speakers had to pay when they shared a platform on ‘New Movements in Kerala’ that wore proudly its mask of hypocritical family loyalty. I find it hard to swallow such ‘sisterhood’ that gets a sister hitherto hounded and insulted by her ‘siblings’ or ignored by them largely to share a public platform with them– siblings who really did little for her until the need to put up the show of family togetherness came up.


That was what I saw happening on the dais when I saw Nalini Jameela sitting next to K Ajitha. Of course, it is not as if sisterhood between establishment feminists and sex worker activists are impossible — indeed, I would like to think that sisterhood is never impossible. But just as there can be no reconciliation without truth — and so we have seen Truth and Reconciliation Commissions , not just Reconciliation Commissions — there can be no enduring sisterhood between establishment feminists and sex workers without a full, heartfelt, sincere apology from the former to the latter. I say that only because I have closely followed and protested the verbal mob lynching of Nalini Jameela by leading Malayali feminists back in 2006, and no, it not in the distant past nor was it a ‘debate’. It was violence, and has continued to be a past that has stayed with us, that still stunts the re-emergence of sex worker activism in Kerala.

As for the trenchant implicit critique of the hypocrisy of Kerala’s welfarism and its violence that destroys tribal lives raised by the young tribal leader, it ought to make us all — establishment and dissident feminists in Kerala — rethink the lenses with which we have hitherto examined patriarchy in Kerala. Instead of the panel’s vapid and toothless understanding of intersectionality (add dalit/caste, add queer/sexuality, stir) actually preferred by global governance feminism, we need a contextual intersectional analysis from the ground up in Kerala which mobilizes our pasts and presents critically — that lives up to the explanatory promise of that concept.

Finally, a speaker representing Muslim women in the feminist spectrum spoke about how they had formed a forum to correct unequal property rights which now disadvantaged Muslim women in their families. She did not seem to agree with position that the Union Civil Code will end such inequalities, but did not care to explain how exactly this issue was chosen as the major problem encountered by Muslim women in contemporary India and Kerala . As a daughter of Indian feminism, it was the old proverb about the attitude which impels one to harvest banana bunches growing in the yard when the whole house is on fire that came to my mind immediately, but I realized that this may be deeper. It is actually an attitude stemming directly from establishment feminism’s persistent hijabphobia. You want to address Muslim women’s issues but religious hijab-wearers are a presence that actually annoys you. You don’t want a dialogue with the Islamicist women’s organisations which are protesting patriarchy on many fronts. So you address a theoretical/hypothetical Muslim woman who is deprived of property instead of actually building alliances and dialogues with mobilized Islamicist women before launching the front.

I wondered where this speaker would fit in the body politic of family loyalty, and it struck me that she would be closest to the mask. The hypocritical, bad-faith mask is an integral part of this body politic, after all.

But there was also a clear indication that this is a diseased body (politic), probably suffering from an an autoimmune disorder. Friends tell me that moments after the speaker on tribal women’s struggles finished making her points, Whatsapp groups of women who share power in Kerala were fortified with posts that dismissed her with ‘facts’ and figures of huge amounts spent by the government on tribal welfare! Now, that is actually not immunity, it can only be an auto-immune disorder.

One of the two speakers who formed the head of this family loyalty-body politic mentioned that there are plans to revive the Kerala feminist network, once called the Kerala Sthreevedi. What will it be, I wonder?