Politics in India has, and continues to be, spatial, and streets and public roads remain front and centre in these contests.
In Kerala, where laws of purity and pollution had remained extremely rigid (the region had relegated some castes to the status of “unseeable” and “unapproachable”, apart from the untouchable), public spaces like streets, kavalas (crossroads or street corners), and markets became highly contested spaces once these laws began to crack in the 19th century, and early signs of what Jürgen Habermas called a modern public sphere were taking shape.
The emergence of a new social order, as Lefebvre argues, also suggests the emergence of a new spatiality. On one hand, social spaces like teashops, reading rooms, and libraries were starting to emerge, while on the other, the rules of engagement in other spaces like roads and public and religious institutions were being renegotiated.
The nationalist and socialist waves in the 1920s and 1930s further transformed public roads into spaces for anti-imperial and anti-class struggles. Memoirs and biographies of (mostly male) public figures begin to reflect these changes, and the role of public roads as spaces that shaped the worldviews and political positions – often through the most mundane and everyday experiences – begin to stand out.
Recent decades have seen political, cultural, and economic pressures to control public spaces, resulting in incidents of privatisation of public lands, or the redevelopment of urban landscapes in cities like Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram. Yet, some subversive spaces have also emerged.
Large-scale occupation of public roads was also seen during the Sabarimala agitation, both by protesters and also when progressive groups and the government organised a 620-kilometre-long human chain along the stretch of the national highways in the state in response to conservative protests. Meanwhile, other public spaces like grounds are also finding space in recent election manifestos of political parties in Kerala.
01/05/2023