Breaking the Fall
In time, within the Self, there emerge different parts that feel foreign. These parts, unknown to the Self had, for so long, managed to stay hidden. In most cases, it is the other perfect beings that unlock these parts, shocking and destabilising foundations of the Self in the process. And with this, the Self tends to fall away, moving away from the support systems it was taught to lean on.
The 2026 Kerala Assembly Election Results
The 2026 Kerala Assembly election was fought on complex grounds of liberal principles and secularism. The UDF managed to convince the majority that there would be a continuation to the NavaKeralam project that the LDF promised. But that they would do it differently, with all the liberal freedoms guaranteed. The LDF also inadvertently gave credence to this claim by supporting the communal statements from certain community leaders. Additionally, CPIM leaders also repeated the anti-Muslim rhetoric that strengthened the support of liberal crowd for the UDF. And finally, when it was all said and done, on May 4, UDF secured a thumping victory, with LDF suffering one of its worst defeats in recent history. But could this also mean that the voters in Keralam basically voted for the logics offered in the liberal mindset that questions organizational rigidity, eternal discipline, and other unfreedoms. Let's find out.
CPIM’s election strategy apart from projecting their Kerala Model was the anti-Muslim rhetoric, signposting how a Hindu party is indeed needed in power, to check and keep Muslims in their place. Since CPIM is the largest Hindu party (majority of the Hindus in the state vote for CPIM), it wanted to consolidate and strengthen more of its core Hindu vote base. Unlike many innocent left voters, this perspective at the time made more sense to the leader(s). [PSA: Ideal contexts wouldn’t bother about caste/community alliances getting redrawn during elections but this being the strategy of social engineering that gets idolised in the fundamentals of our democracy, one can only approach this cesspool of reimagined alliances with an open mind. I suggest you also do the same]. Ok, now, after the elections, CPIM understands that the party has lost its footing among its core voters, not least among the Ezhava community in the south. The party was sure that the 2024 Lok Sabha elections trends were only an anomaly that would correct itself in the Assembly elections. But this wasn’t the case. Take Chathannur constituency in Kollam, one of the three constituencies that the BJP won, as an example. Here, the result clearly indicates the loss of support of the Ezhava voters for the CPIM. Even if it was the CPI that lost the constituency to the BJP, the fault lies with the LDF strategy, i.e., the CPIM strategy. CPIM thought they could become the better Hindu party, but with BJP emerging as a close contender in Hindu dominant constituencies, this strategy is now in need of a realignment with the realpolitik. The CPIM was, in a sense, meeting parts of itself it had kept hidden for too long -- and the fall was inevitable.
And now to the question posed in the first paragraph. Let's take it with the theory, as things become clearer with the help of Aijaz Ahmad here. Since, secularism was the major talking point of this election, let's unpack what Ahmad had to say about it. Secularism is not just any other component of the democratic cause. It is the foundational principle upon which all other liberties emerge. Ahmad writes, “Democracy presumes a secularist compact, and it is not liberal democracy that produces the secularist idea; it is the issue of secularism – not just religious tolerance but the civil equality of denominationally different individuals and communities within a given society – that produces the idea of equality in general, and therefore the idea of political democracy.” Many voters identified with core concern of liberties being affected with this principle of secularism. The different depressed sections of our society that were neglected during the last ten years had clearly voted against the party in an attempt to situate secularism as not only limited to religion, but also to classes. This, in a way. becomes the perfect correctional message to the party. This defeat signposts that the party should understand class and secularism together in the spirit of the constitution. In other words, do class politics better. And now, as the Congress party led UDF is in government, it does not mean that they understand secularism and class in the spirit of constitution better than the LDF or CPIM. Quite the opposite. The tragedy remains that no party would care to understand politics separated from the numbers game.
Now, let's give the people what they want. Let's pivot to some of the numbers to analyse ‘the election trend’. There are 11 constituencies that both the LDF and UDF lost, with a margin below 5000 votes. An almost equal swing pattern that clearly favors the UDF when viewed under the larger context. Read below. But don’t read too much into it.
UDF ---
Margin loss <5000 votes
1) Azheekodu - K V Sumesh (349)
2) Koothuparambu - P. K Praveen (1286)
3) Nenmara - K Preman (3305)
4) Manaloor - C Ravindranath (126)
5) Guruvayoor - N. K Akbar (1998)
6) Kunnamkulam - A C Moideen (4563)
7) Puthukkadu - K K Ramachandran (2853)
8) Konni - K U Janeesh Kumar (1838)
9) Kottarakkara - K N Balagopal (1012)
10) Varkala - V Joy (2050)
11) Aruvikkara - G Stephen (2843)
LDF ---
Margin loss <5000 votes
1) Uduma - K Neelakandan (4847)
2) Trikkarippoor - Sandeep Warrier (4431)
3) Kozhikode North - K Jayanth (1483)
4) Kongaadu - K A Thulasi (3706)
5) Pala - Mani C Kappan (2991)
6) Vaikkom - K Binimon (1360)
7) Ranni - Pazhakulam Madhu (4,344)
8) Chirayinkeezhu - Remya Haridas (1422)
9) Nemom - Rajeev Chandrashekhar (4978)
10) Chathannur - B B Gopakumar (4398)
11) Kazhakkoottam - V Muraleedharan (428)
Now, these numbers are indeed fascinating (many wouldn’t find this fascinating) but there is another aspect that needs to be highlighted here. The right question leading up to the elections was whether the cadre was convinced of the NavaKeralam Project. And that should there be a need for convincing the cadre. Now since the LDF lost, we may think that we have an answer. But this is not the case. The LDF loss or the UDF win is not about oppositional ideas in governance or structure, it is about the basics of imagining a future that needs concepts of progress that are aligned to the core values of a modern society where all sections can partake in its functioning. Same as to what Ahmad points out with secularism.
Okay, now, in a Gautam Bhatia blog model, I also decided to give recommendations from The Viewfinder.
In View
Hokum (2026) can be very engaging with its psychoanalytic id-ego-superego structure but wouldn’t be as interesting as other similar foundational films like Psycho (1960). Not saying that this is derivative, since it has a unique style to building atmosphere. Oddity (2024), another recent film from the same director also managed to stay decent with the same style and approach. 3/5.
Watch Blue Heron (2025) if you loved Aftersun (2022). I mean, there is a lot to sit with after watching this film. It will break your heart and make you question yourself about love, care and innocence. That’s it. 5/5.
I know that Taiwan Travelogue won the Booker Prize. But guess what, The Director is more interesting and complicated than the “settler-colonial porn” (random X comment; I wouldn’t call it that, but it’s still bad). It is about the careers and art built under regimes of questionable character. To me it pertains to the larger ethical issues of living under capitalism. “Can you evade the system?” stuff! 3.5/5
Read this for a project and yeah, it offers incisive commentary on how globalization and the rise of the Hindu Nationalism are adaptive of each other. Again, reminded me of Ahmad who said, “if welfarist reformism was the capitalist solution for the period of prosperity and of offensives from the Left, neo-liberalist economy and irrationalist populism may well be regarded as a general solution for the period of stagnation: and if, within India, Nehruvian social democracy corresponded to the earlier phase, Hindutva is suitable for the latter.”
Fine read! 3.5/5
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