introduction 25
in an air ticket and visa, many migrants fi nd that they are unable to make as
much money as they had hoped to earn, and some, betrayed by their handlers
who do not provide the employment they promised, have to return home broke,
their families in worse fi nancial shape than when they left. Some migrants who
did fi nd steady employment, usually in construction or other manual labor, relate
the onset of their mental troubles to extreme homesickness, to not being able
to handle the emotional strain of being separated from their families for long
periods, although their mental problems persisted after moving back to Kerala.
Th e religious life of Kerala today reveals the long-term and ongoing connec-
tions of this part of the Indian subcontinent with far fl ung regions of the world.
Th e majority of people of the Malabar coast consider themselves “Hindu,”
which in most of India is a mix of local practices and prestigious, brahmanical
elements that are linked to classic Sanskrit texts. Th e southern Indian coast
has seen numerous religious movements pass through, some of which, such
as Christianity and Islam, stayed and some of which, including Jainism and
Buddhism, gradually disappeared. In the fi rst few centuries B.C.E., a commu-
nity of Jews made their way from the Middle East to Cochin on the Malabar
coast followed in the fi rst century C. E. by a group of Christians who, according
to one story, set out for southern India in an eff ort to inform the Cochin Jews
that their Messiah had come. Islam made its way to South India in the eighth
century brought by traders crossing the Arabian Sea, some of whom married
local women and settled on the Malabar Coast. While today Kerala is approxi-
mately 60 percent Hindu, 20 percent Muslim and 20 percent Christian, and
thus one of the most religiously diverse states in India, this part of the country
has not seen the kind of violence that has erupted between religious communi-
ties in other places such as Mumbai, Ayodhya and Gujarat. Religious divisions
do enter party politics and certain confl icts, but Hindutva, the Hindu funda-
mentalist political project that is at the center of controversies in Maharashtra,
Gujarat and much of north India, has not had a strong presence in Kerala.^13
Since 1956 when the princely state of Travancore was merged with the
former British colonial territories of Cochin and Malabar to create the state of
Kerala, the state government has been controlled mostly by communist par-
ties, although coalitions led by the Congress Party have also seen several terms
in offi ce. Kerala’s communist parties and grassroots social movements played
signifi cant roles in making quality health care and education broadly available
in the state, and land reform and literacy movements brought a measure of
socioeconomic equality to Kerala society.^14 Malayalis like to point to the fact
that Kerala has the highest literacy rate in India, and they often add that this is
one indication that Malayalis are, as they see it, more “educated” and “sophis-
ticated” than people in other parts of the country. Kerala is anthropologically