The southwest coast of India has always been significant within the global network of relations, through trade and the exchange of ideas, commodities, technologies, skills and labour. The much longer history of colonial experience makes Kerala’s engagement with modernity complex.
Kerala Modernity studies these complexities—the various ideas, spaces and practices that weave together the region’s experiences of modernity. The book emphasises the methodological need to re-examine the idea of ‘region’ as a discursive category to explore Kerala’s regional modernity.
This interdisciplinary presentation, complete with a Dalit critique of modernity in the Foreword, is an important contribution to literature on Kerala and debates on alternative modernities in South Asia. It will be of interest to students and scholars of history, sociology, and literary and cultural studies.