The historiography of precolonial Southeast Asia remains remarkably fragmented and inaccessible, even by the standards of that variegated region. We have a limited number of country monographs. But no systematic overview of Southeast Asian political or economic history has been attempted for all, or even part, of the period between the waning of the classical states in the fourteenth century and the onset of high colonialism in the early nineteenth. Scholarly surveys, like the magisterial and still standard magnum opus of D. G. E. Hall, make discretion the better part of valor by providing separate country chapters without integrative theme or comment.

Political rituals can be seen as non-verbal expressions of an existing or desired political reality. Whether ritual is defined with the emphasis on the cremonial aspect (Tennekens), with attention to emotional meaning (Lukes) or with regard to repetitions (Kertzer), all definitions stress this symbolic function. Rituals are about the expression of a wish or a fact in symbolic form, in other words they refer to another reality behind the directly observable. Rituals are a form of communication about deeper values, norms and relationships. Political rituals thus convery messages about political relationships and the configurations and exercise of power.

The JVP (Janatha Vikmuthi Peramuna—the People's Liberation Front) first came to the attention of the world outside Sri Lanka when it launched an abortive insurrection in 1971. In 1987, the JVP made another bid to come to power by force of arms. The insurrection of 1987–1989 was better-prepared and more deeply-rooted than that of 1971; the human costs and societal consequences of its extirpation were correspondingly greater. Although the JVP came close to achieving state power both in late 1988 and mid-1989, it was thereafter destroyed very rapidly.

Modern Kerala presents us with a paradox: the state, best known to the outside world for its association with communism, is also where communalism has, arguably, found its most complex political expression. This raises tantalizing questions about the part considerations of class and community have played in the evolution of state politics. The aim of this paper is shed light on a little explored aspect of the background to the Kerala conundrum—the way in which politicians before independence mobilized communal support in elections.

The present paper seeks ‘to explore the nature of Indian secularism, the difficulties it has run into, and the ways in which it may be revised’. This is a large undertaking for a short text, originally written as public lecture, particularly because the issues posed do nopt readily translate into plain questions. The most that I can hope to do is to raise some doubts and make a few suggestions for rethinking the issues involved.