India, Feb. 21 -- Kerala has long been called God's Own Country, and not without reason. A narrow, fertile strip between the Arabian Sea and the Western Ghats, it is a land of temples and churches, mosques and monasteries, coconut groves and backwaters, literature and learning. Its nurses heal across continents, its teachers shape generations abroad, its migrant workers carry the state's resilience into the Gulf and beyond. It is devout yet politically argumentative, traditional yet fiercely modern. And precisely because it defies neat categorisation, it has become a convenient target for neat political narratives.

In recent years, Kerala has repeatedly been framed as a hotbed of demographic conspiracy, radical recruitment and civilisati...