The State of Power and Poetry: Vedan, Caste, and the Revolutionary Awakening of Kerala’s Left

In the great theatre of Kerala politics, some performances are so overacted that even the audience begins to check if the actors have mistaken the stage for a mirror. Case in point: the Left government’s magical rediscovery of caste, which, until a few days ago, was filed somewhere between ‘British conspiracy’ and ‘bourgeois distraction.’

And what was the trigger for this radical epiphany? Not decades of data, demands for a caste census, or Dalit deaths in custody. No – it was Vedan. A 29-year-old Dalit rapper with verses sharp enough to cut through the haze of ideological gaslighting, and a fanbase that couldn’t be tamed with Marxist lullabies.

On April 28, 2025, Kerala police raided a rented apartment in Vyttila, Ernakulam, where Vedan – fast becoming a cult icon among Kerala’s youth – was present with eight others. The officers seized six grams of ganja in total, amounting to less than a gram per person. Despite the nature of the charge (for which the station house officers could grant bail), the news was sensationalised – Asianet News aired it under the distasteful headline 'The Shirt Stitched with Ganja', a sarcastic parody of a line from his song that translates as 'The Shirt Stitched with Sweat,' evoking his rise from a Dalit ghetto to his current position through immense personal struggle. The law granted Vedan the station bail. However, during the search, officers noticed that he wore a pendant bearing what appeared to be a tiger’s tooth. 

And then Vedan is, again, arrested over the pendant by the forest department. The state, in a dazzling display of procedural enthusiasm, invokes the Wildlife (Protection) Act. He is jailed, shamed, and paraded like contraband. 

Abraham and a U-turn

And in the backdrop? A scathing high court order had torn into the vigilance department’s handling of a corruption case involving former finance secretary K. M. Abraham – who now holds post-retirement posts as the chief principle secretary to the chief minister and the CEO of the Kerala Infrastructure Investment Fund Board (KIIFB). The court, expressing clear distrust in the vigilance, ordered a CBI probe. Abraham swiftly approached the Supreme Court. But just before that judgement could drop, the news cycle swerved. Suddenly, primetime was consumed not by the looming threat to the government’s credibility, but by the arrest of a very visible, very loud, very Dalit artist. The scandal disappeared, the spectacle took over, and the timing spoke volumes.

Of course, the strategy was textbook: create a moral spectacle, weaponise the law, ride the waves of manufactured moral outrage and deflect attention from the haunting issue. Except, this time, the waves didn’t crash where expected. Social media didn’t play along. Neither did the youth. Neither did the left comrades. And neither, eventually, did the facts.

Within days, the same Left government that had struck its most pious pose – arms folded, eyes closed, whispering “let the law take its course” – began pirouetting through a series of rhetorical backflips. The forest minister, previously auditioning for the role of Legal Conscience Personified, started mumbling about “public sentiment.” An internal inquiry was floated. A few forest officers were gently thrown under the bus.

Within days, the same Left government that had struck its most pious pose – arms folded, eyes closed, whispering “let the law take its course” – began pirouetting through a series of rhetorical backflips.

It was, in short, the kind of U-turn that deserves its traffic signage.

But the real showstopper came from the Left’s intelligentsia – those eternal gatekeepers of dialectical purity who’d spent years dismissing caste as “postmodern identity fetish”. Suddenly, they’ve become fluent in the vocabulary of Ambedkarite resistance. Facebook timelines that once shunned Dalit politics for being “divisive” are now gesturing solidarity with Vedan’s cause.

Comrades who wouldn’t touch a caste census with a ten-foot pole are now rapping along with Vedan’s lyrics, as if rediscovering the minor inconvenience of systemic discrimination. The same media spaces that never placed a single Dalit face in front of the news camera are now speaking of “double justice” with the urgency of a corporate consultant trying to meet quarterly goals and with the theatrics of a rejected theatre school applicant who suddenly rediscovered the forgotten passion.

It’s not conviction, it’s crisis management with hashtags.

Let’s not forget: this is the same government that implemented EWS reservations for temple boards long before the BJP turned it into law. The same comrades who defended the idea of economic backwardness among Savarna with a straight face now pretend they’ve always been torchbearers of radical anti-caste politics. You’d almost believe them – if you had the memory of a goldfish and the political literacy of a houseplant.

The glorious parallel universe of Savarna celebrity immunity

Let’s recap. Vedan is arrested over a tiger tooth pendant—an item that becomes magically illegal when worn by a Dalit. The state, in a dazzling display of procedural enthusiasm, invokes the Wildlife (Protection) Act. He is jailed, shamed, and paraded like contraband.

But curiously, when superstar-politician Suresh Gopi sported what looked suspiciously like a tiger tooth pendant on television, no forest officer went sprinting to file a case. No raid. No remand. The law, it seems, doesn’t just take its course – it checks your caste location before deciding which route to take.

And lest we forget the precedent: Mohanlal, in 2011, was caught with ivory tusks in his house. The case meandered through a decade of legal somnambulism before the government conveniently moved to withdraw prosecution in 2023. Because apparently, public interest in wildlife protection has a caste and celebrity filter too – it spikes for Dalit rappers but flatlines for award-winning actors with the right social capital.

Dalit with a pendant? Jail. Superstar with tusks? Souvenir.

That’s the equality of enforcement in the People’s Republic of Casteist Irony. 

And now, in this theatre of irony, the chief minister and the CPI(M) secretary, two Avarnas themselves, have their historic roles to play

When asked about the hunting of Vedan, the chief minister, with a wry smile, offered this gem: “When it is an issue of drug, no question of the abuser being forward or backward. But the tiger claw issue, it should have been dealt more carefully (my translation, listen from the 7.40-minute mark). A masterstroke, really – draped in the neutral tones of administrative impartiality, but tuned perfectly to the fantasy matrix of the Savarna mind.

Here’s the subtext (packed densely and neatly for the Savarna audience), parsed for clarity: when it’s about drugs, caste doesn’t count – so don’t you dare play your “backward” card. But when it’s about the pendant, well, then the machinery must tread lightly; after all, this is the realm where historical injustices are reluctantly acknowledged and ritualistically accommodated. It's an exquisite balancing act: a nod to law and order for the gallery, and a quiet reassurance to the Savarna elite that their perennial grievance still holds – that the Dalits, as always, are getting too much because they clamour a lot.

This isn’t a political misstep – it’s a textbook case of Lacanian fantasy formation, where the symbolic order (law, caste, historical privilege) masks the obscene kernel of enjoyment: the Savarna’s belief that the Dalit is always-already overcompensated.

This is no gaffe. This is doctrine – echoing the age-old mutterings that have shadowed the constitution since its inception: that reservation, representation, and redress are somehow excess. That equality, when extended beyond the pale, becomes unfair.

Postures

Here’s the twist: the issue is not the privilege denied to Vedan. It’s the privilege eternally extended to Suresh Gopi and Mohanlal –effortlessly, invisibly, as though inscribed into the very grammar of history – that is now being questioned. That is the real rupture. The question, in essence, was not “Why was Vedan arrested?” but “Why were Mohanlal and Suresh Gopi not arrested the way Vedan was arrested?”  And by pretending otherwise, by subtly flipping the script, the chief minister wasn’t fumbling – he was performing for the Savarna fantasy matrix.

Thus, the second half of the chief minister’s statement can be unpacked precisely like this: when a large chunk of the society challenges the Savarna privilege inscribed into the grammar of history, then you may play your “backward” card – even theatrically, then the state, with calibrated benevolence, will concede it, so that the Savarna audience can still believe you're receiving an undeserved privilege.

The ruling party’s initial posture was laid out, with a kind of well-meaning cluelessness, by M.A. Baby on Facebook. In a post that tried to blend revolutionary chic with social commentary, Baby professed his fondness for Bob Marley – yes, that Bob Marley – and reminded us that Marley, too, had once been arrested for marijuana possession. The only part that rang remotely true was the accidental comparison: Vedan is becoming something of a Kerala Marley – his art roars from the margins, irreverent and rhythmic, cut through with fire. But to invoke Marley solely as a dopehead, while airbrushing out the Rastafarian movement, its biblical politics, and the sacramental logic of what they call “the herb,” was a misreading so grand it could’ve been satire.

Still, the real failure wasn’t the reggae reference. The real failure came afterward – in the silence. Not a word about the absurd spectacle of a Dalit artist being arrested under the Wildlife (Protection) Act while Savarna celebrities like Suresh Gopi and Mohanlal parade around with tiger tooth pendants and ivory souvenirs, shielded by caste, class, and camera angles.

Meanwhile, Vedan – who has been called everything from criminal to cultural icon – is quietly becoming the most important political voice in Kerala. Not because he speaks in policy prescriptions, but because he dares to exist. His music doesn’t ask for inclusion; it demands reckoning. And it speaks to a generation that has stopped waiting for the Left to wake up and confront the Manusmriti.

That’s what rattles the establishment – not his pendant, not his ganja, not his lyrics. What scares them is his resonance. He is everything the system wasn’t prepared for: a poet with rhythm, rage, and reach. This video encapsulates it all.

In the end, what Vedan exposed wasn’t just the hypocrisy of the state, but the Left’s chronic allergy to caste when it’s not wrapped in the comforting shawl of class struggle. They want to fight oppression, just not the kind that makes their voting base nervous. 

They want a revolution that’s neat and sweet – Savarna-safe and Avarna-grave. White-sheet clean!  

Anilkumar Payyappilly Vijayan is a Professor of English at Government Arts and Science College, Pathiripala, Palakkad. Under the name a/nil, he is the author of The Absent Color: Poems. A/nil’s book, Is There a Dalit Way of Thinking?, is forthcoming from Navayana.

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