S. Harikrishnan’s Social Spaces and the Public Sphere: A Spatial History of Modernity in Kerala, published by Routledge in 2023 contributes to the body of scholarship on the relationship between social spaces and linear modernity in the state of Kerala. He focuses on social spaces and everyday experiences to draw a spatial history of Kerala that challenges the narrative of linear modernity.

Harikrishnan draws his theoretical inspiration from Henri Lefebvre’s work on the role that social spaces play in shaping social relationships (pp. 2). There is an attempt to both theoretically and empirically adapt this framework to the Indian context. When speaking about the public sphere, we often forget the role that informal social spaces and relations play in making it. Harikrishnan’s book also tries to foreground these in his retelling of the story of Kerala’s public sphere. Instead of looking at place and space as separate entities, he is trying to address the two as a ‘dialectical unity’ that speaks to each other (pp. 7). There is also a desire to go beyond the binaries of the public and private that often dominate discussions of public spaces.

The author draws his findings from both archival sources in Thrissur and fieldwork that were conducted for nine months between 2017 and 2018. A detailed methodological section explores the various ways (discourse analysis, interviews, observation, etc.) in which information was gathered for the study. Harikrishnan also recognizes that there was a lack of recorded histories from caste-oppressed communities, which presented itself as a methodological challenge.

The book consists of seven chapters in total. After laying out the foundation of the book in the Introduction (Chapter 1), Harikrishnan looks at the relationship between the public sphere and social space in the second chapter. He argues that the emergence of a modern public sphere also gives rise to a new spatiality (pp. 23). There was very less access to public spaces for marginalized sections in pre-modern Kerala. Caste particularly plays a significant role in governing social relations in these public spaces. 

The contests for space within the mainstream public sphere had started. It was now necessary to make the upper-caste Hindus acknowledge the presence of other castes in such spaces. More importantly, the lowered castes – for centuries neglected and overlooked in mainstream public spaces – had to be instilled with the voice to assert them­selves in a changing secular public, even if it involved the re-imagination of their own identity and their “body as space” (pp. 77).

In Chapter 3, the author looks at how the intersection between the public and spatiality is created from pre to early modern Kerala. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw the rise of common spaces and new public spaces which enabled socialisation with the aim of transcending caste differences (pp. 51). This included appropriating a few conventional spaces, but also creating new ones. The social movements did not just reject or refute the traditional setting. The focus was on the reformation of the religious and caste-based framework (pp. 79). The socio-religious reform movements were begun not by the upper castes, but by the lower castes (pp. 81).

In the fourth chapter, Harikrishnan argues that the nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw the emergence of a new type of spatiality across the Indian subcontinent. It arose out of both reform movements and anti-colonial nationalism. There was an attempt at creating a pan-Indian identity (pp. 100). But in Kerala, specific communities were at the centre of these reforms. The establishment of caste-based organisations like the Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam (SNDP) by Ezhavas in 1903, the Keraleeya Nair Sama-jam (1904), Sadhu Jana Paripalana Sangham (SJPS) set up by Ayyankali in 1907, and the Nambuthiri Yogakshema Sabha (1908) was directed towards caste and social welfare.

Harikrishnan traces the cognizant and organised attempts from Hindu cultural organisations to expand their impact in the public sphere in both Chapters 5 and 6. These efforts include opening schools, beginning publications, and organising events like Shobha Yatras. This study of the history of social spaces tells us that whenever any kind of hegemonic power wants to rule society and social relations, new ways of resistance emerge to challenge such dominance. The struggle for modernity has been a struggle for access to public spaces like teashops, markets, public roads, temple grounds, reading rooms, and libraries. It is in these social spaces that the political culture of Kerala was formed and dominant hegemonies – caste, class, capital, gender and religion – were confronted. The evolution of the modern publics in India is also the narrative of who has access to and controls public spaces.

In reality, social spaces in contemporary Kerala suggest that the struggle for hegemony and resistance is far from settled. These struggles continue to be manifested in the everyday lives and experiences of Malayalis (pp. 207).

Gender is an underlying theme in all the chapters, an issue most often neglected when looking at spatial transformations and political movements in post-reform Kerala. Harikrishnan’s book is a timely contribution, particularly at a time when Kerala’s public spaces like the Sabarimala temple have been in public news in recent times. It will be of interest to students of Sociology, Social Anthropology, Urban Studies, Social Geography and History.