Mob justice and Kerala’s moral drift

A lynching exposes prejudices that authorise violence. Can the state arrest the alarming symptoms?

Kerala has long wrapped itself in the comfort of exception. Higher literacy, stronger public health, and a history of social reform movements that challenged caste and hierarchy when much of India remained silent. It is a story the state tells itself with pride. But every few years, that mirror cracks, and what looks back is a crowd standing over a broken body, convinced it has done society a favour.

In 2018, it was Madhu, a young Adivasi man from Attappady. Hungry and disoriented, he was accused of stealing food. He was chased, caught, paraded, beaten, and killed. Men who looked like neighbours and shopkeepers became judge, jury, and executioner. Kerala gasped, protested, promised reform, and then slowly learned to live with the memory.

Last week, the pattern repeated itself. In Walayar, Palakkad district, a migrant worker was beaten to death by a mob on suspicion of theft. There were whispers too about nationality, about whether he was “Bangladeshi”. By the time the police arrived, justice – brutal and primitive – had already been performed. Yesterday, it was a tribal man. Today, it is a guest worker. Tomorrow, it will be someone else who lacks the armour of social privilege. This is not an aberration. It is a warning.

A lynching is not just a crime of violence. It is a crime of confidence. A mob forms only when people are sure they can get away with it, socially if not legally. It forms when the crowd believes the victim’s life is negotiable, that their fear, poverty, accent or hunger places them outside the circle of full citizenship. At that moment, the mob does not feel criminal. It feels authorised.

That authorisation comes from silence, from selective outrage, from the language we casually use about “outsiders”, “thieves”, and “suspicious people”. Kerala’s discomfort is that these lynchings happen despite institutions, not in their absence. This is a state with police stations within reach, with strong local governance structures, and an educated public that knows the difference between accusation and proof.

The term Kerala uses for the migrant worker exposes a hypocrisy: athithi thozhilali (guest worker); it sounds warm and civilised. But guests are not beaten to death on the roadside because someone shouted “thief”.

Migrant workers across Kerala live in a state of conditional acceptance. They are welcome as labour, unwelcome as neighbours. Essential to the economy, invisible in public life. This is not unique to Kerala. Across India, migrants are increasingly treated as surplus humans, tolerated in good times and targeted in moments of anxiety. They are accused of stealing jobs, changing cultures, and spreading crime.

A moment to introspect

Kerala’s particular failure lies in its self-image. A society that believes it is inherently progressive often stops listening when it is told it is becoming intolerant. It reacts with denial. It says, “This is not who we are.” But lynching is not an alien import. It grows quietly in the soil of everyday insensitivity.

Look at what connects Madhu and the migrant worker in Walayar. Both were poor. Both were alone. Both were denied the dignity of explanation, of defence, of humanity. And in both cases, the crowd felt morally superior.

After every such killing, the script is familiar. Condemnations are issued. Arrests are made. Assurances are given that Kerala will not tolerate mob justice. And yet, the deeper questions are avoided. Why did no one intervene? Why did fear overpower empathy completely? Why did bystanders film instead of stopping the assault? Why did the idea of handing someone over to the police seem weaker than the thrill of instant punishment?

Progressiveness cannot be measured by literacy rates alone. It must be measured by how a society treats its most defenceless when panic sets in; by whether people trust institutions enough to step back from violence. It must be measured by whether difference is seen as a fact of life or a provocation.

Kerala still has a choice. It can treat these lynchings as isolated stains on an otherwise clean record, or it can confront them as symptoms of a moral drift. That confrontation must go beyond policing. It requires political leaders to stop feeding suspicion. It requires the media to resist dog-whistle narratives. It requires civil society to intervene before, not mourn after. And it requires ordinary citizens to rediscover the courage to say no to the crowd.

A society does not lose its humanity overnight. It loses it gradually, each time it looks away while a mob tightens its circle. Kerala should be frightened not because these killings happened, but because they felt possible.

(The writer is a South India-based journalist who has chronicled rural distress and environmental struggles)

(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.)