ABSTRACT
This chapter constructs an alternative micro-history of conflict and violence among Marakkayar Muslims and Mukkuvar Christians. It explains how conflicts and violence acquired a spatial meaning in the coastal regions of Southern Kerala as an offshoot of increasing contestations over land and the coastal commons between dominant Marakkayar Muslims and subordinated Mukkuvar Christians, and reveals how coastal villages in this region formed into a space of mutually antagonistic ‘ethnic enclaves’ of these two groups with clear social and spatial boundaries.
