ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the steady rise of violence between Marakkayar Muslims and Mukkuvar Christians during the period of 1950 and 1980 in the backdrop of structural violence that began to permeate the coastal villages after Independence as a consequence of the political ecology and modernisation of fishing. Further, it shows how the conflict over fishing significantly declined after the 1980s due to the gradual withdrawal of Marakkayar Muslims from the domain of fishing and yet how the state interventions continued to amplify reification of identities in the historically contested space of the seashore, which produced more violent riots, unlike the earlier violent incidents.
