Dr Shashi Tharoor’s recent commentary on a World Bank study highlighting conservative shifts in gender attitudes among migrants returning from Saudi Arabia has triggered an intense public debate in Keralam. Arguing that imported orthodoxies run counter to the state’s progressive ethos, Tharoor called upon the Muslim community to engage in serious introspection. While his remarks have drawn mixed reactions from the diaspora, community leaders and political observers, the issue demands an objective assessment rather than an emotionally charged response. To understand the ideological shifts taking place in Keralam, one must examine the complex intersection of migration, theological currents and the state’s own socio-religious landscape.
The conservatism observed among sections of Gulf returnees is not entirely accidental. Following the oil boom of the 1970s, Saudi Arabia systematically used state and institutional machinery to extend its theological influence among the vast migrant workforce entering the country. Organisations such as Maktab al-Jalyat (dawah centres for expatriates), the Muslim World League and the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) disseminated strict Salafi/Wahhabi doctrines in the native languages of migrant workers. Backed by state-funded literature and scholars trained at institutions such as the Islamic University of Madinah, this literalist theological current was often projected as the authentic expression of Islam. Migrants exposed to these ideas inevitably carried some of them back to their home societies, Keralam included.
However, reducing Kerala’s growing religious conservatism to a “Saudi-returnee phenomenon” is analytically inadequate for at least two important reasons.
The Wider Gulf Footprint
The influence of revivalist and Salafi-leaning movements has never been restricted to Saudi Arabia. Expatriate organisations operating across Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE and elsewhere in the Gulf have also propagated orthodox religious narratives. Consequently, changes in gender relations, cultural practices and social attitudes can be observed among sections of the wider Gulf-returnee population, rather than exclusively among those who worked in Saudi Arabia.
Migration, therefore, is part of the story. But Saudi Arabia alone cannot explain it.
The Orthodoxy at Home
Equally important is a reality that the Saudi-centric explanation risks obscuring: conservative perspectives on women’s public participation, attire and cultural engagement are not exclusively imported.
Keralam has its own deeply rooted traditions of religious orthodoxy. Sections of the traditionalist Sunni clerical establishment, including influential factions associated with the Samastha Keralam Jamiyyathul Ulama, have articulated positions on gender and cultural participation that are themselves markedly conservative. Recent controversies surrounding statements by prominent traditionalist clerics discouraging participation in Onam celebrations, for instance, point to a form of cultural insularity that cannot simply be attributed to Saudi influence.
Indeed, when it comes to women’s autonomy, political leadership and visibility in the public sphere, the differences between reformist Salafis and traditionalist Sunni establishments in Keralam can sometimes appear to be differences of degree rather than substance. Both clerical ecosystems remain predominantly patriarchal and socially conservative on several questions concerning gender.
Tharoor’s Question Needs a Wider Answer
Tharoor’s intervention touches upon an undeniable social reality: conservative attitudes have hardened within sections of post-migration Keralam. The relationship between Gulf migration, religious revivalism and changing social attitudes therefore deserves serious examination.
However, laying the responsibility entirely at the doorstep of blue-collar workers returning from Saudi Arabia risks mistaking one strand of a much larger phenomenon for the phenomenon itself.
The story is more complicated. Gulf-wide socio-religious networks have played their part. So have theological movements and clerical institutions within Keralam itself. Traditionalist and reformist currents that disagree bitterly with each other on doctrine can nevertheless converge on questions of gender, cultural participation and the boundaries of individual autonomy.
That is why the introspection Tharoor calls for cannot be outsourced to a single category of migrants or reduced to the familiar trope of the Saudi returnee.
If Keralam is serious about confronting the growth of religious conservatism, the scrutiny must travel in both directions — across the Arabian Sea to the ideological networks shaped by Gulf migration, and back home to the institutions and clerical establishments that have nurtured their own forms of orthodoxy.
The debate Tharoor has opened is worth having. But Keralam must ask a larger and more uncomfortable question: how much of the conservatism it attributes to the Gulf was imported, and how much was already waiting at home?
This is far bigger than Tharoor’s Saudi question—it forces Kerala to confront the political machinery behind the rise of religious conservatism. The real issue is not merely what leaders say, but who benefits when fear, identity and faith are turned into instruments of political mobilisation. This powerful analysis cuts through the noise and exposes the deeper struggle over Kerala’s secular, democratic and plural public sphere. A fearless piece that asks the questions politics often tries to bury. 🔥✊
Of course a much broader study and introspection are both needed by Muslim. Hindus and Christians are also experiencing growing conservative, sectarian and extremely patriarchal trends. Hijab is not the only marker. Increased dowry taking and giving, domestic violence etc are also important indicators. Andgrowinh intolerance and conservatism in each community encourage these trends in the others.