Who’s Afraid of Zumba?

What is being framed as a dispute over fitness classes in Kerala schools is, in reality, a much deeper conflict—one that lays bare the contradictions between a state’s duty to educate and emancipate, and the reactionary pull of religious fundamentalism that seeks to regulate bodies, restrict freedom, and preserve a crumbling moral order.

The Campus Joy initiative, launched by the Kerala government as part of its broader “With Childhood and Youth” campaign, includes activities like Zumba, yoga, and theatre therapy as tools for enhancing mental health, promoting physical fitness, and steering students away from drug use. One of its core objectives is to make schools spaces of joy, movement, and stress-free learning, and to keep children away from the lure of drugs.

Among these, Zumba—a globally recognised dance-based fitness practice—has drawn disproportionate attention and backlash. What should be an ordinary physical education activity, conducted during school hours and in uniform, has provoked a wave of outrage from fundamentalist religious groups who frame it as a moral and cultural transgression.

This isn’t just a fight about children dancing. And it’s not only about freedom. It’s also about power—about how religious outfits, especially fundamentalist ones, try to use public issues like this to grow their influence and strengthen their grip on the community.

These organisations don’t just offer opinions on morality. They function like political machines, using fear, identity, and moral panic to build their base. They pretend to speak for faith, but what they really want is authority—not just inside homes or mosques, but in schools, in legislation, in the minds of young people.

They want to be the gatekeepers—to decide how children dress, who they talk to, what they learn, and how they behave. And they do this not because they’re defending values, but because they’re defending hierarchies that give them power: over women, over youth, and over the poor.

Islamist organisations—like their right-wing Hindu nationalist counterparts—may seem to oppose each other on the surface, but they often work in similar ways. They police public behaviour, shame people for not conforming, and claim to be protecting “the community” while quietly building political capital.

Take the example of SDPI. It claims to speak for the oppressed, but time and again it has acted as a moral police force, harassing people, breaking up art events, and punishing young people for things like dancing, dating, or simply mixing across gender. These acts aren’t random—they are part of a strategy to show they’re in charge, to create fear, and to assert control over everyday life.

By controlling what’s seen as acceptable in culture, they also control who gets to speak, who gets to lead, and who gets to dream. And that’s their real goal—not faith, but influence. They want to become power brokers, to speak for entire communities, to pressure governments, and to make public institutions bend to their will. Whether it’s schools today or cinemas tomorrow, the tactic is the same: create outrage, claim to protect morality, and use that outrage to claim political space.

Education Minister V. Sivankutty has framed the backlash as “injecting a poison more dangerous than drugs,” calling out the communal and regressive undercurrents of the protest. When the state expands public education to include movement, expression, and mental well-being, it chips away at centuries of disciplinary conditioning—the same conditioning that kept oppressed castes, women, and working-class children docile, compliant, and easily governed.That’s why reactionaries are terrified. Zumba is not just a dance class—it’s an interruption. It breaks the rhythm of control.

Public schools are among the democratic spaces where children from all classes, castes, and religions come together. That’s what makes them dangerous to reactionary forces. A curriculum rooted in scientific thinking, secular values, and emotional well-being poses an existential threat to those who thrive on irrational beliefs, fear, division, and blind obedience.

Kerala’s Zumba programme is part of a larger campaign—“Padanamaanu Lahari” (Education is the real addiction)—aimed at countering drug use and mental health decline among the youth. It includes not just Zumba, but yoga, theatre therapy, and mindfulness. The initiative is grounded in evidence, not ideology. It prioritises health, not ritual. And in doing so, it asserts a vision of schooling where children are not passive recipients of dogma but active participants in their own becoming.

That vision must be defended—not just in Kerala, but across India and everywhere across the world.

As General Secretary of Communist Party of India (Marxist) and former Education Minister M.A. Baby rightly put it, “Religious organisations are free to express opinions—but not to issue commands to society or education. Saying boys and girls shouldn’t interact is not appropriate in a modern society.”

The Left Democratic Front (LDF) government has made it clear: Campus Joy and its programmes will continue. They will not be rolled back to appease those who preach control in the name of culture. In standing firm, the state is drawing a line—not just for Kerala, but for the country—that public education is not the playground of fundamentalist politics. It belongs to the children. And if they are to inherit a better future, that space must remain free, fearless, and full of movement.