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Published Aug 24, 2025 | 12:12 PM ⚊ Updated Aug 24, 2025 | 12:12 PM
Women taking out a demonstration against Rahul Mamkootathil with roosters.
Synopsis: Demonstrators march with live roosters tucked under their arms, holding them high like victory flags. Others, adding culinary insult to political injury, set up grills on the roadside and made tandoori chicken in public view.
Kerala’s protest arena has seen plenty of symbols over the years — from the most common of them all, effigies, biriyani pots, PPE kits, and many more.
But nothing quite like this. These days, the streets are reverberating not just with slogans, but with clucks.
The unlikely star of the show? The rooster – or kozhi, as it is known in Malayalam – the unlikely mascot of dissent against Palakkad MLA Rahul Mamkootathil.
Ever since misconduct allegations clipped the wings of Palakkad MLA Mamkootathil, demonstrators have latched onto a symbol that needs no translation.
In local slang, kozhi is a jab at men who flirt indiscriminately. And for Mamkootathil, once seen as the face of Congress’s youth brigade, the word has become a brand — and not the kind any politician wants.
With leaked chats with women, allegations of pressuring a partner to terminate her pregnancy, and a string of personal controversies, his fall has been as dramatic as his rise.
Related: Rahul Mamkootathil resigns as Kerala Youth Congress chief
At just 35, Mamkootathil was not only an MLA but also the state president of the Indian Youth Congress. Today, he is “Kozhi Rahul,” the butt of a statewide satire campaign.
Mahila Morcha’s cradle protest in Thrissur against Rahul Mamkootathil. It has been alleged that he had forced a woman to terminate her pregnancy.
The protests have taken on a surreal, almost theatrical quality.
Demonstrators march with live roosters tucked under their arms, holding them high like victory flags. Others, adding culinary insult to political injury, set up grills on the roadside and made tandoori chicken in public view.
Women protesters have carried both roosters and cradles, symbolically taunting him over the allegations of relationships gone wrong.
In one tragicomic twist, a rooster allegedly suffocated during a rally, prompting a police complaint of animal cruelty. It was as if Kerala politics had briefly turned into a dark comedy staged by poultry.
The symbolism has stuck because it is so biting. In politics, a nickname is often more damaging than a scandal — and Mamkootathil’s critics have found one that clucks loudly in every corner of the state.
For a leader once groomed as a youth icon and firebrand, the transition from Rahul Mamkootathil to “Kozhi Rahul” is a fall scripted almost entirely by satire.
Meanwhile, Mamkootathil is finding doors closing around him. Palakkad municipality, fearing noisy demonstrations, withdrew an invitation to him to inaugurate the new bus stand.
The General Education Department, too, dropped him from chairing the organising committee of the Kerala School Science Festival. Once a chief guest, he is now a guest who must stay away.
The Congress, under pressure, forced him to step down as state Youth Congress president, citing moral responsibility. The LDF and BJP, unsurprisingly, demand that he go further and resign as MLA.
Mamkootathil, however, is standing his ground, insisting resignation is “not even a consideration.” He blames the “technologia” behind the viral voice clips, but his wafer-thin defence has done little to stem the tide of ridicule.
For now, his political career appears suspended between satire and scandal. If politics is a theatre, Mamkootathil’s stage has been overrun by poultry.
What was once a promising career has been reduced to a punchline as of now. And in Kerala’s political lexicon, Rahul Mamkootathil will never again be just Rahul.
