God's own country

We spent a week relaxing in Kerala, the backwaters state, also called "God's Own Country". I think it's a nice name, usually palmtree areas somehow always are associated with 'paradise' and 'heaven'. All the restaurants, hostels, beaches etc. have one of those words (or both) in their name. Not here, not in God's Own Country. We wanted to spend 1 or 2 days here, we stayed 4 or 5. One of the most beautiful places we've seen in India. A special place.
God's Own Country, with capitals. I suppose because there's a God involved. That's probably because of the 20% Syrian Christians who live here, and that's a lot more than in any other Indian state. Kerala is different. This is also the state where the first democratically elected Communist Government (Marxist) was elected. Also with Capitals. The Communist Capital C. And Capital's Capital C. In God's Own Communist Country.
Money is important here, tourism is big. You can easily not see it, although there's nothing else to see. I wonder how that works, a society with a lot of money, and christians ruled by communist Hindus. Communist rulers calling the lower classes/casts to revolt? Against who? Who owns/is the Capital? God, the church, Catholics? Communists themselves?
I'm reading 'The God of small things' by Toolongafirstname Roy now, which is set in Kerala. The writer gives three possible explanations for the popularity of Marxist communism here. One is that Christianity has been largely replaced by another religions called communism. God replaced by Marx, sort of. But the problem with that explanation is that the Christians remained Christian, it's mainly the Hindus that became Communist. The second is that, as Kerale claims the highest literacy rate in India, people read more are more Aware of how things can be different. Problem with that one, the writer says, is that the 90% literacy is precisely because of communism. So the last and most probable explanation according to Roy is that communists never have judged or convicted the cast system, allowing them to work from within and from below.
The result is that we got the impression that poverty is a lot lower than elsewhere, that children go to school instead of selling in the streets, that there still is a huge difference between the (very) rich and the poor, but that those poor aren't as poor as in Rajastan for example. But, this impression could be wrong of course. We only saw what we saw, most probably we didn't stay long enough to have a more refined idea about how things work here. Not to say that we actually don't have a clue. And I really wonder who has over here.