You’re not dragging anyone down a rabbit hole, you’re not even showing the rabbit hole, so far you’ve just talked about it. Doing a quick search, what “communalism” might be, these are some definitions I’ve found:

The concept of ‘communalism’ is based on that of ‘community’ and has to be understood in relation to the concepts of ‘nation’ and ‘civil society.’ Communalism signifies a politics of belonging that does not emphasize the nation in all its diversity, but the homogenous, religious community. It should be clear that the term communalism comes up as an alternative to nationalism, both in theories that explain the failure of the nation-state to emerge in certain parts of the world and in theories that explain the demise of the nation-state under conditions of globalisation. Like the use of the concept of ‘tribalism’ in the study of African politics ‘communalism’ is primarily used in the analysis of Indian society and politics and is seldom encountered in theoretical arguments of a more general nature.

Communalism refers to communities of belonging and especially to such communities in Indian society. More specifically, it refers to the articulation of religious communities into mutually antagonistic, social, political, and economic groups. It emerges within the context of the colonial modernization of Indian society, in which the Indian population was classified, counted, and measured in terms of community. Communalist ideologies emerged in India in the Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh communities. Today they are connected to forms of transnational community.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/communalism

But that’s probably not what you’re talking about, right?