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Journalism of Courage
The Kerala BJP’s bid to make inroads into the state’s Christian community has received a big boost, with the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church saying that it will support the BJP if the Central government takes steps to improve the condition of rubber cultivators. The Syro-Malabar Catholic Church represents a dominant segment of Christians in the southern state.
The comments came on a day the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) said dialogue with Christians in Kerala would continue, and added that the Christian community in Kerala was no more afraid of the RSS. The Sangh said state and district-level mechanisms had been set up for dialogue with Christians.
At a farmers’ meeting organised by the Catholic laymen association All Kerala Catholic Congress in Kannur, the church’s Archbishop Joseph Pamplany said, “Rubber prices have plunged … Who is responsible for it? Nobody … If the party that rules the Centre takes a favourable stand, the prices can be raised to Rs 250 per kg. We should understand that a protest becomes valuable in democracy only when it turns into a vote. We can tell the Central government … (if) you buy rubber from farmers at Rs 300 per kg, whatever your party, we are ready to vote for you … The settler farmers will solve the BJP’s grouse that they don’t have an MP in Kerala.”
The meeting was held in Alakode, a farming belt in the district, in protest against a fall in the prices of agricultural products, including rubber, and to demand steps to ease the attacks of wild animals on farmers. The archbishop said farmers would not retreat from their agitation until their demands are met. “We are not against any government, but authorities should ensure a situation in which farmers can survive here,” he said.
Ahead of next year’s general elections, the BJP has a lot riding on the Christian vote bank in Kerala. It is aiming to take a chunk of Christian votes, particularly the numerically strong Catholics, to prove that the state is not unbreachable.
But the party has so far fallen short in taking up the concerns that bother the community at the grassroots — such as the fall in the prices of natural rubber, increasing man-animal conflict, and fixing of the boundaries of buffer zones for protected forest tracts. Over the last few years, the state’s churches, particularly the powerful Kerala Catholic Bishops Council, have been highlighting the concerns of the community engaged in farming.
Rubber is a big part of the farm-based economy of central Kerala, where the BJP has been trying to make inroads among Christians. The rubber growers have been pleading with the Centre to curb the import of natural rubber and rubber components, with the domestic market depressed since 2013. That their condition has not improved during the tenure of the BJP-led Central government is not lost on the rubber cultivators.
The Christian community also has high stakes in the hilly farm regions of Kerala, where their crops are increasingly being threatened by a growing population of wild boars. Again, churches have taken up their cause, demanding that the wild boar be declared vermin, which will enable the state to control its population. But the Centre rejected the proposal last year.
The most recent issue over which the church has been protesting is the Pinarayi Vijayan-led government’s plans to hold satellite surveys to mark human activities and structures within a proposed one-km buffer zone for protected forest tracts. It has left residents across the state apprehensive about their holdings and the BJP’s failure to tap into it is seen as the failure of the ground-level connections of the RSS, something that the Sangh has in other states, especially among the minorities.
