Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ongoing visit to Kerala assumes political significance amid the BJP’s efforts to expand its support base in the state ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls by highlighting the Central government’s development agenda and reaching out to Christians. The two-day visit that started on Monday comes almost two months after the PM said the BJP would win power in Kerala. On Monday, PM Modi said at a youth conclave the way Northeastern states and Goa had accepted the BJP, its work, and its government, Kerala too would “accept it in the coming days”. Later in the day, he held a 20-minute meeting with eight bishops, most of them heads of various Christian denominations in Kerala. On Tuesday, the PM flagged off a Vande Bharat Express that will run between Thiruvananthapuram, which is at the southern tip of the state, and the northern city of Kasaragod. Later in the country, Modi inaugurated the Kochi water metro, which is reckoned to be the first of its kind in the country. The minority outreach and the development thrust are part of the BJP’s strategy to consolidate itself in a state that has proved to be unbreachable so far. The only time it ever won an Assembly seat was in 2016, but it lost this too to the CPI(M) in 2021. It has never won a Lok Sabha election in Kerala. The state’s politics remains bipolar, with the CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) on one side and the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) on the other. But, over the years, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance’s (NDA) vote share has grown in Kerala from 6.6% in the 2011 Assembly elections to 14.93% in 2016. It fell to 14.4% in 2021. Last time, the party finished second in seven Assembly seats. In many other constituencies, the BJP got enough votes to tilt the results by fielding high-profile candidates and celebrities. Christian vote Against this backdrop, the Christian vote becomes crucial. All across April, a month of festivals for all three communities in the state, the BJP planned a special outreach programme. It looked at reaching out to one lakh Christian families on the occasion of Easter (April 9) and connecting with Hindu families on Vishu (April 15) and Muslim households on Eid (April 22). Minorities make up nearly half of Kerala’s population, with Muslims comprising 26% of the population and Christians numbering around 18%. Since Muslims are unlikely to go with the BJP, Christians look the best bet for the BJP if it has to start winning in Kerala. The ground has opened up for this due to the decline of the Kerala Congress, a regional party that once dominated central Kerala’s Christian politics. It has been left weakened by frequent splits, the death of satrap K M Mani, and the exit of several senior Christian leaders from active public life. The BJP’s outreach, led by state and Central leaders, has included meeting the clergy of various Churches, including Bishops, and trying to find common ground on an issue such as “love jihad (conspiracy theory of Hindu rightwing groups to describe inter-religious marriages that they allege involves the conversion to Islam of a Hindu woman either by force or guile on the pretext of marriage)”. While the party has made some headway with the Syro-Malabar Catholics, its success has been constrained due to the failure to take up more bread-and-butter concerns of the community such as the fall in the prices of natural rubber, increasing man-animal conflict, and worries regarding buffer zones for protected forest tracts. The frequent reports of attacks on churches and missionaries in north India by outfits linked to the Sangh Parivar mean Christians remain suspicious of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Several Bishops in Kerala have tried to mend fences with the BJP because it rules the Centre, but the activities of some Sangh Parivar outfits have left several embarrassed. The clergy is also apprehensive about a backlash of the kind it saw from civil society over its “silence” on the long incarceration and subsequent death of Father Stan Swamy who was arrested in the Elgar Parishad case. Another factor that has driven a wedge between the Church and Sangh Parivar is the RSS’ stand on reservation benefits to Dalit Christians, a long-standing demand of the Church. The formation of a government committee under former Chief Justice of India K G Balakrishnan kindled some hopes in Kerala but the Sangh Parivar’s mass communication wing Vishva Samwad Kendra has opposed granting of such quota. But the recent formation of a new Christian party by disgruntled leaders of various splinter outfits of the Kerala Congress and the new warmth between the Catholic Church and the Sangh Parivar have rekindled the BJP’s electoral hopes in the state. The contest The CPI(M), which has also been eyeing the Christian vote in the wake of the slide of both the Kerala Congress and the Congress, keeps raising the spectre of attacks on churches in north India. Following Modi’s claim about the BJP’s rise in Kerala, CPI(M) state secretary M V Govindan recently said, “The PM must first respond to the joint statement issued by retired civil servants (recently) that violence against Christians should be stopped immediately.’’ In the constituencies where the BJP finished runner-up in the previous Lok Sabha and Assembly elections, Christians were not a factor. Be it Thiruvananthapuram, Palakkad, Thrissur or Kasaragod, the BJP gained by taking away Hindu votes from both the CPI(M) and the Congress. There is another big hurdle standing in the BJP’s way. The closer it gets to the Christian community by playing on Islamophobia, the more likely the consolidation by the Muslim community behind either the LDF or the UDF. Both the CPI(M) and the Congress have been trying to fight off the BJP in Kerala by getting Muslim votes to their side apart from their usual vote bank.
