PM’s interaction, Christmas message, home visits: BJP pushes on with Christian outreach

Highlights from today’s Christmas programme at my residence… pic.twitter.com/J3g6qMcK14

— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) December 25, 2023

In March, following the victories of NDA parties in Nagaland and Meghalaya, Modi told party leaders and workers that the results proved allegations about the party being anti-Christian. The PM said a BJP-led coalition would “come to power in Kerala also”, one of the southern states where it has not been able to electorally make any headway so far. The only time it won an Assembly seat was in 2016 but it lost that too to the CPI(M) in 2021. It has never won a Lok Sabha election in the southern state.

Following the PM’s speech, the BJP started reaching out to Kerala’s Christian community before Easter. Senior party leaders visited the homes of bishops of the Catholic Church, sharing with them the PM’s Easter greetings. Later that month, Modi met eight bishops of various Christian denominations.

But the Manipur violence that began in May, marked by attacks on churches, coupled with the alleged inaction of BJP governments at the state and at the Centre in containing the violence, cast a shadow on the party’s Kerala efforts. The two major religious minorities make up over a third of Kerala, with Muslims at 26% and Christians at around 18% of the population. With the party unlikely to receive widespread support from Muslims, the Christian vote becomes crucial to its Kerala expansion plans.

BJP national spokesperson Tom Vadakkan who attended the interaction at the PM’s residence, said the guests came from across the country including the South. “This was not an election programme. This is an ongoing process. The PM is working for every minority community. The PM’s initiatives in support of minorities have set an example. No other Prime Minister took so much care of minorities,” he said.

Asked if the party was doing damage control after the Manipur violence, Vadakkan said, “It was only a Christmas celebration and the programme had no connection with Manipur … The Congress tried to politically benefit from the Manipur issue. We (the BJP government) had and have complete attention on Manipur. Christians understand that a political game has been played. The fact is that people want development and growth of the nation.”

The BJP Minority Morcha’s national president Jamal Siddiqui, too, joined Christmas celebrations with Mocrha workers at a church in Kerala on Monday. “BJP joins the celebration of festivals of all communities. It is an exercise to meet people,” Siddiqui said. On why the party was conducting the outreach, he said, “The prime minister has the vision to make the country vishwa guru and vishwa vijayi (world leader). For that, we have to win the trust of everyone and take everyone along. We are approaching Christians like other minority communities.”

The party’s minority wing claims to have already appointed 3.5 lakh “Modi mitras (friends of Modi)” in 65 Lok Sabha constituencies in several states, including Kerala, Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir, Assam, Bihar, Telangana, Maharashtra, West Bengal, and Uttar Pradesh. Siddiqui said that by February, the party would have 25 lakh “Modi mitras” in all the Lok Sabha constituencies across India. According to Siddiqui, the party selects non-political persons who support the PM as “Modi mitras” and then tells them about government schemes and programmes so that they can spread awareness about them in their communities.

In the next couple of months, the Minority Morcha was planning to hold two grand rallies, most probably in Delhi and West Bengal, Siddiqui said.

Meanwhile, continuing his minority outreach on Tuesday, PM Modi addressed a “Veer Bal Diwas” event in Delhi. The “Veer Baal Diwas” is observed to commemorate the martyrdom of Guru Gobind Singh’s sons Zorawar Singh and Fateh Singh.