Wayanad: On Easter, some Christians in Kerala had unlikely visitors: leaders from the BJP. They visited homes of Bishops and a selected few faithful Christians, distributing cards with the image of Jesus Christ, alongside a smaller photograph of Prime Minister Modi.
On the same day, Modi visited a church in Delhi and joined in prayers and listened to hymns. He lit a candle and planted a sapling. This came a day after Congress stalwart AK Antony’s son, Anil Antony, joined the BJP.
This, many observers in Kerala say, is part of one of the most significant shifts in Modi’s new politics. The community is currently being wooed by the BJP, which has stepped up its outreach efforts: PM Modi is also scheduled to visit the state on 25 April.
In Kerala, followers of the Syro-Malabar Church have typically stood behind the centrist, Congress-led United Democratic Front. In an era when the Congress is looking increasingly aligned with Muslim communities across India, the Christian leadership are looking for a new home. After all, they had popularised the phrase “love jihad” before the BJP and RSS groups did.
The BJP’s outreach to the Kerala Christians came right after the party’s inclusion of Pasmandas—the backward Muslims—in its political rhetoric. But this is surprising to many because allegations of religious conversions by nuns and priests have been a key political platform for many Hindutva groups.
“Yes. Christians do not have any such insecurity now [in BJP-ruled India],” said the head of the Syro-Malabar Church Cardinal George Alencherry in a recent interview. “But some say if BJP gets absolute power, minorities may become insecure. But I don’t know. We can’t predict all that.”
However, the political posture of church leadership has not yet trickled down to the average Christian voter in Kerala – even if the initial anathema to the BJP has reduced.
“The Syrian-Christian community has always been a pro-UDF, centrist voter base, despite strong attempts by the BJP to make inroads in Kerala. The overwhelming bulk of the Syrian-Christian clergy will not vote for the BJP,” said senior bureaucrat and former Collector of Ernakulam, MP Joseph. The BJP has been trying to make inroads in Kerala for decades now, witnessing a slow, incremental increase in vote-share since the 2011 polls.
The initial abhorrence and resistance to the BJP may come down in Kerala but, according to Joseph, the voter base hasn’t shifted in favour of the BJP.
“The Syrian Christian community in Kerala is highly educated and politically engaged. After all, we are the followers of St. Thomas the Apostle, and are known as thottavishwasikal: those who believe only what they touch and are personally convinced. It will not be easy to convince them about the love that the BJP and the RSS have suddenly started professing towards Christians in Kerala.”
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UDF: The political faith
For BJP, which has indulged in Hindutva politics for long, especially a large part of the last eight years, the shift is likely to be seen with cynicism in the southern state.
In Kerala, it’s not uncommon to see different religious institutions in proximity to each other. In Wayanad’s Sulthan Bathery, for example, a church, a temple, and mosque line a one-kilometre stretch along the town’s main road in quick succession.
“Everyone knows that religions coexist well in Kerala, many people come to live here from outside the state too because of this,” said Anna Njallapuzha, a Sulthan Bathery local, as she walked from church to a local grocery store — run by a Hindu, she pointed out. “I know in the North the BJP is only on the side of Hindus.”
The Muslim and Christian community, who constitute 27 and 18 per cent of Kerala’s population, respectively, have largely voted for the UDF. The Christians are such a loyal voter base that 58 per cent of the community voted for the UDF during the assembly elections in 2021, and 51 per cent in 2016. The three per cent that voted for the NDA in 2016 dropped to 1 per cent in 2021.
Noted theologian Father Paul Thelakat, who is also a former spokesperson of the Syro-Malabar Synod and an editor of the Christian publication Sathyadeepam, said that “some church leaders show a strange political leniency to the BJP.” There could be several reasons for this, according to him: the natural tendency to be in the good books of those who are in power, as well as the BJP’s willingness to confer higher caste status to the Syrian Christians.
The Christians and others in Kerala have a political sense, which, Thelakat said, is not very much influenced by religious leaders. “Respect is a free gift the Christians offer their religious leaders; it will be a very costly affair for them to enter into partisan politics and try to meddle with party politics. They expect [leadership] to be moral and spiritual leaders and not political leaders.”
And this might be true: most people have not read the Cardinal’s interview, and aren’t aware of his political stance. The Cardinal did add in the interview that Christian Malayalis are “very politically conscious,” and that the church does not tell the community who to vote for, which echoes across the clergy.
One priest in Sulthan Bathery said that it’s not the church’s duty to advocate which political party to vote for, and that he won’t advocate a political stance. “We support the people and the people’s issues,” he added. “Whoever addresses the issues in the best manner should get votes.”
His personal vote, he says under his breath, will go to the UDF.
But the RSS, as well as local BJP leaders, have stepped up their outreach efforts to the Christian community. Apart from senior leaders visiting several Bishops’ homes on Easter, sharing greetings, BJP national vice-president AP Abdullakutty also visited the home of Archbishop Joseph Pamplany, who had promised that the BJP would get an MP from Kerala if they increased the price of rubber. This shift toward the BJP and the RSS is because of the promise they offer the nation, according to Sangh leaders.
“A transformation is happening across the nation. Instead of strong party politics, people are shifting towards developmental politics because they want India as a developed nation,” said A. Jayakumar, the RSS Head of Outreach in South India.
Saying that the RSS began working in Kerala in 1942, he added that it is important to remind the people of Kerala of their traditional culture. “When narrow, parochial thought comes in, it divides festivals and jobs per communities. That should not happen for the future nation State,” he said. “Politics divides society, but culture unites society.”
“The Christian community will not vote in large numbers for the BJP, though I would say there is rising support in Kerala,” said Baby, a retired forest officer as he exited evening mass from his church in Sulthan Bathery. “The Prime Minister did visit a church for Easter, but what will that change! Good for his exposure, I suppose!”
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Controversy in the church
The church has been under the scanner in the last few years. And especially Cardinal Alencherry, who has several cases filed against him.
The Cardinal has cases registered against him from 2019 by a church member, Joshy Varghese, under Section 120 B, 406, 409, 418, 420, 423, 465, 467, 468 and 34 of the IPC — for cheating, criminal breach of trust, forgery and criminal conspiracy. At the center of the controversy stands church-owned properties, which the Cardinal was allegedly involved in selling at prices far below market value — the prime properties, priced at around Rs 30 crore, were allegedly sold at Rs 9 crore.
The Income Tax department had imposed a total fine of Rs 6 crore on his diocese, the Ernakulam-Angamaly archdiocese of the Syro-Malabar Church. And in 2021, the broker associated with the Cardinal, Saju Varghese, was raided by the Enforcement Directorate.
On 17 March, a Supreme Court bench dismissed a special leave petition filed by the Cardinal trying to quash the criminal cases against him. Thelakat said it was “disgrace” to have so many lawsuits against a head of the church — and “that the insinuation to sort them out with political influence is also very disheartening.”
“This is simply election engineering by the BJP,” said Shaiju Anthony of the Almaya Munnettam, or “movement of the faithful,” an organisation within the Ernakulam-Angamaly archdiocese that has demanded the Cardinal’s resignation. “They’re preparing the ground for the BJP to gain support from the Christian community.”
When the Metropolitan Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Thalassery, Joseph Pamplany said that the BJP would definitely get an MP from Kerala if they raised the price of rubber to Rs 300, it was dismissed by Cardinal Alencherry as the former’s individual opinion, and not the official position of the church. But the cardinal also said that the BJP is successful in getting peoples’ votes, and that the community does not feel insecure in a BJP-led India.
Thelkat does not agree with the Cardinal, telling ThePrint that the ground reality is different. He pointed to several instances, like when Horticulture Minister Munirathna recently called on people to “hit [Christians] and send them back” and said he would look after them if there were any repercussions.
“There are hard-core militant organisations and persons in the Sangh Parivar who go on creating problems for Christians and taking to violence in the assemblies of Christians all over India,” said Thelakat.
“It also betrays the malaise in the Church leadership who are myopic and apathetic to Christians suffering outside Kerala,” he added.
A recent protest rally in Delhi by the Christians at Jantar Mantar was against ‘rising hate and violence’, pointing to instances of harassment across the country. The Archbishop of Benguluru, Peter Machado, too filed a public interest litigation in concern over the number of attacks on Christians, detailing over 700 such incidents between 2020-21. The Supreme Court had directed seven state governments — including Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Karnataka — to look into these figures in February 2023.
“The sentiment among us is very different,” said Anthony. “The bottom line is that we are suffering everywhere.”
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Minority politics
What also explains the BJP’s rising popularity among Christians in Kerala is another significant minority in the state — the Muslims. And the former has been pitted against the latter.
The usual suspects — WhatsApp forwards and social media posts — have contributed to this tension. Videos purporting to “expose love jihad” regularly do the rounds on Christian WhatsApp groups, the flames of which are fanned by groups like the Christian Association and Alliance for Social Action.
“The Christians were the first minority in Kerala and then slowly Muslims became the most numerous of the minorities. The Muslim population is increasing while Christian population is falling,” said Thelakat, adding that with generational shifts, Muslim youth are more engaged in Kerala while Christian youth don’t have as much of a connection with their ancestral land.
“Here there is a reason for communal feeling,” he said. “What happens between the two communities in some places can be well understood and explained by Rene Girard’s “mimetic rivalry”. This can create a connatural spite, which if interpreted badly, and used for political ends can become destructive. The fringe extremist elements among the Muslims cause many to misunderstand the community.”
In January 2020, the Church issued an unusual statement expressing concern over the rising cases of ‘love jihad’ — something the Cardinal reiterated in April 2023, saying that “it is a fact that girls are being lured and converted” by Muslims.
The Bishop of Pala, Joseph Kallarangatt, also accused Muslims of “narcotics jihad”: trying to trap non-Muslims with narcotics. He encouraged Christians not to eat and drink at halal establishments, or use food products from Muslim distributors.
Many from within the community say that if Christians support the BJP, it might be due to socio-political tensions like deep-seated biases against Muslims or disillusionment with the Congress. “There’s an uneasiness. People support Modi because of their own fears,” said one Malayali Christian who requested anonymity. “But politically, Malayalis are quite firm about what they want. The Christian clergy don’t have as much influence over the people, but social media might.”
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Doubting Thomas
Seventeen-year-old Fida is waiting for her friend Maria outside the Assumption Forane Church in Sulthan Bathery. Maria had just gone in to say a quick prayer on her way back from school. The two are classmates and best friends, and Fida, who is Muslim, said she doesn’t mind the wait as Maria runs back out of the church.
They roll their eyes when they’re asked about the BJP. “There’s very little support for the BJP in Kerala,” said Fida with finality.
It’s the first time they’re hearing the Cardinal say the Christian community is getting closer to the BJP. Maria’s eyes widen, and Fida asks what a Cardinal is. “Did he say that? He must have his reasons,” answers Maria. “But I don’t support the BJP. And no one I know does either. I don’t think there are many people in Kerala who do.”
Syrian Christians are known as thottavishwasikal because they’re followers of St. Thomas, who famously doubted that Jesus Christ had been resurrected until he could touch him and see for himself.
Just like Doubting Thomas, the young women — and Christians at large in Kerala — will have to see it to believe it.
(Edited by Anurag Chaubey)