Thiruvananthapuram: On 12 March, Union Home Minister Amit Shah was in Thrissur, Kerala’s cultural capital renowned for the Thrissur pooram (an annual festival). The first agenda on his itinerary was paying floral tributes to Sakthan Thampuran — a former ruler of Cochin with whom the city is closely identified — at the Vadakkekara Palace.
After presiding over a BJP core committee meeting at the Joys Palace Hotel in the afternoon, Shah met with prominent influencers and community leaders.
As dusk set in, Shah arrived at a public event at the iconic Thekkinkadu Maidan, a 65-acre canopy in the middle of the town, with the stunning Vadakkunnathan Temple in the background. A crowd running into a few thousands was firmly seated in the arena when K. Surendran, the BJP state president, got the proceedings underway with a speech.
A couple of minutes into it, Surendran was interrupted by a loud cheer from the crowd when actor Suresh Gopi made a fashionably late entry.
Gopi, who performed creditably in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, and tipped to stand the best chance of making the lotus bloom in Kerala, was the next to speak. He reiterated his now-famous “Ee Thrissur Enikku Venam” (Give me Thrissur) to thunderous applause and followed it up with, “Amit Shah Ji, I would be equally glad to contest from Kannur, too, if you were to give me the go-ahead” — which sounded a bit odd to the audience in Thrissur.
Cut to 18 March. Tellicherry Archbishop Joseph Pamplany was speaking at the conclusion of a farmers’ rally organised by the All Kerala Catholic Congress at the settler farmers’ township of Alakode in Kannur, where he made an open offer: “These settler farmers will erase your sorrow of not having a single Member of Parliament if you fix the support price of rubber at Rs 300”.
One cannot be certain if Gopi’s wish to contest from Kannur had anything to do with the archbishop’s offer, but it has since come to light that this speech was preceded by a district BJP delegation calling on the prelate at his headquarters a couple of days prior to the event.
Also Read: Kerala BJP is a divided house under K Surendran. The Tamil Nadu model isn’t working
BJP plateauing in Kerala
The BJP has been on a downward slide in Kerala lately. After polling 15 per cent — with ally Bharat Dharma Jana Sena (BDJS) — in the 2016 assembly polls and maintaining that figure in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, it was down to 11.3 per cent in the 2021 assembly polls, also squandering its lone seat in the state in the process.
When Amit Shah came to Kerala in 2016-17, he had expressed confidence in reaching a critical mass by 2021, with a base of 15 per cent which, he noted, as significant.
One major reason attributed for the party’s slide is K. Surendran’s lacklustre leadership. Surendran emergence as the Hindutva poster boy during the Sabarimala protests had catapulted him to the top job, but his stint has since been mired in controversies and he lost much of his goodwill in the party’s rank and file in its aftermath.
His dwindling popularity is evident in the ‘comments’ section of Kerala’s most popular right-wing media outlet, the Shajan Scaria-run Marunadan Malayalee.
Growing Islamophobia among Christians
Shajan Scaria, too, makes for a curious case study.
A trained journalist with an unremarkable stint at the Syro-Malabar Church-promoted Deepika, Kerala’s oldest daily, Scaria’s career really took off only after founding the web portal Marunadan Malayalee. The portal primarily caters to the BJP’s base and is equally popular among the Syrian Christians of central Travancore.
Coincidentally, the rightwards-turn of a section of the community was coterminous with the growing popularity for Marunadan Malayalee in the Syrian Christian belt, a chicken-and-egg situation.
The decline in fertility rate has been bothering the Syrian Christians in central Travancore for a while now.
The assembly delimitation in 2009 saw the Muvattupuzha Lok Sabha seat and other assembly constituencies in central Travancore ceasing to exist, while four fresh constituencies were carved out of Muslim-majority Malappuram.
In fact, the population census from 1951 to 2011 of these two communities in Kerala would be instructive, as it is inversely proportional.
Migration is also a factor as Christians generally immigrate to western countries. Land, which has sentimental value to the older generation, is quickly changing hands.
As for Kerala Muslims, who generally seek their fortunes in the Persian Gulf where permanent residency isn’t on offer, they come back with their savings to invest in property.
This change of ownership hasn’t gone down well with Syrian Christians, who were the original landed gentry in central Travancore, leading to the rise of a wave of islamophobia in this part of the world.
Also Read: Importance of being IUML in Kerala politics — Congress ally now courted by ruling Left
The role of the Church
The BJP has been engaging the Syro-Malabar Church steadily in Kerala.
It was the demonetisation of high-value currency notes in 2016 that saw the Church first reciprocating to the BJP overtures, apparently in a bid to protect its own financial interests.
The land scam in the Ernakulam-Angamaly archdiocese, the seat of power, further gave a fillip to the BJPs efforts. In fact, long before Archbishop Pamplany’s offer, Cardinal George Alencherry had declared in 2016 that the BJP wasn’t “untouchable”.
The schism in the Church in the wake of the land scam was also an opportunity for the BJP to get closer to the Church’s official faction, led by the Cardinal.
When Pala Bishop Joseph Kallarangatt’s “narcotic Jihad” comment snowballed into a controversy, it was the BJP which came to his defense.
The comments closely mirrored the BJP’s, indicating how lines were increasingly getting blurred. The political stance taken by Deepika, the Church mouthpiece, peddling soft on the BJP, was also an indication of how far the party had progressed in its endeavour.
The role of the ‘Catholic Congress’
The Church’s change of heart, despite the reasons mentioned above, may not have been all that straightforward.
It has to be noted here that Archbishop Pamplany’s comments came at a function of the All Kerala Catholic Congress. The body has an illustrious past, dating back to over 150 years, when it was called the ‘Thiruvithamkoor Kochi Catholica Mahajana Sabha’, as a key player in Church politics.
It seems BJP-affiliates managed to make their way into the Catholic Congress around 2014, when the party assumed power in Delhi.
A key figure in this “infiltration” is V.V. Augustine, who quit the BJP on the eve of the 2014 Lok Sabha election, after serving it for nearly three decades — contesting twice to the Lok Sabha and once to the legislative assembly, albeit unsuccessfully.
Augustine’s three-year presidency of the Catholic Congress from 2014 saw the organisation taking pronounced right-wing positions. Coincidentally, this was also when the bar bribery scandal broke out in Kerala, with veteran K.M. Mani, a leader from the community, finding himself in the dock.
With the clout of the Church and the community in the state administration on the wane, the Catholic Congress initiated talks with the blessings of Kanjirappally Bishop Mathew Arackal to found a political party to cater to the community’s interests.
Bankrolled by Syrian Christian leaders, such as George J. Mathew, a former three-time Congress MLA and president of ‘Kerala Congress’, this movement has found itself aligning closely with the BJP in recent times, ThePrint has learnt.
Also Read: Jamaat-e-Islami Hind is the new Sarkari Mussalman in Kerala after meeting RSS
Harvesting the votes of the laity
It is not enough for the clergy to identify with the BJP to harvest the community’s votes. The laity, too, needs to be on the same page to accomplish that.
The BJP will have to keep working behind the scenes to widen the cleavage between the Christian and Muslim communities to accomplish it.
The recent ban on the Popular Front of India (PFI) has generated some goodwill for the BJP among the Christians, as the Congress was not seen to have the political will to do it.
However, despite the growing islamophobia permeating through a section of the Christian community, they are, by instinct, voters of the Congress and, as long as the Congress stands a chance to come to power, they will never switch en masse to the BJP.
In short, the BJP’s ticket to power in Kerala is to ensure the United Democratic Fronts’ (UDF) defeat in 2026.
The BJP with its 11 per cent vote share and zero representation in the Kerala assembly is not a fair representation of things, as it stands today.
The votes polled by the UDF include the anti-Marxist bloc, a portion of which will naturally switch to the BJP if it gains an upper hand. The ‘Kerala Congress’ factions backed by the Church will also align with the BJP if it manages to pip the Congress.
V.V. Augustine, while speaking to ThePrint, had this prediction to make, which is premature as of date: “In 2026, Kerala will see an alliance between the Marxists and the Muslims, and the Christians will be left with no choice but to align with the BJP”. The 80-year-old Augustine, however, wasn’t sure if he would be around to witness it.
(Edited by Richa Mishra)
Also Read: From ‘nepotism’ standoff to Rs 85 lakh Mercedes — inside Kerala’s governor vs govt tangle