How Manipur strife cost BJP & allies dearly in Christian-majority northeastern states

Political leaders, observers in region say that nowhere did the Church determine the outcome of the result more than it did in Nagaland.

A BJP rally in Dimapur, Nagaland, ahead of the Lok Sabha elections | ANI

Kohima/Shillong: Nagaland’s ruling People’s Democratic Alliance (PDA) could sense that there had been a shift in sentiment on the ground even as its workers campaigned for the Lok Sabha elections.

But the alliance’s sheer dominance — from the streets to the state assembly, where it had 60 legislators — meant that hope was not in short supply. Its leaders believed that the Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP) candidate, fielded jointly by the PDA on the state’s lone Lok Sabha seat, would still pull through. However, by 19 April, the day Nagaland went to polls, the PDA had reconciled with the idea of its impending defeat.

The first confirmation of this came 10 days later, when the influential Nagaland Baptist Church Council (NBCC), which had accused the BJP of “actively promoting right-wing extremism” in the run-up to the polls, “politely declined” an offer from the PDA member to clean church compounds in the state.

“Stay as a political party, and leave the church to run whatever they see fit within their compounds,” the NBCC told the Nagaland BJP in a letter on 30 April.

“However, if something needs to be remembered, we may ask the BJP leadership to mobilise party members to travel to locations to safeguard persecuted churches in the mainland. This act will undoubtedly give reassurance to people whose churches and institutions are constantly targeted,” the letter further said.

Speaking to ThePrint, a leader of the Nagaland BJP, who shared the letter, said the NBCC was not the only Christian body to snub the BJP. From the Nagaland Christian Revival Church Council (NCRCC) to the Catholic Association of Nagaland (CAN), many key church bodies followed suit over the next few days.

“The pushback against our offer to simply clean the compounds of the churches made us realise that we were staring at a big loss not just in Nagaland, but in neighbouring Manipur, especially the Christian-majority outer Manipur seat and in Meghalaya,” the BJP leader said.

The BJP’s dominance at the Centre helped the party get a foothold in the Northeast — either on its own or through alliances with regional partners — in the last decade, but the Manipur conflict, which began in May 2023, as part of which churches also came under attack, appears to have halted its growth in the region.

A senior NDPP leader and a minister in the Nagaland Cabinet said that while the BJP’s ideological agenda never sat well with vast sections of the population in the region, opposition to it gained fresh impetus after the Manipur conflict broke out. “Previously, one could just say, ‘Look, we are over 90 per cent Christians in the state, what can the BJP do?’ But Manipur changed that line of thinking,” he said.

Like the NBCC, the NCRCC and the CAN turned down the BJP’s offer and also strongly criticised the party’s “communal agenda”.

The NCRCC, for instance, rebuked the BJP for communicating to the party’s state unit that instead of focusing on Nagaland for the sake of the campaign, it should protect “persecuted Christian minorities across India”.

In its letter, the CAN cited the destruction of “church properties and whole buildings” in the neighbouring states of Assam and Manipur. “It is difficult to not see a relationship between correlation and causation when the very vast majority of these cases have been in BJP-ruled states with the same party ruling the central government,” it said.

On 4 June, when the election results came out, the alliance and BJP’s worst fears came true. PDA lost the lone state Lok Sabha seat in Nagaland. In Meghalaya, the BJP’s alliance partner NPP lost both seats it was contesting. In Manipur, the BJP lost the Inner Manipur seat, while its alliance partner Naga People’s Front (NPF) was defeated in the outer seat. In Mizoram, the alliance partners, the Mizo National Front (MNF) and the BJP contested separately, only to lose to the ruling Zoram People’s Movement (ZPM) party.

After the results, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma appeared to place the blame for the party’s setback in the region squarely on the Christians. He said the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance lost seats in the region because a “particular community” did not back it. With its rise to power at the Centre, the BJP had over the last 10 years managed to make inroads in these states to some extent by tempering its ideological agenda, which included shedding its hostility toward the consumption of beef.

However, political leaders and observers in the region point out that nowhere, not even in the Christian-majority Meghalaya, did the Church determine the outcome of the result more than it did in Nagaland.

“The church bodies issued statements not just after the elections, but ahead of election day as well. At the grassroots level, the church leaders did not openly ask people to vote against the BJP but left it to their conscience after portraying it as anti-Christian, listing incidents against the community across the country over the last few years,” a functionary from one of the key church bodies in Nagaland said on condition of anonymity.

Manipur conflict in focus

In Manipur, where the BJP is in power, the ongoing ethnic conflict between the Meiteis and Kukis, has so far killed at least 225 people, injured over 1,500, and displaced more than 60,000 people. In the hill districts, populated by Kukis and Nagas who largely follow Christianity, there have been reports of attacks on churches.

In Meghalaya, where the ruling NPP had the BJP’s support, there was no overt involvement of the Church during the elections. Leaders of the NPP and the Voice of the People’s Party (VPP), which upset the calculations of the ruling alliance by winning the Shillong Lok Sabha seat, said the Church has historically maintained an arm’s length from politics in the state.

“Meghalaya might be Christian-majority as well but here people do not appreciate any leader of the religious institution commenting on political matters. Yes, its association with the BJP did dent the NPP’s prospects but not to the extent it affected the NDPP in Nagaland. Here the Khasi community gravitated towards the VPP,” said VPP president Ardent Millar Basaiawmoit.

“The NPP’s loss in the Tora seat in the Garo Hills was also due to the Garos turning against the ruling Sangma family,” added Basaiawmoit.

Some sections of the NPP, including state cabinet minister Rakkam Sangma, blamed its ally BJP’s “emphasis on Hindutva rather than governance” for the party’s Lok Sabha reverses.

In an interview with ThePrint, Chief Minister Conrad Sangma had also said that the NPP’s “alignment” with certain political parties, along with anti-incumbency, could have been the factors behind its defeat, avoiding directly blaming the BJP. He also ruled out the possibility of any future pre-poll tie-up between his National People’s Party (NPP) and current ally BJP.

However, a senior BJP leader in Meghalaya claimed that the NPP was “trying to deflect blame from the real resentment over corruption by blaming the party”.

“It is not for nothing that Union Home Minister Amit Shah once called the NPP the most corrupt party in India,” said the leader.

The BJP, which managed to win only two seats each in the last two assembly polls in Meghalaya, was part of the previous state government led by Sangma as well. Relations between the local units of the two parties have, however, been uneasy from the beginning.

In Manipur, where the NPP is a junior partner in the ruling alliance led by the BJP, the ties between the two parties have been frosty. Last month, the Manipur unit of the NPP threatened to walk out of the alliance if the ethnic conflict in the state is not resolved in the next three months.

Local councils played a role: Congress

Girish Chodankar, All India Congress Committee (AICC) in-charge for Nagaland, told ThePrint that Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra was a significant factor behind the party’s resurgence in the state. The Congress won the lone Lok Sabha seat in Nagaland this year for the first time since 1999.

Chodankar said the Congress also worked closely with NGOs and the civil society in preventing proxy voting. He acknowledged the role of the Church bodies too.

“The Bharat Jodo Yatra led by Rahul Gandhi drew the attention of the Naga people. The Manipur issue had an impact as well. There was factionalism in the Nagaland Congress unit. We addressed that and brought senior leaders on the same platform. The state unit worked as a team as anti-party activities were minimised,” Chodankar said.

The Congress also said it was not just the Church, but also the influential village councils of the state that played a part in denying the ruling alliance a victory.

“The menace of proxy voting in Nagaland where one person casts votes for multiple individuals is widely known. There has been resistance against it from civil society and the church also. Despite sensing the resentment against the BJP and its implications on the ruling alliance, we could not predict an outright victory for us keeping the potential damage wrought by proxy voting,” Ranajit Mukherjee, AICC secretary in charge of Nagaland and Sikkim, told ThePrint.

“We reached out to all the village councils that ensured nearly zero proxy voting in favour of the ruling alliance. That sealed our win,” he added.

Sensing that its association with the BJP was going to sink its candidate, the NDPP sought to play up its local roots, anchored in Christian values, midway through the campaign. For instance, the party targeted the Congress, highlighting the proposal in its manifesto to recognise civil unions among LGBTQ couples as anti-Christian.

However, the Congress moved quickly to contain any potential damage by pointing out that Article 371A, a special provision in the Constitution that shields Naga religious and social practices, and customary laws, was introduced by the party itself.

There had been early signs that the campaign by the Church bodies was bringing the moribund Congress back to life in the state. The turnout at the two major campaign rallies of the Congress and the BJP — addressed by Randeep Singh Surjewala and JP Nadda respectively — reflected as much. While visuals of empty chairs at Nadda’s Dimapur rally went viral on Naga social media, Surjewala’s rally, also in the state capital, saw a substantial turnout.

(Edited by Sanya Mathur)