Thiruvananthapuram: The 2019 Lok Sabha battle for Kerala capital Thiruvananthapuram has shaped up much on the lines of the party game truth or dare: Congress candidate and two-time incumbent Shashi Tharoor wants the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to stop its lies, and his BJP rival, Kummanam Rajasekharan, has dared him to pull off a third consecutive win.
The campaign for the third phase of elections on 23 April, when all of Kerala’s 20 seats vote, ended Sunday, drawing curtains on a highly-charged poll season that has given the BJP hope of making its parliamentary debut in the state, primarily on the back of the stir against women’s entry into the Sabarimala sanctum.
Local pride has been front and centre this campaign season in Thiruvananthapuram: While the September 2018 Supreme Court order allowing the entry of women aged 10-50 into the sanctum sanctorum of Lord Ayyappa at Sabarimala has underpinned the campaign, so has a reference to Nairs from Tharoor’s superhit debut book, The Great Indian Novel, which hit the shelves in 1989.
One Q, Mr @ShashiTharoor.
U wrote Nair Women had mny lovers & allowed husband into her room only if she wasn’t wth them.
With that 1 paragraph, u painted all Nair ladies wth the brush of promiscuity & sullied their reputation.
The Q is with what face r u asking for our votes? pic.twitter.com/y9BjbKFNY5
— Shilpa Nair (@shilpamdas) April 3, 2019
https://twitter.com/Swaraj1001/status/1117715385858396160
A few lines from the book, that talk about an ancient social practice of married women taking extramarital sexual partners, have been used by rivals to claim Tharoor, a Nair himself, had insulted the community.
‘Yarn of lies’
On the campaign trail, Tharoor has been at pains to explain to constituents that the lines are from an old book and rooted in historical accounts. But, talking to ThePrint, the former UN undersecretary general conceded that the BJP’s “yarns of lies” would take a toll on his vote-share.
“The NDA has been running a campaign of lies and distortions and, sadly, it is a shameful way of conducting an election,” Tharoor told ThePrint.
Over 60 per cent of Thiruvananthapuram’s voters are Hindus, of which the Nair community forms a large chunk. The Nairs are a Hindu forward community that represents about 12 per cent of Kerala’s population.
“They have caused some damage, especially among the Nair community and Hindus… Their lies have been so assiduously put out that our campaign and refutations have not been having the same traction,” he said.
“I will concede that I will lose a certain number of votes because people have believed lies about me,” Tharoor told ThePrint.
Tharoor is also said to bearing the brunt for his initial support for the entry of women of menstruating age to the Sabarimala temple.
The MP has since shifted his stance, citing the faith of devotees, and the state Congress unit joined the stir against the Supreme Court order.
But political analysts say that a section of neutral Hindus who traditionally voted for the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) or the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF), irked by Tharoor’s initial stand, may shift to the BJP.
Also read: Support for Sabarimala protests will win BJP 3 of Kerala’s 20 seats, says Pandalam royal
‘A simple man’
BJP candidate Rajasekharan is known for his simplicity and organisational skills. His “aam aadmi” image has struck a chord with the public and given the BJP a handy tool to lash out at Tharoor’s “elitist” approach.
Talking to ThePrint, Rajasekharan, who resigned as Governor of Mizoram to fight this election, said the BJP was the “saviour of the people of Kerala”.
A common pitch during Rajasekharan’s campaign has been how the Congress and the CPI(M), which worked to implement the Supreme Court order, did “not make locals feel safe on Sabarimala”.
“I am one with the people, I will do what people want,” he told ThePrint. “I am just like them. We have won the hearts of people and now we will take this election forward with our adage … ‘one hurt, one motto and one aim’,” he added.
Rajasekharan’s candidature is said to be backed by the RSS. It was apparently at the Sangh’s instance that Rajasekharan was brought back from Mizoram, amid hope that his years of work as a “protector of Hindu culture” while serving as state secretary of the Hindu Aikya Vedi, an outfit aimed at protecting temples and Hindu heritage, would work to his advantage.
Rajasekharan was also at the forefront of the 1982 Nilakkal agitation against the construction of a church near a local Shiva temple.
Why Thiruvananthapuram is important
Thiruvananthapuram was one of the 44-odd seats the Congress managed to win amid the 2014 Modi wave, but just by a whisker.
Tharoor retained the seat by a margin of just over 15,000 votes against the BJP’s oldest candidate in Kerala, O. Rajagopal.
The BJP has never won a seat to the Lok Sabha from Kerala, but it has been making inroads in the state of late, landing its first ever assembly seat in the 2016 election. The seat was Nemom, one of the assembly segments under Thiruvananthapuram.
If the BJP manages to wrest Thiruvananthapuram from Tharoor, it will give the party a big boost just before the 2021 assembly elections.
In light of its support for the Sabarimala agitation, the party has already found itself gaining momentum in the districts of Kasargode, Thrissur, Alappuzha, Pathanamthitta as well as Thiruvananthapuram, and the BJP believes a win from the state capital would help it bridge the gap in other constituencies.
Between 2009 and 2014, the BJP’s vote-share from Thiruvananthapuram went up from 11 per cent to 32 per cent.
The areas around Kazhakootam, Nemom, and Vattiyoorkavu have been strongholds of the RSS, which has helped the BJP tremendously in previous elections.
Many believe that Tharoor only won in 2014 because the LDF had fielded a weak candidate, Bennett Abraham. This time, while the Modi wave is not as strong a factor, the BJP’s support for the Sabarimala stir is expected to work to the party’s advantage.
Also read: The fight in this Kerala seat is over political murders, not jobs or development
The CPI(M) senses advantage
Tharoor told ThePrint that he had been trying to contest his rivals’ campaign with reason. He termed the BJP’s stand on Sabarimala “opportunistic politics”, saying the party was out to foment communal tension and create a Hindu-versus-Muslim-Christian narrative.
“The BJP could have done a lot on the Sabarimala issue, but they chose not to,” he said. “The central government could have submitted a review petition [in the Supreme Court], which it did not, they chose not to,” he added.
“They could have made a law or amendment to take Sabarimala outside the purview of the court, they chose not to do it… They could have brought an ordinance, they chose not to do it, they merely exploited the believers by creating a political drama on the street and converting a sacred shrine into a place for their political advantage,” Tharoor said.
Meanwhile, in this fight between the Congress and the BJP, the CPI(M) seems to have sensed an opportunity for their candidate C. Divakaran, an MLA, to gain from the split votes.
Although the LDF is on the backfoot on the Sabarimala issue, they believe that they will be able to draw their their traditional votes and put up a tough contest.