By P. Sreekumaran
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Bharatiya Janata Party’s much-hyped political strategy to woo the Christian population in Kerala has fallen flat in the face of strong opposition from within the community.
That the opportunistic strategy has not been to the liking of the community was clear from the very beginning. The latest manifestation of Christian anger against it came from the result of the recently-held by-election to the Nilambur Assembly constituency. The BJP had fielded a Christian candidate with an eye on the community vote in the constituency. But the strategy failed dismally with the party’s vote share actually registering a steep decline! In the wake of the poor show of the BJP candidate who lost his deposit, the party’s state leadership came in for stringent criticism from within the party. BJP state president Rajiv Chandrashekhar and other top leaders who crafted the strategy had to bear the brunt of the criticism in the meeting held to review the result.
The BJP had formulated the Christian-wooing strategy mainly with an eye on the local bodies election to be held later this year and the crucial Assembly elections due next year. That it won’t produce the desired results is evident from the strong undercurrent of the community’s anger against the BJP as was evident from the voting pattern in Nilambur.
The resentment among the Christians against the BJP found powerful expression in an editorial in Deepika daily, the mouthpiece of the Christian church in Kerala. The editorial of July 14 has gone hammer and tongs against the BJP’s double standards in hunting with the hunter and running with the hunted. How can the BJP, which says it is with the Christians in Goa and Kerala, which boast a sizable Christian population, ask for their votes while the party remains silent on the growing atrocities against the community in North Indian states, Odisha and Maharashtra? That is the question posed by the strongly-worded editorial. And the BJP leaders have maintained a deafening silence on the sensitive issue.
The latest incidents of attacks against Christians have come from Maharashtra where a BJP MLA ,Gopichand Padalkar, has openly announced a reward ranging between Rs 3 and 10 lakh for anyone organising attacks against the community. Another party MLA is on record that illegal construction of churches was going on in districts like Dhule and Nanderbar. As if all this was not enough, Maharashtra’s Revenue Ministry has hinted at a new law against forcible conversions in the State. There is already a law against such conversions. Why is then the clamour for a new anti-conversion law? That is the question asked by the Deepika editorial.
The editorial further says that, since the Modi Government assumed power in 2014, there has been a rise – as many as 4316 instances, according to the United Christian Forum report – of attacks against the Christian community. The year 2024 alone saw 834 incidents. The Uttar Pradesh police filed as many as 835 FIRs , and made 1682 arrests. But out of this conviction has come in only four cases!
It is against this murky backdrop that the BJP is out to woo the Christians in Kerala. No less a person than Union Home Minister Amit Shah himself came to Kerala as part of the efforts for the party’s expansion in the State. He went on to announce that the party’s aim is to achieve a 25 per cent vote share in the local bodies elections. And the party has declared its intent to capture two Corporations in the State – Thiruvananthapuram and Thrissur – in the elections. But the BJP must realise that the voters of Kerala are too enlightened to be taken in by the party’s profession of concern for he well-being of the Christian community and silence on attacks against them. This being the ground reality, the BJP’s dream of putting up a good show in the local bodies election and the assembly polls next year is unlikely to be realised.
Meanwhile, the BJP in the State has gone in for a revamp of its organisational structure. The new office-bearers were announced on the day Amit Shah visited the State. Prominent woman leader Sobha Surendran, former secretary S Suresh and former Yuva Morcha national secretary Anoop Antony Joseph have been inducted as general secretaries, while senior leader M T Ramesh has been retained in the post. Former DGP R Sreelekha and young leader Shone George figure among the 10 new vice-presidents.
The exercise, aimed at strengthening the party organisation, is unlikely to yield the desired results in view of the acute factionalism bedevilling the party in Kerala. For reasons known only to itself, the central leadership has ignored leaders belonging to the faction led by former union Minister V. Muralidharan and former state BJP chief K. Surendran. Besides, Sreelekha and Shone, former vice-chancellors K S Radhakrishnan and Abdul Salam, C Sadanandan of Kannur, P Sudheer of Thiruvananthapuram, C Krishnakumar from Palakkad, B Gopalakrishnan from Thrissur, K Soman of Alapppuzha and K KAneesh Kumar of Thrissur have also been appointed as new vice-presidents
The 10 newly appointed secretaries are: Ashokan Kulanada, K Renjith, Renu Suresh, V V Rajesh, Pandalam Prathapan, Jiji Joseph, M V Gopakumar, Poonthura Sreekumar, P Shyamraj and M P Anjana Renjith. Abhijith R Nair has been named the party’s social media convenor. P Jayachandran Master will serve as the BJP’s spokesperson. (IPA Service)
India’s Aluminium Producing Units To Invest US$ 5 Billion To Build 20gw Renewable Energy Capacity By 2030 