BJP bigwigs in Kerala

IT was fortuitous that BJP president Amit Shah was called back to the Delhi durbar a day before he was to lead an aggressive mob through the hometown of Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. The overgrown hamlet, Pinarayi, is the epicentre of a murderous two-decade-old turf war between the CPI (M) and the RSS. Shah was counting on the raised tensions to serve as the symbolic throwing of the gauntlet to Vijayan, who has never backed away from a good fight in the badlands of northern Kerala. The BJP has tried its hand at several permutations in Kerala. Tribal rights’ activist CK Janu was drafted into the NDA but she barely managed to save her deposit in the previous Assembly elections.

The BJP has a Christian card up its sleeve, courtesy KJ Alphons. This approach may not work because of the RSS cadre’s antagonism to the ‘People of the Book’. So what better than to fall back on the BJP’s well-honed formula of ratcheting up communal tensions? This is what Shah, with UP CM Yogi Adityanath in tow (even as two BSP leaders were murdered a day before in his home state), wanted to accomplish. Only, things are not that simple in Kerala. The Left, the Muslim League and the Congress have so far successfully mediated the accommodation of all diverse groups in the power equation.  

The BJP opted to sell its divisive brand of politics in northern Kerala because of its proximity to Mangalore, in Karnataka, where the Sangh’s spear carriers have plied their divisive trade since the 90s. Unsurprisingly, the BJP has won the Mangalore Lok Sabha seat five times and feels that northern Kerala is ripe for Amit Shah’s booster dose of communal polarisation. In two Assemblies, it has already been the bridesmaid seven times.  Kerala is in distress because of the slowdown in Gulf remittances and the fall in the prices of spices and rubber, its agricultural mainstays. At a time of economic pain, it may seem uncomplicated to fracture communal amity. But the pieces will be difficult to pick in a place not incorrectly called a “madhouse of castes and religions”.