Kerala BJP losing favour with Church. Sangh not on board with Christian outreach

The Print

a day ago

Anoop Antony, the newly-minted general secretary of the BJP – hitherto unknown to most of Kerala – butting in to make the most of the occasion, brought a touch of comic relief to the sombre proceedings. The whole fiasco, however, cast a huge shadow on the saffron party's Christian outreach in Kerala.
BJP's Kerala leaders, as well as the Congress and the Left politicians, vied with each other to make it to the frame of the live visuals aired to the living rooms of their home state.
It may have been straight out of the climax scene of a Priyadarshan comedy, where typically all characters converge in a chaotic sequence. The event was anything but comical, though: Two Malayali nuns who were lodged for nine days in a Durg prison on trumped-up charges of human trafficking by the Bhartiya Janata Party-led Chhattisharh government were getting freed on bail.
On 25 July, the two Kerala nuns – Preethi Mary and Vandana Francis – of the Assisi Sisters of Mary Immaculate congregation were arrested by the Government Railway Police in Chhattisgarh. They were accused of forcibly converting three girls they were accompanying, when Bajrang Dal workers led by Jyoti Sharma pressured the state officials to apprehend them. The FIR added a trafficking angle when it emerged that the girls were adherents of Christianity from a young age, albeit of the Protestant kind.
How the case played out
Naturally, there was a huge uproar over the development in Kerala, not least because of the BJP's attempts to make political inroads into the community lately. The Congress and the Left were quick off the blocks and dispatched political delegations to Chhattisgarh even as parliamentarians from Kerala protested with placards in front of the Sansad Bhavan in Delhi.
Kerala BJP president Rajeev Chandrasekhar also leapt to the defense of the nuns. He sent Anoop Antony as his emissary to touch base with the Chhattisgarh administration. Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai, however, had already passed his judgment on the matter on social media, accusing the nuns of proselytisation and trafficking, leaving the Kerala unit in an awkward position.
In the meantime, a Sessions Court in Durg refused to hear the matter and disposed of it, citing lack of jurisdiction – referring to the 2019 amendment that placed human trafficking cases under the National Investigation Agency (NIA). This sent a chill down the spines of the nuns' relatives and created a sense of panic among the community in Kerala. Chandrasekhar met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah in Delhi to apprise them of the damage wrought by the Chhattisgarh government's action on the BJP's Christian outreach in Kerala.
The prosecution finally relented after the political intervention from the Centre by letting the nuns walk out on bail after spending nine days behind bars. The court did not go into the merits of the case, and the charges – that can fetch up to ten years in jail – remain far from quashed.
Blowback in Kerala
In Kerala, Christians of all denominations took to the streets as dioceses mobilised laity across the cities and census towns. They gagged themselves with pieces of cloth and carried placards protesting the persecution of the nuns. Some marches were led by Archbishop Joseph Pamplany, who famously promised to help the BJP open its account in Kerala if rubber prices were jacked up to Rs 300; Pala Bishop Joseph Kallarangatt, who coined the infamous 'Narcotic Jihad' phrase; and Thrissur Archbishop Andrews Thazhath – all considered sympathetic to the BJP cause.
In one instance, Archbishop Pamplany's speech at Angamaly, where he spoke polemically, harked back to the days of the 'Vimochana Samaram'—the church-led Liberation Struggle that dislodged the EMS Namboodiripad-led Communist government of Kerala in 1959. This set off alarm bells for Rajeev Chandrasekhar, who has been engaged in building bridges with the Church since becoming the state BJP president.
Factionalism rears head in BJP
However, Chandrasekhar not only found himself caught between the hardline position adopted by the Chhattisgarh BJP—represented by the likes of CM Sai and Bastar MP Mahesh Kashyap—he was also facing rebellion from within the Kerala unit for summarily issuing a clean chit to the nuns. No sooner had he issued a statement on social media, senior Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) ideologue K Govindan Kutty publicly commented below his post, counseling him to stick to the party affairs in the state and let the law take its course in Chhattisgarh.
On cue, the Kerala BJP bloc led by V Muraleedharan and K Surendran aligned themselves with the RSS position, getting back at Chandrasekhar for cutting their faction to size while naming office bearers. This stance was also echoed by the likes of other Sangh Parivar organisations such as the Hindu Aikya Vedi in Kerala. K Surendran's Facebook post, and leaders of his faction venting their frustration at Chandrasekhar for dispatching Anoop Antony without internal consultation, was threatening to eclipse the delicate 'cake diplomacy'.
The issue also exposed a bunch of online media portals allegedly linked to the BJP. While such 'yellow portals' generally thrived by channeling hatred against the Muslim community on the back of issues like Munambam, their true colours stood exposed when they started echoing the Sangh Parivar narrative on the nuns' issue. The BJP-affiliated Christian Association and Alliance for Social Action (CASA) also went on an overdrive for damage control.
Christian vote trade-off
The RSS position on the issue is hardly surprising, as the organisation has a deep-seated suspicion of the missionary work of the Church. Supremo Mohan Bhagwat cast aspersions on the motives of even Mother Teresa's service years ago. Vishnu Deo Sai is a product of the Loyola School in Jashpur, but being an RSS adherent, he cannot see missionary work through any other spectrum.
A veteran leader aligned to the K Surendran faction told me how the BJP cannot afford to lose its core Hindutva vote bank by appearing to appease the Christian community. This development proved an unexpected windfall for the Congress, reeling under the proposition of a slice of its Christian base shifting to the BJP. The issue might also help the Left to prevent some of its 'Hindu vote' transferring to the saffron party on an incremental basis, as 'Christian appeasement' charges have been levelled against the Rajeev Chandrasekhar-led BJP.
The split down the middle within the Kerala BJP unit, not to speak of the RSS position, has exposed the Right-wing tactic of targeting Christians in Chhattisgarh to foment Hindu consolidation, while pitting the same community against Muslims in Kerala. The Chhattisgarh police, failing to act against the Bajrang Dal on a case filed by the girls – initially suspected to be victims of trafficking – demonstrated how the Hindutva outfits enjoyed state patronage.
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Prelates in the dock
Another case of a Bajrang Dal gang attacking a couple of Malayali priests and nuns emerged from Odisha soon after—further enraging Kerala's Christian community. in the state. This, following the aftermath of the Chhattisgarh imbroglio, snowballed into an impromptu social media backlash against the Syro-Malabar Church prelates. When Archbishops Andrews Thazhath and Pamplany thanked the BJP for interceding in the release of the nuns, they had to field tough questions on who put the nuns behind bars in the first place.
The Syrian Christian Church leaders in Kerala have long held a casteist attitude of supremacy on account of their legacy being traced back to the Common Era. The conspicuous silence or acquiescence on Manipur, as well as in Father Stan Swamy's case, bears heavily on the conscience of the Syro-Malabar Church leadership. They willingly played ball with the BJP on account of their common distrust of the Muslim community.
The criticism on social media is mostly targeted at Archbishop Thazhath—whom Kerala's Leader of Opposition VD Satheesan called a 'slippery person' for his role in facilitating Suresh Gopi's win—and Archbishop Pamplany. It was noticeable how bishops outside the Syro-Malabar fold reacted. Cardinal Baselios Cleemis of the Malankara Catholic Church and Baselios Marthoma Mathews III of the Syrian Orthodox Church talked tough against the BJP. They said the party was running with the hares in Kerala and hunting with the hounds in Chhattisgarh.
Case of missing MP
The BJP representatives in the Union Cabinet from Kerala, George Kurian and Thrissur MP Suresh Gopi, found themselves caught in the crossfire. While there was widespread criticism against Kurian's lack of empathy and running away from the press, citing poor comprehension of Hindi, Suresh Gopi went missing ever since the nuns' arrest until after their release.
This was particularly flabbergasting for the Christian community in Thrissur – mostly comprising the mercantile class – who shifted their voting preferences in favour of the actor in 2024. The transactional nature of that support might come back to bite the actor if he were to seek re-election in 2029. Suresh Gopi's vanishing act prompted Bishop Yuhanon Meletius, of the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church in Thrissur, to quip that perhaps he should file a police complaint to establish the whereabouts of the actor.
The state BJP will have to go back to the drawing board on its Christian outreach template and find unity within the party and the Sangh ecosystem before it can aspire to become a larger player in Kerala.
Anand Kochukudy is a Kerala-based journalist and columnist. He tweets @AnandKochukudy. Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)