Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday held a massive roadshow in Kerala's Kochi. In his distinctive style, he departed from the tradition of taking the open-top vehicle and chose to walk the road decked with flowers and cheering supporters. Modi stole the thunder in Kerala by making big-ticket infrastructural announcements, and on Tuesday launched India's first water metro, soon after announcing Kerala's first Vande Bharat Express.
While Keralites soaked in the persona of Modi and welcomed him with a certain amount of festivity, it was the prime minister's meeting with top priests of various churches in Kerala that was the cynosure of eyes, especially the minority community. Modi met top church priests, including heads of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church, Syro-Malankara Catholic Church, Syrian Orthodox Church and Jacobite Church.
The Modi-led government, which has been facing flak over intolerance to dissent and minorities, has lately shown a change in heart and has engaged in striking outreaches to both Catholic and Muslim communities. It makes sense in Kerala politically because of the delicate community balance. According to the 2011 census, Hindus constitute 54.72 per cent of Kerala's population, Muslims make up 26.56 per cent and Catholics 18.38. The 2021 decadal national census is delayed due to the Covid-19 outbreak, but experts roughly calculate the Catholic count to be around 3.58 crore, going by an average growth rate of 7.2 per cent. The statistic shows that minorities could change the political game in the State.
Catholics are a strong force in Kerala's electoral space and have a significant presence in 9 of the 14 districts of the State. The over 37 lakh Catholic voters here could be decisive in the larger scheme of things and ultimately decide who takes the throne at Thiruvananthapuram. While the change of heart vis-a-vis minorities may not be universal across the nation, in Kerala, it could be BJP's only hope after a dismal 2016 assembly elections where they won only one seat and followed it up with a humiliating zero at the 2021 polls.
The questions are many: Whether the BJP can cover the ground with a minority community outreach and whether the BJP can counter Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan's chest-thumping speeches about BJP's politics of communal hate and the attacks on Christians. Recently, Vijayan recalled 486 attacks on Christians in 2021 in various parts of the country and drew a timeline of events starting with the attacks on churches in 1998, besides highlighting the rising attacks on Catholics in poll-bound Karnataka.
While the Bishops of Kerala refrained from raking up any of the issues of conflict and the attacks on Catholics while engaging the PM with discreet courtesy, it remains to be seen how long they will hold their silence. On the flip side, although the BJP has disassociated the visit from politics, it has not been able to explain the diplomacy convincingly.
It's to be seen if the minorities would change tracks and put the past behind them and whether Modi's appeasement of minorities could succeed in Kerala. The BJP would need some divine intervention in this tourist destination billed as "God's Own Country".
