It was natural that news of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the Sacred Heart Cathedral Catholic Church in New Delhi on Easter Sunday, April 9, followed by that of BJP leaders to Christian religious leaders in Kerala delivering the Prime Minister's Easter message made headlines. The BJP leaders explain that the Prime Minister's visit and the contact program of the BJP leaders were not for political ends but for social cohesion. However, given that Prime Minister Modi himself ha at the party's Hyderabad National Executive Committee, given instructions to organize outreach and dialogue programs among the minorities in Kerala the hide and seek by BJP leaders will not hold water. As part of the dialogue endeavour, 10,000 BJP workers will visit one lakh Christian homes and invite Christians to the homes of BJP members on Vishu festival day on April 15. In a program organized at the BJP headquarters after the victory in the assembly elections of the northeastern states, Modi had highlighted that Christian votes were crucial in the victory and directed the ranks to seek their support elsewhere. Modi had then stated also that the party will form a coalition government in Kerala, where assembly elections will be held in 2026. It is clear that this visit and contact program is a continuation of this thrust.
When facing general elections due next year, the BJP has not been able to extend to the south the influence that it has gained in the Centre, north India and finally the northeast region. The only exception is Karnataka, where it won 26 seats in 2019. The party is also dreaming it big in Telangana, where it just won four seats. The BJP is mulling various plans to gain a foothold in south India, which has 130 Lok Sabha seats. Most of the 160 seats the party lost in the last parliamentary elections were from the south. BJP is aiming to win back at least 60 of them. It is the experience of Tripura that gives hope to the doubts amidst doubts about its prospects. Pinning hopeson the weakness of the opposition, the BJP is looking for appropriate measures in each state. It is as part of this that the Centre nominated to the Rajya Saba such personages as Ilayaraja from Tamil Nadu, Vijayendra Prasad from Telugu Nadu and PT Usha from Kerala, in addition to increasing the representation of the South in the National Executive Committee In order to capture Kerala, former Union Minister Prakash Javadekar and MP Radha Mohan Agarwal have found the formula to rope in Christians. Union Minister of State for Minority Affairs John Barla held several meetings with various church leaderships. Last Christmas, BJP state leaders were instructed to reach out to Christians to introduce BJP and Central government schemes. Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar has been conducting various communication programs with students and youth in areas dominated by Christians.
Apart from that, BJP is actively taking advantage of the sinister propaganda carried out by some extremists from Christians against Muslims by endorsing them overtly and covertly. It is a fact that during the last Assembly elections, the CPM leadership also had backed the outcry raised by some in the church leadership that Muslims were taking away the privileges that Christians too were entitled to and that Muslims were carrying out various activities harmful to Christians. Taking the cue from this, the BJP, is still trying to consolidate its vote bank as 'protectors of Christians against Muslim persecution' with the backing of the Central government. The BJP is also highly enthused by the statements of the Archbishop of Thalassery, who promised to vote for the BJP if the government raised the floor price of rubber Rs 300 per kg, and by the statements of the Major Archbishop of the Syro-Malabar Sabha, who said that Modi is a great leader and that Christians in India do not feel insecure. Even as the Sangh Parivar is committing atrocities against Christians across the country under its inherited perception of 'internal threat', paradoxically enough, the church leadership is declaring Modi and the administration beatified. But the insecurity felt by the church fathers reigning in mansions is different from that of the laity across the country. A month and a half ago, on February 23, Christians collectively called out to the world through an unprecedented display of protest at the Jantar Mantar in New Delhi that incidents of persecution of Christians under the Modi regime have increased from 147 in 2014 to 598 in 2022. But it would take only common sense to grasp that this collective vote trading is transacted by the Sangh Parivar and some in the church leadership by turning a blind eye to their burning experiences and scratching each other's back, only for the defence of those involved in the act and not for the security of the Christian minority or the country at large.