“Democracy is about discussions and consensus…They (CPM) raise slogans of secularism. But in the guise of secularism, they are trying to make this state a hub of jihadi terrorism,” these words of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath aptly sums up the strategy of the Sangh Parivar that has been evolved to ‘wipe out the Communists from their last fortress’. The 15-day yatra, led by state party president Kummanam Rajasekharan against ‘red and jihadi terrorism’, has devoted three full days for Kannur, the northern Kerala district which is a CPM citadel and the site for gruesome revenge murders between the party and RSS-BJP cadre.

[For our exhaustive NL Sena coverage of the Left vs Right political murders in Kerala, click Part 1 and Part 2]

On Thursday, the yatra will pass through Pinarayi, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s native village. It was in this tiny village that the Communist Party’s Kerala unit was formed in 1939. Taking the fight to the enemy’s gates is the saffron strategy and the yatra was inaugurated on October 3, it will cover 11 of the 14 districts in Kerala and is the most publicised show the BJP has undertaken in Kerala in recent times.

The yatra originally scheduled in September was postponed after serious corruption charges involving state-level BJP leaders came to the fore. The national leadership has ensured these allegations and the deep-rooted factionalism ailing the saffron party for long did not hamper the spirit of the yatra. The media coverage the yatra has been getting and the participation of all important leaders of the Sangh Parivar are pointers to the fact that the national leadership of both the RSS and the BJP have invested heavily in this and they hope this flamboyant march will eventually break the jinx.

Like West Bengal, the erstwhile fortress of the CPM, the saffron party hopes to reap political dividends by mainly targeting the Left party. And the no-holds-barred campaign against the CPM and the minorities, especially the Muslim community, the saffron party hopes to polarise Kerala society and elicit the support of a sizeable section of the Hindu population. Traditionally, a majority of the caste groups belonging to the Hindu fold are the vote base of the CPM except for the upper caste Nair Service Society (NSS) and insignificant groups among the Brahmins.

The BJP has been evolving strategies and to penetrate the various caste groups ever since it started participating in the electoral politics in the state. Its efforts bore fruit when the Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana (SNDP) Yogam, a social organisation that represents the Ezhava community, the largest Hindu segment, formed a political party and became an NDA constituent. The Ezhavas have been predominantly aligned with CPM for the last several decades. Other than this, the BJP has been trying to woo other caste groups which have been traditionally supporting the Left, all this was meant to unify disparate Hindu caste groups into a unified vote bank.

The RSS and the BJP in the state have been able to inculcate a feeling among different caste groups that they are being given short shrift by the CPM-led Left Democratic Front and the Congress-led United Democratic Front. By undertaking a virulent campaign against the CPM and the minorities, what the BJP hopes is to bring together different Hindu organisations under its banner. Apart from the powerful Nair Service Society (NSS), the upper caste Nair group, a majority of the caste groups has been supporting the Left front in Kerala. The social base of the Congress-led UDF has mainly been upper caste Hindus and religious minorities.

The Sangh Parivar aims to conquer Kerala by targeting and eventually ‘eliminating’ the CPM which gets support from different Hindu caste groups. If Congress Mukt Bharat is the BJP slogan elsewhere, here it is Communist Mukt Kerala. As the demographic pattern and electoral choices of different groups would show, this campaign though unwittingly is going help the left parties in the state. Here is why.

Muslims in Kerala constitute 26.56 per cent of the population in the state and are one of the most politically agile groups here. Generally, they have voted to keep the BJP and the RSS at bay. It is to be noted that the response of the Congress and the United Democratic Front to the anti-Kerala campaign of the Sangh Parivar has been muted. The Congress leaders always love to hear bad things about the  Communists. Except for former chief minister Oommen Chandy, no major leader has cared to respond to the pernicious campaign that is being unleashed by Sangh leaders not just against the CPM but also against the minorities. This ambivalent approach of the Congress is going to exacerbate the process of disenchantment among the Muslim community towards the Congress. The thinking that the CPM and Left forces in the state are politically more capable to defend the minorities from systematic targeting by the Sangh Parivar is getting stronger with each passing election. The fact that the BJP increased its vote share in the last many elections at the expense of the Congress has already had a debilitating effect on its stature as the force that can stall the Sangh monolith from entering Kerala.

The campaign by the BJP even if partially successful, in all probability is going to help the CPM to spread its influence among Muslims. A directionless Congress leadership with their dwindling mass base, and with a pragmatic politician like Pinarayi Vijayan, whose disdain for idealism is well known, on the other side of the political fence, the chances of the Indian Union Muslim League deserting the United Democratic Front in favour of the LDF can’t be ruled out. A section of the Muslim League leadership, which fancies the idea of aligning with CPM, is sure to use the current atmosphere ‘vitiated’ by the BJP to advance their political project. All this may not happen immediately, but the polarising campaign will force Muslim organisations, especially the Muslim League, to go soft on Left parties.

Though the blitzkrieg campaign against the Muslim community by raking up non-existent issues like Love Jihad has created panic among many in the community, there is no sign of Hindu consolidation in the state. The BJP’s alliance with the Bharat Dharma Jana Sena (BDJS), the SNDP’s political party, has been fraught with dissonance. Other than the BDJS, no political or caste groups have so far not extended support to the BJP.

During the previous UDF government, the BJP tried to consolidate Hindu groups by pointing towards what they called blatant minority appeasement of the government. The Congress with the Muslim League and Kerala Congress, a Christian party, as its main ally was accused of kowtowing to the interests of minorities at the expense of the majority community.  Now, with the LDF in power with no ‘communal’ party as its constituent, the Sangh Parivar finds it difficult to take forward their ‘appeasement’ campaign. This also comes in their way of consolidating the Hindu vote.

Talking to people largely from the middle class without any political preferences, one gets the idea that the campaign targeting Kerala is turning out to be counterproductive for the BJP. Though they are all happy with the voices against the political violence, comparing Kerala with Uttar Pradesh or other BJP government states did not evoke the expected reaction.

Social media had a field day on Wednesday over Adityanath’s statement advising the Kerala government to learn from his state on how to run government hospitals. Coming as it did after the death of hundreds of children due to the lack of basic infrastructure in Uttar Pradesh, this statement evoked sharp responses from people across the political spectrum.

Through its concerted campaign, the BJP has been able to project itself as the victim of the CPM’s intolerance. Though the CPM with its disregard for the opposition and its obstinate attitude towards political opponents contributed to the culture of political violence, the role, the strategy and the ideology of the Sangh Parivar ensured this grotesque culture remains the ‘hallmark’ of Kerala politics.

For the Sangh Parivar to win Kerala is like taking a big step towards the achievement of their prophesied goal. This is because Kerala represents a state where the main ideological opponents of Hindu Rashtra are in dominance. They, according to the forefathers of Hindutva, are religious minorities and communists.

If its muted response is any indication, the Congress is failing to decipher the political fallout the BJP campaign may leave in its wake. In short, if the Sangh Parivar is going to achieve anything through this high-decibel campaign, it is by invariably consolidating Muslims in favour of the Left. And this could break the entrenched binary of LDF vs UDF politics. This will help the BJP to catapult itself as one of the two main players in Kerala politics. But it will be at the expense of the Congress and not by a Communist Mukt Kerala. Though there is no imminent challenge to its existence, it may not augur well for even the Left in the long run, not to speak about a pluralist state like Kerala.