A BJP ally has said the Hindutva agenda will not work in governing the country and winning a state like Kerala which has a large population of Christians and Muslims.
Tushar Vellapally, president of the Bharat Dharma Jana Sena that is the BJP’s main ally in Kerala, told a party study camp in Ernakulam on Thursday: “You cannot govern the country with Hindutva. You need the support of the minority communities to win Kerala.”
Tushar said the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance would not make progress in Kerala unless it reached out to the minority communities. “The NDA won’t make progress if we don’t make a systematic move in Kerala,” he said, implying a minority outreach.
Tushar’s statement is being seen in the context of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls in which the BJP is eyeing to open its account in the southern state that has consistently rejected it.
He said the BJP did “not have enough people in the state to fill even an auto-rickshaw”.
“In 2016, we helped the BJP, which had in the past forfeited even the deposit money, win one seat and made its candidates come second in seven places. Any given place in Kerala, we have more than 20,000 votes,” Tushar told the gathering.
Without naming the BJP, he said one Opposition party in Kerala was branding all Muslims as terrorists. “This is not true. A majority from that community are believers. If we can carry them along with the Christian community, then we can come to power in Kerala,” he added.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Tushar had contested against Rahul Gandhi from Wayanad and though positioned third, had mustered over 60,000 votes.
The only seat the BJP won in Kerala in the 2016 Assembly elections was Nemom in Thiruvananthapuram where party veteran and former Union minister O. Rajagopal emerged victorious. The CPM wrested the seat in 2021 with V. Sivankutty, now the education minister, romping home with ease. The BJP was again left with no seat in 2021 despite a high-voltage campaign.
Early this month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had singled out Kerala as his party’s next target, saying “I am confident that in the coming years, a BJP-led government will come to power in Kerala too”.
Tushar is the son of Vellapally Natesan, general secretary of the Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam, an organisation of the backward but numerically strong Ezhava community.While the BDJS is technically the political arm of the SNDP Yogam, a sizeable chunk of the Ezhavas is a dedicated vote bank of the CPM.
Tushar reminded his followers that both the ruling CPM-led Left Democratic Front and the Opposition Congress-helmed United Democratic Front were in queue “waiting with palanquins to carry us to their respective camps”. This was seen as a candid warning to the BJP that Ezhava votes cannot be taken for granted in the next general election.
A senior BJP leader agreed with Tushar’s take on Hindutva and a minority outreach. “He’s right,” the state office-bearer told The Telegraph on Friday.
“We should highlight our success in the Christian-dominated northeastern states as an example in not only Kerala, but also in Tamil Nadu and other states where minorities are in large numbers,” he said.
The BJP has been struggling to carve out a toehold in Kerala where Christians form about 20 per cent and Muslims about 30 per cent of the 3.5-crore population. Both communities have historically backed either the UDF or the LDF, refusing to be weaned away by the BJP.
Asked if Tushar had consulted the BJP before making such a statement, the office-bearer said: “Ideally, he should have.”
He pointed to Prime Minister Modi’s advice to the party to reach out to the minority communities across the country and said that was the only way to win the “hearts and votes” of Christians and Muslims.
