Kerala will be voting to elect a government for the next five years tomorrow, i.e., April 6. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is making a remarkable outreach of late in the southern states of India. Now, in Kerala, the BJP is looking to win the support of Christians, who are currently disgusted by the state of affairs in the state. In fact, it is the Christian community which is itself taking a massive leap of faith in favour of the BJP. A day prior to the state of Kerala voting, it becomes necessary to analyse why the state’s 19 per cent Christian population has begun siding with the BJP.
The party in its election manifesto has promised a stringent law against the menace of love jihad if voted to power. This one promise is proving reason enough for the state’s Christians to rally in support of the BJP and abandon their historical friends in the LDF and UDF, who have been occupied completed with the appeasement of a particular minority community in the state which has grown rather infamous for contributing wholeheartedly to the ISIS and other Islamist terror organisations around the world. Such is the condition of the state’s Christian women that many of them are shipped off to Syria and other Islamic countries after being lured into marriage by Islamists who initially fake or do not reveal their actual identities.
The threat of love jihad in Kerala has grown manifold, and the Christian community particularly is taking the challenge head on. Not only is it waging a social media battle against the menace, but is also taking the help of the BJP to address the issue. The church authorities have no less than taken up the issue of love jihad with Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself. Not only has the BJP conducted a massive outreach for the Catholics, but has also been able to win over a significant chunk of the Jacobite and Orthodox Church believers. The common binding factor for the Christian support in Kerala for the BJP is the party’s promise that it would protect Christian women from love jihad.
A variety of issues have contributed to the Christians of Kerala losing faith in the Congress party and its alliance partners. Among them, Muslim students unduly availing over 80 per cent of the minority scholarships in the state have been a particularly pricky point of concern. With Kerala due to vote on Tuesday, the state’s Christians have made up their mind, and are going to go all-out in their support for the BJP.