Hindu nationalist party fails to break through in Syro-Malabar heartland
Despite a concerted push to court Christians, the BJP failed to win in four pivotal constituencies.
India’s ruling Hindu nationalist party has failed to gain a foothold in the Syro-Malabar Church’s heartland in a closely watched election in the southern state of Kerala.
Despite fielding Christian candidates, the Bharatiya Janata Party failed to win in four pivotal constituencies in an area known as the Syro-Malabar Belt, though it made incremental gains elsewhere in the state.
BJP candidates standing in the April 9 Kerala Legislative Assembly election lost in the strongly Syro-Malabar constituencies of Kanjirappally, Poonjar, Pala, and Thiruvalla, according to results published May 4.
The outcome marked a setback for the BJP’s strategy of reaching out to Christian voters in hopes of expanding beyond its Hindu base to make a major electoral breakthrough in a state dominated by the Left Democratic Front and the United Democratic Front.
The Left Democratic Front, an alliance led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), has held power in Kerala since 2016. But the United Democratic Front — an alliance led by the Indian National Congress — ended its 10-year rule in the April 9 election, winning 102 of the 140 seats in the Kerala Legislative Assembly.
The result brought an end to India’s last communist-led state government.
A May 5 analysis by the Times of India highlighted extensive efforts to court Kerala’s Christian population by V.D. Satheesan, an Indian National Congress politician and Leader of the Opposition in the Kerala Legislative Assembly.
The newspaper said that Satheesan’s engagement was acknowledged by Syro-Malabar Major Archbishop Raphael Thattil and Cardinal Baselios Cleemis, head of the Syro-Malankara Church, another Eastern Catholic Church in full communion with Rome.
“What emerged was a steady rebuilding of trust through religious and cultural engagement. Whether strategic or organic, the shift is now visible and politically consequential,” the paper commented.
But while the BJP struggled in densely Syro-Malabar areas, it won three Kerala Legislative Assembly seats overall as part of the National Democratic Alliance. This marked a steady advance for the party, which secured only one seat in the 2016 election and zero in the 2021 ballot.
In another notable development, the BJP added West Bengal, an eastern state with more than 100 million people, to the states under its control. This means the BJP and its National Democratic Alliance allies now rule in a vast continuous swathe of Indian states.
Human rights activists argue that the BJP’s dominance at both state and federal levels has implications for India’s Christian minority.
The most recent census, conducted in 2011, concluded that there are around 28 million Christians, comprising around 2.3% of India’s then-population of 1.21 billion. According to the 2011 census, the country is home to more than 23 million Catholics, who belong to the Latin Church, Syro-Malabar Church, and Syro-Malankara Church.
India’s constitution upholds religious freedom, but advocacy groups report widespread violations of Christians’ rights. Campaigners argue that infringements are more common in BJP-led states. But the party insists it upholds the rights of religious minorities and is not connected with anti-Christian incidents.
A campaign group accused officials in the eastern state of Odisha this week of presiding over “a complete breakdown” of constitutional protections for Christians.
Members of the Karwan-e-Mohabbat (Caravan of Love) group suggested that police, government employees, and politicians were complicit in the persecution of Christians, in an open letter to state authorities at the end of a May 2-5 trip to Odisha.
They said they had heard “repeated testimonies of the role of the police, the civil administration, elected representatives and even members of the state cabinet who encouraged and participated in the persecution of Christian minorities and the denial of their fundamental rights.”
Odisha, previously known as Orissa, has an extensive history of anti-Christian violence, including the 2008 Kandhamal massacre. In 1967, Odisha became the first state to pass an anti-conversion law. The BJP has led the state since 2024.
A “people’s tribunal” organized by Karwan-e-Mohabbat gathered evidence of attacks on churches, social ostracism, and denial of burials in village cemeteries in Odisha.
“In some of the districts, the violence has crossed even these many red lines and taken the form of physical assaults on the bodies of people of Christian identity,” the group said.
“Sometimes, this takes the form of tying them to a tree and beating them or putting them in sacks and physically assaulting them; and a few instances of sexual assault and violence and attempts to burn alive which were halted only at the last minute.”
The open letter claimed that police often charged the victims of violence, rather than the perpetrators.
“What is evident to us is a complete breakdown in the constitutional machinery of the state in relation to its Christian minorities,” it concluded.
Officials in Odisha deny any involvement in anti-Christian persecution and insist the state’s anti-conversion law is necessary to prevent coerced conversions among Hindus.