The communal overtone that the election campaign in Kerala has assumed is hard to ignore and portrays a dangerous trend. The attempt—by all three main political fronts—is to woo the three main religious groups with messages pandering to communal instincts and aimed at achieving polarisation. While such messaging has the potential to sway votes, they have little value in terms of improving the lives of people, upholding rights and justice, and addressing matters of concern. One distinct characteristic of this election is that the divisive agendas of the parties have trumped the real issues that matter to the people.
The fight is mainly for the sizeable minority votes the Congress-led UDF till recently considered its right. Of late, the ruling CPM has been making bold and often questionable attempts to snatch Muslim votes. And the BJP, gunning for a breakthrough, is going for Christian votes. If the noise initially was about the Citizenship Amendment Act, the clamour now is about Manipur violence and the movie, The Kerala Story. The CPM chose to make CAA an issue—despite being aware the state government has no role in its implementation—to portray itself as a champion of Muslims. Pinarayi Vijayan has spoken about it at every campaign meeting, never missing an opportunity to point out how the Congress isn’t talking about it enough.
Next was the telecast of The Kerala Story by Doordarshan and its screening by certain dioceses of the Catholic church. While the timing of the DD telecast needs to be questioned and it’s natural to suspect the BJP’s role in bringing the ‘love jihad’ movie back into discussion, both CPM and Congress are guilty of paying it more attention than it deserved. These two have now started playing up the violence in Manipur to portray the BJP as anti-Christian.
Till recently, the most pressing concerns of Keralites were the state’s poor financial health, its impact on government services, the rising cost of living, joblessness, infrastructural inadequacies, and loss of lives in man-animal conflicts. Looks like these matter little to parties vying for votes. It’s disturbing to see even parties whose foundation rests on the idea of secularism invoking religion to win votes. They have realised that appealing to baser emotions is easier, and the trend shows that the decline in political morality has happened across the spectrum.