The leadership is finding it hard to keep the issue alive in the wake of normalcy in and around Sabarimala.
NEW DELHI: It is an irony that Prime Minister Narendra Modi thought it fit to interact with BJP workers in Kerala on a day when the party state unit spearheaded a dawn-to-dusk shutdown to protest a man’s contentious suicide near the party’s Sabarimala demonstration venue in front of the state secretariat in Thiruvananthapuram. The PM’s initiative through video-conference is part of BJP’s overall nationwide exercise to keep in touch with grassroots workers in the run-up to the 2019 general elections. “When you are struggling for people, make them a part of the struggle too,” PM Modi told party workers in Kerala as he referred to certain “sad news”. “Every life is important and it should not suffer,” he told workers in Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam, Attingal, Mavelikkara and Pathanamthitta, where the Sabarimala shrine is situated. The PM was obviously referring to the death of a 50-year-old man who set himself on fire apparently shouting “sarana mantras” (chanting praise of Lord Ayyappa of Sabarimala) opposite the BJP protest venue. The BJP lost no time portraying the man as a Lord Ayyappa devotee who self-immolated in protest against the Left Front government’s decision to implement a Supreme Court order making way for women of all ages to have a darshan at the Sabarimala shrine. It was following this incident that the BJP called a state-wide bandh, its fifth since the Sabarimala temple opened for the annual Mandala-Makaravilakku pilgrimage in November, on Friday, the day PM spoke to the party workers. While the BJP claimed the victim, Venugopalan Nair, was a Lord Ayyappa bhakt, the police contented that he was suffering from depression and ran across the road towards the protest venue after setting himself on fire.
The PM spoke about the political killings in the state and referred to Tripura where the BJP had dislodged the Left after two decades in power. “Those in power in Kerala have shown no respect to democracy. They have made every effort to silence the voice of BJP workers and voice of people…But now BJP workers are becoming voice of the people, even if it means withstanding the brutality of political violence,” he said. Though it was not clear for the workers whether the PM was endorsing the state leadership’s decision to forcibly impose a bandh upon the people of Kerala, but his subsequent words did inspire party workers there. In Kerala, he said, there are two governance models, the Congress model and the Communist model. “Both models are models of efficient corruption and inefficient governance. The BJP model of governance is a model of development. It is a model of quick development, inclusive and all round development,” the PM told the workers. To a worker’s query as to how the party could expand its base in Kerala, Modi said they should make people’s voice heard and then people would hear their voices. Then, taking a leaf out of the late Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpeyee’s political notebook, Modi said, “Atalji used to say that one leg of every BJP worker should be inside a train coach, he should relentlessly travel. And the other leg (should be) in jail, where he gets lodged fighting for people.”
However, by the end of the day it was clear that the people of Kerala were not too happy the BJP was forcibly curtailing their life frequently, considering the fact that this was the fifth time in two months the party had called for a shutdown in the name of Lord Ayyappa. A time will soon come when there will be spontaneous resistance from the people themselves. Already the sign were visible on Friday. This time there were serious doubts about the intentions of BJP since contradictory claims about the deceased victim came from various quarters. Police say that Nair in his dying declaration had stated that he was “fed up with life”. There is no mention of BJP’s ongoing agitation or Sabarimala issue in his statement. BJP, however, dismissed it as a “concocted statement”, but did not bring any evidence to prove that the victim was a BJP supporter. Last month the party had observed a shutdown in Pathanamthitta district following the recovery of a dead body of a devotee in the forests. That time the party had claimed the man died of police torture, which subsequently turned out to be false. Since then many Hindu organisations which had supported BJP in its Sabarimala struggle had distanced themselves from the party. The party’s agitation is now confined only to relay fast in front of the secretariat. The general feeling is that the leadership is finding it hard to keep the issue alive in the wake of normalcy in and around Sabarimala. Moreover, no young woman has ventured out to undertake a pilgrimage to the shrine. So naturally the question arises as to which people the BJP is fighting for in the state. If this is the way, the party will find it extremely difficult to sustain the struggle on in the name of Sabarimala for too long.