Weeks after Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma irked Christian-majority states by accusing them of being a factor behind the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) losses in some north-eastern parliamentary constituencies, the party and its government at the Centre has sent its first emissary to the community in an ostensible move to ease tensions.
According a report in The Wire, Minister of state for minority affairs George Kurian visited Mizoram this week for a day, and stressed to reporters in Aizawl that his party was not “anti-Christian”.
“Affirming that the BJP believes in integral humanism, Kurian stated that it is just a political game when people said that BJP is anti-Christian,” reported India Today NE after the junior minister in the Narendra Modi government interacted with state party members, and local reporters on July 11.
Kurian also looks to have tried to communicate to the public that Prime Minister Narendra Modi “treats all communities as equals and that under various schemes…the party is willing to help to uplift every section of the country.”
Hopes of expansion
Essentially, Kurian has attempted to revive the notion of Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas (be with all, bring development to all), a catchphrase Modi would use with the idea of bringing a section of minorities to the BJP fold. However, in the 2024 general elections in which the party sought votes on planks like the Ram temple construction, and Modi himself was seen inducing the fear of minorities in the Hindu voters, this line went missing from poll rallies.
Mizoram is the only Christian majority state in the region where BJP could open its account in the assembly only in the last state elections, that too by engineering defections from the Mizo National Front (MNF).
In that 2023 election, the party won two seats after considerable strategising. It now wants to build on that victory, to ensure that it becomes a part of the state dispensation by 2028. Mizoram is the only north-eastern state that BJP or its coalition, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), is not in power. The ruling Zoram People’s Movement (ZPM) in Mizoram is not a BJP ally.
Kurian’s visit could, therefore, be seen against BJP’s hope of expansion.
A spanner in the works
But Assam chief minister Sarma’s statement to Guwahati media on June 4 just after the general election results – in which the BJP and its allies failed to win any seats in Meghalaya, Nagaland and Manipur – came out, did not go down well.
Among a considerable section of Christians, both voters and political leaders, did not take kindly to Sarma blaming “leaders of a particular faith” for working against the NDA for that loss.
Sharp reactions came from various regional political leaders.
In the run-up to the general elections, Assam also saw Hindutva outfits issuing threats to Church-run schools. Posters printed in Assamese by a right-wing outfit, Sanmilita Santan Samaj, had said, “This is the final warning to stop using the school as a religious institution…stop anti-Bharat and unconstitutional activities or else…”
The poster campaign came in tandem with an Act passed by the Sarma government — Assam Healing (Prevention of Evil) Practices Act, 2024. Sarma had told reporters that his government is bringing it to end “magical healing”, which “is a dicey subject used to convert tribal people (to Christianity).”
Right-wing news outfit Swarajya hailed the BJP government’s decision and called the legislation “a crucial one aimed at curbing the widespread faith-healing camps organised by Christian missionaries to lure and convert gullible people, especially tribals, to Christianity”.
The state’s action received massive opposition from the church bodies across the state which argued that “healing is not proselytisation”.
Christian anxieties
Such actions in a BJP-ruled state warranted considerable response from the neighbouring states which are Christian majority, a reflection of which could be seen in the results of the 2024 general elections. An additional reason that BJP attracted the ire of the community across the region was also attacks on churches in BJP-ruled Manipur during the Meitei-Kuki ethnic clash.
On July 11, Kurian, in his Christian outreach to the Mizos on behalf of his party, offered himself as an example, “I am a faithful follower of Christ and firmly believe in prayers. We must all continue to pray for the development and prosperity of our nation.”
“When I joined the BJP in 1980, 95% of my village were Christians, and no one was surprised because no one considered the BJP to be anti-Christian.”
In a previous Modi government too, the central leadership of the party had made use of another Christian junior minister, KJ Alphons, for a Northeast outreach. Like Kurian, he too is from Kerala.
Alphons, who was a minister in the Modi government between November 2017 and May 2019, was made the party’s election in-charge in the run-up to the Meghalaya polls set for 2018. He was seen making statements in media on the freedom of people in that poll-bound state to eat beef, wear what they want and that his party would not interfere in such decisions. BJP contested 47 seats in those elections and pocketed two, its first ever win in the hill state.
In the 2023 polls, although the party lost a fraction of its vote share in Meghalaya, it succeeded in winning two seats once again. It has been a part of the NDA government since 2018 – a model that Kurian seems to have been given to replicate in Mizoram.
In Kerala, he has already proven his worth for the party. BJP could open its account in the southern state in the 2024 parliamentary polls by winning the Thrissur Lok Sabha seat, primarily because a large chunk of Christian voters also pressed the EVM button on the lotus. As per the 2011 Census, over 10% of voters are Christians there.
The credit for the big Thrissur win of the BJP goes to Kurian, the reason why the third Modi government not only has Suresh Gopi, the winner of that seat, as a minister, but Kurian too, even though he did not contest the polls.
