As the assembly election in Kerala gets near, the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) is planning to include many important policies in its manifesto.
As per the information that is available, BJP plans on changing the name of Pathanamthitta to the “Sabarimala” District and has promised to bring in the idea of Hindu Religious Education Schools.
Elections in Kerala will be held in April 2021 to elect 140 MLAs to the 15th Kerala Legislative Assembly. The election will be conducted on 6 April in just one phase the and counting of votes will be conducted on 2 May.
The BJP could also propose a law regarding the administration of the state’s temples — including Sabarimala — in its election manifesto, freeing its administration from political interference in line with the Sree Padmanabha Swamy Temple in Thiruvananthapuram.
If the proposed plan is implemented, the Sabarimala temple will be administered by the Thantri, the Pandalam royal family and Hindu outfits may be given administrative powers.
The manifesto also promises to bring laws against ‘Love Jihad’, a coercive tactic where Muslims men pretending to be Hindus target non-Muslim women and persuade them to convert to Islam and marry them.
Already the party’s state president, K Surendran, has said that the BJP manifesto would include legislation against “love jihad”. Even the Christian community in the state has endorsed this.
Kerala is the only Indian state where a large number of Muslim youth left India to join the Islamic State, including many young women who had converted to Islam. In fact, young women formed the “single largest pool of converts” going to fight for the Islamic State.
The BJP is now trying to forge an alliance with Christian, especially Catholics who form the largest Christian denomination in the state. It was the Christian community that first raised the alarm on ‘Love Jihad’. Churches are carrying out intensified “campaigns and enlightenment drives’’ on the issue as well.
The BJP also plans to include in the manifesto a proposal to construct a memorial for the victims of the Mappila Riots and pensions for their descendants. The Mappila riots took place in 1921-1922 in the Malabar region of Kerala amidst the Khilafat struggle. The riots quickly gave way to Muslims perpetrating the worst kind of atrocities against Hindus, including rape, plunder, forced circumcision and conversion.
Already many high profile people have joined the BJP, with the party announcing E Sreedharan as its Chief Ministerial candidate. Many communists and Congress workers have jumped ship to join the BJP as well.
Click here to subscribe to The Commune on Telegram and get the best stories of the day delivered to you personally.