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BJP building bridges with Church in Kerala

D Jose in Thiruvananthapuram

The members of the Indian Pentecostal Churches, who are used to only sermons from pastors in their religious conclaves, will get to listen to politicians during their week-long all-India conference now in session at Kottayam in central Kerala.

The most surprising speaker on Friday will be senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader and Union Minister of State for Law O Rajagopal. The other politicians scheduled to address the assembly at the Nehru Stadium are communist leaders E K Nayanar and T K Ramakrishnan, Congress leader Oommen Chandy and Kerala Congress (Joseph) leader P J Joseph. The forum was opened to politicians for the first time as an attempt by a section of the Church to bridge the gap between the Sangh Parivar and the minorities.

The initiative to invite Rajagopal to address the conference was taken by former National Minorities Commission member John Joseph. The conservative section in the Church vehemently opposed the move. Members of the Pentecostal church were actually the target of the Sangh Parivar in several parts of north India.

John Mathew enlisted the support of several bishops and got the issue clinched in his favour. The rival section conceded only after getting their favourite politicians too to attend the conference. John Mathew, a politically ambitious man, has been acting as a mediator between the Church leaders and the Bharatiya Janata Party. He had made many covert moves here in support of Rajagopal during the last election. He had convened several meetings of various denominations of the Pentecostal churches before and after the election to drum up support for the BJP.

A meeting he arranged at Kochi recently proved to be a big hit with the heads of various denominations attending it. The bishops who attended the meeting included the Mar Thoma Church's Metropolitan Joseph Mar Irenious, Chaldean bishop Mar Aprem, Church of South India bishop Rt. Rev Dr K J Samuel, Malankara Catholic Bishop Joshua Ignatious and Pentecostal Church president pastor K C John. The State BJP president C K Padmanabhan, general secretary P P Mukundan and national executive member K Raman Pillai also attended the conclave.

The BJP, which has been trying in vain to woo the minorities in Kerala, has grabbed the opportunity extended to Rajagopal to address the Pentecostal assembly. The party leaders hope that it would go a long way in convincing the minorities in the state that it is not anti-minority as projected by its rivals.

Rajagopal is considered a moderate leader, who can strike the right chord with the minorities. He had intervened in favour of the minorities on several occasions in the past. In fact, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has made him a minister despite his losing the election from Thiruvananthapuram with a view to advancing the party's cause in Kerala, where the minorities constitute nearly 50 per cent of the population.

One of the tasks Rajagopal undertook soon after becoming the minister was to strive for a consensus on removing the discriminatory provisions in the Christian Succession and Divorce Acts, a sensitive issue agitating the minds of a large number of Christians in Kerala. Rajagopal had held extensive consultations with heads of various churches and Christian organisations during his second visit to the state after assuming the charge at the Centre.

A consensus on the issue is a tough proposition in view of the divergent opinions in the community on succession and divorce. If Rajagopal succeeds in his mission, it would be a major political victory for the BJP as a whole. Rajagopal is not leaving any stone unturned in this mission.

Rajagopal has volunteered to address other longstanding grievances of the Christian community. He is also trying to get some Christians appointed to key posts at the Centre to build the confidence of the community in his party.

The BJP leadership has realised that it cannot make a dent in Kerala without winning the hearts of the minorities in the state. In fact Rajagopal's senior colleague Murli Manohar Joshi had also made several attempts to win over the Church leaders. He had met the leaders of the Mar Thoma Church and visited its headquarters and the famous St Peter's Orthodox Church at Parumala during his previous term as the minister for human resource development.

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