Hindu Nationalism in South India: Why a saffron surge is building in favour of BJP in Kerala

Deep inroads made into the socio-cultural space of South India, rather than mere electoral gains, is seen as the most significant achievement of the Sangh Parivar that is now well primed to yield electoral results even in Left-dominant Kerala, according to a collection of scholarly papers published recently.

The last frontier of Hindutva, South India barring the lone exception of Karnataka where the BJP has either won on its own or cobbled coalitions, is no longer immune to the saffron surge down from the Hindi heartland.

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The collection of studies by scholars including renowned author Christophe Jaffrelot, titled ‘Hindu Nationalism in South India - The Rise of Saffron in Kerala’, (Routledge) deep dives into the steady progress being made by the Sangh Parivar in the southern states, especially Kerala, which has for long been a bulwark until a few breaches including the first Lok Sabha seat in 2024.

Although a resurgent Congress trounced the BJP in Karnataka in the 2023 state polls, the socio-cultural tools used by the RSS has helped the BJP take roots across the South, including the Left stronghold of Kerala.

“Hindu nationalism appears ‘more content, proud, brazen and belligerent than ever before’,” the book’s editor Nissim Mannathukkaren, writes in the introduction quoting Edward Anderson and Arkotong Longkumer. Mannathukkaren, professor at the Department of International Development Studies, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada, notes that the “expansion is not just electoral, it is also socio-cultural”.

“That is why despite the lack of comparable electoral success in South India and Kerala, it is vital to map the tectonic changes that are happening at a discursive level across India,” observed Mannathukkaren.

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The papers by Jaffrelot, Mannathukkaren, J Devika, professor at the Centre for Development Studies in Thiruvananthapuram, TT Sreekumar, professor at the department of communication at the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, Anil M. Varughese, Associate Professor, School of Public Policy and Administration, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, among others, attribute the strengthening of Hindutva forces to the use of social change and cultural assimilation as tools.

Kerala’s unique socio-cultural dynamics and syncretic culture is seen as the main reason why the high number of RSS shakhas do not reflect in the electoral fortunes of the BJP. But, the writers note, that even Kerala is changing.

The RSS’s socio-cultural experiments by engaging in the daily lives of common people, whether providing relief in times of natural disasters, healthcare for the needy, mid-day meals at hospitals and free healthcare, have already begun yielding results.

From being “untouchables”, the RSS and its Parivar outfits like the Seva Bharathi, according to Dayal Paleri, are now integral to activities ranging from temple festivals to community work, visibly so from flood relief work in 2018, the Covid pandemic and last year’s deadly landslides in Wayanad.

Social engineering targeting all sections of the larger Hindu community is something the RSS paid great attention to in Kerala that has so far swung between the CPM-led Left Democratic Front and Congress-led United Democratic Front leaving no space for a third alternative.

“Post-poll surveys show that more than a fifth of Hindu voters, and around a third of Hindu upper castes, preferred the BJP in recent years despite it having no electoral prospects in Kerala,” writes Mannathukkaren.

The BJP had increased its vote share in Kerala from 6.31 per cent in 2009 to 10.83 per cent in 2014 and 15.20 per cent in 2019. While it managed to open its account in the Assembly by winning the Nemom Assembly seat in 2016, the LDF wrested the seat in 2021, leaving the BJP with nothing.

But in the biggest achievement so far, the BJP won the Thrissur Lok Sabha seat in 2024, stunning its bigger rivals. It is this victory and the 16.68 per cent vote share that it polled which the party hopes to count in winning a few seats in the 2026 state elections.

A state that has for long been idolised by progressive forces across the country, the book notes that Kerala is no longer immune to the nationwide surge of Hindutva.

The Sabarimala agitation to counter the 2018 Supreme Court judgement allowing women of all ages to visit the hill shrine is a case study in Devika’s argument that the society, especially its women, have begun toeing the saffron line. The temple forbids women of menstruating age from entering since the deity, Swami Ayyappan, is an eternal celibate.

The Sabarimala agitation, writes Devika, marked a major shift in significant sections of the society and “this moral majority now forms the major support base for the regressive Hindutva social and political agendas.”

Devika delved into how the BJP and the Congress made quick turnarounds after initially hailing the Sabarimala verdict. Both parties separately protested for months against the implementation of the judgement.

Statewide shutdowns, violent protests targeting government properties, forced the Left government to wait until the Apex Court decides on the review pleas.

“The dominant Left now finds that the time-tested formula of socially-regressive-politically-progressive posturing may have backfired, and they are managing the crisis,” Devika writes about the Left groping in the dark.

The scholars delved into the techniques adopted by the RSS in its silent, but steady, progress in making inroads into the hearts and minds of “progressive” Malayalis, many of whom are still reluctant to vote for the BJP.

The 1921 Malabar Rebellion, a violent uprising by the Muslim peasantry against the upper-caste landlords provided impetus for the RSS to launch in Kerala four years later. It began its work in the Malabar region, northern Kerala, where Malappuram is part of, by deploying pracharaks.

While the early mission was to find some elbow room to manoeuvre, the pracharaks worked their way through the goodwill of upper-caste Hindus. What followed was a silent operation across Malabar and the rest of Kerala, now dotted with RSS shakhas.

After several failed attempts to forge an alliance with influential community organisations such as the Nair Service Society and Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam, the BJP is now banking heavily on the work of its various Parivar organs.

The RSS, writes Nisar Kannangara, has adopted multiple methods to get the attention and thereby support of the local populace who were far removed from its ideology.

The organisation, writes OB Roopesh, appropriated traditional shrines of the lower or intermediary castes, like the kavu or sacred groves, restoration of neglected shrines — especially in north Kerala where many families had abandoned them after joining the early Communist movement.

Ordinary folks, fed with myths and astrological insights into the presence of divinity, often took the lead to renovate or build new temples.

The RSS even introduced north Indian religious festivals like Ganesh Puja, and rituals such as ‘sangeet’ and ‘haldi’ in Hindu weddings, in place of the famed Malayali Hindu wedding ceremonies known for simplicity and brevity.

It is such machinations that came into play when thousands of women, especially from the upper castes, hit the streets with lamps in hands and ‘Ready to Wait’ placards against the Left government’s decision to implement the Sabarimala judgement.

Propaganda films like The Kashmir Files, Kerala Story, and Malayalam film Malikappuram “offer a testing ground to explore the potential BJP had in understanding the demography of its supporters, who could be mobilised through cultural production,” writes Darshana Mini Sreedhar.

While the first two flopped miserably, Malikappuram was a runaway hit as people flocked theatres to experience the “family movie” dipped in divinity and miracles of Swami Ayyappan.