nageshks wrote:
Suraj,
Most Christian conversions occurred in the last days of the 19th century and the first four-five decades of the 20th century for reasons that are too long for me to go into here.
Since you know about this, you probably also know what happened and why. Very briefly for the sake of context I'll provide a background: those conversions were primarily in the OBC Ezhava community, and were characterized as 'protest conversions' because of the rigid stratification of the time. It was Swami Vivekananda himself who called the state a lunatic asylum. The man who put a stop to it was Sri Narayana guru, and his SNDP organization and self-respect movement among Ezhava Hindus. But for him, Kerala would perhaps have been majority Christian today.
This is somewhat similar to Dravidian movement in TN. Both were self respect movements. But there were key differences. The TN movement was very aggressively anti-Brahminical. SNDP avoided that confrontationalism and simply set up a parallel system of temples and schools, until the Temple Entry Proclamation. The TN movement developed into a political movement. But the key thing in Kerala is, the SNDP did not.
This group is both Kerala's largest demographic and BJP's largest potential voting bloc, but they primarily vote Communist today. Together with the Nairs and Orthodox Christian folks, they have the potential to be BJP's long term base in Kerala. There's already a recent understanding between SNDP and NSS, while the Marthoma and Jacobite leaders are talking to Modi. He doesn't have to do anything more than guarantee them all long term support from an
effective state BJP (not the non-existent one of today).
Doing that will take time, because there's no state BJP base to speak of, and there'll be no en masse voting just by screaming 'Modi!'. They'll have to work for it, but if they do, there's a readymade voting base for the BJP in Kerala.
