That is exactly the reason why BJP state president Kummanam Rajashekharan has undertaken a “Janaraksha Yatra” (Save People Yatra). The importance BJP has given to the Yatra is clear from the fact that party’s national president Amit Shah himself flaged off the campaign against the ‘CPI(M)’s violence and jihadi terror’.

Apart from Shah, an array of the party’s national leaders, including UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, will participate in the yatra from October 3 to 17.

Significantly, the yatra has been launched immediately after RSS chief Mohan Bhagawat accused Kerala and West Bengal governments of supporting anti-national and jihadi forces. The new strategy has been adopted with the dismal failure of the party’s earlier communal polarisation policy in the state, known as a bastion of secularism.

Amit Shah and company are obviously hoping that the new ploy would yield dividends enabling the party to firm up its grip on the state and ending the predominance of the CPI(M). But the game plan is foredoomed to fail in the state, which has successfully resisted the BJP’s divisive tactics

The yatra also aims to recover the ground lost after the initial gains in the state. The BJP has suffered a few setbacks of late, first and foremost being the angry mood of its principal ally in the state, the Bharat Dharma Jana Sena (BDJS), which may sever ties with the party any time. In a clear expression of the party’s growing annoyance with the BJP leadership for failing to keep its promises, the BDJS has boycotted the yatra.

That the boycott has dealt a crippling blow to BJP’s bid to strengthen the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in the state is only to state the obvious. It aso bodes ill for the party, which wants to enhance its presence in the state before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

On their part, the CPI(M) leaders, including Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and CPI(M) sstate secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan have pooh-poohed the BJP’s bid to leverage the jihadi-red terror’ formula to to get a firmer foothold in the state’s BJP-hostile soil.

In retrospect, it can be said that the BJP leaders have badly failed to gauge the mood of the voters of Kerala. The attempt to paint the entire state as a haven for jihadis and anti-national forces will only deepen resentment against BJP-RSS.

The LDF and the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) have countered the jihadi terror campaign with the counter-narrative that BJP must put its own house in order before pointing an accusing finger against the dominant fronts in the state. In support of their argument they cite the unrelenting violence unlashed by the so-called cow protection groups against Muslims and Dalits. The silence of top BJP leaders against such violence has emboldened the saffron groups to persist in their murderous campaign.

The ‘CPI(M) violence’ theme will also have fewer takers. The reason is simple: the BJP itself is guilty of unleashing retaliatory violence in the state. The party’s eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth policy has robbed it of the right to occupy the moral high ground against the CPI(M). The BJP’s bid amounts to the pot calling the kettle black.

One thing can be said with certainty. The people of Kerala are too smart to be taken in by the BJP’s sinister campaign to divide the people. The yatra is unlikely to succeed where its earlier divide-the-people-on–a-communal-basis policy flopped. The sooner the BJP-RSS leaders come to terms with this reality, the better. The ‘Janaraksha yatra’ also is set to meet the fate which overtook the earlier yatras undertaken by the BJP leaders. (IPA Service)