Jury out on Sabarimala effect in Kerala poll outcome

Whatever happened to the Sabarimala issue which was expected to define how Kerala voted in the just-concluded elections.

With the results going the way of the Congress-led UDF which won 19 of the 20 seats in the state the jury is out on the role of Sabarimala as an election issue.  The BJP which spearheaded the opposition to the Supreme Court verdict on Sabarimala did not win even a single seat.  The ruling Left Front which opened the doors of Sabarimala to women of all ages, as per the apex court ruling,  managed just one seat.

It is not clear whether the Sabarimala issue played any role because of the 19 seats to the UDF,  15 went to the Congress.   The Congress, while aligning with the Left on most issues,  supported the BJP on Sabarimala and that is what makes it intriguing.

In Pathanamthitta constituency, where the Sabarimala  temple is located, the Congress candidate Anto Antony beat the BJP candidate K Surendran by around one lakh votes.  In fact, the BJP came third after the Congress and the CPM candidate Veena George in this constituency.  This was one seat that the BJP was hoping the Sabarimala issue would yield to it  besides Thiruvananthapuram.

The moot question is whether among those who voted for the Congress were there any who did so because of the party’s stance on Sabarimala?  Or, was it merely a tactical vote by sections of the Left to bolster the Congress with a view to preventing the BJP benefiting from  a division of votes?

An example of this was Congress candidate Shashi Tharoor who won by around a lakh votes in Thiruvananthapuram constituency where  earlier he had scraped through by 15,000 votes against the BJP in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.  According to a senior journalist who covers Kerala, this was possible only because of the support from the Left as there was no other reason for BJP voters to swing to the Congress on such a large scale.

The Sabarimala issue did not play as major a role in its favour as was expected by the BJP, going by its electoral performance.  At the height of the Sabarimala-related troubles,  the BJP state president Sreedharan Pillai had reportedly said the issue presented a golden opportunity for the party.   The BJP candidate in Pathanamthitta, K Surendran, was dubbed a “martyr” for getting imprisoned during the Sabarimala agitation with some 240 cases registered against him.   Of the 13.5 lakh voters in Pathanamthitta,  the majority are Hindu but it  did not make a difference to the outcome.

There could be another argument to the effect that the Congress having adopted a BJP-like stance on Sabarimala made it convenient for anti-verdict devotees to prefer it.  If the results of the panchayat elections in Pathanamthitta in November 2018 during the troubles are taken into account,   the UDF (including a rebel) prevailed over both the Left and the BJP.  Yet it would be presumptuous to conclude from this alone that the UDF  benefited from Sabarimala rather than the BJP as there is no supplementary or circumstantial evidence to bolster this perception.

The Sabarimala verdict came in September 2018.  The BJP and the RSS initially welcomed the verdict but overnight changed their stance.  Soon after, the agitation commenced. But, as the troubles unfolded, social  and cultural organisations like the Nair Service Society backed off from the issue and maintained equidistance from all parties. This punctured the BJP’s attempts to ratchet up the issue and keep the controversy going.   The ruling  Left  Front too organised  counter-rallies including the state-long human chain in support of the Sabarimala verdict.

Kerala, among the most multi-religious states in the country,  wears communal harmony on its sleeves and a majority of people are seemingly wary of attempts by any political party to disturb the equilibrium.