Elections in Kerala and West Bengal are understood to be some of the most difficult for the largest political party on the planet, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The number of BJP workers killed in the southern state ranges between 120 to 283. The brutality of many of these killings finds little mention in the mainstream, and local news is highly controlled. In 2023, 4 men of the ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist) were arrested for attacking journalist AD Ram. In 2019 as well, a CPM worker was arrested in another attack on journalists.
Gaining a foothold in Kerala has proven to be as costly as in West Bengal in terms of lives lost, yet elections have not yielded results that reflect such sacrifices. In the 2021 West Bengal elections, the BJP went up drastically from three seats to 77 seats, and gained 38 per cent vote share, up from 10 per cent only one election cycle ago. This occurred despite the extreme violence and reports of ballot rigging. The same is not expected in Kerala soon.
Kerala has proven such a safe haven for leaders of the Indian National Congress (INC) who have been defeated elsewhere that Rahul Gandhi, who lost his long-held dynastic stronghold of Amethi to Smriti Irani in 2019, found refuge in a seat in Wayanad in order to keep functioning as an MP. Along with Shashi Tharoor, he is one of the most popular faces contesting from the state. This time, much like Smriti Irani against Rahul Gandhi in 2019, the BJP has pitted a highly visible minister in the race against Tharoor’s long-held seat of Thiruvananthapuram. While his origins are from Thrissur in Kerala, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the son of an Air Force officer, has worked all over the country, with his base as Bengaluru.
A choice reflective of the BJP’s understanding of Kerala’s population, Chandrasekhar offers a high-achievement, globally exposed option so loved by the population of Thiruvananthapuram who have chosen Shashi Tharoor’s articulation over anyone else for one and a half decades. He offers a legitimate choice to voters who appreciate a global outlook without being disconnected from their Indian Malayali roots.
Bridging the made-up “North-South divide” that mints much readership for the press cycles, his decades of experience in Bengaluru burnish his cosmopolitan credentials; he is accepted comfortably in the southern part of the nation without having to spew hatred for the north.
Electoral discourse in Kerala has typically witnessed generic commentary on youth, representation and “divisiveness”. Comments invoking Ram have also been par for the course for Shashi Tharoor’s lead-up to the latest elections. Chandrasekhar has instead, chosen to use “Ini Karyam Nadakkum” (Now things will work), a statement invoking development along the lines of other BJP-governed states.
Kerala has seen much industry leave its shores in order to survive, one of the last and most visible being the Kitex Group in 2021. More, violence perpetrated under Communist rule has not even spared their part-time ally, the INC. In 2019, P Naushad, a Congress worker died after an attack by goons of the Popular Front of India, an Islamist outfit that is a rejig of the banned Student Islamist Movement of India (SIMI). Trade unions controlled by the Left and using violent protests as enforcement for an anti-business climate are reminiscent of Trinamool supremo Mamata Banerjee’s policies of driving away business and those who attempted it, before course-correcting some years ago, at least superficially.
Yet, Kerala awaits its own U-turn, and capital investment is still a sore spot in the country’s most literate state. Chandrasekhar, whose involvement in the performance-linked incentive (PLI) schemes that are set to create thousands of jobs in the semiconductor industry in India and has already gotten corporate giants invested, would certainly look towards using such experiences to bring in capital.
While Kerala elections are still two months away, a Lok Sabha seat for the BJP in a state it has been long denied in would go a long way toward securing its foothold in Kerala; whether Chandrasekhar is the person to signal a turning of the tides is the question. He was not seen in several of the programs organised for Prime Minister Modi in the state, and his candidacy was announced quite late in a constituency that has been the Tharoor bastion since 2009. Yet, he has been one of the most visible MoS, undertaking policymaking and implementation in overlooked areas of artificial intelligence and digital infrastructure, while engaging with the likes of Elon Musk at international conferences. In this regard, he offers a solid counter to Tharoor who has been Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and is well-regarded for his exposure to global affairs.
As an entrepreneur and investor in his own right, though, Chandrasekhar has a leg up in the race. Having founded BPL Mobiles almost two decades ago and then invested in several other organisations that flourished, he may know a thing or two about bringing in capital to a state sorely lacking new business. Much like Amethi’s turnaround under Smriti Irani, a Chandrasekhar win in the 2024 elections would signal not merely the toppling of a stalwart politician, but a turnaround for the fortunes of a constituency that might allow the rest of the state to imagine change and newer possibilities.
The nomination of Rajeev Chandrasekhar against Shashi Tharoor is a battle of heavyweights, albeit with a high differential in their election experiences. Fighting on the premise of possibilities, while Tharoor battles on slightly more tired tropes of youth and divisiveness that have nonetheless served him well in his years, Chandrasekhar offers a significant change for the people of Thiruvananthapuram.
The land of Parshurama and Shankaracharya remembers its roots. Its people’s political choices have often been rooted in necessity, but when offered a choice, some may choose a representative of an ideology that seeks to cherish their ancients rather than forget them. This is what the BJP and their prominent leaders are betting on with selecting Chandrasekhar as a counter to Tharoor. It is likely to create resounding anti-Hindutva narratives in a state used to it, and yet bring forth the many who prefer the invocation of an ancient ethos.
His battle as David to Tharoor’s Goliath will be witnessed by an interested constituency with high hopes and ambitions of the kind that he has already delivered on. If he proves himself in the capital, he, along with Annamalai in Tamil Nadu, is likely to be at the forefront of BJP’s southern India strategy.
Sagorika Sinha is a columnist at several Indian publications such as NDTV, FirstPost and CNN-News18 and also hosts a podcast on geopolitics and culture. She writes about international relations, public policy and history, and posts on X on her handle @sagorika_s. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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