Political observers in Kerala say that PC George, who merged his party with the BJP, is a spent force with no mass appeal.
P C George and his son Shaun joining BJP in Delhi.
After 32 straight years, Poonjar decided it had enough of PC George and rested him in 2021. The defeat at Poonjar, which George considered his pocket borough, was of his own making.
For the past more than three decades, the Assembly constituency, located on the eastern side of the Kottayam district in Kerala, had tolerated George, his whims, fancies, and loose talk, despite troll factories often targeting the voters for sending him to the state Assembly.
George took the voters for granted and did not see it coming — like Santiago Nasar in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold who never foresaw his end at the hands of the Vicario brothers, though everyone else knew it was about to happen. That the electorate had decided to end his free run.
During the 2021 Assembly election campaign, Kerala Janapaksham (Secular) candidate George stopped his vehicle on seeing a large group of “well-wishers” waiting by the road at Erattupetta.
With a smile, he alighted from the vehicle and started addressing them in his usual carefree manner, often peppered with below-the-belt jokes.
At that moment, perhaps for the first time, George realised that the voters of Poonjar could not be taken for granted. The crowd booed and waved black flags at him, and demanded the sitting MLA leave the locality.
PC George. (Wikimedia Commons)
George tried to stand his ground. He sought an explanation and ended up facing a volley of questions, specifically on his anti-Muslim remarks and on the so-called but non-existent “Love Jihad” in Kerala.
He had earlier said radical Muslim youth were targeting Christian and Hindu girls, feigning love.
George had by then moved closer to the BJP, sitting with O Rajagopal, the saffron party’s lone MLA in the state Assembly, as a separate block. The crowd also questioned his continuing solidarity with the Sangh Parivar and their aggressive Hindutva ideology.
They also wanted to know why he had portrayed Erattupetta as a mini-Pakistan despite winning their votes.
Not one to back down, George responded. It helped further alienate the crowd.
“I would blame only your parents. The heckling exposes how your family has molded you. They failed to teach you any manners,” he thundered. However, he did not whip out his licensed pistol this time, as he had done in an earlier instance.
“Youngsters would be good only if their families are good. I will pray to Allah for that. I am not saying anything further,” George concluded, but not before terming them a set of “bastards” and “Islamic terrorists”.
The incident, which went viral on social media, sealed his fate in the 2021 Assembly elections, much before the first vote was cast.
The police then had a tough time taking George away unscathed, The crowd comprised people cutting across religion and political ideologies.
For the first time in 32 years, George created barriers between him and his voters.
The same people who had made him a successful hero in the previous election despite CPI(M)’s Pinarayi Vijayan and the Congress’s popular leader Oommen Chandy campaigning against him, pulled him down.
It also wilted — albeit temporarily — the BJP’s hope of seeing the lotus blooming in the rubber plantations of Central Kerala.
After the defeat for the first time in Poonjar, George blamed the religious fanatics of Erattupetta and declared that he would not campaign there anymore.
Till then, George and Poonjar were synonymous with each other.
A prominent face of the powerful Catholic Church in Poonjar, he won the constituency for the first time in 1980 as a politician who reached out easily to the Muslim population of the constituency, especially those in Erattupetta.
In the subsequent years, he became a powerful voice of the Muslims, Dalits, and other marginalised sections in the state and effectively resisted BJP’s communal gameplan.
But he started cashing in on the fast-developing Islamophobia in the state and exposed anti-Dalit thoughts. His line of political thought made him a liability to both the ruling LDF and the Opposition UDF.
Realising that the two fronts with which he had tried his luck frequently would no longer support him, he started pleasing aggressive Hindutva.
Arrested two times for making anti-Muslim speeches and earning the ire of secular formations in the state by terming India a Hindu nation, George finally joined the BJP and merged his political outfit Kerala Janapaksham (Secular) with that party on Wednesday, 31 January.
His son Shaun George, a member of the Kottayam district panchayat, also joined the BJP, terming it a realisation of a long-pending dream.
The going, however, would not be easy for the father-son duo, since many in the BJP have a strong dislike for George, specifically over his no-holds-barred character assassination of political opponents.
Showering abuse on rivals has been his favourite pastime. Possessing a licensed gun, he often threatened rivals, saying he never treated the weapon as a mere toy. Observers viewed him as a political chameleon or turncoat.
Across the political spectrum, leaders in Kerala knew George’s knack for turning long-term friends into arch-enemies within minutes, and that too, with minimal provocation.
PC George at his home. (Facebook/PC George)
According to political observers, the BJP felt George could ride on Islamophobia, and help the party make inroads among a section of the Christians in Central Kerala.
A set of Catholic bishops and priests have been finding common cause with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)BJP on matters like “Love Jihad” and expecting the patronage of Narendra Modi-Amit Shah combine.
The BJP has been keen on a bonhomie between Christian and Hindu communal elements, bound together by Islamophobia.
In 2016, George had created history in the Assembly polls when he defeated the LDF, UDF, and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) of the BJP as an Independent and retained Poonjar by 27,821 votes. In 2021, he lost by more than 16,000 votes.
For much of his career, George was strongly secular, and Muslims stood solidly behind him. He also had an image of being victimised by CPI(M) strongman Pinarayi Vijayan and popular Congress leader Oommen Chandy.
Till 2021, Poonjar was not unduly bothered about his loyalty swinging between the LDF and the UDF with each election.
But when he took his party into the fold of the BJP-led NDA, people turned against him. His badmouthing of popular film personalities and women activists further dented his image. George was at the forefront of supporting the rape-accused former Jalandhar bishop (now acquitted) Franco Mulakkal and admonishing the nun who filed a complaint against the prelate.
As per the calculations of the BJP national leadership, George would contest from the Kottayam Lok Sabha constituency, which includes Poonjar and Erattupetta.
Among the 3.34 crore people in Kerala, Christians constitute 18.38 percent. Catholics constitute the majority of the Christian population in the state. The Jacobite and Orthodox sects are small but influential.
Traditionally, Christians in Kerala are pro-Congress. But the dominating role of the UDF’s second-largest constituent, the Indian Union Muslim League, have made at least a section of the Christians move closer to the BJP.
Three years ago, Kerala’s powerful Christian Party, the Kerala Congress (Mani), ended its decades-long association with the UDF and joined the LDF, alleging a stepmotherly attitude.
Before joining the LDF, the party held many rounds of discussions with the BJP to become a part of the NDA. Incidentally, the party’s chief, Jose K Mani, shares the BJP viewpoint on “Love Jihad”, despite being a part of the LDF.
According to political observer Advocate K Jayashankar, George joined the BJP as a last resort and has evoked communal sentiments against Muslims so far as a means of survival and rehabilitation.
“He may get some positions in the Union government using the Sangh Parivar connections. But the chances of his win in Kottayam are remote,” he told South First.
Outside the Kottayam district, George has no pockets of influence.
“George is a spent force and the most hated politician in Kerala. He would soon turn a liability for the BJP,” Nizam Syed, a Kottayam-based political observer, told South First.
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