The overwhelming consensus at a pre-election brainstorming session held in Thiruvananthapuram on February 6 was that the BJP leaders should swallow their pride, step aside, and allow personalities with an appeal beyond politics to contest in the coming Lok Sabha polls. And their first choice is Malayalam mega star Mohanlal.
If Mohanlal is reluctant, the meeting wanted the leadership to keep wooing him till he agrees. No less a person than the BJP national organising secretary and a top RSS pracharak Ram Lal was present at the meeting. And he was said to be in agreement.
Since Ram Lal shares a strong emotional bond with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the meeting wanted him to persuade the PM to personally call up the thespian and apply “benevolent pressure”. For the moment, Mohanlal has ruled himself out of a political contest. But what if the prime minister proposes? It is felt Mohanlal will be left with no choice.
Keep the politicians out
It was the RSS strategy to keep BJP politicians out of the fray “as much as possible”. The thinking is based on a dispassionate, hard-nosed assessment of the Hindu psyche after the Sabarimala verdict. “The faithful are deeply hurt by the verdict. It was this anger, this fear that their faith is being taken for a ride, that saw lakhs taking part in the Ayyappa Jyothi event across the state and the Ayyappa Bhaktha Sangamam in Thiruvananthapuram. We are not so woolly-headed to believe that these people had swarmed these events out of their enthusiasm for the BJP. We know there are many among the devotees who have strong, even incurable, reservations about the party,” a top RSS leader said.
“So if we want to channelise this sweeping sense of betrayal for a political cause, which in this case is the continuation of the Modi rule, it cannot be done through the BJP alone. We need non-political, non-BJP faces that a politically-neutral devotee can identify with, and can feel comfortable about voting for,” the RSS leader said.
Such an inference is also an admission that the state leaders of the BJP are viewed with some suspicion. The RSS reading is that the BJP state president's “golden opportunity” comment and the party's frequent hartal calls might have even distanced the BJP from the middle class. The RSS and Hindu Aikya Vedi leaders Onmanorama talked to also doubted whether the Ayyappa Jyothi or the Bhaktha Sangamam would have captured the imagination of the faithful had it been organised by the BJP.
Rise of the BJP independents
This is why, besides Mohanlal, even the erstwhile Pandalam royal family member Sasikumara Varma is also being considered as a potential BJP-backed independent. The RSS had reserved former DGP T P Sen Kumar, the man who took on Pinarayi Vijayan and won, for Attingal or Kollam. But the former super cop had to be scribbled out of the probable candidate list after he made some nasty comments against former ISRO scientist Nambi Narayanan after he was conferred Padma Bhushan. BJP sources said the prime minister was livid.
Nonetheless, the RSS reckons Mohanlal to be the only name capable of pulling the rug from under the formidable Shashi Tharoor's feet. Suresh Gopi is keen to contest. The Rajya Sabha MP is popular across the state, and has Modi's ears, but the RSS feels that he has been “tainted” by the politician tag. Politically, Mohanlal has a 'dew drop on rose' freshness.
Mizoram governor Kummanam Rajasekharan, too, has a strong appeal among the middle class urban voters as was evident during the last Assembly polls but, according to Sangh Parivar strategists, it is not compelling enough to challenge Shashi Tharoor. Defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman, too, has been ruled out. She is said to have won the hearts of the coastal community after the Ockhi disaster. But even this has been effectively neutralised by Tharoor when he nominated the fisherfolk for Nobel Peace Prize.
M T Ramesh's poor timing
The BJP has only itself to blame for Mohanlal's diffidence. The actor's public rejection of the offer, to an extent, was triggered by a mis-judgment on the part of the BJP. The earlier talks about Mohanlal had almost died down and the BJP general secretary M T Ramesh chose the wrong time to revive the prospect.
He spoke about Mohanlal's candidature right after the actor was bestowed the Padma Bhushan honour. It was as if Mohanlal was being asked to return the favour. The man who had amassed five national awards, nine state awards and is generally considered one of the world's finest practitioners of the art of make-believe found this insulting. Ramesh's offer, though made unwittingly, unnecessarily sought to link the honour to the actor's supposed association with the BJP. The actor is said to have conveyed his displeasure to the BJP and the RSS top brass through his friends.
If Mohanlal eventually declines even Modi's overtures, not all would be lost for the Sangh Parivar. They would have still made some gains. By projecting Mohanlal as their probable candidate, the BJP had already put to work the “moon shine” theory. They have managed to convey that an iconic figure like Mohanlal is sympathetic to their cause. Like the moon, the party is already basking in reflected glory.
Mohanlal's Achilles' heel
It is not as if the RSS considers Mohanlal's candidature to be an unadulterated boon. A weakness attributed to Mohanlal in the SWOT-like analysis done by the RSS team is the anti-women image he has acquired of late mostly on account of two episodes: one, his seemingly insensitive attitude as AMMA president towards the dissenting women members of the association, and two, his apparently callous statement that the 'Me Too' movement is just another fad.
Born in a village called Elanthoor in Pathanamthitta district, Mohanlal is the youngest son of Viswanathan Nair, a former bureaucrat and law secretary with the Kerala government, and Santhakumari.
He made his acting debut in 1978 with the film Thiranottam. After playing villaneous roles in several films in the initial years of his career, Mohanlal rose to stardom gradually, acting in over 300 films of various genres such as comedy, tragedy and action thrillers.
Mohanlal won the national award for best actor four times, including two special jury mentions. He was recently chosen for the Padma Bhushan by the central government. In 2009, he was chosen for the Honorary Lieutenant Colonel post in the Indian Territorial Army.
Some of his notable films are Rajavinte Makan, Irupatham Noottandu, Chithram, Kireedam, Bharatham, Vanaprastham, Lal Salam, Spadikam, Kalapani and Pulimurugan.
