Analysis | How RSS is silently preparing ground for BJP's win in Nemom

In the afternoon of March 15, when Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar went live to announce the election dates for four states and a Union Territory, people were gathering in large numbers in the ground of Amrita Vidyalayam, a school managed by Mata Amritanandamayi Math at Kaimanam, in Nemom Assembly constituency.

The Hindu Ekta Sammelanam (Hindu Unity Conference) organised to mark the centenary of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) was about to begin. This will be just one of the hundreds that the RSS will conduct across Kerala during the election campaign season.

The RSS considers the 'Hindu Ekta' event at Nemom particularly important. Nemom is where the BJP thinks it has the highest possibility of a win in Kerala -- its state president Rajeev Chandrasekhar is the candidate.

At around the same time, barely three kilometres north from the school ground, CPM's V Sivankutty was conducting a well-attended road show though his name was not officially announced as the party's Nemom candidate at that point.

It might seem that the CPM had an early start in Nemom. Fact is, the Sangh Parivar has been in an under the radar Assembly campaign mode from the last quarter of 2025. Events like Hindu Ekta Sammelanam are the hardly noticed back-end of the BJP campaign, voter outreach done not on the road but behind the scenes. The day such a public event happens will be the culmination of a long outreach process.

For instance, RSS activists visited the houses, offices, community gatherings of Hindus of all hues and persuaded them to participate in the Hindu Ekta event. At the Nemom event on March 15, representatives of Nair Service Society, Hindu Nadar Samajam, Yoga Kshema Sabha, Kerala Pulayar Mahasabha, Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam, and Brahmana Sabha were there. Members of various temple trusts in Nemom constituency, too, were present. But the bulk of the crowd was made up of influential Hindu families belonging to all castes.

"We were told about the advantages of Hindus standing united when the BJP was in power," said a Nadar member who came from Venganoor (some 10km away) with his family to the Nemom event. "The people who came to talk to us also said that the RSS was historically against the caste system, and they were very convincing," he said.

Unity as deception
At the heart of the Hindu Ekta Sammelanam is division: the need to unite against the Muslim enemy.

The objective of the event is to "awaken Hindu pride" but it actually meant whipping up anger against "wicked" Muslim characters like Mahmud of Ghazni, Aurangazeb, Tipu Sultan and "Maulana Mohammad Ali" (the RSS's alias for Jinnah).

The themes discussed at the Hindu Ekta Sammelanam will form the 'whisper part' of the BJP's Assembly campaign. The 'shout part', meant for youth and neutral voters, will be 'Viksit Kerala', the BJP's official campaign slogan.

While billboards, posters and loudspeakers will blare the BJP's 'development agenda', closed-door family meetings will mobilise voters around the idea of the "Muslim invader".

The 'Hindu heroes', 'Hindu artistic triumphs' and 'Hindu places of worship' spoken of at the Hindu Ekta Sammelanam had one thing in common. They were all killed or mutilated or vandalised by "Muslim invaders and appeasers".

Sikh Guru and Bharat Mata
The ninth Guru of the Sikhs, Guru Tegh Bahadur, was one such hero mentioned at the Hindu Ekta meet. He was a poet and philosopher. Over 155 hymns of the Guru Granth Sahib, the holy text of the Sikhs, were his contribution.

The gathering was told that the Guru had fought against the oppression of non-Muslims during Mughal emperor Aurangazeb's time, particularly the forced conversion of Kashmiri Pandits.

Shorn of all nuance, it was said that the Guru was beheaded by Aurangazeb when he refused to convert to Islam. "These Muslims were then walking with a sword in one hand and a Koran in the other," Rajasekharan, a top RSS leader in the district, told the gathering.

The mutilation of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee's Vande Mataram was another proof of Muslim persecution of Hindus.

"In the early days, the meetings of Indian National Congress began with the recital of Vande Mataram. But during one such recital, Maulana Mohammad Ali said this song was 'haraam' (forbidden) for Muslims and insisted that it should not be sung on the Congress stage," the RSS speaker said. "The Congress abandoned this song that had helped unite India during the Partition of Bengal," he said.

The Centre, in an order on January 28, said that all the six stanzas of the song should be sung at official functions like the arrival of the President, the unfurling of the national flag and addresses by governors.

Fantasy of Left historians
Later, Onmanorama called up two of the Hindu Ekta participants and asked whether they knew why the Congress decided to sing only the first two stanzas of Vande Mataram.

"They did not have the spine to stand up to Muslim pressure. They are born appeasers," one person said. Another said: "I know that Jinnah and gang found the references to Bharat Mata as idolatrous. But if you want to live in India, you will have to bow before Bharat Mata even if your religion looks down upon idol worship," he said.

Both of them admitted that these points were "discussed" when "some RSS-BJP people" visited their houses to invite them for the event.

The third stanza of the song evokes the image of thousand-limbed Goddess Durga and even Rabindranath Tagore had written to Jawaharlal Nehru saying it "might wound Muslim susceptibilities". When this information was passed on, one of the participants said: "These are things made up by Left historians like Romila Thapar."

Temple of hope
The repeated destruction of Somnath Temple is also used to evoke Hindu pride and, by default, Muslim hatred.

"These Muslim invaders like Tipu have a pattern. They destroy Hindu temples, and rape Hindu women," the RSS leader said. "Somnath Temple was razed down 17 times right from the time of Mahmud of Ghazni to Aurangazeb," he told the gathering.

References to Vande Mataram and Somnath Temple are not made randomly. Like the official revival of Bankim's poem, the repositioning of the Somnath Temple as a symbol of the Hindu's undying spirit of resistance is part of Sangh Parivar's pan-India plan to unite Hindus against the other.

From January 8 to 11 this year, the Union government organised the 'Somnath Swabhiman Parv' to commemorate one thousand years of the first recorded attack against the temple in 1026.

"Over centuries, Somnath was repeatedly targeted by invaders whose objective was demolition rather than devotion. Each time, however, the temple was rebuilt through the collective resolve of devotees like Devi Ahilya Bai Holkar. This unbroken cycle of revival has made Somnath a powerful symbol of India's civilisational continuity," said a government release.

To reach these themes to the voter is a national project.

Backdoor outreach
Hindu Ekta Sammelanam is just the beginning. "The RSS has already deputed locally respected professionals, including retired teachers and professors, to visit Hindu homes in the constituency and continue the discussion on the themes that were introduced at the Hindu Ekta Sammelanam," a senior BJP leader in the constituency said.

While the BJP candidates and politicians will speak of development and come across as modern and progressive, the seemingly non-political individuals hand-picked by Sangh Parivar will silently go around Hindu houses and instil in them the fear of the other.