2026 Kerala Assembly polls will be remembered as the most communally-charged in history

In hindsight, the 2021 Assembly elections in Kerala was uncomplicated. 
On one side, the strength and solidity that the LDF promised. On the other, the UDF's bouquet of scandals -- gold smuggling, e-mobility hub, Sprinklr and deep sea fishing. 

After the deluge and the pandemic, voters had no appetite for the sensational. They wanted solidity, personified by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. 

Both the Congress and the BJP had then misread the mind of an electorate shaken by a series of mythical disasters. The BJP tried to sell the entry of women into Sabarimala as the most consequential issue. The party lost the only seat it had. 

Hoping for the 2019 Lok Sabha magic, the Congress also had espoused the Sabarimala cause. It lost minority votes in central and south Kerala. By default, the LDF had then emerged as the only secular formation.

This time, freed from apocalyptic terror, voters will perhaps assess the Chief Minister more rigorously. 

But the 2026 battle is not as simple as performance versus change. Communal thinking has both complicated and vitiated the 2026 elections like never before. It is as if parties are banking on alleged communal hatred to boost their chances.

Does Kerala have Muslim haters?
Even while celebrating its development and welfare initiatives, the LDF seems willing to weaken its secular positioning for electoral gains. Will voters impressed by the performance of the Pinarayi-led LDF government be troubled by this erosion of secular ethics?

In 2018, while trying to take on the national leadership role in the fight against the Citizenship Amendment Act, the CPM had tried to nullify the appeasement charge by sharply attacking Jamaat-e-Islami and Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI). 

The CPM reserved for the Jamaat-e-Islami and the SDPI the same volume of revulsion it ostensibly had for the RSS. This way, it kept its secular wardrobe fresh and fragrant. Voters found this appealing and voted the LDF back to power in 2021. 

However, after the 2024 Lok Sabha drubbing, when it was felt that the secular balance had caused the loss of both Hindu and Muslim votes, the CPM ditched impartiality. The desertion of Hindu votes perhaps hurt the CPM more.

From then on, Jamaat-e-Islami, particularly, was singled out for attack. A CPM veteran like A K Balan said that if the UDF came to power, the Jamaat-e-Islami will control the Home Department. The intensity of the attacks were so disproportionate when seen in terms of the Jamaat's influence that it seemed to border on Islamophobia. 

By abusing the Jamaat was the CPM trying to indulge the Muslim-hating Hindu? More critically, is there a sizable Muslim-hating Hindu segment in Kerala? The 2026 verdict could throw up some answers.

Natesan's venom and SDPI surprise
The suspicion that the CPM was furtively inducing the feeling that Muslims were dangerous got validation when the Chief Minister refused to censure the SNDP Yogam general secretary Vellapally Natesan who spat out Muslim hate as casually as paan chewers would paan residue. 

The very same Pinarayi Vijayan had called Natesan “Kerala's Togadia” in 2015 when he questioned the compensation of ₹10 lakh granted to the family of Noushad, who had lost his life while trying to save two sewage workers who had fallen into a manhole. 

And then, all of a sudden, in the middle of the election campaign, the CPM gave out a confusing signal. It said it was not averse to accepting the votes of SDPI, which the party in its 2025 political resolution had termed as a “fundamentalist and extremist organisation”. 

From bragging that it would not commit political adultery for a handful of votes, party leaders now ask what is wrong in accepting votes that have been offered, even if by the SDPI. 

But if the CPM was trying hard to woo the Hindu community, as reflected in its belligerence against the Jamaat and its pampering of Natesan, the acceptance of the SDPI support is evidently not consistent with the party's poll strategy. 

Or was the support supposed to remain a secret and the SDPI state president C P A Latheef had sprung a surprise by making it public? If so, was the CPM betting on supposed Muslim hate to secure majority community votes and at the same time secretly seeking votes from Muslim groups that the party itself has termed extremist?

The Congress, whose image has been dented by perceived infighting and failure to convincingly account for the funds collected for the Wayanad relief, is also doing its bit to stoke communal passions. 

Right at the start of the campaign, opposition leader V D Satheesan had reset the campaign by hurling the CPM-BJP secret deal. He was clearly trying to mobilise Muslim votes by fanning the community's alleged fear of the BJP.

Competitive Islamophobia
And towards the fag end of the campaign, both the BJP and the CPM were heard making Islamophobic comments, aimed at thwarting a UDF win. 

The BJP state president Rajeev Chandrasekhar said that the Muslim League, “which remote-controls the Congress”, will demand six ministers and a deputy chief minister post if the UDF comes to power. On the same day, CPM politburo member A Vijayaraghavan said that the League would have a stranglehold on a UDF government. “Keralam had seen the League increasing its ministers using pressure tactics,” he said.

It was Islamophobia that BJP employed to counter the possible disapproval of Christians as a result of Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2026, which the church leaders see as an existential threat. 

“If a government is formed under the LDF or the UDF, they will be controlled by anti-national groups like Jamaat-e-Islami and SDPI. If this happens, girls in Hindu and Christian households will be lured by Muslim men faking love in the name of love jihad and then recruit them for traitorous activities,” the BJP's Kattakada candidate and former state president P K Krishnadas.

The remarks of these leaders, both BJP and CPM, crudely suggest their political belief that Hindus and Christians in Kerala are fearful of the Muslims.

MLA challenge
It was BJP's Guruvayur candidate B Gopalakrishnan who hurled the sharpest challenge at Kerala's collective conscience during this campaign. "Why has Guruvayur not elected a single Hindu MLA in 50 years," he said. An answer to this is the most eagerly awaited one on May 4.