The decision of the Congress to keep away from the consecration of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya has left the party in a sticky situation in Kerala.

When the invitation was sent to the Congress, party leaders from Kerala were in the forefront demanding a boycott of the event, sensing the uneasiness among Muslims on the issue. But with two prominent Hindu organisations in Kerala hailing the ceremony and asking the faithful to celebrate the day, the Congress now fears the anger of its Hindu base.

Soon after the Congress national leadership “respectfully declined” the invitation extended to its leaders Sonia Gandhi, Mallikarjun Kharge and Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury to attend the event, the prominent Kerala Hindu outfit Nair Service Society (NSS) said: “It was the duty of every faithful to take part in the Ram Temple consecration ceremony in Ayodhya on January 22.”

Asking the faithful to do the same, NSS general secretary G Sukumaran Nair went on to say, “Boycotting the consecration event, based on politics, would amount to blasphemy. If political parties or organisations oppose the consecration, it would only be because of their selfishness and (desire for) political gain.”

The NSS is traditionally known as pro-Congress, and several senior party leaders, including K C Venugopal, Shashi Tharoor, Opposition leader V D Satheesan and former opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala, belong to the Nair community.

Close on the heels of the NSS, the influential backward Hindu Ezhava organisation, Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam, urged the faithful to light up their homes on the consecration day. Its general secretary Vellappally Natesan said the sentiment of every Hindu was attached to the Ram Temple. “Any force standing against that sentiment would get washed away. The consecration is a spiritual moment that makes every Indian proud,’’ Natesan said.

The backing for the consecration from the two prominent Hindu organisations has helped the BJP sharpen its attack against the Congress. Senior BJP leader and Union Minister of State for External Affairs V Muraleedharan asked “at whose behest” the Congress had turned down the invitation for the consecration.

“Does the Congress in Kerala have a leader who respects Hindu sentiments?… The Congress has to make clear whether it is afraid of the Indian Union Muslim League or SAMASTHA (an influential Muslim outfit seen as the backbone of the IUML),’’ Muraleedharan said.

Given the pressure it is facing from the CPI(M) for the Muslim vote in Kerala, the Congress had earlier tried to dodge the issue over the invite. The CPI(M), whose ideological position on the matter is clearer, had been the first party to announce that it would not attend the Ram Temple consecration. Following this, the SAMASTHA had questioned the Congress “ambivalence” on the issue and asked it to review its “soft Hindutva approach”, speaking the CPI(M)’s language against the party.

If the CPI(M) has little to lose, the BJP has only to gain on the issue, with the Ram Temple helping it consolidate the Hindus behind it while projecting the Congress, with its long-term IUML ally, as anti-Hindu. The BJP is also set to use the issue to strengthen its outreach towards the Christians, the focus of which is the Congress’s “pro-Muslim bias”.

The Congress-led UDF’s hold among the Christians has been declining, with the shrinking of its powerful regional Christian ally Kerala Congress. The BJP has been trying to widen this gap by playing into Christian fears of Muslim fundamentalism in Kerala, with the Congress seen as unwilling or unable to check it.

The concern of the Kerala unit of the Congress regarding the Hindu vote is not new. Party veteran A K Antony had warned the leadership several times about this, saying it should not lose sight of Hindu sentiments while trying to retain the minority vote bank.

A Congress panel headed by Antony that examined the party’s 2014 Lok Sabha poll debacle – whose findings were never made public – had reportedly attributed it to, among other things, pitching of the elections as a fight between secularism and communalism. The panel found that this had led to the Congress being painted as a “pro-minority”, and worse a “minority appeasement”, party.