Prior to the Lok Sabha elections, the RSS said on Saturday that dialogues with Christians will continue and that it was also prepared to start talks with Muslims in the state in an effort to build bridges with the state’s prominent minority communities.

According to RSS state Prantha Karyavahak P N Eswaran and Prantha Sangh Chalak K K Balram, the Christian community in Kerala is no longer afraid of the RSS.

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“There was a time when the Christian community was terrified of RSS. We’ve had several rounds of discussions with Christian leaders, and the conversation will continue. We have established state and district-level dialogue mechanisms with Christians,” they said.

While implying that the RSS is interested in engaging with Muslims in Kerala, RSS leaders stated that Muslim leaders in the state have yet to come forward for discussion.

“Depending on the issue at hand, if they come forward, we can take that into consideration,” the RSS leaders said, adding that there would be no dialogue with anti-nationalists at the same time.

Eswaran claimed that the RSS did not view the Congress ally Indian Union Muslim League as an extremist organisation.

“Despite having communal interests, IUML does not take an extremist stance. A democratic party, that is. In Malappuram, there was a conversation with an IUML lawmaker,” he said.

Eswaran referred to the dialogue it had with various Muslim organisations in Delhi in January of this year, noting that it wasn’t just with Jamaat-e-Islami.

“Among the Muslim intellectuals who came for the conversation with the RSS was their (Jamaat’s) representative,” he stated, adding that the RSS would only engage in discussion with Jamaat if they were prepared to give up their extreme position.

A recent political controversy in Kerala resulted in the ruling CPI(M) flaying the dialogue due to Jamaat-e-participation Islami’s in the RSS dialogue with Muslim organisations in Delhi.

The CPI(M) believed that the dialogue would not benefit minorities at a time when the country’s secular community was fighting the RSS’s Hindutva agenda.