KOZHIKODE, MALAPPURAM & THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Long before the two-nation theory would implode on its own, Muslim leaders from South India had a personal experience on the hollowness of the grand argument that the Muslims of Indian subcontinent are one separate nation.In November 1947, in the then Calcutta, All India Muslim League (AIML) leader HS Suhrawardy invited Muslim leaders from across the country to decide the fate of the League. He argued that since AIML had achieved its mission of a separate Pakistan for Muslims, it should be disbanded forthwith. Suhrawardy moved a resolution to this effect.But two gentlemen from the then Madras Presidency — Mohammed Ismail and KM Seethi Sahib — argued the League should be reshaped as the political agency of Indian Muslims. They carried the day, and as his resolution was defeated, a bitter Suhrawardy is said to have remarked: “These two Dravidians from the South have foiled our plans!”The two Dravidians went on to launch the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) a year later at the Rajaji Hall in the then Madras. Today, 68 years later, the IUML may not exactly be the pan-Indian Muslim political agency that Ismail and Seethi envisioned, but it lords over what could be one of the most prosperous Muslim communities in the world in Kerala . More importantly, it has largely kept the promise of being a progressive, even secular, representative of the community.Muslims constitute 14.2% of India’s population, but they hold only 4.4% of the total makeup of the current Lok Sabha. Cut to Kerala, it is a different world altogether. There are 33 Muslim MLAs in the 140-member assembly — and three Lok Sabha Members of Parliament out of 20 seats — doing justice to their 26% share in population. And of the 33 MLAs, 20 come from the IUML stable.KPA Majeed, state general secretary of the IUML, says increasing Muslim political representation is considered a positive by all sections of the society. “Kerala society has accepted IUML as a secular force. In the Malabar region, we have people from even among Nair families who vote for us.They don’t look at IUML as a party that stands up only for Muslims,” he says. What Majeed is trying to stress is the nature of politics practised by the League, which may not be all too apparent to an outside observer. The IUML is into Muslim politics, not Islamic politics.In other words, the party works for the betterment of the Muslim community, and not to usher in Islamic laws. “Remember Suhrawardy and the Dravidians? The IUML belongs to this Dravidian stable,” says Dr Fazal Gafoor, president of the Muslim Educational Society (MES), an organisation that runs a slew of institutes including medical and engineering colleges.

DIVIDE & RULE: If there is a split in IUML bastions of Malappuram and Kozhikode as was evident in the recent Panchayat polls, the Left will easily ride to power

Islam arrived on India’s Malayalam speaking west coast somewhere in the 7th-8th century, brought in by the Arab traders. The community that mostly comprised traders and farmers had many run-ins with the upper caste Hindu landlords and the ruling British. But Malabar remained a Congress bastion with charismatic Gandhian leaders such as Muhammad Abdur Rahiman and Moidu Maulavi at the helm. The cut off year was 1921 when Mahatma Gandhi let the Congress play with the Khilafat fire. “The All India Muslim League was founded in 1906. But there was not a single unit of that party anywhere here for a long time to come,” says KT Jaleel, a CPMsupported independent MLA from the region.All that changed in one tumultuous year, 1921, when thousands took up arms against the British and upper-caste Hindu landlords. The British replied with brute force. Around 10,000 died and more than 50,000 were imprisoned.Post 1921, the Mappilahs (as Muslims of Malabar are known) started moving away from the Congress. The party that was responsible for ushering in the Khilafat mood into a largely agrarian community washed its hands off as soon as it turned violent. “This was like adding insult to injury,” says Jaleel, who points out that the Congress party refused to accept 1921 as part of Independence movement until the 1970s.The first pure-play Muslim political agency in the region was formed in 1931 as Kerala Muslim Majlis, which soon joined the federal set up of All India Muslim League. Soon, there was a Malabar Muslim League that happily endorsed the AIML demand for Pakistan and there were even demands of a separate Mappilastan.“The only leader of any consequence who went from here to Pakistan was a Muslim League veteran called Sattar Seth,” says professor Mohiyuddin N Karassery, a Kozhikode-based intellectual and life-long critic of Islamist politics. Although it was an early enthusiast for Pakistan, IUML never had to shake off the stigma of Partition because of Kerala’s geographical isolation. The state, despite its heterogeneous mix, was spared of the horrors of Partition riots. And the League got a head-start in Kerala politics.“They were welcomed by both the Left and the Right, and they grew steadily,” says Karassery. The peak came a tad too soon in 1979 when IUML legend CH Mohammed Koya became the state chief minister although the party had only 11 MLAs.It goes to the credit of leaders like Koya, a man of humble origins respected for his intellect and integrity, that a party that calls itself the Muslim League could have its own chief minister in a Hindu-majority state. Koya became the deputy CM when the next government was formed. Another of his IUML colleagues Avukader Kutty Naha too became deputy chief minister.However, even as it flourished in the sliver of a state cradled between the Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea, it slowly disappeared from the rest of the Indian Union. In Kerala, they say in jest that IUML is the only party whose state president is more powerful than its national chief.Arif Mohammed Khan, him of the Shah Bano fame, narrates a story that could explain why the IUML could never really make its mark outside of Kerala. Somewhere in the ’70s, Abdur Rahiman Bafaqi Thangal — one of the other legends from the IUML history books — approached a young Congress MP from Malabar who had unlimited access to Indira Gandhi. Thangal had an exchange offer in mind.“The League wanted Congress support in four seats in Uttar Pradesh (UP) assembly elections. In return, they were willing to give the Congress one of their two Lok Sabha seats from Kerala,” says Khan. Mrs Gandhi was not amused. She gently told the Congress MP to convey to the genteel Thangal never to broach the topic again.Khan says an experiment like IUML can succeed only in Kerala where Muslims are looked upon more as a caste than a community. “Suppose Congress had an alliance with IUML in UP. Now tell me, will IUML be able to harness even 1% of the traditional Congress votes? No way. There would be zero vote transfer, which is at the heart of any coalition. But in Kerala, it was very easy.And that is mostly because the Malayali doesn’t look upon their Muslim League as a party that was responsible for the Partition of the country,” he says. IUML leader KPA Majeed agrees there is merit in the Partition argument. “I don’t think we can be successful elsewhere. The moment we go to other states saying we are the Muslim League, they look at us with lot of suspicion and mistrust. This is a legacy of Partition,” he says.Truth be told, in the beginning IUML had solid bases in UP, West Bengal, Assam, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Under KA Hassanussaman it had even representatives in the state cabinet in the Ajoy Mukherjee government in Bengal in the 1970s. But the party disintegrated soon after in almost all of the states except Tamil Nadu where it exists theoretically and Kerala where it practically rules.Arif Mohammed Khan, who is currently working on a book on pluralism in various Muslim societies, thinks Kerala’s Muslim community is really unique. He recalls that when in 1985, as industry minister, he was invited by the Kerala industry minister E Ahamed (who is now national president of IUML) to inaugurate an industrial estate near the IUML bastion of Malappuram. “I am sure more than 80% of the audience was Muslim. But in the hall, I was surprised to see Ahamed greeting people with folded hands, which a Muslim leader in the north will never do. There were coconuts being broken. In Kerala such symbols are not important,” Khan says.But those symbols — and associated posturing — are making a comeback scarring the Kerala social fabric. If BJP , which has been trying to open its account for the last five decades, feels it will succeed in the next assembly polls, it is mostly because of the absurd war for empty symbols that has IUML at one side.The Kerala nilavilakku, a traditional lamp that belongs more to ceremonial podiums and tourism brochures, can hardly light up a controversy. But it haunts the IUML. For reasons known to itself, the party that prides itself on its secular credentials has allowed it to be a prestige issue pertaining to Islam.Many a state government functions have led to moments of public embarrassment and screaming news headlines as Muslim League ministers refuse lighting the lamp which is a staple at all public functions in Kerala. The controversy dates back to decades and the party is yet to officially say if it actually believes lighting a Kerala lamp is un-Islamic. The result: the religiously fundamentalists among its cadre are upset the party is not taking a firm stand while the secular voters of Kerala feel IUML is getting influenced by radical Islamist outfits like the Popular Front of India (PFI).The party rank and file itself is divided on the issue. So the IUML leadership came up with a solution that satisfied both groups: it issued a diktat that light it or lump it, the nilavilakku issue won’t be discussed anymore in public. John Brittas, social commentator and head of the CPM-affiliated Kairali TV Network, remembers the issue haunted even Panakkad Syed Ali Shihab Thangal, one of the most respected leaders in IUML history.The IUML cadre considered Shihab Thangal who was IUML president from 1975-2009 as the final authority on all spiritual and temporal matters. His family of Panakkad Thangals trace their origin to the lineage of Prophet Mohammed and is believed to have arrived in Kerala from Yemen centuries ago.“I remember asking him about the issue when I interviewed him long ago,” Brittas says. During the period, there was an incident when a burqa-clad woman executive from the UAE was chief guest at a function in Kerala to inaugurate the Indo-UAE joint IT project called Smart City. “To the surprise of everyone, this burqa-clad woman lighted the nilavilakku,” recalls Brittas. “So I asked Shihab Thangal about this. And his reply was curt: She did it because she was not aware what it means in Kerala!”In fact, the term of this United Democratic Front (UDF) government began with a controversy involving IUML’s education minister PK Abdu Rabb, as one of his first decisions was to rename his official ministerial residence from ‘Ganga’ to ‘Grace’. There were efforts to add a communal colour to the controversy, but as many pointed out later, Rabb didn’t anticipate the row when he decided to change the name to Grace, which is the name of his house in his village in Malappuram district.Controversy, in a way, has always been an IUML fellow traveller. One of its first political successes was extracting a separate Muslim dominated Malappuram district carving out portions of Kozhikode and Palghat. This happened in 1969, under the chief ministership of CPM veteran EMS Namboodiripad, but it is something that Sangh Parivar keeps highlighting as proof of “Muslim appeasement”.That there is another demand these days for a further bifurcation of Malappuram into two Muslim-dominated districts doesn’t help things any further. And behind this demand lies the emerging Muslim politics of Kerala that seems less Muslim and more Islamic. IUML’s future would depend on how it handles this challenge.Kerala’s Romance with Radical Islam Abdul Nassar Mahdani broke into Kerala’s political scene in the heady days of early 1990s. The young cleric from southern Kerala could move mountains with his fiery oratory and walked a slippery slope between minority empowerment and open incitement to violence. Political Islam as articulated by Abu Ala Maudoodi in the 1940s had always existed in Kerala in the form of Jamaat-e-Islami, a staunch opponent of IUML. And the now-banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) was a force to reckon with in Kerala campuses in the ’80s, but none of them could capture the public imagination like Mahdani did.He first established Islamic Seva Sangham in the late 1980s — that stood up to Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in word and sword — and launched People’s Democratic Party (PDP) as a political forum for minorities and Dalits. Neither is a force in Kerala today but there were many who keenly observed Mahdani’s politics and learnt from his mistakes.The Popular Front of India (PFI) which started as National Development Front in the ’90s doesn’t need an introduction. It caught the national spotlight when a bunch of its cadre chopped off the hand of a college professor for allegedly insulting the Prophet. The PFI launched its political front Socialist Democratic Party of India (SDPI) in 2009 with an avowed aim of “Freedom from fear, freedom from hunger”.Those like Prof MN Karassery feel all that is a cover for a larger Islamist agenda and formations like SDPI and Welfare Party — the political offshoot of the Jamaat-e-Islami — are essentially working with the aim of establishing Islamic rule. “For Kerala’s Muslims, they pose a bigger threat than the RSS,” says Karassery.SDPI and Welfare Party harvest their support from the Muslim youth who felt dejected that IUML didn’t do enough to reflect the anger the community felt at the Babri Mosque demolition. IUML’s Majeed says his party chose to calm down the sentiments and risk short-term rejection in the larger interests of the community and Kerala.“There were demands by various groups within the community that we should reciprocate in the same coin. But the then state president of IUML Panakkad Syed Ali Shihab Thangal took the challenge upon himself and doused the communal fire,” says Majeed, adding that the party did suffer losses in the next polls. SDPI state chief Nasruddin Elamarom argues that IUML is making a virtue out of its helplessness. He says that the party has become a coterie of elite who are far removed from the real sentiments of Kerala’s Muslims.“The party has faltered in standing with the cause of the community. There are enough IUML leaders who explain their stand during the post-Babri days were right, but the fact is that the Babri issue was something related to the self-esteem of Muslims. In that issue the IUML stand was not one that could be accepted by Indian Muslims. That moment backfired on the League,” he says.Leaders like KT Jaleel, while disagreeing with the politics of SDPI, say the days of smooth sailing for IUML are over. He points out that the communal polarisation happening in Kerala, something that began with the Babri demolition, is at its peak now. “In the coming times, it won’t be possible for IUML to voice its frank opinion on anything. IUML was largely silent while the Left led the protest in Kerala against the Dadri lynching. The point is the Left-led beef festivals were not interpreted as communal. But had the League organised such protests, it would have been interpreted as communal,” he says.Dr Fazal Gafoor says IUML can claim only around 12-13 constituencies as its bastions. The rest is up for grabs depending on the dominant issue of the season and the candidate. “Even Christians and Muslims together can win only 32 constituencies in the state. There is Hindu majority in 108 constituencies in Kerala. If parties such as IUML push ahead with communal demands inviting a Hindu backlash and if CPM gets weakened, this is the right time for the BJP to surge ahead in Kerala,” he says.However, as things stand there is no challenge to the status of IUML as the sole political arbiter of Kerala’s Muslims, especially in the north. Even Nasruddin of SDPI says they don’t harbor any illusions that they can challenge IUML’s hegemony even in the distant future. “In Malabar at least, IUML is considered by the community as an extension of the religion,” he says, adding that their efforts to focus on South Kerala is yielding rich dividends. He argues that IUML’s invincibility is also tied to the exalted spiritual status of Panakkad Thangals that could wane in a matter of years. “Using this spiritual authority, the IUML really exploits the superstitions still prevailing in the Muslim society,” he says.Majeed, however, is hopeful that the Muslim community and the Kerala society in general will continue to keep IUML in currency. “The entry of BJP in Kerala will only strengthen our bastions. This will help a new union between the minorities and the marginalised,” he says, adding that the challenges that BJP poses impacts not just the League but all parties including Congress and the Left.Kerala goes to polls in April. And if there is a split in IUML bastions of Malappuram and Kozhikode as was evident in recent Panchayat polls, the Left will ride to power in Thiruvananthapuram easily. An IUML mired in controversy and a Congress ridden with scandals can only hope that a rising BJP will shepherd the Muslim flock of Malabar to the League stables once more.