Pinarayi blames Thangal for IUML’s ‘fundamentalist drift’

The Indian Union Muslim League  (IUML) risks being socially and politically outpaced by Muslim fundamentalist outfits if its State leadership continues its current dalliance with the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI) and the Jamaat-e-Islami, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has said.  

Inaugurating the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] area committee office in Kozhikode, Mr. Vijayan said the current IUML State president Sadikali Shihab Thangal was responsible for the party’s “fundamentalist drift” and the former was not above political criticism.

‘A heavy price paid’

He said the Congress had paid a heavy political price for tacitly encouraging the Sangh Parivar to further the latter’s vicious and communally divisive agenda to destroy the very idea and fabric of secularism in India. Mr. Vijayan said the Congress actively encouraged Hindu majoritarian political build-up that culminated in the Babri Masjid’s demolition in 1992, despite cautionary red flags raised by secular parties.

“The then Congress Prime Minister, P.V. Narasimha Rao, allowed the Sangh Parivar mob to pull down the masjid by remaining incommunicado even though chaos unfolded. Decades later, Congress’s top leaders endorsed the construction of the Ram Temple over the mosque’s ruins by sending silver bricks and donations,” Mr. Vijayan said.

“Congress suffered badly and but has still learned nothing. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ascended to power in Congress strongholds in north and central India. Soft Hindutva blurred the line between the Congress and the BJP,” Mr. Vijayan said. 

He said ministerial berths mattered more to the IUML’s leadership than the party’s founding reformist ideals. “IUML clung to power with Congress in Kerala in 1992 for a handful of its leaders to remain in the Congress government. Comparably, the IUML is now actively courting fundamentalist outfits for a few votes to shore up its increasingly shaky base in north Kerala. The IUML is forsaking its traditional secular democratic ideals for the elusive electoral dividend to its peril,” Mr. Vijayan said. 

Against Jamaat

Mr. Vijayan said the Jamaat-e-Islami, which forsook democracy for its stated ideal of establishing an Islamic caliphate in India, fielded a candidate against the CPI(M)‘s Mohamad Yousuf Tarigami in the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly elections at the BJP’s instance. He pointed out that the SDPI leadership spoke in a “terrorist language” when he criticised the IUML leadership for aligning with Muslim fundamentalist organisations against the LDF in Kerala. 

Mr. Vijayan said the bypoll results belied the Congress-BJP-IUML claim that the LDF government was the target of intense anti-incumbency anger. He said the LDF retained its Chelakkara Assembly seat with a resounding majority and improved its vote share in the Palakkad bypoll despite heavy anti-government campaigning by Muslim fundamentalist and Sangh Parivar forces for the UDF.