Recently reports had emerged that Jamaat-e-Islami Hind a top Muslim body has been engaged in talks with RSS. However, a top leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind has refuted reports of discussions with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). His clarification comes in response to the CPM targeting the Hindutva outfit over the alleged parleys with the Islamic outfit. But embroiled in many controversies including the recent allegations of misuse of Chief Minister’s Relief Fund, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has sprung a surprise, when he himself criticised the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind for its decision to hold talks with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in New Delhi.
The Political Game By Pinarayi
Just when it seemed that bread and butter issues raised by the Opposition were seriously troubling the LDF government, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan sprung a surprise. He has revived a social mobilisation strategy that had done wonders for the LDF during the 2021 Assembly elections.
Instead of the targeting entire Muslim population, he has demonised a fringe religious outfit, Jamaat-e-Islami Hind (JIH). This way he hopes to secure not just the support of Hindus but Christians and Muslims, too. What has come in handy for Pinarayi is the closed-door meeting held by RSS and BJP leaders with certain Muslim outfits, including Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, at the residence of the former Lieutenant Governor of Delhi, Najeeb Jung, on January 14.
On February 17, more than a month after the meeting, the Chief Minister put up a Facebook post asking the JIH to come clean on what transpired during the meeting with the RSS. “The JIH’s logic that the RSS was a kind of organisation that could be reformed and modernised through dialogues is like hoping that a thorough wash could turn a spotted leopard into a spotted deer,” the Chief Minister said, and threw a pointed question: “Who gave the JIH the authority to represent minorities in India.”
The logic of CM is that by demonising whoever comes in to contact with RSS even if those from minorities, they shall be attacked and demonised. It is a ploy to keep the communities in his state divided and to garner himself votes in the upcoming elections, considering the hate of Muslim parties towards RSS in the state. By lambasting an organisation which held talks with RSS, Vijayan hopes to garner support of these Muslim elements and ‘Left-Liberal’ Hindus in the state.
The Chief Minister followed this up with a grander political rhetoric while flagging off the People’s Resistance March led by CPM state secretary M V Govindan in Kasaragod on February 20. He asked whether the Congress and the Indian Union Muslim League had anything to do with JIH’s secret negotiations with the RSS. He also reminded Kerala of the UDF’s electoral understanding with the Welfare Party, the political wing of the JIH, Kerala.
The JIH Kerala assistant emir, P Mujiburahman, called a press conference and accused the Chief Minister of spreading “Islamophobia”. Even before Pinarayi had raised the issue, both the Samastha factions that together have a near complete sway over the Muslim community in Kerala — the E K faction led by Muhammad Jifri Muthukkoya Thangal and the AP faction led by Kanthapuram Aboobacker Musliyar had publicly questioned the JIH’s decision to hold talks with the RSS. “We have strongly disapproved of the JIH’s move to hold talks with the RSS,” said Abdusamad Pokkottoor, a prominent leader of the E K faction (Samastha Kerala Jem-iyyathul Ulama), the most influential Muslim religious body in Kerala. “How can any well-meaning organisation have a discussion with a group that does not believe in Indian secularism and still continues to justify the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi,” he told.
So, when he asked whether the Muslim League and the Congress had any role to play in the talks the JIH held with RSS, Pinarayi was not just trying to sow the seeds of suspicion in the Muslim community against the UDF, the League in particular, but was also projecting the CPM as the sole anti-Hindutva force. Pinarayi’s leadership role in the anti-‘Citizenship Amendment Act’ struggle had won him many admirers in the Muslim community. The 2021 election results testify to his increased popularity among Muslims. According to Lokniti-CSDS’s post-poll survey data, nearly two-fifths (39%) of Muslims had voted for the LDF in 2021 as opposed to about one-thirds (35%) in 2016.
The Vijayan government is also stepping up its attack on Hindu community in the state. The left also displays the dangerous trend of associating anything Hindu as RSS or BJP. For example, recently, Kerala Police directed temple authorities in Thiruvananthapuram’s Vellayani to take down saffron decorations put up for the Bhadrakali temple festival and use multi-colour ones instead. Before that, there was the instance wherein Communist leader and Minister MB Rajesh passed distasteful comments against Adi Shankaracharya to please the party’s pseudo secular followers.
Pinarayi’s Divide And Rule
CPM is playing a dangerous politics in Kerala. By alleging that the JIH is trying to strike a deal with the RSS with the League’s blessings and also by stepping up its attack on Hindus, the CPM is trying to enhance rift between communities for vote bank politics. Relentless and sharp attacks on a fringe Muslim outfit like the JIH seems like a safe bet. It will keep the fake Hindu liberals happy but would not bother the mainstream Muslim community. But the question is whether the dirty politics by Pinarayi will break the very social fabric in the state?
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