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"DO you need a cannon to kill a bed bug?"
Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) leader P.K. Kunhalikutty often asked the media this derisive question before he announced his candidature from Kuttippuram, the constituency in Muslim-dominated Malappuram district that had always voted overwhelmingly for him. There is a time-tested belief behind this: "Religion is a sure defence against the Left and a shield whenever you face a trial for personal misdeeds." But all over Kerala, such notions were upset as the Left parties transformed the traditional voting preferences of the State's prominent minority communities - Muslims and Christians.
In fact, in mid-April, soon after he announced his candidature against the very man whom he described as the "bed bug" (K.T Jaleel, a former leader of the Muslim Youth League, who was expelled from the party for questioning the misdeeds and corruption of the party leadership including Kunhalikutty and had challenged the IUML leader, with the support of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), to a fight in the constituency), Kunhalikutty confidently told Frontline: "I will double my margin of victory from my constituency this time."
Indeed, the high-profile general secretary of the IUML, a party that once claimed to exist "to devote its attention principally to the religious, cultural, educational and economic interests" of Muslims, was then already under a quiet siege by his own community members who, perhaps for the first time, believed every word that his opponents said against him during the campaign - about his involvement in the `Kozhikode ice cream parlour' sex scandal, the riches that he had accumulated, the corruption charges against him and his alleged links with extremist and mafia elements - and watched in silent disbelief as he tried to beguile them with shrewd rhetoric about his personal troubles being a grave threat posed by his Left opponents against the unity of Muslims and their future in Kerala.
In this election, both Jaleel and Kunhalikutty became representatives of a prominent trend in Kerala, the former of the resentment brewing within parties that claimed to represent the minorities and yet had reneged on the genuine needs of a large majority of poor, ordinary community members, and the latter of the rot that had set in within such parties and of the ubiquitous wayward politicians who were increasingly finding it difficult to hoodwink their once gullible (religious) vote banks.
Without doubt, it was the bed bugs that silenced the cannons in the end, with Jaleel winning enviably with a margin of 8,781 votes from what was one of the safest constituencies for any IUML candidate. Elsewhere, the IUML, which had increasingly assumed the character of a party of rich Muslims, faced the biggest crisis in its history, winning just eight of the 22 seats it contested (it had 17 members in the last Assembly). Several prominent leaders were smothered in the avalanche of Left votes as IUML bastions fell one after the other. In its stronghold district of Malappuram alone, where the IUML was used to grand victories in at least 10 of the 12 constituencies, the party could win just five seats this time. The LDF captured the other five in an election that saw most other prominent Muslim parties and organisations such as the People's Democratic Party (PDP), the Jamaat-e-Islami, and the Sunni group led by Kantapuram Abubacker Musaliar unilaterally declaring support for Left Democratic Front (LDF) candidates, some of them IUML dissidents such as Jaleel.
The final result, in an election where the pro-United States foreign policy of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government (in which IUML leader E. Ahmed is the Minister of State for External Affairs) came in sharp relief to the consistent anti-imperialistic stand of the CPI(M), was an increase of nearly 7 per cent in the party's vote share in the Muslim-dominated districts in north Kerala, a crucial factor in the LDF victory in the State.
On several occasions in the past, religious loyalties have failed to work as an antidote against the progressive ideas that the Left movement had persistently sprinkled among Muslims in Kerala - ideas about education, women's empowerment, social justice and equity, relief from unemployment, poverty and poor wages, raising of living standards and so on. Whenever such Left promises were seen in contrast to the pro-rich, corrupt and decadent tendencies within the IUML leadership, Muslim loyalties have wavered, towards rival Muslim organisations at times, but eventually to the communist parties, and the Left has gained in the Muslim bastions. Almost all the important development initiatives launched by the LDF in the State, including prominently the land reforms and the drive for literacy and decentralisation, have had a large number of beneficiaries among the poorer sections in Muslim society, many of whom subsequently became loyal soldiers of the communist parties. Even the IUML had on occasions shown an inclination to ally with the Left, to hijack its progressive agenda for broad-basing its patronage politics, ignoring the contradictory danger of driving its flock to its enemy in the process.
The other prominent minority group in Kerala, Christians, has been an economically and educationally more advanced community which, as someone famously remarked, "accepted the drill of the Church for the good of their souls and (occasionally) voted the communists to power for the fulfilment of their more tangible needs". This time, the majority of Christians once again voted for the Left, if the results in Ernakulam, Thrissur, Idukki, Wayanad, Pattanamthitta and Kottayam districts are an indication.
Thus the most eye-opening element of the LDF victory in Kerala is that the Left advance was not confined to some districts; the spread was all over Kerala, among all communities and groups - a clear sign that minorities, especially Muslims, were unshackling themselves from the chains of communalism and feudal-like loyalties that had traditionally bound them to the IUML and are increasingly joining mainstream Kerala in their political preferences.
However, it would not be correct to read the Left advance, visible even during the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, as a permanent Left triumph among the minorities. It should rather be seen only in the context of the deep crisis that has engulfed the IUML and other minority political outfits in the State.
The real test of the red spread would therefore come only if parties like the IUML decide to cleanse and reorient their tainted leadership to address the growing restlessness within the communities that have sustained them for decades.
R. Krishnakumar
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