The high-decibel climax of the spirited campaign for the Palakkad Assembly bypoll on Monday evening seemed not to drown out the rasping echoes of the bitter political row that erupted after Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan attempted to question the secular credentials of the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) State President Syed Sadikali Shihab Thangal.
Mr. Vijayan’s accusation during the heat of the electioneering that Mr. Thangal lacked the secular outlook of his late predecessor and elder brother, Syed Mohammed Ali Shihab Thangal, and the IUML leadership had gravitated towards the “radical Islamist” ideology of the Jamat-e-Islami has stirred up a hornet’s nest.
Notably, Mr. Vijayan’s take on Mr. Thangal came close on the heels of the IUML leadership opening the doors of the Panakkad House to Sandeep Varier, a former BJP leader who defected recently to the Congress.
The IUML’s mouthpiece, Chandrika, fired a first shot across the ruling Left Democratic Front’s (LDF) bow on Monday. In a sharply critical editorial, Chandrika accused Mr. Vijayan of echoing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s (RSS) anti-minority outlook.
Soon, a chorus of Congress leaders, including Congress Working Committee member Ramesh Chennithala, Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president K. Sudhakaran and Leader of the Opposition V.D. Satheesan, came out in Mr. Thangal’s defence.
They said Mr. Thangal had ensured communal amity by disowning the Waqf Board’s claim over the lands owned by over 600 families, most of them Christians, and strongly advocating the restitution of the homeowners’ revenue rights.
Congress claimed that, in contrast, Mr. Vijayan sought to create political space for the RSS to create enmity between minority communities, both crucial electoral blocs, by letting the communally sensitive issue fester without resolution.
The Congress said the CPI(M) had adopted a majoritarian political tack when its gambit to play minority communalism backfired. It averred that CPI(M)‘s paroxysms of political shape-shifting would not pass muster with voters.
CPI(M) leaders pushed back against the UDF’s alleged attempt to portray the party and government as patently anti-minority.
The party’s State Secretary M.V. Govindan accused the UDF of seeking to play sectarian politics on the bypoll eve by distorting Mr. Vijayan’s political criticism of the IUML’s current revanchist bearing as a personal attack against Mr. Thangal.
LDF convenor T.P. Ramakrishnan said Mr. Vijayan had rightly pointed out that the IUML was an ideological prisoner of the Jamat-e-Islami. Local Self-Governments Minister M.B. Rajesh said the “Islamist outfit’s” aspiration to establish a Caliphate was a perfect complement to the RSS’s aim to create a Hindu nation.
Published - November 18, 2024 08:40 pm IST
