It is by now clear that ‘Muslim appeasement’ will be the theme around which the Kerala unit of the BJP will mobilise its adversarial politics. ‘Vikasit Kerala’ will take a back seat.
The supposed outsized influence of Muslim organisations in the UDF is already the BJP’s favourite talking point. “I don’t have insider information, but what I gather from news reports is that V D Satheesan has become the CM not as the Congress candidate but as the candidate of a UDF alliance partner,” said BJP state president and Nemom MLA Rajeev Chandrasekhar.
This is a clear even if a subdued reference to the alleged Muslim League support for Satheesan in the Chief Minister race but the Muslim organisation that is openly and unapologetically demonised is Jamaat-e-Islami.
Like the CPM during its days in power, the BJP too has perhaps realised that the mention of the League will not summon up the necessary Islamophobia in Kerala. So Chandrasekhar effects a subtle shift in his narrative. The secret power behind Satheesan’s crowning is not the League but the Jamaat, which at best is only a fringe player in Kerala politics.
“Jamaat-e-Islami is against democracy, secularism and the Constitution, and yet a party like the Congress, which has a long history in Indian politics, seeks the help of such an organisation in Kerala,” he said, and added: “It is unfortunate that the Congress is at its mercy and even the Congress Chief Minister is chosen at the behest of the Jamaat. This is scary.”
After the loss, the CPM has abandoned this ‘UDF-Jamaat’ forbidden affair theory but the BJP evidently wants to sustain it, hoping for a beneficial polarisation.
The BJP hopes that this anti-Muslim stance will get further impetus with the rendition of Vande Mataram on the swearing-in day. The controversy has come in handy to flog the CPM.
While the Congress has merely said that it was unaware of the Lok Bhavan’s move to perform Vande Mataram on swearing-in day, the CPM State Secretariat issued a formal statement a day after the ceremony on May 19, objecting to the use of the national song. The CPM had also hinted that such a move had Congress’s silent approval.
“It was wrong to have sung Vande Mataram in full. The Congress Working Committee itself had, in 1937, taken the stand that singing the full song was undesirable in a plural society,” the CPM State Secretariat statement said. It added that certain lines of the song subscribed to the beliefs of a certain religion.
Soon after the CPM statement, the BJP state president painted the CPM as anti-national by saying that the Left had a history of tormenting even its followers who uttered the patriotic cry ‘Jai Hind’.
But the sharpest charge against the CPM was not unpatriotic behaviour but Muslim appeasement. Jamaat-e-Islami, again, was the flogged. “Now these Left people are insulting our national song simply to curry favour with their extremist vote banks like Jamaat-e-Islami and SDPI,” Chandrasekhar said. He said that these “extreme elements” were now busy controlling the Congress and the CPM wanted them back in its fold.
On Thursday, after the swearing in, BJP’s other BJP MLA V Muraleedharan also joined chorus. Though a bit late, he tore into the CPM Secretariat statement, calling it “highly condemnable”.
“Only the CPM can say that the lines of Vande Mataram are against secularism. Those who are denouncing the national song are committing treason,” he said and hurled a challenge at the CPM: “The CPM should clarify which line of Vande Mataram is against secularism.”
To respond to this would be to enter a political minefield. If the CPM says the mention of Durga and Hindu motifs like the lotus flower in the national song as examples, the party can be easily branded as anti-Hindu, a trap the party wants to avoid.
Further, Muraleedharan said that it was high time the CPM came to the realisation that it was because of such political proclamations that it was being wiped off the map of India.
Both the CPM and the Congress will now have to find ways to neutralise the aggressive anti-Muslim sentiment the BJP is inciting.
