The CPM’s invitation to Congress ally Indian Union Muslim League and the influential Sunni body Samastha Kerala Jam-Iyyathul Ulama to participate in the upcoming agitations and seminars against the proposed uniform civil code is being interpreted as a political move aimed at wooing Muslims ahead of next year’s Lok Sabha polls.
While the Kerala-based IUML took the invite with a pinch of salt by making a general statement about cooperating with any secular-democratic force in opposing the UCC, the Congress lashed out at the CPM since it is widely felt that the Left party was trying to muster support among the considerable Muslim population of the state.
The leader of the Opposition in the Kerala Assembly, V.D. Satheesan of the Congress, on Monday told reporters in Kannur that the CPM nursed “big dreams” of luring Muslims.
“The CPM, just like the BJP, is out to gain political mileage from this issue instead of taking it as merely a move that is part of the larger Sangh parivar agenda. They (the CPM) have big dreams,” he said.
“The CPM and the BJP are moving on the same path as they both want to milk the UCC for political gains,” Satheesan alleged.
“The CPM got scared the moment it became clear that Sunni groups are uniting (against the UCC). It is that very fear that is making them do all this,” Satheesan said, alluding to how the Samastha and the IUML had decided to work together to fight the Union government’s plan to implement the UCC.
CPM state secretary M.V. Govindan had on Sunday set the cat among the pigeons by inviting the IUML and the Samastha to join its anti-UCC agitations set to be rolled out in a few days. He had announced an “anti-CAA model” of agitation against the UCC.
Kerala IUML general secretary P.M.A. Salam was, however, cautious about his party’s approach to the CPM’s invitation. “The IUML will cooperate with all like-minded democratic forces on this issue. What that cooperation would entail should be decided through discussions with the parties involved,” he told a media conference in Malappuram on Monday.
But he reminded the LDF about its unfulfilled promise of withdrawing cases booked against hundreds of activists, many of them from the IUML and other Muslim groups, over the protests against the citizenship matrix.
He, however, welcomed the CPM’s position on the UCC and termed it a shift from its earlier stand taken by former chief minister and communist stalwart E.M.S. Namboodiripad who had in 1984 stoked a controversy by calling for reforming the Shariat law.
“It is good that the CPM has changed its position (on the UCC). E.M.S. had then supported the UCC and campaigned against Shariat. What we now see is a major shift from that position,” Salam said.
He added that any plan by the CPM to seek political benefits from its invitation to his party would reveal itself. “We will be able to identify whether it (inviting us) is a move with a political objective, or to cheat or exploit the situation as such an objective would reveal itself in due course,” Salam said.
Samastha leader and Islamic scholar Dr Bahauddeen Muhammed Nadwi was more blunt in reminding that none of his counterparts have ever allied with “atheists”.
“History shows that no leader from the Samastha Kerala Jam-Iyyathul Ulama has ever uttered a word about any friendship with an atheist political party,” he stated in a Facebook post on Monday.
