The Real Story From Kerala Is The Crisis In Indian Union Muslim League

The Thangal family has long provided moral and spiritual leadership to the Sunni Muslim community in Kerala. However, its position is increasingly under question. 

Kerala’s most recent political controversy (other than the Congress’s Kerala chief dropping a swear word in public and a Congress leader’s hilarious, if not revolting, butchering of the national anthem) was the demand by the Muslim League for a third Lok Sabha seat.

The weeks-long controversy between the League and the Congress has been defused through the offer of a Rajya Sabha seat later this year.

The reasons for this demand and settlement may seem ordinary. But there are underlying issues that the League is more than perceptive of. 

The accepted social and political power equations in Kerala’s Muslim community are facing a churn like never before in the past decade.

The rise and fall of the Popular Front of India (PFI), the prominence of the Jamaat-e-Islami, the inroads made by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM) in the community, have all created much disquiet among those who had so far benefited from the predispositions of the Muslim community. Most prominently, the position of Muslim League, and its first family, the Panakkad Thangals are increasingly under question. 

This has been the underlying tension that led to the League going outrightly public in its demand for a third Lok Sabha seat.

Traditionally, the League as part of the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) has contested two seats in Lok Sabha elections. The issue of a ‘third seat’ had been raised in the past, including in 2019.

Then, it was quenched by Rahul Gandhi's entry to Wayanad, the most logical seat the League could have contested from. Today, the Congress is giving up a Rajya Sabha seat that would have usually gone to them to ‘compromise’ with the League.

Neither the Congress nor the League comes out well in this latest of a long line of ‘compromises’ both have made with each other. 

The underlying pressures and expectations the League is facing from the Muslim community in Kerala is immense, and this can lead to a full realignment in the state’s fronts. 

A Rich History And Legacy

The Panakkad Thangal family has long been a preeminent force in Kerala and holds wider influence and respect than mere political affiliations.

The family, which traces its origins to Yemen, has been well-respected members of the Muslim Community in Kerala since the 18th century. The involvement of the family in the Indian Union Muslim League through P M S A Pookoya Thangal (1913-1975),  and his sons Muhammad Ali Shihab Thangal (1936-2009), Hyderali Shihab Thangal (1947-2022) and now through Saddiq Ali Thangal (the current Kerala state president of IUML) gave the family wider respect and admiration.

Multiple members of the Thangal family have been involved in the Samastha Kerala Jem-iyyathul Ulama, the scholarly council of Sunni Shafi’i clerics in Kerala. The Thangal family, simply put, can be considered as the most powerful ‘family’ among the Muslims in Kerala.

But in a state which is facing a massive political realignment, the premier position of the Thangal family is no longer unquestioned. 

The reasons for the realignment are not linear and in fact have little to do with the Thangals themselves.

A potent mix of demographic changes, shift in national politics and the CPM’s active courting of the Muslim community under Pinarayi Vijayan, along with more radical and conservative elements within the Muslim community, exploiting the anxiety of the Muslim community in the state, have contributed to this flux. 

Rise Of PFI And Jamaat 

The Thangal family has in general been the ‘moderates’ in the Muslim community and has generally stayed away from divisive and radical forms of politics.

In many ways, the family and its leaders have kept at bay more radical or conservative movements in the Muslim community. 

The interventions that have been made by the family might seem like ‘secular legends’ but they are nonetheless well attested to. 

During the aftermath of 6 December 1992, while more radical and conservative preachers such as Maudany (now accused in the 2008 Bangalore blasts) fanned flames, the League called for communal amity. The Congress’s supposed complicity in the events led some in the League itself to leave the UDF.

When the League did not officially charge the Congress for events of 6 December 1992, it led to the formation of the Indian National League (INL) composed of rebel League members and leaders, aligned with the LDF.

The rise of Maudany’s popularity, along with the prominence of his party, Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP; not linked to Jammu and Kashmir’s PDP) in the 1990s and 2000s were direct challenges to the League's hegemony, but ultimately came to nought. 

The post-2014 scenario has however been completely different though. 

The Jamaat-e-Islami has always had a marginal following in the Muslim community in Kerala, but their institutional strength and social activity led to a rise in their public prominence. 

This, along with the rise of PFI in the post-2014 era posed serious challenges to the Thangals and the League. Both the Jamaat (Welfare Party) and PFI (SDPI) created their own political vehicles to express a more radical positioning of the Muslim community in Kerala. 

The League too, at certain levels, ‘cooperated’ with these organisations, so their position would not be displaced in the short term. But the fundamental discourse by the PFI and Jamaat was completely different from the League’s broad agenda.

Both PFI and Jamaat had broader and more extreme social and cultural aims which were in tune with the most conservative elements of Sharia’a. This was not in particular attunement with what the League professed; it can in many ways be considered the ‘big tent’ party of Muslims. 

The Thangal family’s pre-eminence has diminished to a large extent because of the more ‘active interventions’ that these non-League movements have undertaken.

The ‘outrage’ over Sadiq Ali Thangal’s comments on Ram temple (for stating that the Ram Temple should not be protested against) was driven by Jamaat and PFI members or aligned persons, along with the Communist-aligned Islamists.

The more ‘revolutionary’ and radical approaches of the Communists (who recently tried to name a University arts fest ‘Infant-Tida’) are also contributing to the challenge to Thangals.

And that is the final piece of the puzzle. 

The CPM Challenge

The CPM has long made efforts to garner wide-spread acceptability in the Muslim community.

It was the first party to ‘normalise’ the League by inviting it to the Saptakakshi (seven party front) under EMS and giving a ministership to the party along with the creation of the Muslim-majority district of Malappuram. The CPM has since then ‘courted’ the League time and time again while still ideologically attacking it for being ‘non-secular’. 

Even today, the CPM maintains a convenient ambiguity about the same. 

The CPM’s efforts to deepen its roots in the Muslim community have also been spurred on by demographic change. The Muslim community was 18 per cent of the state’s population in 1961 and today stands at 26 per cent (2011), and will likely show more growth in the next census. 

The efforts by the Marxists post-1992 centred around the earlier mentioned rebel league (INL) and in the 2000s, around Maudany’s PDP. Both did not take as much effect as Pinarayi Vijayan’s more direct pitch about being a force of resistance against communal forces (read BJP) along with soft-pedalling criticism of the League and the Thangal family itself. 

Worryingly though, the CPM under Pinarayi Vijayan has encouraged those with more radical viewpoints and has at many points co-opted cadres of the PFI into the organisation.

The commitment to ‘secularism’ has also been extended by many comrades into many outrageous or radical statements on Hinduism and culture, as well. That Sadiq Ali Thangal’s non-controversial statement was made controversial by Islamists, should be viewed in this light. 

League’s Attempt To Reassert 

In the last UDF ministry under Oommen Chandy, a major controversy was over the League’s demand for a fifth ministry.

This demand led to a major political event, the joining of hands between the Nair Service Society and the Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam, the community organisations of the Nairs and Ezhavas respectively, opposing the decision. 

Many commentators opined that the League's demand for a third Lok Sabha seat, if fulfilled, would lead to a similar outcome, this time in a manner favourable to the Bharatiya Janata Party. 

This might not happen eventually, but that would still leave the fundamental challenge of the League and the Thangal family unresolved. 

The loss in 2021 Legislative elections, along with the unlikelihood of Congress returning to power in 2024 nationally, will hasten the League’s dissatisfaction in the UDF. A possible shift from the UDF to the LDF in a post-2024 scenario is not impossible.

The CPM has laid the ideological groundwork for this over the years under Vijayan. The only thing missing for CPM now is a somewhat favourable result in the general elections. 

The Thangals will have no qualms, and neither would the League. 

(Special thanks to Aishwarya Ajayan for her inputs).