Hamas is synonymous with Palestine in Kerala. CPI(M), IUML have boxed Congress into a corner

To prevent the Left from snitching its Muslim vote-bank and to declare its pro-Palestine pitch unequivocally, the Congress has organised a rally in Kozhikode.

Dakshina Kerala Jamiyyathul Ulama held a solidarity march to Kerala Raj Bhavan in support of Palestine Liberation Force | Representational Image | ANI

Delivering the Sunday sermon at a Syrian Christian church this weekend in Kanjirappally, Kerala, the parish priest took an unexpected detour from the scripture into the conflict raging in the Middle East. The faithful, who were otherwise distracted by the symphony of raindrops thudding on the roof, were suddenly all ears as the vicar proceeded to speak about the Promised Land or Canaan—roughly covering the area from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea—which, he asserted, rightfully belonged to the Jews, based on the Old Testament.

The clergyman went on to state that all Abrahamic religions, which have the Torah as part of their scripture, should gracefully accept the fact. He was only echoing the general unease among the laity. Just last week, Thomas Tharayil, the auxiliary bishop of Changanassery, had questioned the doublespeak of the Left and others in the secular pantheon on the provenance of Hamas.

Ever since the militant group’s attack on 7 October caught Israel off-guard, Kerala has been undergoing a churn, fuelled partly by political parties targeting the Muslim vote in the 2024 Lok Sabha election. There has also been a ratcheting up of rhetoric in general, despite the Palestine issue not having any direct bearing on Kerala. This has, in turn, led to a spike in Islamophobia in the state, as a natural reaction to the hardline positions across the board.

The genesis

Operation ‘Al-Aqsa Flood’ launched by Hamas on 7 October blew up on Kerala news channels, with the Left, more specifically the ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist), immediately lending its voice to the issue. From Politburo member MA Baby to state Secretariat member M Swaraj, CPI(M) leaders had no qualms leaping to the defence of Hamas without condemning the civilian deaths of 1200-odd Israelis in equal measure. It was left to KK Shailaja, the former health minister, to offer a sane response—she condemned the terrorist act of Hamas even as she expressed solidarity with the people of Palestine—although she didn’t get the backing of the party.

The Congress Working Committee (CWC) put out a statement which sounded unambiguous on its “long-standing support for the rights of the Palestinian people”, but the Left—which saw an opportunity to convert the issue into votes—wasn’t convinced by the intensity of the Congress’ support for Palestine.

The CPI(M) has been working overtime to take the issue to the streets to create confusion among the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF)’s ranks by courting the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) on this issue.

The IUML responded by taking the lead in organising a solidarity gathering on Palestine with CWC member Shashi Tharoor as the chief guest. But things didn’t go according to its script. The liberal in Tharoor didn’t leave the question of Hamas’ terrorist act on unsuspecting Israelis unaddressed, and the Left and its champions were quick to qualify Tharoor’s nuanced position as being pro-Israeli. The CPI(M) went on to extrapolate Tharoor’s position to that of the Congress, thus fashioning itself as the sole champion of Muslims.

Ideological cover 

If anyone pipped the CPI(M) in Kerala to set the agenda on the 7 October attack, it was the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind that went on a propaganda overdrive on its news channel, MediaOne. By constantly converting Al Jazeera feeds into Malayalam capsules and launching into a partisan narrative on its editorial show ‘Out of Focus’, the channel, which is otherwise professionally run, normalised the theory that the lives of Israeli civilians are expendable. The MediaOne editors rationalised everything through the prism of a resistance movement, although viewers wondered why they were dubbing Israel a terrorist state without simultaneously qualifying Hamas as one.

Jamaat’s youth wing, the Solidarity Youth Movement, went one step further and got former Hamas chief Khaled Mashal to virtually address its gathering in Malappuram, vitiating Kerala’s public sphere further and shrinking the space for those who wanted to express solidarity with the people of Palestine without necessarily supporting Hamas.

The Kalamassery blasts at a prayer gathering of the Jehovah’s Witnesses on 29 October engendered the worst fears among Keralites—although, people heaved a sigh of relief when the perpetrator came forward to identify himself as being a former member of the cult. It robbed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and other Right-wing elements of the opportunity to communalise it to their ends.

IUML’s hardline positions

Two-and-a-half years ago, in the run-up to the assembly election in Kerala, the CPI(M) had unleashed a propaganda campaign to project the UDF as being driven by the IUML’s agenda. It claimed that the Muslim League was under the spell of the Jamaat-e-Islami. Although it was then assumed to be a case of CPI(M) making the most of the wave of Islamophobia spreading across Central Travancore, it gained traction when the Congress was seen not asserting itself within the UDF as it did in the past.

The Jamaat-e-Islami Hind in Kerala supported the Left from its inception until the 2019 Lok Sabha election, and the withdrawal of support could have been interpreted as a case of sour grapes on account of this volte-face. Now, they have moved on to the IUML. The gradual hardening of positions of the generally moderate IUML is attributed to the twice-banned outfit’s influence.

When the Babri Masjid was razed by Hindutva hardliners in 1992, the timely intervention of former IUML state chief Syed Muhammedali Shihab Thangal is credited with ensuring that the entire Malabar region remained peaceful. Islamist rabble-rousers such as Abdul Nazer Mahdani and the Jamaat-e-Islami (which was banned in the wake of the mosque’s demolition) had taken more radical positions back then.

It’s only in recent times—when the baton passed from Sayed Hyderali Shihab Thangal to the incumbent Sayyid Sadiq Ali Shihab Thangal—that the Panakkad family’s writ seems to have weakened within the IUML and the community. As if to compensate for this, the party has been taking more hardline positions to keep its vote base intact.

Sadiq Ali Thangal’s 2020 op-ed in the IUML organ Chandrika backing Turkey’s announcement of the Hagia Sophia being turned back into a mosque was a red flag. Of late, however, the riots in BJP-ruled Manipur rekindled the feeling of brotherhood among the two minority communities, Christians and Muslims—only to be frayed in the aftermath of the blanket support for Hamas from the IUML and other Muslim outfits.

CPI(M)’s vote-bank politics

This is not the first time that the CPI(M) has used international issues for vote-bank politics in Kerala. A member of the Jamaat-e-Islami Kerala admitted how it was international issues such as Palestine and a common “anti-colonial” plank that made them bedfellows for so long in the state’s politics.

The Left has mastered the art of winning elections in Kerala by utilising the dominant sentiment of the day with subtle communal messaging. If the “principle-based politics” conceived by EMS Namboodiripad in 1987 translated to ‘soft-Hindutva’, there was a U-turn of sorts in 1991 when it resorted to minority appeasement.

In the 2016 assembly election, the CPI(M) played on the Hindu psyche by dubbing the UDF a minority wagon. Then, in 2021, it modified that appeal to pit Central Travancore Christians against Muslims by tapping into the latent sentiment of Islamophobia.

It is curious to note that the previous instance of the IUML rocking the UDF boat by breaking away was in early 1991 when the Left under Namboodiripad’s stewardship rode the Saddam Hussein wave. Thus, the significance of the CPI(M)’s invite to the IUML to partake in its Palestine solidarity rally on 11 November wasn’t lost on anyone.

Congress boxed into a corner 

It is the Congress that finds itself boxed into a corner in the current scenario. The party is being arm-twisted to adapt its pro-Palestine position to the more hardline pro-Hamas position championed by the Left and the IUML, both swaying to the Jamaat-e-Islami’s tune.

To prevent the Left from snitching its Muslim vote-bank and to declare its pro-Palestine pitch unequivocally, the Congress had organised a rally in Kozhikode on 23 November.

The event also saw the participation of IUML leaders, although it didn’t have representatives of allies such as the Church-backed Kerala Congress factions. Meanwhile, the BJP, which has found itself out of favour with the Church in Kerala after the Manipur riots, is making the most of the situation to cosy up to the clergy; although, it fears that a truce in Gaza could obliterate the Palestine issue from primetime altogether.

The Jamaat-e-Islami, which succeeded in making Hamas synonymous with Palestine through its glorification of the militant outfit on MediaOne, may have also unwittingly aided the rise of Islamophobia—something it regularly accuses others of. A Jamaat member had this to say: “Yes, we want to shape the Muslim consciousness on the issue, against the public consciousness influenced by the Sangh Parivar.”

Claims aside, the Palestine issue has only ended up widening the schisms and vitiating the secular moorings of Kerala.

Anand Kochukudy is a Kerala-based journalist and political commentator. Views are personal.

(Edited by Theres Sudeep)