BJP minister in Maharashtra, Nitesh Narayan Rane stirred up a huge controversy this week when he said, “Kerala is mini-Pakistan; that is why Rahul Gandhi and his sister were elected from there. All terrorists vote for them. They have become MPs after taking terrorists with them.”
Under normal circumstances, it may have been dismissed as a random bigoted remark made by a Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) but Rane seemed to echo a similar comment by a Communist Party of India (Marxist) Politburo member, A Vijayaraghavan.
“With whose support were Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi elected from Wayanad? With the strong support of the communal Muslim alliance. ”Was it possible for Rahul Gandhi to reach Delhi without their support? He is the Opposition leader. Who formed the front and back rows of the processions of Priyanka Gandhi? The worst extremist elements in the minorities,” Vijayaraghavan said at the CPI-M district conference in Wayanad on 21 December.
Hitting national headlines
Vijayaraghavan’s comments reflected a change in the Kerala CPI-M’s strategy to court the majority after the humiliating loss endured in the Lok Sabha polls. Its campaign, anchored on Hamas and the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), backfired. The CPI-M has been bending backwards to make amends after facing stinging criticism at party conferences for its tactic rebounding.
This comment also corresponds to Amit Shah’s infamous 2019 remark, “When a procession is taken out, you cannot make out whether it is taken out in India or Pakistan”, likening Wayanad to Pakistan. No wonder Vijayaraghavan’s comments made it to the national media.
It hit headlines not only in the English language dailies but also in Hindi and other languages. Vijayaraghavan’s (and the CPI-M’s) short-sighted approach may have led to such a notion getting traction across the nation.
A 360-degree turn
In its review of the party’s performance in the Lok Sabha, the Kerala CPI-M acknowledged feedback that its strategy caused an erosion of its Hindu vote bank to the BJP. The CPI-M deftly took a 360-degree turn in the by-polls in Palakkad, Chelakkara, and Wayanad in November.
Even before the by-polls were announced, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had dropped hints that the CPI-M was going for a U-Turn. This came in the wake of controversy over a clandestine meeting between MR Ajith Kumar, a senior police officer (also the CM’s blue-eyed boy) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s (RSS) Dattatreya Hosabale, along with Left MLA PV Anvar going rogue in tow.
The party, represented by state secretary MV Govindan, was quick to come to Vijayaraghavan’s defense. The Politburo member’s comments also came after Vijayan’s frontal assault on Congress-ally Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) president Sadiq Ali Thangal, of behaving like a camp follower of the Jamaat-e-Islami.
Also read: Kerala Left is becoming indistinguishable from Right—turncoats, ideological erosion, hypocrisy
A case of sour grapes
The CPI-M in Kerala is known for routinely adopting political-tactical strategies (dubbed ‘Adavunayam’) in Kerala and doubling down on them. With an active party machinery down to the grassroots level, the party gets timely feedback and improvises on its propaganda to relay the message to the last voter. The CPI-M’s latest strategy is similar to the blueprint it adopted in the 1987 elections and, to an extent, in 2021.
While the CPI-M has been projecting the Jamaat-e-Islami and the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI) – the political wing of the outlawed Popular Front of India (PFI) – as outfits catering to minority communalism, it has also been trying to obliquely paint the IUML with the same brush, as reflected in Vijayaraghavan’s comments and Pinarayi Vijayan’s targeting of Thangal.
The strange thing is that only as far back as the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the CPI-M was trying to woo the IUML to join the Left Democratic Front (LDF) fold, and issuing ‘secular’ certificates to it. The CPI-M has previously allied with the IUML or its splinters on many occasions, and even today the LDF has among its allies the Indian National League (INL) – floated by Ebrahim Sulaiman Sait in 1994 – after he split the IUML, accusing it of not being strident enough.
It is true that the IUML too occasionally reacted positively to the overtures of the CPI-M. However, when the Congress won 99 seats in the Lok Sabha polls, it seemingly made up its mind to stay put in the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) alliance. IUML State Secretary Mohammed Shah told me that the party did consider the possibility of allying with the LDF at one stage before firming up its position.
Whose SDPI is it anyway?
For several elections now, the CPI-M in Kerala has habitually refused to accept election setbacks in its stride. Its general response to a defeat is that the BJP transferred votes to the Congress, or vice versa.
A case in point is the high-profile propaganda campaign unleashed by the CPI-M in the Palakkad by-polls. The party suggested that the Congress and the BJP had drawn up a pact to trade votes in the Thrissur and Vadakara (where the then Palakkad MLA Shafi Parambil contested against KK Shailaja) constituencies, thereby opening the possibility for the BJP to win Palakkad – where it ended up a close second in 2021.
However, as soon as the results were declared, the CPI-M quickly changed tack. The central committee member AK Balan claimed that the trade-off was actually between Thrissur and Palakkad (and not Thrissur and Vadakara).
The CPI-M later shifted focus to the SDPI procession celebrating the BJP’s defeat in Palakkad, attributing Rahul Mamkoottathil’s victory to the SDPI—notwithstanding the fact that the Congress won by a record margin. The same SDPI had publicly backed the CPI-M candidate V Sivankutty against BJP’s sitting MLA O Rajagopal in Nemom in 2021.
CPI-M’s Jamaat conundrum
The Jamaat-e-Islami and the CPI-M were virtually on the same page in the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls, with the two mirroring each other’s position on several issues. Yet, despite being more strident in its professed anti-fascist (read, anti-BJP) stance, the Jamaat-e-Islami’s political offshoot, Welfare Party, declared its support for the UDF.
Needless to say, the Kerala CPI-M saw red, and a campaign to demonise the Jamaat-e-Islami was unleashed. That may have worked out fine, but for the fact that the CPI-M was in bed with the Jamaat right from the 1996 assembly elections until 2019 in Kerala. The shift came when the Jamaat decided to back the Congress with the BJP becoming stronger nationally—making it another case of sour grapes.
Under a concerted attack, Jamaat released visual evidence of winning CPI-M candidates outside Kerala (such as Amra Ram who won from Sikar in Rajasthan) parleying with Jamaat leaders, leaving the Kerala Marxists scampering for cover. Jamaat-e-Islami state secretary Shihab Pookkottur declared that “three among the four CPM MPs in Lok Sabha had the backing of the Jamaat-e-Islami even in 2024”. So far, the CPI-M hasn’t offered any response.
Green flags in Wayanad
In the run-up to the Wayanad Lok Sabha polls in 2024, Rahul Gandhi’s campaigns were conspicuous by the absence of the IUML’s green flags (as well as the Congress tricolour).
The UDF had made a calibrated decision to use tricolour balloons instead of flags, lest the imagery is used by the BJP for propaganda in the Hindi belt or Whatsapp where the IUML is often confused with the Jinnah-led All India Muslim League. The Congress had also learned from the 2019 experience when Home Minister Amit Shah and Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath had targeted it for fielding Gandhi from Wayanad, where Muslims make up a sizeable number.
The CPI-M latched on to it and Vijayan himself took a dig at the UDF. “The Congress needs the votes of the IUML, but not its flag,” he said in a seemingly tone-deaf reaction. It also wrought in well with the minority-driven strategy the CPI-M had deployed in the Lok Sabha. In the process, the Left failed to ascertain the kind of damage it was causing itself and the state.
Similarly, Vijayan has now belatedly responded to Rane without realising how the Maharashtra minister was only rehashing the words of Vijayaraghavan. The CPI-M still hasn’t apparently figured out the long-term damage it is causing ‘God’s Own Country’ to score petty brownie points in Kerala.
Anand Kochukudy is a Kerala-based journalist and columnist. He tweets @AnandKochukudy. Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)
Kerala sends the highest number of Indian recruits to the ISIS and other global Jihadi outfits.
So, of course, there is some grain of truth to Mr. Nitish Rane’s assertion.
Specious arguments won’t be able to hide the reality of Kerala.