A minority that matters

If the past few election results are anything to go by, Malappuram, Kerala's most populous district, holds the key to deciding who will rule the state. This time around, though, the hectic poll campaign does not seem to have had the same effect on the ground in this Muslim heartland (the community makes up for 70 per cent of the population here). The voters seem least anxious about who is going to win, being more worried about the scorching heat, which is fast drying up the wells. The summer has been worse than usual and the tank water lobby that supplies drinking water has been doing brisk business (so have the ubiquitous milk shake stalls).

The Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), the political outfit of the Sunnis and an ally of the Congress-led United Democratic Front for 40 years, isn't worried, though. It's contesting 12 of the 16 seats in the district (in 2011, the IUML had won all 12 here). "We are contesting in 24 seats in Kerala. We will repeat our 2011 performance," says IUML national treasurer P.K. Kunhalikutty.

The 65-year-old, contesting from Vengara for the second time, is considered the "political brain" of the party. The fortunes of the serving industries and IT minister in the Oommen Chandy government have been intimately linked with the IUML's own in the past two decades. Kunhalikutty figured in the 'ice-cream parlour' sex scandal and resigned from the Chandy cabinet in 2005 after a victim claimed she was sexually exploited by the minister in 1996. He lost from Kuttipuram in the 2006 assembly polls with the League also suffering its most humiliating defeat-only seven legislators made it out of the 22 seats it contested.

But now, a decade later, Kunhalikutty has emerged as the sole leader in the party, or at least the only one who matters. He says he's older and wiser today. "Of course, age and experience have something to do with your attitudes. I know I've changed for the better and now I listen more before taking decisions," Kunhalikutty told india today on his campaign trail in Vengara. It is his home constituency, and the people and their issues are all familiar terrain.

Kunhalikutty's political stock went up after the 2011 elections in which he led the party to a big win and consolidated the Muslim vote bank as well. "In fact, the IUML was primarily responsible for blocking the LDF's return to power in 2011. If the Muslims had not voted for the Congress in other constituencies, the party would have lost badly," says M.I. Thangal, a veteran politician and former district secretary of the IUML in Malappuram. Indeed, in a state where the community constitutes 26.6 per cent of its 33 million population, it would be remiss not to say that the consolidated Muslim vote is what took the UDF across the line in an extremely tight contest in 2011.

According to Thangal, the Muslims of Kerala are by and large secular, citing the large numbers that participated in the freedom struggle to illustrate his point. "All the historic symbols in Malappuram talk about how we fought against the British and how we supported the freedom struggle. Our traditions are not communal, our passions are deep-rooted in Indian culture," says a bed-ridden Thangal, who left active politics five years ago.

Those are great traditions to set store by. And yet, it's a story of the past. The IUML's adherence to the middle path in politics has driven many away. The party never took an aggressive political line even after the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992, leading to the emergence of splinter groups advocating a different, more aggressive tack. Abdul Nasar Madani and his People's Democratic Party (PDP) were at its forefront in the '90s, but have been marginalised since (he's currently lodged in a Bengaluru jail, after being charged variously in the 1998 Coimbatore and 2008 Bengaluru blasts cases). Of late, offshoots like the Popular Front of India have arrived on the scene but are yet to get wider acceptability.

"By and large, the Muslims in Kerala are worried more about the emergence of the BJP in national politics. They have a feeling the Congress is playing the role of a spectator and is not able to protect their interests. It may harm the IUML politically in the longer run," says eminent historian Dr K.V. Kunhikrishnan.

Meanwhile, the CPI(M) is testing a few new political tools of its own in the district. Numerically, Left strongholds are restricted to two constituencies, Ponnani and Thavanur. But A. Vijayaraghavan, CPI(M) central committee member, who is monitoring the Left campaign in Malappuram district, says the LDF has a "clear roadmap to defeat the IUML in their fortresses. We have been working on the strategy since the 2014 LS polls." The party has fielded some influential local businessmen and ex-Congress leaders as LDF candidates.

So far, the Left hasn't been able to make much of a dent because the IUML is backed by Sunni Muslims headed by E.K. Aboobacker Musaliyar, who controls 8,500 of the 12,000 madrassas in the state. Another 2,000 madrassas are controlled by the AP faction of Sunnis (headed by Kanthapuram A.P. Abubacker Musaliyar), who have sometimes sided with the Left. The rest are controlled by the Mujahideen and Jamaat factions. The AP and EK factions clash over the control of madrassas every now and then, and Kanthapuram has publicly come out against some IUML candidates.

But the IUML leadership is least bothered what the "sickle Sunnis" (alluding to the AP faction's ties with the Left) get up to. "It's not a matter of concern for us," says Jelseemiya Hussain, an IUML women's wing leader in Nilambur. "We are more worried about the BJP's emergence in Kerala. The BJP is trying to divide people over trivial issues. Now they are telling us what to eat, how to dress and how to salute our national flag."

Veteran CPI(M) leader and former minister Paloli Mohammed Kutty, though, says all is not well in the IUML citadel. "There is certainly an undercurrent helping the Left in the district. Apart from the anti-incumbency factor, the Muslim youth are worried over the slowdown in the Gulf states. They are a lot more realistic. They follow a different politics, not one dictated by the madrassas or the Panakad family, who head the IUML," Paloli says.

The Marxists have formed women squads to visit homes to canvass votes for them, targeting mainly families and the youth who are disillusioned with the power politics inside the IUML. The logic is that any gains from the Muslim vote bank should make the Left's overall tally more comfortable in the Kerala assembly.