Pinarayi defends Balan’s comment on JIH’s growing heft in UDF

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Thursday defended Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] leader A.K. Balan’s controversial remark that the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind (JIH) would control the Home department under a Congress-led government. 

Mr .Vijayan also sought to give the contentious comment a contemporary political context, stating that Mr. Balan had only held a mirror up to the Islamist organisation’s increasingly pernicious influence within the Opposition United Democratic Front (UDF). 

Mr. Balan’s statement sparked a controversy on Wednesday, with Leader of the Opposition V.D. Satheesan and JIH emir P. Mujib Rehman separately accusing the former Law Minister of being a propagandist for the Sangh Parivar. Mr. Rehman compared Mr. Balan to racial hate-spewing Nazi publicist Josef Goebbels. 

Mr. Vijayan said the JIH had attempted to distort secular criticism of the Islamist organisation’s pursuit of a theocratic State as a reproach of Muslims to corral Hindu votes. “The propaganda won’t pass muster with Kerala voters,” he said.

He said the JIH’s political tack dovetailed with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s (RSS) gambit to cast any condemnation of the Sangh Parivar as a censure of Hindus. He said Islamist organisations and the RSS shared a symbiotic relationship, with each drawing political sustenance from the other. 

Mr. Vijayan said former JIH emir T.K. Abdullah’s statement that the JIH had not abandoned its Islamist agenda and had merely shape-shifted to exist in a secular democracy belied Mr. Satheesan’s bid to whitewash the outfit as secular to justify the UDF’s transactional alliance with the fundamentalist organisation. 

He said Mr. Balan had merely reminded the public that the Maradu riots in 2003 remained a stark example of the Congress’ ineptitude in containing communal forces. He said the RSS disallowed then Chief Minister A.K. Antony from travelling to the tense coastal locality with his cabinet colleague and IUML leader P.K. Kunhalikutty. “In contrast, CPI(M) leaders, including me, led a peace mission unchallenged,” he added. 

Mr. Vijayan accused Congress leaders of stoking minority and majority communalism for political expediency. He stated that Mr. Antony, while resigning as Chief Minister in 2004, decried “organised minorities” for creating social schism by exploiting their political heft to bargain with successive governments from a position of strength. 

“Mr. Chennithala and Mr. Satheesan, now ambassadors for the JIH, argued against giving the IUML greater leverage in the UDF, including by giving the party a fifth minister in the Oommen Chandy government,” he stated. Mr. Vijayan said the CPI(M)’s secular line against schismatic communalism had, in stark contrast, remained a constant.