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The national headquarters of the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), the Quaide Millath Centre, was inaugurated in Delhi last month. This was a significant milestone for the Kerala-based party which has long tried to shed the “communal” tag thrust upon it by both the Right and the Left. Here’s a brief history.
Not Jinnah’s Muslim League
Political opponents often equate the IUML with the erstwhile All India Muslim League (henceforth, ‘Muslim League’) of Muhammad Ali Jinnah which orchestrated the Partition of India on communal lines. While many of the IUML’s founding members were formerly in the Muslim League, the party was founded in 1948 with a fundamentally different outlook.
After the Partition, some from the Madras Presidency, under the leadership of ‘Quaid-e-Millath’ (‘Leader of the Community’) Muhammad Ismail, came together on March 10, 1948 and decided to form the IUML to politically organise and empower Indian Muslims. Ismail, who was elected as the president of the new party, started working to address Muslims’ social and political grievances, and rejected all offers including for financial assistance made by Jinnah for this endeavour.
The party adopted a secular constitution, and, according to its website, “took upon itself the onerous task of organising the members of the community as well as the like-minded minorities along political lines without overriding the primacy of nationalism and secularism.”
Early struggles, successes
The IUML soon spread beyond the Malabar region in North Kerala to other parts of the state as well as various other state legislatures like Assam, Bengal, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi. But the baggage that its name carried was hard to shed.
Srikanta Ghosh wrote in his book Muslim Politics in India (1987), “The Indian Union Muslim League surely brings to mind unhappy memories of the part played by Jinnah’s Muslim League in the bloodshed and massacre and finally in the partition of the country notwithstanding IUML’s commitment to secularism. Simply because the party has the prefix Indian Union its leadership cannot claim that the name is free from provocative communal association”.
No party was willing to align with the IUML in the 1952 general election. Contesting alone against the Congress and the Communist Party in Kerala, it won the Malappuram Lok Sabha seat and five seats in the Madras State Assembly.
In 1957, when Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru referred to the party as a “dead horse” during a speech in Kozhikode, the IUML’s young and upcoming leader C H Mohammed Koya, popularly known as ‘CH’, famously responded: “No Panditji, [the IUML] is not a dead horse but a sleeping lion.” Two years later, Nehru’s Congress would be shaking hands with the League.
In 1957, the Communist Party under E M S Namboodiripad had emerged victorious in the first elections for the new Kerala Assembly. But before long, Kerala was gripped by a violent anti-communist agitation, the Vimochana Samaram (Liberation Struggle), led by the Catholic Church and the Nair Service Society against the certain reforms floated by the Left government.
The IUML decided to back the agitation in June 1959, just a month before Nehru dismissed EMS’s government. The IUML would now join the Congress-led coalition against the communists, winning 11 seats in the 126-member state Assembly in 1960. The League’s K M Seethi was elected as the Speaker.
Over the next few years, Kerala witnessed a lot of political turmoil which led to splits and divisions within the Congress and the communist parties, and the re-imposition of President’s rule in 1964.
The IUML allied with EMS and the communists in the 1967 elections, and contested 15 seats as a part of the United Front. The anti-Congress Front romped to victory, winning 113 of the 127 seats in the Assembly. Unlike in 1960, the IUML was offered two cabinet portfolios this time, and its ministers CH and Vukkader Kutty Naha lobbied the government to carve out the Malappuram district, one of the few in India where Muslims are in majority.
Cementing ties with Congress
Resentment against the dominant CPI(M) — the Communist Party of India had split into CPI and CPI(M) in 1964 — led to the League, CPI, and other parties joining hands with the Congress to move a no confidence motion against the state government in 1969. The second EMS government fell, and CPI’s C Achutha Menon was sworn in as Chief Minister to lead a coalition comprising the CPI, IUML, Socialist Party and Kerala Congress.
Menon called for early elections in 1970, returned to power once again, and remained in office till 1977. During this time, Congress under Indira Gandhi grew more comfortable with the League despite reservations of some younger leaders, including A K Anthony. The IUML-Congress relationship of today can be traced to this decade which not only cemented the League’s position in Kerala, but gave shape to the coalitions that remain central to Kerala politics till date.
After CPI’s P K Vasudevan Nair quit as CM in 1979, CH, supported by Congress leader K Karunakaran, took over for a brief 52-day tenure. This was the only time that an IUML leader has been the Chief Minister of a state.
The churn in national politics, most notably, the Ram Temple movement and the political fallout of the Shah Bano case, and the rise of political Islam abroad shaped the politics of the IUML in the 1980s. The League advocated for significant reforms within the community, reiterated the importance of being in government to affect change and address community concerns, and sought to prevent youngsters from drifting towards more radical Islamist politics. IUML leaders such as Ebrahim Sulaiman Sait and G M Banatwala became active in the newly formed All India Muslim Personal Law Board
Through this time, the CPI(M)’s hardline stance on the League only further strengthened the IUML’s ties with the Congress. While a splinter group that had emerged in the mid-1970s, did briefly ally with CPI(M), by 1985, it had rejoined the IUML.
After the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, IUML leader Sayed Muhammad Ali Shihab Thangal made a passionate plea to Kerala Muslims to maintain calm. The state remained peaceful even as deadly riots raged in many parts of the country. In fact, the IUML resisted pressure from within to quit the United Democratic Front (UDF) government in protest of Congress’ alleged complicity in the destruction of Babri Masjid. A faction led by Ibrahim Sulaiman Sait eventually left the party and formed the Indian National League, which has long allied with the Left Front.
IUML’s E Ahamed would hold a number of ministerial posts in both UPA I and II.
Recent challenges
The IUML has now been out of power in Kerala (as a part of hte UDF) for almost the decade. This has undoubtedly been a difficult period for the party. T J Nossiter in his book Communism in Kerala (1982) had aptly mentioned that the IUML’s politics has been driven by practical considerations. But despite several covert and overt attempts by the CPI-M to arrive at a tactical understanding with the League, the IUML has remained loyal to Congress even as the Grand Old Party faces national decline and deepening factionalism at the state-level in Kerala.
The more conservative sections of the IUML have pushed towards the party leaving the Congress camp. Nonetheless, amid these pressures and the rise of the BJP, which now secures around 15% of Kerala’s vote, the leadership of the IUML has been able to maintain its secular nature and to adopt a progressive outlook. Its move to include two women including a Hindu in its national leadership was largely welcomed.
Today, the role of IUML is often lauded for keeping the Muslim community in the political mainstream in Kerala, where electoral democracy is deeply interwoven with religious and caste identities. The party can also claim credit for the surge in Muslim women’s participation in political, social, and economic spheres, especially with the formation of Haritha, the women’s student wing of its youth wing Muslim Students Federation (MSF), in 2011.
Today, the challenge for the IUML does not revolve around gathering mass support or resources, N P Chekkutty, an author and former editor of the Thejas newspaper in Kerala, told The Indian Express.
“There are a number of new forces coming up in the Muslim community. For one, there is a global influence of Islamic politics,” he said. Chekkutty also pointed to the emergence of “a strong Muslim middle class that is not comfortable with power politics but with cultural issues and the attacks on the community”.
He said, “IUML is finding it difficult to address these issues. These new groups may not be an electoral challenge now, but at the level of ideology, the League is finding itself inadequate to address their concerns”
