IUML opens doors to women in national leadership. Why Jayanthi Rajan breaks many ceilings

The induction of the two women faces is expected to help the IUML shed its image of a “male-dominated party”. An ally of the Congress, the IUML has often wrestled with juggling between the growing demand for better women’s representation in the party and the conservatism advocated by Muslim clerics.

In 2021, Haritha, the women’s wing of the IUML’s Muslim Students Federation (MSF), had held protests over gender-related issues within the party. After this, the IUML had set up a 20% representation benchmark for women in all its affiliated groups.

Last year, the IUML inducted women into the state leadership of the Youth League, the party’s youth wing, for the first time.

The 46-year-old Rajan, who hails from Wayanad and belongs to a family of “Congress supporters”, began her journey with the IUML in the 2010 local body elections, which were the first after 50% seats in these bodies were reserved for women. The IUML looked for eligible women beyond the Muslim community to field, and this led them to Rajan for a ward under the Poothadi panchayat in Wayanad. Rajan by then was already active in social work.

Rajan told The Indian Express: “In 2004, I began my career with a Church-run NGO, which was involved in women’s empowerment through micro-financing and self-help groups. The IUML was also involved in a lot of charitable works in the area and that helped me find beneficiaries… Their involvement in charity and social causes influenced me.”

Rajan won the local body elections as an IUML representative, and simultaneously joined the party’s Women’s League, going on to become a member of its Wayanad district committee. She was later nominated to the state committee of the Dalit League, which is a wing within the IUML. In 2015, she contested elections to the block panchayat and won.

“For the last nine years, I have been in the national committee of the Women’s League. I have never felt odd in the party. The leadership of the IUML or Women’s League has never approached me as a non-Muslim person,” she said, adding that things had changed since. “When I joined the Women’s League, there were very few Muslim women in the IUML or its affiliated outfits. Now, we have several educated women in the party.”

On conservative clergy and their objections to women in public places, Rajan said, “I am only part of the IUML, I need not comment on what the clerics say. In fact, I have shared the dais with clerics too.”

While the reservation of 50% seats for women in local bodies may have led the IUML to open the doors to women candidates at this level, the party has had very few women candidates for Assembly or Lok sabha elections. In the 2021 Kerala Assembly elections, the party fielded a woman candidate, advocate Noorbeena Rasheed, from the Kozhikode South constituency, for the first time in 25 years. Rasheed, however, lost the seat to a candidate of the Indian National League.