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Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] State secretariat on Friday flagged a “fast solidifying covert alliance” between the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) and the “Islamist” Jamaat-e-Islami to “communally divide the electorate and harness fundamentalist votes” in the crucial election year. CPI(M) State secretary M.V. Govindan told a press conference that the Jamaat-e-Islami’s ideology was gaining traction in the UDF. The IUML, he claimed, has opened the door for Jamaat-e-Islami’s insidious attempt to steer the UDF politics from behind the curtains. “The Congress should recognise the danger of courting the Jamaat-e-Islami for political expediency. Radical political Islam creates a fertile ground for the Sangh Parivar’s Hindu majoritarianism and ethno- nationalism. Such extreme identity politics promoted by the reactionary outfits will undermine broad-based secular politics rooted in livelihood issues, social welfare, development, and progress. Fundamentalism will erase civic debate on issues that have a bearing on people’s lives,” Mr. Govindan said. Mr. Govindan said the UDF-Jamaat-e-Islami entente was most evident in Malappuram district, where the IUML held considerable sway. ‘Declared support’ He said the IUML has declared support for the Jamaat-e-Islami candidates in grama panchayats in Iroor and Mambadi taluks in the district in reciprocation for the “Islamist” organisation’s backing in other local bodies in north Kerala. Mr. Govindan said District Congress Committee (DCC) president, Kozhikode, K. Praveen Kumar had inadvertently admitted that the UDF was in cahoots with the Welfare Party of India, the political arm of the Jamaat-e-Islami, without officially accepting the party into the Opposition coalition. He said Leader of the Opposition V. D. Satheesan had publicly courted the Jamaat-e-Islami and the “fundamentalist” Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI) in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and the 2026 Assembly elections. “Mr. Satheesan had claimed that the Jamaat-e-Islami had rejected its Islamist ideology aimed at transforming India into a theocratic polity governed by the Sharia law,” he said. In contrast, Mr. Govindan stated, the Jamaat-e-Islami’s State leadership camp in Malappuram reiterated the organisation’s ideological loyalty to Syed Abul Ala Maududi, a conservative Islamist scholar whose writing championed the cause for an Islamist state in India. Mr. Govindan said the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) election-eve outreach to minorities, lately Muslims, was a sham. He said minorities, including Christians, were increasingly vulnerable to attacks from Sangh Parivar organisations in BJP-ruled States in North India, the assurances of the party’s State leadership notwithstanding.
