While the Congress President may have dispactehd defence Minister to his home State to sort out the differences between KPCC President Ramesh Chennithala and Chief Minister Oomen Chandy, the task seems to be easier said than done.
More than that is the danger of UDF slipping into a turf war from within. Mr Antony who is known as the biggest confidant of Congress President, did vent his ire on the warring factions during his last visit to the Home State and warned them not to carry their grouse and fight through the TV channels. Yes UDF allies have been continuing their public tirade as usual.
Kerala, Known as God’s own country for many reasons faces the danger of communal polarization once again and that is because of Chief Minister’s outrageous ‘minority appeasement policy for political expediency’
Kerala has been an extremely sensitive State because of the highest literacy level in the country. It has been a pioneer in social and land reforms and its human development index could even put a few western countries behind.
But the ‘ minority appeasement bogey ’ has left many congress leaders as well as UDF allies fuming. The recent cabinet reshuffle in which Oomen Chandy had to yield to the blackmail and threats of pullout by the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) for a fifth cabinet post to save his government.
Traditionally, the Muslim League, a formidable Congress ally in north Kerala, gets four ministers; but this time, the helplessness of the Congress in running a government with a thin majority had emboldened them to ask for more. The most bizarre part was that the Muslim not only asked for five ministers but also went ahead to announce their portfolios, even if it meant a blatant political blackmail.
What made things worse was Chandy’s gesture of giving up two of his own plum portfolios, including home, for the Congress ministers belonging to two powerful Hindu communities, the Nairs and the Ezhavas, to offset the criticism that he gave away too much to the minorities or more precisely, the Muslims.
At present, in Oomen Chandy’s cabinet are seven Christians, five Muslims, and nine Hindus. In other words, there are 12 Ministers from the minority communities and nine from the majority community. While the secular observers see this as outright communal politics; the CPM, the Nair and Ezhava leaders; and the BJP see it as pure minority appeasement.
No wonder then that the majority Hindi community has been crying foul and publicly slamming the Chief Minister. Questions ahave been publicly asked about how many Muslims, how many Christians (mostly the powerful Syrian Christians, that too represented by different congregations such as Jacobite, Orthodox and Catholic, and one Latin Catholic) and how many Nairs, Ezhavas, SC and ST have been accommodated or should have been accommodated.
One community is still left out – the Nadars, who are influential only in some parts of Thiruvananthapuram. Nadars are likely to ask for a seat in the next bye-election in Neyyattinkara constituency in Thiruvananthapuram, that went vacant recently when the sitting CPM MLA resigned. Nadars had asked for a cabinet berth in May, but given their comparatively low threat-potential, it was overlooked and their protest is still simmering.
The communal appeasement has been all too visible in the Congress leaders’ public behavior as well. There are instances of many Congress leaders constantly rushing to Bishops of various Christian congregations; the house of Panakkadu Hyderali Shihab Thangal, the spiritual and political head of the IUML in Malappuram; and the headquarters of the Nairs (NSS) and Ezhavas (SNDP).
Factions of Kerala Congress, which represent the Christians, and the IUML together account for 29 MLAs in the UDF’s bench strength of 72. Congress has only 38 seats. Of this, the IUML alone has 20 seats. In terms of extracting the last ounce of flesh from the Congress, the IUML and the Kerala Congress are together, sometimes leading to charges that they act as a block within the UDF.
The Chief Minister has also been accused of not taking the state unit of the Congress, including its president, into confidence before capitulating to the Muslim League demand. Interestingly, the biggest beneficiary of the communal polarisation of the state will be the CPM and not the insignificant BJP. The CPM, in the past, had played the majoritarian electoral card, but of late they have also been making continuous overtures to the Christian and community power centres because that their blocks continue to be invincible bastions for electoral politics.
This may also present an opportunity for the CPM to change track and stick to the old “secular” stand of no truck with communal parties. They can, in fact, boast that in their ministry, it was not the caste or religion that mattered, but politics and competence, when it came to allotting ministries. It had just two Muslims and three Christians.
The moot question that many Congress leaders don’t want to acknowledge or even discuss openly is why five Muslim ministers (for 25 percent of the population) or seven Christian ministers (for 19 percent of the population)were given berths in Chandy’s Cabinet to serve as a ready made recipe for communal polarisation. The biggest point of discussion even “in the evening chats are various tea shops” is communal appeasement of the Congress that vitiates Kerala’s political culture and sets a more dangerous trend in the game of political brinkmanship.
Mr Antony has been given a rather difficult task now to contain the damage and make Congress leaders and UDF allies quiet. However, the damage appears to have already been done and given the “sensitivity of kerala voters”, it would be a Herculean Task for the Congress party to hold its ground in the forthcoming Lok Sabha Polls where even Antony magic may not cut much ice.
(Posted on May 31, 2013 @ 10.10pm)
(Ajay Jha is a Commentator and Independent Writer and Analyst on Politics, security and Economy of South And West Asia. His email id is: Ajay N Jha <ajayjha30@gmail.com>)
