When Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced his decision to convert the famous Hagia Sophia museum in Istanbul into a mosque in the second week of July, it coincided with the arrival of central investigative agencies in Kerala, some 6,000 kilometers away. from New Delhi, to unearth a gold smuggling scam carried out through a diplomatic channel.
However, what appears to be a political conundrum is that the reconversion of the Hagia Sophia, originally founded as a cathedral, had a greater impact on a section of voters in the local body elections, especially Christians in central Kerala, than the smuggling of gold.
Despite the scandal being linked to some officials in the Chief Minister’s Office, the ruling CPI (M) led by CM Pinarayi Vijayan remained in a comfortable position and out of reach of political rivals, the Congress-led UDF and the BJP. The flood of accusations leveled at the CPI (M) in the past five months after the gold smuggling case opened a Pandora’s box appeared to have little effect on the party’s political fortunes.
The precedent of 1991
Those who think that it is nothing more than political naivety to connect the two developments – the conversion of Hagia Sophia and the elections to the local body – should remember the position taken by the CPI (M) on the US attack on Iraq after the latter invaded Kuwait. . The party opposed the “imperialist forces” and the result of the 1991 district council election was astonishing.
The CPI-led LDF (M) had captured 12 of the 14 districts designed to transfer power to the grassroots, while the Congress-led UDF (I) could win only 141 of 474 seats compared to 328 of the LDF. Malappuram was the only district in which the UDF won. The other district was Kasargode, where no party reached a majority.
Waves of Hagia Sophia
The 1500-year-old Orthodox Christian Cathedral, the largest Christian church in the Eastern Roman Empire, was converted into a mosque after the Ottoman conquest in 1453. It was converted into a museum in 1934 and was a UNESCO World Heritage Site (see photos) until July 2020.
A senior Muslim League leader, UDF second partner Panakkad Sadiq Ali Shihab Thangal, in an article on Hagia Sophia titled ‘Friday prayer in Ayasofya’ on July 24 in the party daily ‘Chandrika’, said : “Many European countries, which have opposed Turkey’s decision on Hagia Sophia, have not allowed Muslims the right to offer namaz. When all contemporary Christian religious and political leaders disagree with the conversion, they put no interest in its property, realizing that historically there is no basis for such a claim. “
“The President of Turkey, Tayyip Erdogan, who is raising his voice in the international community for the systematically oppressed Muslims around the world, has been attacked under the guise of pseudo-secularism,” added Sadiq Ali, part of the high-power committee. of the IUML, who is also a prominent member of the Malappuram-based Panakkad family, who has a considerable interest in Kerala politics.
CPI (M) responded quickly to this. Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, its politburo member and later secretary of state asked in a Facebook post “how the Muslim League can now oppose the decision of the BJP government to build a Ram temple where a mosque once stood.”
“Jamaat-e-Islami is an organization that supports the government of Turkey. With the leader of the Muslim League praising the conversion of Sophia Hagia into a mosque, the link between the Muslim League and Jamaat-e-Islami has come to the fore. Congress has decided to ally itself with the Welfare Party, the political wing of Jamaat-e-Islami and the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI), the political wing of the Popular Front of India. What is the position of Congress towards the Muslim League’s approach to recognizing the act of the ruler of Turkey? ” I ask.
Soon, the Catholic Church, which was behind Congress and the UDF for a long time, admonished the article, which had used the Turkish name ‘Ayasofya’, instead of ‘Hagia Sophia’. The Kerala Council of Catholic Bishops, in a statement, said: “Before glorifying the invasion of the Hagia Sophia, Muslim League leader Sadiq Ali should have learned history. Justifying Erdogan would be a responsibility of the political Islamists in Kerala. That should not be at the cost of jeopardizing the future of Indian secular democracy and the peaceful coexistence of religions. It is dangerous to unilaterally interpret history ”.
Reserve for economically weaker sections
Then came the Vijayan government’s decision in October to implement a 10 percent reserve on government jobs for the economically weaker section (EWS) among advanced communities. This created a rift in the UDF as the Muslim League vigorously opposed the measure.
Nair Service Society, a Nair Community organization that had long demanded this reservation, kept a studied silence on the issue, Syrian Christians launched strong criticism against the UDF leadership.
The Archbishop of Changanassery Joseph Perunthottam of the Syro Malabar Church, in an article published in his spokesperson, Deepika, lashed out at the UDF. “The Muslim League opposes the EWS reservation, not on an ideological premise, but only to serve its narrow political ambitions,” he wrote.
“The community lean on the League position is revealed with the EWS theme. Approximately 27 percent of the state’s population was outside the reserve and now the government has decided to help the economically weaker sectors of this group through the reserve. This government measure will immensely benefit a massive section of the population of Kerala who deserved it, but the measures taken by certain organized communal groups to oppose this progressive step of the government are very regrettable, “he said.
The article, while praising the BJP and the Communist parties, also asked why Congress cannot support the “national interest.”
“It appears that the party has no control over its MLA who have different opinions on the same issue,” said the long article, which was widely circulated in the community.
Other issues ranging from the alleged ‘Love Jihad’ conspiracy to the Muslim League’s growing influence in the UDF administration sparked by the ‘Fifth Minister’ controversy are also part of the ‘fear’ factor among the Christian community.
Kerala Congress Mani Factor
After a power struggle, a faction within the Kerala Congress (M) led by José K Mani severed ties with the UDF and joined the LDF on October 14. José K Mani, a member of Rajya Sabha, is the son of the late KM Mani. The late leader was one of the architects of the Congress-led UDF in Kerala and a dean who made the Church a formidable voice in Kerala politics.
José’s faction that joined the LDF was interesting, as the CPI (M) had led an agitation against his father in the alleged bribery scandal in a bar. Mani was forced to resign as finance minister after LDF raised the matter in the Assembly and interrupted the presentation of its budget in 2015 and bar bribery was one of the key issues highlighted by the LDF during the Assembly elections. of 2016.
Links between the UDF and the Welfare Party and SDPI
Despite the criticism raised by the Christian community in two issues in four months, the UDF opted for an alliance with the Welfare Party and a tacit understanding with the SDPI in the December elections to the local body. The welfare party alliance proved to be good as it topped nearly 70 panchayats out of 94 in Malappuram district.
However, it appears that the alliance made a dent in traditional UDF votes in at least three central districts of Kerala: Kottayam, Pathanamthitta and Idukki. The entry of the Kerala Congress (M) as a partner made it easier for LDF to reap the traditional UDF votes who had some apprehension about voting on the CPI (M) symbol.
UDF lost the three district panchayats that it had since 2015 and in the block panchayats, it could only win one of 11 in Kottayam, and two of nine in Pathanamthitta while in Idukki, both shared four each. Among the number of Panchayats too, most of them chose LDF.
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