Allies of the Congress and minority community organisations in Kerala are keeping a close watch on the developments in that party in the aftermath of its senior leader AK Antony’s controversial remarks that people generally are refusing to trust the kind of secularism it advocates and that it has been showing a tilt towards a particular section, the minorities.
Though neither the Muslim league, second biggest party in the Congress-led ruling UDF, nor the Church-backed Kerala Congress (M) is intending to express loudly their doubts over the intentions of Antony in making such a remark, internal discussions are raging in these parties regarding this.
However, the efforts of the Congress’ national leadership and State Congress president VM Sudheeran to establish that Antony’s remarks have nothing to do with the party’s policy on secularism but he had made them purely in the context of Kerala have irked many leaders of the minorities-based organisations, particularly the Muslim league.
“We don’t know why Antony had chosen to make those remarks in the first place. But to say that those comments were Kerala-specific is equal to the Congress itself making the absurd admission that it has contradictory positions on secularism in the national level and for Kerala,” said a top leader of a Kozhikode-based Muslim organisation who did not want to be identified.
“Is the Congress’s national leadership saying that it is all right to have a minority-appeasement policy for Kerala whereas it is not acceptable in the national levelIJ However, that is not an issue which concerns us. But we should make it clear that they should not think that the minorities in Kerala are getting Congress’s help which others are not getting,” he said.
Neither the minorities-based parties nor their social organisations want to be seen as attaching too much political significance to what Antony said because they prefer to think that the Congress Working Committee member was only trying to find some justification for the theory that the BJP had begun eating into his party’s support bases among the majority communities.
A Muslim league leader said that this was not the first time Antony had turned against the minority communities, particularly the Muslims. In 2003, when he was Kerala Chief Minister, Antony had said that the Muslims in the State had become a power through organisation and had been securing undue privileges through collective bargaining.
It is said that certain top Muslim league leaders had then joined hands with Antony’s enemies in the Congress — like current Chief Minister Oommen Chandy — and ensured that he resigned as the Chief Minister after the terrible defeat of the Congress and the UDF in the lok Sabha election of 2004. The UDF could then win only one seat out of the total 20 in the State.
“If the theory that the Congress has been bestowing undue favours on Muslims is true, the Sachar committee report would not have been saying what it has said. The Sachar report suggests that the Congress has not been able to do anything for Muslims despite its pro-minorities policy. But that is another matter,” said a Muslim cleric from Malappuram.
Antony’s statement has indeed caused unhappiness in the Kerala Congress (M), UDF’s third biggest constituent enjoying the whole-hearted support of the Catholic Church, but sources in that party indicated that they do not want to turn it into a big issue by making public statements. However, it would raise the matter in the UDF if the occasion arose, they said.