The Central government’s recent framing of rules to enforce the contentious Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) has animated Kerala politics ahead of what portends to be a bitterly contested Lok Sabha elections.
The ramifications of the Centre’s move to fast-track CAA’s implementation have rippled across Kerala’s socio-cultural and political spectrum and reforged the election narratives of the opposing fronts.
The Congress and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] seemed to vie with each other to tap into the growing social fear that the CAA was patently ‘anti-Muslim, ran against the grain of the Constitution and was a precursor to creating a Hindu majoritarian polity.’
The CAA’s enforcement has also compelled both parties to resurrect the schismatic and strident debate over the criminalisation of triple talaq, the potential drafting of a Uniform Civil Code (UCC), and abrogation of the special status of Jammu and Kashmir, the sole Muslim-majority State in the Union, as significant election talking points to retard Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s strong electoral foray into Kerala.
BJP rejects narrative
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has dismissed the Congress-CPI(M) narrative as misleading and aimed at rendering the Muslim community insecure.
BJP Kerala State president K. Surendran told reporters in Kochi on March 12 (Tuesday) that the 2019 enactment merely offered “a safe harbour” for six minority communities facing persecution in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan by welcoming them as Indian citizens.
“The CAA does not aim to disenfranchise any Indian citizen. The Congress and the CPI(M) are playing vote-bank politics by spreading lies”, he said.
Mr. Surendran scoffed at Chief Minister’s Pinarayi Vijayan’s statement that the Left Democratic Front (LDF) would not implement the Central law in Kerala. “The State has no jurisdiction over the matter”, he said.
Moreover, Mr. Surendran argued that the CAA was no election-eve surprise sprung on the country. “The law is the BJP’s election manifesto commitment”, he added.
However, the ruling LDF and the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) Opposition did not buy the BJP’s argument.
IUML calls meet
The Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), the Congress’s closest political ally in the UDF, has convened an urgent meeting in Malappuram to weigh legal and political strategies to deter what it deems a manifestly “anti-Muslim law” that dangerously sets religion as a criterion for Indian citizenship.
IUML leader P.K. Kunhalikutty told reporters in Malappuram that the BJP has sought to create “a communal flash point to divide the country into religious lines” for electoral dividends.
He said the CAA barred Muslim refugees and naturalised immigrants from applying for Indian citizenship and was manifestly anti-Constitutional.
Mr. Kunhalikutty also hinted that a Muslim Coordination Committee meeting headed by IUML State president Panakkad Sadiq Ali Shihab Thangal was imminent to discuss the community’s future course of social action.
In Kannur, LDF convener E.P. Jayarajan said the BJP’s attempt to “insert religion as a criterion” for citizenship ran against the Constitution’s basic structure.
He noted that the CAA’s enforcement would have undesirable consequences for Muslim families in Kasaragod and Kannur. “It would spell disaster for minority community refugees and immigrants living in the north-eastern States,” he said.
Mr. Jayarajan alleged that the CAA would also enable the Centre to tweak the voters’ list to its political advantage.
“The BJP has attempted to create a communal division like it did in Gujarat to galvanise Hindu majoritarian votes by demonising and targeting Muslim citizens ahead of the Lok Sabha polls”, he said.
Mr. Jayarajan alleged that the Central government had violated the Supreme Court’s momentous order (the Kesavananda Bharati verdict of April 24, 1973) barring Parliament from using its constituent power to alter the founding document’s living spirit.
He pointed out that secularism, democracy, and federalism lie at the core of the Constitution. “The Constituent Assembly had set the values in stone and enshrined them in the Preamble. They are inalterable”, Mr. Jayarajan said.
‘Electoral autocracy’
However, Mr. Jayarajan said the BJP had used its majority in the Lok Sabha to impose an “electoral autocracy” on the country. “Its legislations and actions had incrementally chipped away at the Constitution’s secular and federal foundations,” he said.
Though the Congress and the CPI(M) were technically on the same page on the CAA, a bipartisan move against the law seemed remote.
For one, Mr. Jayarajan said the Congress and the BJP “pursued the Hindutva agenda to varying degrees.” He said the Congress’s opposition to the CAA in the Lok Sabha was, at best, muted, given its “soft-Hindutva” line.
In contrast, Mr. Jayarajan said the LDF, which challenged the law in the Supreme Court and “banned” its imposition in Kerala, was the sole credible bulwark against the ascendancy of the Sangh Parivar.
He said Congress legislators and MPs had defected to the BJP at the drop of a hat and would follow the same political course in Kerala. “A Lok Sabha vote for the Congress was tantamount to a referendum for the BJP,” Mr. Jayarajan said.
“The LDF government was yet to withdraw the cases registered against anti-CAA protesters, including women and children, when Parliament passed the law in 2019”, he added.
Meanwhile, the LDF and the UDF have geared up to take their anti-CAA political messaging to the voters. The Congress was set to hold demonstrations across Kerala on March 12 (Tuesday) evening.
The LDF has already taken to the streets in protest against the law.
In Thiruvananthapuram, LDF workers, led by the ruling front’s candidate for the constituency, Pannian Raveendran, marched to the Accountant General’s office to protest against the Centre’s move.
The Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) said it would challenge the contentious law in the Supreme Court.
(With inputs from Kochi Bureau)
