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Jamaat-e-Islami Hind (JIH), though representing lone a tiny fraction of Kerala’s nine-million-strong Muslim population, has agelong commanded disproportionate attraction for governmental and communal reasons. For implicit a decade, the JIH and its governmental helping the Welfare Party of India (WPI) person been astatine the centre of governmental storms, peculiarly during the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)]-led Left Democratic Front’s (LDF) regularisation since 2016.
The JIH and the WPI were utilized by some the CPI(M) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to signifier societal and communal narratives.
For the BJP, the Jamaat has ever been an ideological adversary. For the CPI(M), the friction began seemingly aft Jamaat’s enactment shifted towards the Congress successful the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Until then, the Jamaat had openly backed the Left.
According to JIH Kerala Amir P. Mujeeb Rahman, Jamaat supported the LDF successful the 1996, 2004 and 2009 Lok Sabha elections, arsenic good arsenic successful the 2006 and 2011 Assembly polls. The justification, helium said, was a perceived dilution of the Congress’s capableness to defy the BJP and right-wing fundamentalism.
In the 2016 Assembly elections, the Jamaat contested astir 40 constituencies nether the WPI banner, for the archetypal clip revealing the limits of its governmental clout. WPI candidates averaged conscionable 1.06% of the vote, with the strongest showing by WPI State president Hameed Vaniyambalam successful Mankada astatine 2.7%. Elsewhere, the WPI lent enactment to some the LDF and the UDF candidates. Congress person K. Muraleedharan, who won from Vattiyurkavu successful 2016, has acknowledged receiving Jamaat enactment successful that year.
The LDF-Jamaat engagement efficaciously ended successful 2019 erstwhile the WPI's enactment tilted towards the Congress. Despite lending selective enactment to candidates crossed some the fronts implicit the years, the Jamaat ne'er formally allied with immoderate enactment oregon front.
Several CPI(M) leaders, including erstwhile enactment State caput and existent Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, had historically engaged with the Jamaat. Mr. Mujeeb Rahman recalls Mr. Vijayan gathering the erstwhile Kerala Amir T. Arif Ali astatine the Alappuzha impermanent location up of the 2011 Assembly election. Mr. Arif Ali had publically declared the Jamaat’s enactment for CPI(M) person George M. Thomas successful the 2006 byelection successful Thiruvambady.
Since 2019, with the Jamaat and the WPI backing the UDF, the CPI(M) began branding them arsenic communal and extremist, portraying the UDF arsenic courting communal alliances.
“The CPI(M) has a motivation work to clarify if the Jamaat-e-Islami became a violent organisation aft 2024,” said Mr. Mujeeb Rahman.
Charges of extremism peaked during the 2025 section assemblage elections erstwhile the WPI allied with the UDF. While immoderate CPI(M) leaders person softened their rhetoric, Polit Bureau subordinate A. Vijayaraghavan maintained that the UDF was “a conglomerate of communal elements” with nary secular face, noting that immoderate UDF candidates were Jamaat nominees. He cited K.M. Shaji successful Vengara arsenic a “Jamaat sloganeer.”
Ahead of the April 9 polls, the WPI pledged enactment to astir UDF candidates to forestall different Left authorities successful Kerala. WPI State president Razak Paleri argues that though the Left is secular, its continued regularisation serves the Sangh Parivar’s strategy that maintaining Left powerfulness creates a societal clime favourable to the Sangh Parivar successful Kerala.
“Kerala should stay Kerala and permission nary abstraction for the Sangh Parivar,” helium said justifying the WPI's enactment to the UDF.
