The Hindu Business Line : Maudany: A man for all seasons

Thiruvananthapuram, March 24 There was a hush on that rain-drenched beach in Thiruvananthapuram on August 2, 2007, as Mr Abdul Nasir Maudany, who for years had been the most visible face of Muslim fundamentalism in Kerala, raised his bony fingers to the crowd and began to speak.

It was a ‘redefining moment’ for the man and his party. For nearly a decade, the former chairman of the banned Islamic Sevak Sangh (ISS) and founder of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) had been in jail in Tamil Nadu, as an under-trial prisoner in the 1998 Coimbatore bomb blasts case, suspected of masterminding it and as the one who had supplied the high-grade explosives.

On the day of his acquittal (none of the charges was proved), and clearly aware of the political opportunity in an emotional homecoming, Mr Maudany chose to undertake a journey from Coimbatore to Thiruvananthapuram. Despite a history as the rabble-rousing champion of a fundamentalist group, his imprisonment for nearly a decade, the delay in the trial process, and the difficulties he had to endure as a prisoner with a disability (he lost a leg in an RSS bomb attack in the early 1990s) had struck a chord among a large section of the people in Kerala.

Hundreds swarmed the beach that day, the media coverage was intense, and there were three Left Democratic Front Ministers on the dais, including the Home Minister, Mr Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, alongside PDP members. Mr Maudany seized the opportunity to make it known that he was moving away from the Muslim fundamentalist platform he had built over the years towards one that was more accommodating, more mature, perhaps secular even.

The Mistake

Mr Maudany said his mistake was not that he had ever made a call that a Hindu should be killed or a temple should be destroyed but only that he had been severe in the manner in which he had spoken about the demolition of a mosque, perhaps, and that he had hurt the sentiments of a lot of his “Hindu brethren”.

Ever since Mr Maudany made that speech, Kerala has been arguing whether his post-prison proclamations alone were enough to lower the guard on such a man and his party.

Indeed, after his release, the PDP had offered little sign of its straying from the new path of moderation. But last week, after a poll-eve battle with the CPI, as the CPI(M) hand-picked Dr Hussein Randathani (a college principal allegedly recommended by the PDP) as the LDF’s Independent candidate at Ponnani, there began to appear news reports claiming that Mr Maudany still had links with pan-India terrorists.

The reports also alleged that the CPI(M), because of its electoral compulsions at Ponnani, was preventing the police from conducting a proper inquiry into the PDP leader’s involvement with those implicated in some recent cases. The PDP chairman has since denied such reports categorically but there was no doubt that his past had started to haunt him once again.

Debate on stance

The debate, ‘Maudany: friend or fundamentalist?’, has therefore come to dominate the Kerala election scene, especially after March 21, when, in a virtual re-enactment of his homecoming meeting of 2007, Mr Maudany was the guest of honour at the inauguration of the LDF’s election convention in Ponnani, sharing the dais with the CPI(M)’s State secretary, Mr Pinarayi Vijayan, and the Local Administration Minister, Mr Paloli Mohammed Kutty.

Political Kerala was glued to the television that evening as Mr Pinarayi Vijayan sought to explain it all thus: “The LDF is seeking Maudany’s support because of the strong secular positions he has been advocating of late. None of his recent activities has encouraged terrorism, fundamentalism or communalism. If such things happen, then, naturally, we will have to oppose them. But why should we oppose a person who has none of these problems? Should we not encourage people who take such a stand? They should not be kept aside merely because of their past positions.”

And in his usual style, denying the fresh allegations against him and reiterating that he was indeed a changed man, there was Mr Maudany, asking the gathering of PDP and CPIM) supporters at Ponnani: “How is it that I become a messenger of God when I seek votes for the Muslim League or the Congress (as in earlier elections elsewhere in Kerala) but a fundamentalist when I do the same thing for the CPI(M)?”

Rhetoric apart, what the two parties wanted from such an exigent friendship during this election season was left to no one’s imagination.

The CPI(M) badly needs the nearly 50,000 votes the PDP claims it can gather against the Muslim League at Ponnani, the last remaining League citadel in Kerala that the CPI(M) wants to tear down. But sitting there in his wheelchair alongside the ruling CPI(M)’s State secretary and by proclaiming “unconditional support” for LDF candidates in all the 20 constituencies from an LDF platform, Mr Maudany, despite his skimpy vote-bank power, was claiming a higher prize for himself: Political legitimacy, the one factor that has eluded him and his followers from the days of the ISS, and, even after his post-prison speech in Thiruvananthapuram.

Trap of his own making

Mr Maudany’s powerful speeches are a spectacle to watch and the resonance of his breathless oratory is mesmerising. Of late, in between, he pauses and talks poignantly about the lack of trust still in people’s minds, even after all the suffering he underwent in prison, the open confessions he made about hurting Hindu sentiments earlier and the promises he has given of never doing it again.

Perhaps he does not realise it, but Mr Maudany seems to have put himself in a trap of his own making, one that opens a door to his uncertain past every time he attempts to unlock a window to a promising future. This is why the PDP and its leader may continue to look incongruous on any political platform that has secular acceptance in Kerala.

The impact of such an alliance on Kerala society will be known only after the elections, perhaps.

A gleeful Opposition (which has entered into electoral understanding with the PDP at several places in the past) calls it “the most dangerous political alliance Kerala has ever seen” and along with the BJP is hoping for a polarisation of votes of other communities against the CPI(M).

Three of CPI(M)’s partners — the CPI, the Rashtriya Socialist Party and the Janata Dal (Secular) — have distanced themselves from the PDP and its recently articulated secular positions. So far, no PDP representative has been present in any election meeting addressed by the Chief Minister, Mr. V. S. Achuthanadan.

And, the PCC(I) President, Mr Ramesh Chennithala, has coined a word that conceivably catches the spirit of all these events: ‘Maudanyism’.

More Stories on : Politics | Terrorism | Kerala

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