The history of Muslim League in Kerala and India
In independent India, the All India Muslim League was
succeeded by the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), whose history was entirely
different.
The IUML has long been a Congress ally, and is part of the Opposition United Democratic Front (UDF) in Kerala. The IUML has 18 MLAs in the current Kerala House, and had 20 members in the 2011 Assembly.
Uttar
Pradesh chief minister Yogi Aditynath equated the Indian Union Muslim League
(IUML) with the pre-partition Muslim League Friday. “Muslim League is a virus.
If someone is affected by this virus, he cannot survive and today, the main
opposition party- Congress is affected by it. Imagine, if they win what will
happen? This virus will spread in the entire nation,” Adityanath said on
Twitter. The BJP has raised questions about the support of the
IUML to Congress president Rahul Gandhi in Kerala’s Wayanad constituency, and several BJP supporters
have likened the IUML’s flag to that of Pakistan. What is the history of the
IUML in Kerala and India?
Soon after
Partition, the All India Muslim League, which had led the movement for
Pakistan, was disbanded. Over the next few months, the party of Mohammed Ali
Jinnah (who after the creation of Pakistan had become the Governor General of
the new country) was succeeded by the Muslim League in West Pakistan and The
All Pakistan Awami Muslim League in East Pakistan.
The Muslim
League gave Pakistan its first six Prime Ministers, all of whom had short
tenures, before it was dissolved by the martial law regime of General Ayub
Khan. Ayub subsequently resurrected the party as the Pakistan Muslim League,
which over the following decades splintered, reunited, was dissolved and
reconstituted. The Pakistan Muslim League’s best known faction today is the one
led by Nawaz Sharif and Shahbaz Sharif.
In East
Pakistan, the Awami Muslim League championed the cause of Bengali nationalism,
and sought to chart a course independent from Punjabi-dominated West Pakistan.
Under the leadership of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, East Pakistan ultimately broke
free from the West.
In
independent India, the All India Muslim League was succeeded by the Indian
Union Muslim League (IUML), whose history was entirely different. The IUML
fought elections under the Constitution of India, and has always had a
constant, if small, presence in Lok Sabha. The IUML is the strongest in Kerala,
and has a unit in Tamil Nadu as well. It has long been recognised by the
Election Commission of India as a state party in Kerala. The IUML’s flag has a
white crescent and star at the top left corner of rectangular green, and is
clearly very different from the flag of Pakistan, which has a broad white strip
to the left of a square green patch. The white crescent and star in the
Pakistani flag is much bigger, and sits in the middle of the green.
The IUML has
had two MPs in every Lok Sabha from the Third to the outgoing Sixteenth Lok
Sabha, with the exception of the Second, in which it had no representation, and
the Fourth, in which it had three MPs. A leader named B Pocker was a Member of
the First Lok Sabha, representing the Madras State Muslim League Party from the
Malappuram constituency, which was then part of Madras. The IUML had one MP, E
Ahamed (Ponnani) in the Fourteenth Lok Sabha.
The IUML has
long been a Congress ally, and is part of the Opposition United Democratic
Front (UDF) in Kerala. The IUML has 18 MLAs in the current Kerala House, and
had 20 members in the 2011 Assembly.
Nationally,
the best known IUML leaders have been Ahamed, a former union Minister, the
educationist G M Banatwalla, and the veteran Cutchi Memon leader Ebrahim
Sulaiman Sait. These three leaders, along with the current two-term sitting MP
E T Mohammed Basheer, have represented the Ponnani seat in Lok Sabha
continuously from 1977 onward. The Manjeri Lok Sabha constituency was also won
by the IUML constantly from 1977 to 1999, before it became part of the
Malappuram constituency. The Malappuram and Kozhikode seats too, have a very
strong IUML presence. Malappuram, Kozhikode and Ponnani are all contiguous to
the Wayanad seat where Rahul Gandhi is contesting.
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