At the time of its 75th birthday, the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) is finding itself at the crossroads of history: It was a party that was born out of the most tragic circumstances in India’s political history and was accused of being responsible for the division of the country at the time of its Independence, and was thrust into a destiny of leading a community abandoned by its own leadership at a moment when decisive leadership was the most urgent need for the hapless Indian Muslim community.

So looking back at those difficult times it has traversed, the party has reasons to feel proud and happy because it has come a long way on the pathway to political acceptance by the Indian public, serving the people as a major political party with a long experience of exercising political power for the benefit of common people, being the fulcrum of a viable united front strategy that became a model for the entire country and then becoming the representative of Indian Muslims in the central government when they shared power with the Congress and other secular parties in the first and second UPA governments led by Dr Manmohan Singh. In those long years of its association with other secular parties and the governments they ran, including the Left parties in Kerala and West Bengal from the mid sixties, the Muslim League was able to wash away the stains inherited from its pre-Independence past.

Its legitimacy as a political party representing the minority interests in a pluralist and multi-ethnic Indian polity is now entrenched and the old accusations that it was a communal outfit at loggerheads with other communities do not carry credence in public discourse any longer.

This is perhaps the greatest achievement of the Muslim League in its long decades in Indian public life, going by the fact that communalism was a stamp branded on its name for a long time, starting from its early days. When League leader Muhammed Ismail, a Tamilian politician who entered the national movement in the 1920s as a Congress volunteer, took upon himself the task of reorganising the Muslim League in the post-Independence period, he was dissuaded by his friends and was attacked by his foes, as both considered it as an ill-timed and ill-advised move as images of the terrible violence and tragic developments at the partition were still fresh in public memory.

Even Jawaharlal Nehru, the prime minister and the most secular politician in India, was not at all well disposed towards the revival of Muslim League in India. He had even asked Lord Mountbatten, Governor General of India at the time, to advise Muhammed Ismail to abandon the idea. He was of the view that Indian Muslims no longer needed a party like the Muslim League to be a part of the public life, as national political parties like the Indian National Congress were able and willing to embrace them into their ranks and offer them public positions. Communal and sectarian movements were not advisable to the unity of India and thus he warned that the government would seriously view such adventurous steps and would do everything to crush such tendencies.

This message had been sent across the party’s ranks and leadership, and though there were more than a hundred national council members of the erstwhile All India Muslim League, the party that originated at Dhaka in 1906, only 33 of them had turned up for the Madras meeting, according to Theodore Wright, an American scholar who has done an excellent academic study on the early decades of the Indian Union Muslim League. He has pointed out that most North Indian members of the council opted out of the meeting, which was mainly attended by members from the Madras, Bombay and Mysore regions. There were around 15 members from the Madras province, a region which had seen the least troubles at the time of the country’s partition.

But even there, several members were not comfortable with the idea of Muslim League re-entering into political activity. One of the representatives from Malabar, P P Hassan Koya, a businessman in Calicut and a member of the Madras Provincial Assembly, even brought up a resolution urging the house not to consider setting up a new political party for the Muslims, as it was not conducive to the community’s genuine interests. His resolution was supported by MSA Majeed, another leader from Madras. However, other delegates from Malabar, including K M Seethi, general secretary of the Malabar District League committee, Abdurahman Bafakhy Thangal, its president, senior leaders and legislators K Uppi and B Pokker, etc, opposed their arguments.

But the differences were deep and the issues of contention serious that the meeting eventually came up with a consensus resolution, urging the formation of a new organisation that would work primarily for the economic, social and educational progress of the Muslim community and also engage in other activities aimed at the community’s progress. This resolution drafted and presented by P K Moideen Kutty, a former leader of the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee in early forties, was adopted by the meeting which also resolved to name the new party, the Indian Union Muslim League. Its political role was actually defined at the time of adoption of the party’s constitution and bylaws in 1951. By the time, many of the original critics of the political party idea had either left the party or moved to other fields abstaining from active politics.

The fears that many of them expressed that the Muslim League tag would be counter productive was not without basis or that it did not go unnoticed by the senior leaders of the party, including its new president Muhammed Ismail. He was acutely aware of the circumstances prevailing in northern parts of the country, and so he allowed his colleagues in Bombay province to work under another name, the Fourth Party. In the election in the fifties in the Bombay province, the League leaders like G M Banatwala had contested as representatives of the Fourth Party and not the Muslim League.

However, the Indian establishment and the Home Ministry were not amused at all. Nehru called the party a dead horse and pledged the Congress would crush it. The League was kept under a strict watch and even after a decade of its existence, Nehru, at his rallies at the first elections to Kerala Assembly in 1957, unleashed a crushing attack on the Muslim League. He was angry with the PSP, a party led by Pattam Thanu Pillai, for their electoral adjustments with the Muslim League. At his address at West Hill Maidan (now called Capt. Vikram Maidan) in late February 1957, two days prior to the formal voting in the state, Nehru described the Muslim League a “Quisling” in Indian politics, darkly hinting that their loyalties lay elsewhere, a precursor to the same allegations raised in later years by the Sangh Parivar who accused the League of nursing secret Pakistan loyalties.

However, the Muslim League pulled the political strings cleverly to come out of the woods. For Muhammed Ismail, his party’s unshakeable support base in South Malabar Mappila villages proved to be the real trump card. The party had won all the five seats from the region, which was crucial to C Rajagopalachari to form a government in Madras in 1952 as no party had won a clear majority in the elections. That was the first opening for the League in the power politics in Madras, and soon with the help of some independents he had supported, he won a Rajya Sabha seat from Madras Assembly though he did not have sufficient numbers to ensure a victory.

Later in Kerala, when the Congress and PSP joined the liberation struggle, originally launched by the NSS and the Catholic Church in protest against the land reform and educational reform bills introduced by the Communist government, the League also joined the movement mainly to woo the Congress as a potential ally in the state. But when the Communist government was brought down, and an election was announced in 1960, the League was not accepted as an equal partner, though they were offered seats in the Congress, PSP alliance. Post elections, their claims to a ministerial berth was also rejected. In fact, Theodore Wright has said that after the Durgapur resolution of the AICC session in 1962, where the party had pledged to crush communal forces -- read the Muslim League and Jan Sangh -- after an upsurge of communal violence in the country for the first time after Independence, there were some discussions in the Home Ministry about imposing a ban on the Muslim League, though the idea was not favoured by the political leadership.

Thus the League found itself in a serious crisis in mid- sixties, when all its efforts to build a viable and durable alliance with the Congress had failed, and there was no way it could survive in Indian politics without an ally. In this situation, two parties came as real friends -- the DMK in Tamil Nadu and the CPM in Kerala. In Kerala, the seven-party alliance led by CPM accepted the League as a major partner, and the party was offered two cabinet berths in the new ministry that came to power in 1967 with EMS Namboodiripad as chief minister. This government provided the real ballast for the Muslim League to cement its power base in the state, with such major achievements like the formation of the Malappuram district and the establishment of the Calicut University, both severely criticised by the right wing forces as well as the Congress party in the opposition. It was this government that set right a number of discriminations in the administration that continued from the days of British rule against the community, ensured representation for Muslim community in the higher judiciary and the Public Service Commission, provided adequate reservations for the Muslims in government jobs and educational institutions, etc.

But the government collapsed two years later, and the League had played a critical role in bringing it down. They were part of the ‘mini front’ against the CPM within the United Front, and once Chief Minister Namboodiripad resigned, they were part of the new alternative government that took power. Ever since, the League had played the role of fulcrum in the united front politics with Congress at the centre. It has given the party much political advantage, even providing them a chance to occupy the driver's seat when C H Muhammed Koya took over as chief minister, though for a mere 53 days in late seventies.

The past experiences have provided the League a lesson that without access to political power, it would be difficult to survive as a party that represents the minority interests. The minorities have their own grievances, which need constant redressal with the aid of the administration. Hence its main objective has been to remain in power, at whatever cost. This alone would explain the seemingly opportunistic twists and turns in their political alliances, and they always aimed at building more profitable and more durable alliances with the ruling establishment. That explains their preference for the Congress at the cost of other secular parties like the CPM which had been more considerate to them in their hours of need.

But this limited vision and objectives have put them in serious troubles as the Congress is now out of power, and even in Kerala they find that access to power is no longer assured. This is causing internal friction, and some of the groups like the religious ulama, always a dependable force to ensure mass support, are no longer blindly loyal to the party. The split in the Sunni ulama and the covetable returns enjoyed by the rival faction led by Kanthapuram Aboobakkar Musliyar, known to be close to the CPM, are triggering new tensions. At least a section in the pro-Muslim League ulama are now rooting for a closer relationship with the Communists. The old taboos like “No Relations with the Godless Communists”, etc., do not wash in the community any longer.

This is calling for new approaches, new policies and a new interpretation of the global and national politics and new regional power alignments. The Sangh Parivar is now controlling the Indian power structure, and the Muslim community is now facing an existential crisis at various levels. How to cope with these challenges is a serious issue for the League. There are attempts on the part of even influential community groups like the Jamaat-e-Islami and the Jamiyyathul Ulama-e-Hind to get closer to the RSS-BJP leadership as also to the power centre. Even influential sections in the community are thinking of new options, now that they realise the Hindutva politics is here to stay.

On the other hand, the community is also going through momentous changes and calls for urgent reforms. The orthodox hold on the community is no longer tenable, because the old fatwas are irrelevant and new assertive voices from the margins of the community are difficult to ignore. At the political level, there are a number of new forces challenging the dominance of the Muslim League, while at the social level, women and other oppressed sections are a force to reckon with. The Haritha controversy, where some Muslim girls in a pro-League organisation raised a banner of revolt gainst the orthodox ways of the League, was a pointer to the way the wind is blowing. They have put the party on notice that the old style patriarchal politics controlled by the social elites and the business tycoons would not survive in a society now undergoing a flux. There are assertive demands for reforms and changes in the party and the community, and how these factors could be addressed and a new social contract built up that would ensure that the party remains relevant in these fast-changing times is a question that looms large before the Indian Union Muslim League at its 75th birthday.

(The author is a senior journalist)