With no Muslim leader of any consequence in its scheme of things, the Left has no choice but to depend on Madhani, though it is at pains to insist that there is no formal alliance

In Kerala, the Left’s permanently ad hoc laboratory of ‘political’ Islam, a structurally driven and ideologically battered CPI(M) is caught between its own badly packaged doublespeak, and the realities of the times. It’s no longer the V S Achuthanandan-Pinarayi Vijayan turf war, desperately paraded with a threadbare ideology camouflage, or even the corruption charges on its top honcho that is the bigger threat. It is its basic woo-the-Muslims strategy this election that may trigger the long-thwarted implosion in the ranks, if not a possible overhaul of the party’s own raison d’etre for the future.

At another level, it could even lead to some whole new churnings in the state’s Muslim mindspace and re-alignments in the community’s own politics, both current and aspirational.

Holding centrestage in this Left turbulence is, ironically, a fiery Islamic cleric whom few Muslim outfits of some significance in Kerala now want to be seen with. Abdul Nasser Madhani founded the ultra-radical Islamic Sewak Sangh, which he used to galvanise the community’s post-Babri angst of the early 1990s. After it was banned, he gave it a more innocuous name, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

After his nine-odd years as a POTA undertrial, as an accused in the Coimbatore serial blasts, Madhani has been training himself for a relaunch into Kerala’s political space on the Left mother vehicle.

... contd.