MALAPPURAM: Two decades ago, Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) state vice president C P Saidalavi authored a blistering ideological indictment of the Jamaat-e-Islami titled Jamaat-e-Islami: Oru Cheliyum Kalaratha Parishudha Nei (Jamaat-e-Islami: Pure Ghee Unsullied by Filth). It was then hailed as a fierce line of defence for the League against extremist tendencies. Today, the same book, published in 2005, has boomeranged politically --and struck its creator with lethal precision.
In Makkaraparamba panchayat, Saidalavi’s home turf, the LDF has deployed the book as a front line weapon to expose what it call the League’s “dual existence”: Attacking the Jamaat in public while shaking hands with its political wing, the Welfare Party of India (WPI), in local corridors of power.
What was once a searing ideological blitz is now campaign ammunition. LDF leaders are carrying the book from house to house and reminding people of Saidalavi’s own warnings against Jamaat’s extremist politics. The WPI is contesting here in wards 3 and 8 with IUML’s backing.
CPM local committee and ward member Ramadas A P fired the sharpest salvo. “Jamaat-e-Islami and WPI are growing here with IUML’s blessings. In 2020, WPI got only two seats -- yet IUML gifted them the development standing committee chair. Saidalavi himself wrote the most explosive critique on Jamaat. Now, he hides behind a wall of silence. We will not allow IUML’s ideological betrayal to go unchallenged.”
He added that there are “real League workers” who cannot stomach this unholy compromise -- and that the LDF has made a strategic choice to use the book to expose the IUML’s political hypocrisy.
Cornered by his own words from the past, Saidalavi now pleads context. “The political scenario has changed since the book was published. In fact what I wrote in the articles were criticism of their financial corruption. Nothing about their political ideology.
However, after so many years the CPM has been using that book to criticise me and IUML. The truth is there is no official IUML-WPI alliance in the state level -- only local arrangements. The LDF is twisting facts, only because the WPI refused to join them.”
But the numbers tell a different story. The Welfare Party has influence in 19 local bodies across Malappuram itself. In panchayats like Koottilangadi, Makkaraparamba, Nannambra, and Parappur, they even helm local body standing committees. Fearing the political undercurrents, WPI candidates in more than 40 local bodies in the district have conveniently disguised themselves as ‘UDF independents’.