Saint Antony and the Oligarchy of Communalism

How come AK Antony’s conscience did not stir when his secular party mined minority ghettos for votes?

Before we talk about AK Antony, who has suddenly discovered the rot of communalism at the core of the kind of secularism practised by his party in his home state of Kerala, let us talk about a man called PK Abdu Rabb, the state’s education minister from the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML). To take school education in this progressive-regressive state to international standards, the man recently came out with the revolutionary idea of introducing green boards in the place of black ones in classrooms, mainly in the Muslim-dominated Malappuram district and those in his own constituency, Tirurangadi. Mr Rabb loves green, and in the political ecosystem of Kerala, the colour is endowed with multiple symbolisms. In the leafy-serenity state you have seen in its tourism department’s ‘God’s Own Country’ advertisements, green may be the colour endangered by one of the Kerala Models of Development: the big racket of deforestation. Politically, it is the colour of power, patronage and occasional sleaze; the IUML, Congress’ biggest partner in the ruling United Democratic Front, has the Chief Minister dancing to the Mappila tunes of Malappuram, the League’s headquarters. Our Mr Rabb even attempted to give the colour a new dash of feminist aesthetic when the education department reportedly issued a circular asking women teachers to wear green blouses at a public meeting. Mr Rabb may soon become a synonym for the fastest growing item in communal Kerala.

AK Antony is different. He had left Kerala a while ago, for the Chief Minister’s job, he came to realise, was not compatible with his political morality, his conscience, which, once upon a time—remember the famous Guwahati AICC session where the little firebrand from Kerala took on Mrs G—was pretty incendiary. Today, he is the wise old councilor in the durbar of 10 Janpath; he is the Trusted One, the Dependable One. Of late, he did not have much opportunity to play out his conscience, and that was what power did to a man who once maintained that there was more to public life than power. Still, somehow, he retained the halo of his media-awarded sainthood, and his monosyllabic wisdom in the face of a storm was matched only by his no-syllable Prime Minister. As Defence Minister, he was worthy of Dr Manmohan Singh: both made evasion a religion, and it came to a non-believer like Antony so naturally. But Antony still had a political history, which Manmohan lacked. It was a history of youthful idealism, of street-fighting anti-communism, of a detached conversation with power—Saint Antony was inevitable.

Has powerlessness made Antony a politician with a moral purpose again? What he said in Kerala was a banality overemphasised. That secularism has been diluted by his party’s subservience to Muslim League should not have been a shocker in a state that stands for the banality of communalism. The Kerala model of communalism is too advanced to be copied elsewhere, say in Bihar or UP, and three words capture its exceptionalism: empowerment, entrenchment and enterprise. Communal bloodshed is not very Malayalee; communal corporatisation, yes. A communal oligarchy is on the rise in Kerala, and its influence stretches from education to healthcare to the now-booming orphan trade. The ‘progressive’ state has gone past the indignities and cruelties of casteism; it has institutionalised equal distribution of the communal booty. Politics has made it easier. And the MuslimLeague has stolen a march over others courtesy a captive constituency, electorally useful backwardness and leaders such as Mr Rabb who know the uses of colour coding. Antony was right that Congress, under the chief ministership of his erstwhile protégé, Oommen Chandy, accepted the supremacy of Malappuram as the spiritual headquarters of Kerala politics. There was a time when even the Marxists found a second variety of opium from North Kerala very useful; but they no longer require outright communalists as CPM has already internalised the base instincts of caste—and class matters less. The Congress Chief Minister survives on oxygen supplied by the League; and Mr Rabb’s party seems to have a monopoly over oxygen production in the coalition politics of Kerala.

Antony says this survival strategy is a deviation from the principles of secularism that his party upholds. Antony is now a Delhi leader, and his visits to Kerala are for patriarchal reasons—and for some solicited evangelism. In Kerala, he can afford to scold or advice protégés—and tell the inconvenient truth. But Antony, because of the faith that the Family reposes in this good man, is larger than Kerala. The flash of conscience he revealed in Kerala was admirable—it was the vintage rebel. For the last ten years—even longer— where was he when his party, in the name of secularism, mined minority ghettos for votes? Where was he when his government, headed by another good man like him, repudiated any semblance of morality in governance? This is the tragedy of good men who refuse to make use of their goodness at the right moment. The Saint’s conscience stirs only when he is out of the sheltering shadow of power.

AK AntonyIUMLPK Abdu Rabb