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RSS, ISS fight vigorously for Malapuram Muslims

The battle to win over the liberal Muslims in northern Kerala's Malapuram district is vigorously being fought between the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Islamic Sevak Sangh.

In an attempt to outwit the banned ISS's activities in this Muslim-dominated district, the RSS has begun setting up a number of social service institutions across Malapuram.

The effort, RSS activists say, is to inculcate a sense of cultural pride among the Malapuram Muslims and "to make them better Indians."

Thus branches of the Vanavasi Kalyan Ashram (for tribal welfare), Vidya Bharati (which runs a chain of schools) and Seva Bharati (working in medicare) -- the frontal welfare and educational organisations of the RSS -- are being established across Malapuram.

But Muslim leaders and activists of the outlawed ISS say the RSS's mission is not to educate Muslims, but to promote Hindutva in the district and to destroy the Muslim stronghold in the district.

The first casualty of the RSS's onslaught on Malapuram has been on 37 schools run by various Muslim trusts across the district: the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government has stopped providing financial assistance to these schools from this academic year onwards.

The project to start the schools was approved by the Congress government at the Centre headed by prime minister P V Narasimha Rao under the countrywide Area Intensive Educational Programme for minority communities. The Rao government had approved the maximum number of schools in Malapuram, thanks to pressure from the Muslim League, a coalition partner of the then United Democratic Front government in Kerala.

But according to Muslim Higher Secondary Association secretary Anwar Ali, one month after the Vajpayee government took office, a directive arrived from the human resource development ministry informing that more funds could not be allotted to the schools in the district.

"Our schools are on the verge of closure and the future of the nearly 5,000 Muslims students and 300 teachers is in uncertain," he told Rediff On The NeT.

Various Muslim trusts in Kerala have appealed to the Communist Party of India-Marxist-led state government to rescue the schools. "But the state education department has refused saying that the minority-run schools under the Area Intensive Education Programme are taken care of by the Central government," Ali said.

While the Muslim trusts now plan to approach the courts for justice and for further central funding for the 37 schools, many in the community believe the plan to close down the schools is the handiwork of the RSS.

"The RSS wants to destroy our schools and set up their Bharatiya Vidyalayas because they think Malapuram is the centre of religious fundamentalism and extremists in Kerala," says Abdul Sattar, president of the Grocery Merchants Association in Malapuram.

According to Sattar, the RSS has deployed hundreds of its activists from the nearby Calicut and Kannur districts to propagate Hindutva among the Muslims.

But K Narahari, RSS secretary in the southern states, says the Sangh Parivar's mission in Malapuram is the education of Muslims "in order to awaken the younger folks regarding their duties and responsibilities in a free country like India."

"We are intensifying our pro-poor, pro-Adivasi programmes through a number of outfits in the district. Our effort is not to neutralise the stronghold of Muslims in the district," he told Rediff On The NeT.

Vijaya Raghavan, an RSS activist in Calicut, said the RSS top brass have asked the Kerala unit "to market Prime Minister Vajpayee's liberal face among Malapuram's Muslims who are being forced to join extremists and fundamentalists."

"Malapuram is a mini Pakistan and we are fed up with the rash of bomb blasts and extremist activities in the district," he alleged.

RSS-BJP leaders allege that the demography of Malapuram in comparison to other districts of Kerala is a mystery. The state has nearly 29 million people and Malapuram with 3,093,190 people is the most thickly populated of the 14 districts in Kerala.

Narahari says the population figures of Malapuram are abnormal because it is a Muslim-dominated state. "The population growth rate for Pakistan and Bangladesh -- 28 per cent -- are similar to Malapuram. Everyone knows what is common between these two Islamic countries and Malapuram which is situated thousands of kilometres away," alleges the RSS leader.

"There is a hidden agenda in Malapuram and we are here to check that," he added.

While the RSS-BJP leaders have begun plans to woo liberal Muslim groups in other parts of the state, many Muslims feel they are being misunderstood and therefore feel the brunt of activities sponsored by fundamentalist organisations like the ISS and RSS.

The state government claims the ISS, formerly headed by People's Democratic Party chief Abdul Nasser Madani, is now defunct -- at least publicly. But the RSS states that Madani, though he is in jail in connection with the serial bomb blasts in Coimbatore, is active in promoting Islamic fundamentalism in northern Kerala.

"ISS activists, funded by Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence, are very active in Malapuram. Their main industry is to make crude bombs," BJP vice-president O Rajagopal told Rediff On The NeT.

"Only the BJP can check Islamic fundamentalism in Malapuram because the BJP is the only party that is growing in Kerala," he said.

According to Rajagopal, the BJP -- though it has failed to open its electoral account in Kerala -- had increased its vote from five per cent to eight per cent in the 1998 general election. "The vote share of the Congress and the Left parties has been declining all these years," he claimed.

"Our plans to launch extensive social services in Malapuram is to educate the Muslims and make them aware that Pakistan is creating communal tension among Muslims in the state," the BJP vice-president added.

The Muslims in Kerala, Rajagopal said, are finally awakening. Recently, the Muslim League's youth wing staged a state-wide march against extremist forces.

But the BJP-RSS presence in Malapuram has frightened many Muslims in the district. "We are afraid that Malapuram will be the venue of the next communal riot between Hindus and Muslims in India," says primary school teacher Salam Ahmed.

"It is true that some Muslims in the district are taking to fundamentalism. But we feel comfortable with our Muslim brethren rather than our children being taught in RSS-aided schools," he told Rediff On The NeT.

"Hindus are exploiting the backwardness and poverty in Malapuram and are forcing Muslims to become anti-nationals," Ahmed added.

The RSS claims the war for Malapuram is to make the Muslims more patriotic. But many local Muslims fear the RSS-BJP campaign will make them anti-nationals.

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