After the Partition of India, the first Council of the Indian segment of the All-India Muslim League was held on 10 March 1948 at the south Indian city of Madras (now Chennai).[6] The party renamed itself as the 'Indian Union Muslim League' and adopted a new constitution on 1 September 1951.[6]
I.U.M.L. is a major member of the opposition United Democratic Front, the Indian National Congress-led pre-poll state level alliance in Kerala.[7][8] Whenever the United Democratic Front rules in Kerala, the party leaders are chosen as important Cabinet Ministers. The party has always had a constant, albeit small, presence in the Indian Parliament.[7] The party is a part of the United Progressive Alliance in national level.[7] The League first gained a ministry (Minister of State for External Affairs) in Indian Government in 2004.[9]
After the partition of India in 1947, the All-India Muslim League was virtually disbanded. It was succeeded by the Indian segment of the Muslim League in the new Dominion of India (first session on 10 March 1948 and constitution passed on 1 September 1951).[10]M. Muhammad Ismail, the then President of the Madras unit of the Muslim League was chosen as the Convener of the Indian segment of the party.[6] The Travancore Muslim League (the States' Muslim League) was merged with the Malabar League in November, 1956.[6]
Indian Union Muslim League contests General Elections under the Indian Constitution.[10] The party is normally represented by two members in the Indian Lower House (the Lok Sabha).[10]B. Pocker, elected from Malappuram Constituency, was a member of the First Lower House (1952–57) from the Madras Muslim League.[10] The party currently has four members in Parliament.
Apart from Kerala and West Bengal, the League had Legislative Assembly members in Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry, Maharastra, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, and Assam.[11] In West Bengal, the League had won Assembly seats in the 1970s, and A. K. A. Hassanussaman was a member of the Ajoy Mukherjee cabinet.[12]
Indian Union Muslim League first gained a ministry in Kerala Government as part of the Communist Party of India Marxist-led United Front in 1967. The party switched fronts in 1969 and formed an alliance with the Congress in 1976.[13][8] It later became a chief constituent in a succession of Indian National Congress-led ministries.[8]
Early years
First Council of the Indian segment of the Muslim League was held on 10 March 1948 at the south Indian city of Madras (now Chennai).[6]
On 1 September 1951 the 'Indian Union Muslim League' came into being in Madras (constitution was passed).[6]
B. Pocker Sahib, elected from Malappuram Constituency, was a member of the first Lok Sabha (1952–57).[10]
K. M Seethi Sahib served as the Speaker of the Kerala Assembly from 1960 to 1961.[14]
All India Muslim League (AIML) quit the Left Front and merged with the Muslim League in 1985.[18]
Demolition of the Babri Masjid (1992). Panakkad Syed Mohammed Ali Shihab Thangal made a passionate plea to all the Muslims in Kerala to remain calm.[19] Kerala remained peaceful throughout.[20]
The [Indian Union Muslim League] party...has shown strands of identity politics, but largely remained communitarian; it has at times been conservative, but never communal. It has furthered Muslim aspirations without antagonising any other segment—and hence has retained its centrality in the larger Kerala polity.
The distinctive feature of the [Indian Union] Muslim League in Kerala is that it strove to keep the [Muslim] community at the centre of the [Kerala] state's politics, unlike other Muslim political formations elsewhere in India that revelled in confessional isolationism. As a result, the Kerala Muslims emerged as probably the only community of that faith in India that achieved genuine political empowerment on the one hand and, on the other, lived out the promise of equal citizenship enshrined in the [Indian] Constitution.
If organising a religious community politically on the basis of antagonism to another is communalism, the IUML has never mobilised its cadre nor used its political and often administrative clout to create religious divides. On the contrary, whenever the state faced a communally sensitive situation, the party rose to the occasion and played a stellar role in dousing the flames....By practicing a brand of politics that could be termed communitarian rather than communal, the IUML succeeded in actualising the constitutional guarantee of equal citizenship for the Muslims in the state.
IUML opposes implementing gender neutrality and comprehensive sex education in school curriculum saying that it promotes homosexuality, leads to sexual anarchy and is part of an atheist-liberal conspiracy to destroy religious values.[42][43][44]
Muslim League generally presents itself as a conservative political party in Kerala.[48][49] In 2021, ten female leaders from the disbanded Haritha state committee lodged a police complaint against the state president of the Muslim Students Federation (MSF) and the Malappuram district general secretary, accusing them of making sexual remarks.[50][51]
In July 2023, following the Manipur violence where a woman was paraded naked in public,[52] members of the Muslim League raised death slogans in Kanhangad, located in the Kasaragod district of Kerala. These slogans threatened to "hang Hindus in front of their temples and burn them".[53] Following the incident, on 26 July, the President of BJP Kanhangad Mandalam filed an FIR against over 300 members of the Muslim League responsible for the incident.[54][55] The following day, Kerala Police arrested five of those members.[56][57] Upon criticism over the incident, the State President of IUML Panakkad Saiyyad Sadiq Ali Shihab Thangal responded on 28 July, saying no one has the right to hurt the sentiments and faith of others.[58]
^ abcdefWright, T. (1966). The Muslim League in South India since Independence: A Study in Minority Group Political Strategies. The American Political Science Review,60(3), 579-599. JSTOR1952972
^ abcdefghiJames Chiriyankandath (1996) Changing Muslim politics in Kerala: identity, interests and political strategies, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 16:2, 257-271.
^ abcMadampat, Shajahan (11 April 2019). "The importance of IUML". The Indian Express. Archived from the original on 12 June 2020. Retrieved 12 June 2020.
^Jeffrey, Robin. "Politics, Women and Well-Being: How Kerala became a Model" Palgrave McMillan (1992); 112 and 114.
^ abcdefWright, Theodore P. 'The Muslim League in South India since Independence.' American Political Science Review, vol. 60, no. 3, 1966, pp. 579–599., doi:10.2307/1952972.
^ abcNossiter, Thomas Johnson (1982). Communism in Kerala: A Study in Political Adaptation. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. pp. 5–6.
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