As the CPM rushes out to take the leadership of the anti-UCC (Uniform Civil Code) fight in Kerala, there is one question the Left party is bound to answer. What has happened to its reputed longing for gender justice?
This progressive aspect about the CPM was on show as late as 2018 when the Supreme Court gave its verdict on women's entry into Sabarimala. When it came to women's rights, it was as if a CPM-led government did not care two hoots about the political damage that religious orthodoxy could inflict.
The Pinarayi Vijayan government's pro-women stand in the Sabarimala issue was grandly, some said immodestly, projected as Kerala's "second renaissance". The government forged a women 'renaissance wall' across the length of Kerala and even went to the extent of sneaking in two women into Sabarimala.
It is another matter that the CPM abandoned its 'renaissance', and also the two women it escorted unseen into Sabarimala, after the drubbing it suffered in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
Doubly heroic was the CPM stand in 1985 when the Supreme Court delivered the historic ruling that a Muslim man was bound to pay maintenance to his divorced wife in the Shah Bano case. Muslim religious bodies were furious and the Rajiv Gandhi government used its brute majority in Parliament to nullify the verdict.
The CPM not just stood its ground but, under the leadership of its then general secretary E M S Namboodiripad, also unleashed a spirited campaign in Kerala for timely reforms of Muslim Personal Law.
To understand how the CPM's anti-Shariat campaign in the eighties unnerved and angered the orthodoxy, one only has to recall the most notorious anti-CPM slogan of those days: "Onnum kettum, naalum kettum pinne EMS-nte olem kettum" (We will marry once, we will marry four times, and if need be, we will marry EMS's missus, too.)
This slogan also reflected how vehemently protective the orthodoxy was about its patriarchal personal laws.
CPM's blind fury
Now, when the party seeks to be in the vanguard of the anti-UCC fight, there is not a word about gender justice. There are clauses in the personal laws of communities dealing with divorce, inheritance and maintenance that are primitive and anti-women.
During EMS's time, the CPM itself wanted these issues addressed. Not anymore.
These have now been swept under the carpet and the CPM has mounted an anti-UCC onslaught that looks both superficial and absolute. There is no graded assessment of the UCC, of its harms and gains.
Even its opposition to the legislation that criminalised triple talaq was cleverly argued. The CPM did not question the ban on triple talaq, only its overreach.
Here is what the CPM said in 2018: "The triple talaq form of divorce has already been declared illegal by the Supreme Court judgment. The legislation regarding this has made a civil wrong into a criminal offence with the prescription of maximum three years' punishment. This is an ill-conceived measure which will not help the interests of the affected women."
In the case of UCC, the CPM objection is just political, not insightful.
"This is an attempt by the BJP to kill plurality in the country," is how CPM state secretary M V Govindan framed the issue.
UCC vs Vande Bharat
A top CPM leader Onmanorama talked to said a clear unequivocal stand was a necessity.
"At this moment in our history, when the BJP is trying to erase the minorities, especially the Muslims, we cannot insert any 'ifs' and 'buts' in our objection to the UCC. The gender issues will be taken up in due course but at the moment, the important thing is to show up the UCC for what it is; as another BJP ploy to suppress the minorities," the leader said.
Social scientist Hameed Chennamangalur said the argument was fundamentally flawed. "You cannot oppose something like the UCC just because the BJP is pushing for it. If so, the CPM should prevent the 'Vande Bharat' trains from running in Kerala," he said. "Irrespective of which party is piloting the policy, the only thing to look out for is whether it ensures gender justice and equality," he said.
At this moment, Chennamangalur said the CPM was not in a position to judge the policy. "The Centre has not even drawn up a draft. If the draft has anything that goes against guaranteed fundamental rights and gender justice, it has to be opposed with all one's might. Since there is not even a draft, how can the CPM say the proposed civil code is harmful," he said.
Another respected social commentator M N Karassery said that the Left, Congress and even Ambedkarites had no ethical right to blindly question the UCC. "It was Jawaharlal Nehru and B R Ambedkar who came up with the idea. Later, it had the wholehearted support of the CPM under EMS Namboodiripad," Karassery said.
Sinister motives
Therefore, according to Chennamangalur, both the proponents and the opponents of the policy have similar political motives: Political polarisation.
"The Prime Minister has spoken only in a general sense, without letting out any details, knowing fully well that the issue was sensitive enough to galvanise the majority community on the eve of the 2024 general elections," Chennamangalur said. "On the other hand, those blindly opposing the UCC want to whip up Muslim fears and, thus, mobilise Muslim votes in their favour," he said.
EMS would have been uncomfortable watching his party desperately wooing the Muslim League and Muslim religious bodies like the two Samastha factions. Govindan has given the League a clean chit, saying it was not communal.
EMS vs M V Raghavan
This was not how EMS saw the League. He called them communal and did not want the CPM to have any truck with them. Even Govindan's predecessor Kodiyeri Balakrishnan had repeatedly called the League communal.
During the Shah Bano-inspired agitation, then CPM state secretariat member M V Raghavan had warned the CPM of severe consequences if the party did not heed the concerns of the Muslim leaders and clergy. Many senior leaders in the party were in favour of Raghvan's thesis. Not EMS.
"Even if the party loses one or two elections as a result of such an approach it is nothing to worry about," EMS wrote in 1986. "This is because the CPM is not the kind of party that depends solely on its fate in the elections. Ours is a party that is trying to forge a wide unity of masses based on secularism and the need for radical reforms in the socio-cultural sphere. We believe that such a stand is important for even electoral triumph," he said.
The very next year, EMS stood vindicated. The CPM triumphed in the 1987 Assembly elections.
CPM's triple talaq of women
It looks like the bold political acumen once displayed by its tallest idealogue and leader is no longer required in the CPM. The party has officially abdicated its responsibility to champion for the equal rights for women in all communities.
On June 26, the CPM politburo put out a communque that said that the ideal of equal rights for women was best advanced with "active democratic participation of all men and women of these communities". Simply put: "The reform must come from within. We don't want to interfere".
In the eighties, the CPM had begun a no-holds-barred campaign to root out patriarchal biases within communities, seriously provoking the leaders of the Muslim community. Now, nearly half a century later, the party has concluded that these very same people it had once provoked are better placed to do the job.
