The CPI(M) on Monday came out in support of its Politburo member A Vijayaraghavan, who is under fire over his remarks on the victories of Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra from the Wayanad Lok Sabha constituency.
While Left Democratic Front (LDF) convenor T P Ramakrishnan said his party colleague’s statements were not communal and “were meant to safeguard society from communal forces”, senior CPI(M) leader and former minister P K Sreemati said Vijayaraghavan’s comments only emphasise the party’s policy and stand. “Whatever it is… whether Hindu communalism or Muslim extremism, the CPI(M) will take a strong stand against it,” she said.
Vijayaraghavan, 68, triggered a row last week after he claimed that Rahul could not have reached Delhi (read the Lok Sabha) without the support of a “communal Muslim alliance”, and that Priyanka won Wayanad in a bypoll this year because she had “the worst extremist elements in her processions”.
Hailing from the Muslim-dominated Malappuram district, Vijayaraghavan is one of the most influential CPI(M) leaders in Kerala, seen as instrumental in the LDF winning an unprecedented second successive term in power in 2021. His wife R Bindu is the current Kerala Minister for Higher Education.
At the same time, Vijayaraghavan is no stranger to controversy or to attacks on the Congress and IUML. In 2021, he had to retract a comment calling minority communalism an extreme form of fundamentalism. The same year, he courted controversy for describing a meeting of Congress leaders with the Panakkad family – the IUML top brass – as “a bid to expand the alliance with religious fundamentalist organisations”.
Vijayaraghavan’s recent remarks, however, are in line with what other CPI(M) leaders have been saying lately.
Since the Lok Sabha polls reduced the LDF to a single seat in Kerala, the ruling CPI(M) has tried to distance itself from the pro-Muslim image it courted during the elections. The Lok Sabha results were interpreted by it as a backlash from the Hindu community to this.
In the recent Assembly and Lok Sabha bypolls, for example, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan dubbed Sadiq Ali Shihab Thangal, the state president of Congress ally IUML, as an “activist of the Jamaat-e-Islami”, and said an “extremist section” was “trying to gain influence in the IUML”.
Born to agricultural workers, Vijayaraghavan forayed into politics through the CPI(M)’s student wing, the Students’ Federation of India (SFI), and rose to its state leadership during the Emergency.
After his schooling, he took up several sundry jobs like working at hotels and bakeries to eke out a living and also briefly served in the Territorial Army before quitting to resume his education and graduating in Islamic History.
In 1989, Vijayaraghavan made a successful electoral debut from Palakkad Lok Sabha seat, after which he twice served as Rajya Sabha MP in 1999 and 2004.
However, in 2014 and this year, his bid to win the Lok Sabha polls from Kozhikode and Palakkad, respectively, was unsuccessful.
Between June 2018 and April 2022, Vijayaraghavan served as the LDF convenor and was made the acting state secretary of the party in 2020 after Kodiyeri Balakrishnan stepped down in the wake of his son Bineesh’s arrest in connection with a narcotics case.
A year after the 2021 Assembly win, the CPI(M) Party Congress held in Kannur elevated Vijayaraghavan to the Politburo. He thus became only the second CPI(M) leader from Malappuram after veteran E M S Namboodripad to be a part of the party’s highest decision-making body.
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