Kuttipuram, Kerala: Rebellion, dissension, dissent. Three words associated with the ruling Congress party that has split into a bewildering alphabet soup of acronyms, with the latest rebel Democratic Indira Congress (Karunakaran) and the unfortunate contraction it carries, spawning yet another breakaway group.
Not words used to describe the Indian Union Muslim League, where the differences have always been high-minded, breaking with each other over Iraq or Babri Masjid.
Today, the fight is ugly, personal and downright dirty. There's a rebel in the ranks.
And it has left the previously monolithic voters who voted blindly for a political party that made itself synonymous with being a good Muslim, confused and disturbed.
Sample this as the Muslim League's high-flying IT minister emerges in a silver Skoda from the home of yet another rich businessman who's hosted his new 'reach out to the family' campaign, P.K. Kunhalikutty has the windows rolled up. He cannot hear the venom that is being spewed at him from the two 'announcement vans' of the independent candidate Jaleel.
The baby-faced rebel's voice is accusing him of diverting tsunami funds to his own ends, of a debauched lifestyle, of mafia politics of intimidation.
There is unholy glee writ large on a bunch of young madrassa students and teachers sporting their distinctive white 'talapaavu'. The corner shop keeper Abdulla says "I'm waiting to hear what Ajitha will say tomorrow," of the woman who ran an unsuccessful campaign against the IT minister in an unsavoury sex scandal case, scheduled to speak here.
As Kunhalikutty and his five-car convoy with Gulf News making up the rear, find their exit blocked, Jaleel jumps out of one of his vans and plunges headlong into the throng at Mawoli Mukku in this village in Kuttipuram.
"I'm a bridge between the politician and the masses," he says, catch phrases at the ready. "I believe in the common people, I am against mafia politics, the kind of politics that man is perpetuating. I've seen it on the inside. His politics are to benefit a microscopic minority, mine benefits the majority. It's a party of the rich, for the rich. I stand for the common man."
Asked if he was not throwing mud against a rival in a fit of pique purely because he hadn't been allowed to contest Kuttipuram, and did he not fear retribution, he says grandly "I have nothing to lose except my chains," and throws himself back into the sweaty crowd, rubbing in the contrast between the fuming touch-me-not Kunhalikutty ensconced in his air-conditioned Skoda and himself, the self-styled man of the people.
Some of the mud will stick. As we come out of Mawoli Mukku, the corner shop assistant deliberately sends us in the wrong direction. I cannot gauge whether this is because we are following the minister's campaign or because we had stopped to talk to Jaleel.
Later, Kunhalikutty's poll managers ask us what we think of the rebel, and quietly urge Gulf News photographer Kiran Prasad not to send Jaleel's photograph.
This party that claims to represent the Muslims has never lost Kuttipuram.
But the Muslim League is clearly taking nothing for granted. The last thing they need is a repeat of the shock defeat of 2004, or another Manjeri, or T.K. Hamza.
