Congress Working Committee member and Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor has yet again embarrassed his very own party, questioning the grand old party’s close ties with radical Jamaat-e-Islami in Kerala.
Tharoor’s comments came in the backdrop of Jamaat-e-Islami’s surprise win in university elections in Dhaka in neighbouring Bangladesh. Congress leader known for taking an independent stance on issues, Shashi Tharoor, said the rise of Jamaat-e-Islami does not signal well for India and was a matter of urgent concern.
Sharing a clipping of a newspaper with the heading -Jamaat-e-Islami Wins Dhaka Varsity Polls – on X, Shashi Tharoor on September 11 wrote –
This may have registered as barely a blip on most Indian minds, but it is a worrying portent of things to come. There is an increasing sense of frustration in Bangladesh with both major parties — the (now banned) Awami League and the Bangladesh National Party. Those who wish “a plague on both your houses” are increasingly turning to the Jamaat-e-Islami, not because these voters are zealots or Islamist fundamentalists, but because the JeI are not tainted by the corruption and misgovernance associated, rightly or wrongly, with the two mainstream parties. How will this play out in the Feb 2026 general elections? Will New Delhi be dealing with a Jamaat majority next door?
Taking the development with all seriousness, Shashi Tharoor, the very next day on September 12, further wrote an opinion piece on the NDTV website where he said that a more radical dispensation in Dhaka could be a security challenge for India.
“The Dhaka University election is a wake-up call. It is a sign that the political tectonic plates in Bangladesh are shifting. India cannot afford to be caught off guard”, Tharoor cautioned in his opinion piece.
But then the act of sharing a news clipping on Dhaka’s Jamaat-e-Islami victory, followed by another word of caution through his writings, Shashi Throor has certainly put Congress in Kerala in a piquant situation.
Congress keeps high hopes from Kerala, where it looks to unseat the ruling Left Democratic Front from power. Gandhi family has high stakes in the coastal state as Wayanad stands to be their newfound bastion.
However, Tharoor’s words on Jamaat-e-Islami have come as a major embarrassment for the Congress in Kerala. Jamaat-e-Islami has been politically active in Kerala for quite some time and has been a formidable ally of Congress election after election.
Kerala’s Leader of Opposition and Senior Congress leader V D Satheesan has been the man behind bringing Congress close to the fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami. A strong votary of alliance between the two, Satheesan had in his earlier statements argued that Jamaat-e-Islami has changed a lot & admitted getting its backing.
Significantly, even Kerala Chief Minister Pinrayi Vijayan had questioned the closeness of Jamaat-e-Islami with Congress during the recent Wayanad Lok Sabha by-elections, where Priyanka Gandhi stood as the Congress candidate. He argued how can Congress, who claims to be a secular party, take backing from an organisation, which opposes elections and believes in sectarianism.
Initially founded during pre-independence days to spread Islamic values across the Indian subcontinent, Jamaat-e-Islami advocates for an Islamic political system. This orthodox organisation’s offshoots are spread in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and other countries as well.
Interestingly, a section of Congressmen, instead of admitting their folly vis-à-vis their tie-up with Jamaat-e-Islami, has been questioning Tharoor’s raising the issue of the rise of this sectarian organisation in the Dhaka students union polls, arguing that the Thiruvananthapuram MP did not say anything about unrest in Nepal & Sri Lanka.
Local body polls in Kerala are round the corner, and the state will witness assembly elections early next year. Congress will now have to do a lot of answering to justify its tie with a radical muslim organisation.
