Arif Mohammad Khan: The 'progressive' Muslim leader appointed as Kerala Governor

Arif Mohammad Khan (Image: Twitter/@MajorPoonia)

President Ram Nath Kovind on September 1 appointed Governors for five states. Of them, four were senior BJP leaders – Bhagat Singh Koshyari, appointed as Governor of Maharashtra; Tamilisai Sounderarajan of Telangana; Bandaru Dattatreya for Himachal Pradesh and Kalraj Mishra for Rajasthan.

The fifth – Arif Mohammad Khan – appointed as the Governor of Kerala, is the only Muslim and non-BJP member among the five to get the gubernatorial assignment, The Times of India has reported.

Arif Mohammad Khan was a Minister of State for Home in the Rajiv Gandhi government. In fact, he was the youngest cabinet minister at that time, taking oath at the age of 30 years. However, he resigned in 1986 after the Congress government overturned the historic Supreme Court judgment in the Shah Bano Case, which had granted her the right to alimony.

Initially the Rajiv Gandhi government had supported the Shah Bano judgment, and Khan had delivered a much-acclaimed speech in Parliament to that effect.

However, when the Rajiv Gandhi government did a U-turn under alleged pressure from Muslim clerics and brought a bill to nullify the Supreme Court order, he resigned from the ministry. The Uttar Pradesh politician later joined the BJP but quit in 2007 to remain non-partisan.

Sixty-eight-year-old Khan, who replaces former Chief Justice of India P Sathasivam in the Kerala Raj Bhavan, has been a vocal critic of the practice of instant triple talaq, and has called for reforms in the Muslim personal laws for long. Naturally, he supported Modi government’s bill to ban the practice.

Khan’s appointment as the Governor among four other senior BJP leaders has created quite a stir in political lobbies.

On the one hand, BJP spokesperson Shahnawaz Hussain told the newspaper that the party has always promoted “nationalist and progressive leaders”, including Muslims. “The BJP has always liked progressive people, who are filled with nationalist feelings,” he said.

On the other hand, Congress leader Shakil Ahmed said, “The day that Khan stood up against the Rajiv Gandhi government over the Shah Bano case, he was cut off from his own community. Though he claimed to be a secular person, he hurt the sentiments of his own community. I do not think it is fair to call him a progressive Muslim.”

Congratulations to #ArifMohammedKhan on being appointed as Governor of Kerala. An entirely expected decision. His statements made in the recent times were an indicator of him soon getting rewarded by the BJP. The reward is well deserved and was long awaited.

— Abhishek Singhvi (@DrAMSinghvi) September 1, 2019

During a recent interview with Firstpost, Khan had said, "I feel ‘minority psychosis’ debilitates a community, making it insecure about its own incapability to thrive. Muslims are not a monolithic entity. Then, what the proverbial ‘Muslim voice’ claims to represent is itself questionable."