Reports from Kozhikode suggest that the Jamaat-e-Islami is playing another trick to infiltrate government school children in Kerala. It is in the form of a painting competition. It is organised under the auspices of Malarvadi Bala Sangham. But, if Malarvadi Bala Sangham is searched on the internet, it appears under the letter-headed stationery of the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind Kerala. Even though circulars have reportedly been communicated to several schools in the Malabar region, the teachers and head teachers have been kept in the dark about the involvement of the Jamaat-e-Islami in the competition.
V.V. Hari, Rural District President of Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, said that the organisers of Malarvadi Bala Sangham had visited most government schools and distributed the notices. They are all displayed on the school notice boards. But, it is a fact that the majority of the head teachers are not aware of the real identity of the organisers. They do not know that Jamaat-e-Islami is behind this.
V.V. Hari alleged that the organisers utilise the competition to gather data on students on a large scale.
Yuva Morcha and several other nationalistic organisations have expressed their anxieties about the school-centric activities of the theocratic organisation like Jamaat-e-Islami. It is also alleged that the competition may be viewed as an attempt by Jamaat-e-Islami to infiltrate various spheres of social life.
Self-introduction on the Malarvadi Bala Sangham website:
Malarvadi Bala Sangham was founded to nurture moral values, creativity, social consciousness, and effective knowledge among kids. There is a state committee for Malarvadi to coordinate its activities. Kids up to 7th standard are members of Malarvadi. The programmes are organised at unit, area, district, and state levels. Apart from its activities in Kerala, Malarvadi actively organises events in different parts of the country and abroad as well. Malarvadi conducts knowledge fests across the state, beginning from the school level. The programme is named ‘Malarvadi Little Scholar’ when it reaches the state level. Malarvadi also conducts a kids’ fest called ‘Orumayude Punchiri’. ‘Malarvadi’ means garden and ‘Orumayude Punchiri’ means smile of memories.
There were reports of celebrating Sreenarayana Guru Jayanthi, Onam, and Muharram together as a single programme in August–September 2025, since the three festivals fell within the same period. They were organised by the Welfare Party, the political wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami.
These sorts of public relations exercises are projected for influencing society. At the same time, both the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) and the CPM-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) compete with each other to whitewash the religious extremists. V.D. Satheesan, Congress leader and Leader of the Opposition in the Kerala Assembly, keeps on stating that Jamaat-e-Islami has given up its doctrine of a ‘theocratic state’.
Critics argue that the issues with theocratic organisations like Jamaat-e-Islami are that they never encourage open thinking among young children. Instead, they largely believe in indoctrinating the child and instilling a phobia against reading material that encourages reasoning and rational thinking. This is done through sweeping generalisations that suggest, knowingly or unknowingly, that engaging with such ideas amounts to committing a sin. Such an approach prevents children from expanding their human-centric values and replacing dogmatic teachings with broader, reasoned understanding.
