Sreelatha M

Fatima Muzaffar Ahmed represents the changing face of the Indian Union Muslim League as she became the first woman office bearer of the party at the national level last year. She is one of the two women national assistant secretaries of the IUML.

A native of Chennai, she is the national president of the women's wing of the League.

Last year, she was the sole IUML winner in the Chennai corporation and was among a handful of six or so Muslim women councillors who won in the entire Tamil Nadu council elections in 2022.

It was not surprising as she comes from a political lineage, and contesting elections is something she has grown up watching.

Fatima Muzaffar Ahmed speaking at a function

Her father, AK Abdul Samad, a former national general secretary of IUML, represented Velur twice in the Lok Sabha and twice in the Rajya Sabha, his proud daughter recalls.

He was initially a councillor from the Harbour constituency. He was always a progressive personality, and we at home looked up to him and were inspired by him, she says.

Her grandfather was a Maulana who was part of the freedom movement. He was in the Khilafat movement in Tamil Nadu, and he translated the Quran into Tamil for the first time, she says.

That created resentment and criticism in those days, but my grandfather was keen that scripture should be accessible to the common Muslim, she says.

It was the mother of all Tamil-translated Qurans, she says, adding that people still read that version.

Fatima Muzaffar Ahmed 

Even though her father was a politician, of her four other siblings (three of them are male), only she (the youngest of all)  got into politics.

There was no discrimination between us as we grew up, says Fatima. Our parents treated us as equals and did not give more importance to sons. I was good at public speaking in school, and I was always a social activist. From a student union leader in college to leadership in the women’s wing of IUML was a smooth transition, she says, describing her entry into politics.

In 2022, I was the only IUML councillor in the Chennai corporation winning with a thumping majority, she says.

Fatima is a member of the standing committee for education in the Chennai corporation.

She has been nominated for the third term to the Wakf board and the hajj committee; she is part of the executive committee of the  All India Muslim Personal Law Board.

The committee has 40 members, of which only six are women. Two of them are from Tamil Nadu, including Fatima.

"I can speak for women of my state on various personal law issues in the AIMPLB," Fatima says.

Fatima expresses concern about the increasing divide being created between communities. Fear and hatred are being created, she says, referring to the hate-filled comments all over the internet. Islamophobia is being whipped up by showing the narrative of only one side, she says.

IUML tries to be secular, but the new generation of youth is growing up in fear, she says.

She takes inspiration from the writer and IUML supremo of Kerala, Sadiq Ali Thangal, who she regards as an image of secularism. His book Bridging Communities Building Democracies inspired me a lot, says Fatima.

She says Muslims are at present safest in Tamil Nadu as the ruling DMK is pro minority. They have a Dravida model, which sees all citizens as children of Tamil and not as Hindus or Muslims.

This unity is helping Tamil Nadu outshine all other states in all fields, she says.

Our per capita income is the highest in the country, and the state is moving to a trillion-dollar economy.

Her profile lists out lofty goals of social development of the state. It is to empower the downtrodden, backward, illiterate and economically deprived sections of society. She says she wants to establish equality and unity in diversity and promote communal harmony and world peace. Towards this end, her job asa councillor as well as a member of various organisations helps her in reaching out to marginalised sections of society from all communities. She says poverty knows no religion.

Her work among the socially weaker sections has won her awards and even an honorary doctorate in social work from the Mother Teresa University and a lifetime achievement award from the University of Madras.  She is well-travelled, having visited 25 countries as an international delegate on social and political issues.

The most recent one was her visit to Abu Dhabi to attend the Global Summit of Women there. Earlier, she visited the United States for a conference sponsored by the US Consulate Chennai to speak on terrorism and security.

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Asked about her dreams as a politician, she says she wants to be part of the development story of her state.