Kerala, the apple of the eyes for the Left and left dominated mainstream media, has seen much bloodshed in the last few years. The news of murders and violent attacks on Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh members committed in broad daylight on the streets of Kerala has been strategically sidelined. There is however another cobra which is silently raising its hood in ‘God’s own country’ and the Communist government in Kerala will finally have to raise its voice, considering they themselves are at the receiving end this time. A Student Federation of India (SFI) leader was stabbed to death and two others were gravely injured at a college in Kochi. The attack was allegedly carried out by members of the pro-Islamic Campus Front and its parent outfit Popular Front of India. The official police statement regarding the attackers said, “Three workers of the PFI and the Campus Front have been taken into custody in connection with the incident,” Thus proving that this is in fact the start of the tussle between the Communist party and the PFI which it had bred and nurtured for long.
CPM state secretariat member and former Rajya Sabha MP P Rajeev condemned the attacks on the SFI workers and described it as one carried out by forces of “extremist nature.” Rajeev, a former state leader of the SFI from Ernakulam district, went on to add, “We have not heard about such a heinous attack on student activists in recent times. All the progressive forces should come forward to fight against such outfits with extremist nature.”
Both PFI and SFI could be held guilty of indulging in violence from time to time, the only difference between the incident of yesterday and the past ones is that they fought with each other yesterday. The row between SFI and PFI workers started over the petty issue of sticking posters inside the campus. It later escalated into a fully fledged fight which ended with one SFI member getting stabbed. Twenty year old Abhimanyu was a second year degree student at the Maharaja’s college and a worker of the SFI. He was rushed to the nearby Ernakulam General Hospital where he succumbed to injuries late at midnight.
SFI is the student wing of Communist Party of India, which is the ruling party in Kerala. PFI is an Islamic fundamentalist organisation in India which has been accused countless times of murder, rioting and disturbing communal harmony in Kerala and other states. Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan is, surprisingly, yet to ban the PFI and its activities in Kerala where it has the most support. The Kerala government in 2012 had itself informed the High Court their opinions about the PFI. The Kerala government had stated that “nothing but a resurrection of the banned outfit Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) in another form”. Jharkhand has become the first state to ban the notorious organisation in the country; Kerala should follow the lead shown by the BJP government of Jharkhand in this regard and ban PFI as soon as possible.
Communist Party seems to have learned a lesson of its own by this incident and other parties should learn it too. It is no use nurturing a party of thugs and radical elements which could one day turn back and bite you. That is exactly what PFI has done with the Communist Party of India. Two extremist organisations might be fighting against each other in Kerala in the days to come and it could lead to a bloodbath of never seen before magnitude in the state which prides itself on its development, if left unchecked.
