There is no doubt that of radical Islamist organisations like Popular Front of India (PFI) and Socialist Democratic Party of India (SDPI) fuelled the anti-CAA riots across the country as the National Investigative Agency has successfully exposed their nefarious agenda. While UP CM Yogi Adityanath has cracked down on radical islamist organisation Popular Front of India (PFI), Kerala’s Communist Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan in the past has been accused to go soft on the likes of PFI in order to win Muslim votes and now it has come to bite him back.
Vijayan surprised everyone as he criticised PFI for its role in inciting anti-CAA riots on the floor of the Kerala Assembly. His comments have not been taken kindly as Vijayan has received a death threat warning him to stop criticising PFI and SDPI, a political party linked to PFI.
The secretary of CPI(M)’s youth wing, AA Rahim received a letter threatening to eliminate Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan if he doesn’t stop criticising SDPI and PFI. “It says that Pinarayi should stop criticising outfits like PFI (Popular Front of India) and SDPI (Socialist Democratic Party of India). If he did, he would be hacked to death,” said Rahim. Rahim has himself been a victim of such death threats after he married a Hindu woman.
Vijayan had last month slammed SDPI, as he claimed such “extremist” groups were trying to divide people and create law and order issues under the garb of anti-CAA protests. He stressed that the Left government wouldn’t allow such extremist elements to run the roost in Kerala. Vijayan was quoted as: “Extremist groups like SDPI is trying to create unrest using anti-CAA protests. The state govt can’t allow this. Police will slap cases against such people. Any attempts to create communal disharmony in the state will be strongly dealt with.”
On a deeper look, the death threat to him is of Vijayan’s own making as his government went soft of SDPI and PFI until the leader of the CPI (M) students’ wing Students Federation of India (SFI), Abhimanyu was brutally murdered in 2018. While states across the country are banning the likes of PFI, Vijayan had earlier refused to place a ban on the radial outfits as it was widely believed that the communist government aided and abetted their activities.
It is not the Kerala government’s policy to ban any communal or terrorist outfit. If any outfit that creates riots in India and divides society on communal lines needs to be banned, then it should be the RSS first. Such organisations cannot be countered with a ban and this has been proved by our experience in the past,” Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had said.
The trust between the two comrades only broke when Abhimanyu was murdered and the state government was forced to change its stance as it arrested close to 600 SDPI members to explore their role in the murder of Abhimanyu, if any.
“Though the outer image PFI projects is standing up for human rights and the rights of people of the Muslim community, its hidden agenda is the liberation of India through Islam. The CPI (M) in the initial years had allowed them to grow. In the early days of the National Development Front (NDF), there was even a saying that those who are CPI (M) during the day are NDF during the night,” a political analyst said.
It is believed that the siding of Muslim political outfit, the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) with the Left’s main opponent in Kerala, the Indian National Congress, prompted the CPI(M) to get closer to PFI in order to win the minority votes.
The realisation that these extremist outfits must be banned and their activities curbed at the earliest must dawn on cm Vijayan because this time around it’s his life which is at stake.
