Minority groups forfeit sympathy with wrong steps

The five-year ban on the Popular Front of India and its affiliates, imposed by the Central government last week, was not entirely unexpected. Several states ruled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party had asked that it be banned in view of their prejudicial activities.

The Home Ministry ordered the ban under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) after protests called by PFI’s Kerala unit against raids by Central agencies on its offices across the country resulted in widespread violence in the state.

Following the raids and the ban, police arrested its leaders and members and sealed PFI offices throughout the country. The exact number of persons taken into custody is not available.

Under UAPA, the ban order is subject to judicial review by a tribunal to be constituted for the purpose.

PFI was one of the several organisations floated by Muslim groups in the country in the past half a century to safeguard the community’s rights. Two factors appear to have contributed to their emergence. One is the rise of militancy in some areas. The other is growth of anti-minority sentiments, fuelled by the campaigns launched by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, and its affiliates, for the construction of a Rama temple at the site of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh. They claimed that was where Lord Rama was born and that the mosque was built after pulling down a temple.

The first of the new minority outfits was the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), founded in Aligarh, UP, in 1977. Its slogan “India’s liberation through Islam” was impolitic, not to say provocative.

SIMI faced three bans. The first ban was a few days after the 2001 terrorist attack on the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York.

The ban order said SIMI had links with several foreign terror groups.

When the first ban ended, it was extended for two more years.

The third ban came a few months after the second one expired. Subsequently, there was a lull in SIMI activity. Many members of the organisation were prosecuted under anti-terror laws.

Incidentally, SIMI’s first President, Mohammad Ahmadullah Siddiqi, is said to be Professor of Journalism in a US university now.

It transpired later that after the ban on Simi, many of its leaders and cadres moved to other outfits such as PFI, which was founded in Kerala in 2006. Kerala has had a strong secular tradition, thanks to its ancient maritime links with other lands, cultures and religions.

India’s oldest synagogue, church and mosque. They were built not by conquerors but by those who came in peace for trade.

Between mid-19th and mid-20th century, the region witnessed a social renaissance which helped strengthen its secular foundations. As a result, RSS has found the state inhospitable to its Hindutva ideology. The ruling party in the Centre has not been able to win a single seat in Parliament from the state.

Coming after the demolition of Babri Masjid by RSS cadres in 1992 and the 2002 riots in Gujarat, secular sections in Kerala extended a measure of sympathy and support to groups which were seen as trying to protect the interests of the minority community.

However, some of them forfeited such sympathy by indulging in mindless violence. PFI members were implicated in a number of murder cases. The Kerala government informed the High Court in 2012 that PFI members were involved in 27 cases registered in connection with the murder of cadres of the RSS and the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Some PFI members were convicted in a shocking case of chopping the hand of a Christian teacher for allegedly denigrating the Prophet.

PFI grew nationally in a short period by absorbing into its fold a number of small Muslim groups in different parts of the country. The affiliated bodies banned along with PFI include its women’s wing, a students’ body and a human rights organisation. In sharp contrast to the sympathy PFI evoked at the time of its founding, few shed tears over its ban. However, some said that, like PFI, RSS also deserve to be banned.

Minority groups which face human rights violations must remember that a lasting solution to their problems can be found only through democratic means.