For otherwise staid Kerala, chaos is unbelievable. Masked men smashing windows, buses being burnt, and mobs at each other throats as the Popular Front of India (PFI) reacted in rage to the detention of its leaders. Kerala has been the most tolerant state in India for decades, with Christians, Jews, Muslims and Hindus celebrating each other’s festivals and cuisines. That’s changed, perhaps forever. The PFI has grown exponentially in the last 10 years due to certain specific conditions. And it’s likely to bring more trouble in the next 10 years if it’s not handed right.
The raids on PFI and the reaction
The NIA carried out searches in 93 locations of 15 states, including Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi, Assam, Maharashtra, West Bengal and Bihar. According to the NIA, it arrested 45 leaders of which 19 were from Kerala, including the PFI national secretary, VP Nasarudheen, and National Council Member Professor P Koya, who is also editor of Thejus daily, Mohammed Basheer and E Abubacker. The charges? Funding of terrorism and terrorist activities, organising training camps for providing armed training and radicalising people to join banned organisations. Take a look at the violence following the protests: Petrol bombs thrown in Kannur; masked men in Kozhikode vandalising shops for the first time, burning buses in Kollam, Malappuram, Wayanad, Alappuzha, Thrissur, Pathanamthitta and Thiruvananthapuram and in Kochi. This kind of violence is unusual but then so were the nationwide arrests.
The PFI inside out
The group’s history is a collation of bloody incidents going back at least two decades. What is amazing is that it was allowed to grow to its present levels. The original group called itself the National Development Front (NDF) was formed in Kerala in 1997 following the Babri Masjid demolition by a Hindu mob. Thus far a typical action – reaction cycle. But here’s the rub: the group’s guiding ‘Supreme Council’ included among others, a P Koya, who had earlier been a core cadre of the Kerala chapter of the Students Islamic Group of India (SIMI). When SIMI was banned, intel reports from Andhra Pradesh, which had been battling a series of communal riots at the time, said many of its leaders had joined the PFI. Indeed, many of SIMI’s major meetings were held in Kozhikode and its cadres included Shibly Peedical Abdul, and computer engineer Yahya Kamakutty who were to become deadly terrorists. This was Kerala where terrorists came educated and impressive. The NDF’s stated objective was to uplift the lot of Muslims for which it also started an aggressive preaching, and equally aggressive stances that led to the Marad massacre, when a group of peaceful fishermen were brutally attacked and killed. That led to the sentencing of some 62 persons, from the NDF and other groups like the Indian Union Muslim League.
Then State Secretary of the Communist Party Pinaryi Vijayan accused the NDF of being terrorists, while the state BJP alleged that they were being funded by Pakistan. Later, the NDF was dissolved and the new PFI came into being. Its constitution proclaims ‘national integration’ and its political wing the Social Democratic Party of India was later implicated in a series of violent incidents, including protests against the hijab ban, the Citizenship Amendment Act and other issues, assisted ably by a student organisation the Campus Front of India. By now, the PFI and its offshoots were active in some 20-plus states, but still concentrated largely in Kerala and Karnataka.
The logical spread of the PFI
Meanwhile, the question is how it was able to spread so effectively. The reasons are many. For one, the SDPI broadened its base to include other Muslims groups such as the Shia’s and also Christians and marginalised entities like the Dalits. Then there was an undeniable fact that the group was being cossetted earlier by the Marxists, who later denounced them as Taliban influenced, for the Muslim vote; that it had a strong social media base with just the official handle showing 80,000-plus followers; the obvious fact of the “gulf returned’ phenomenon, when educated young men were exposed sometimes of a most regressive ideology, but most important of all their cadres grew due to the growing feeling of insecurity of Muslims. There’s more. As a little known fact that the PFI and its networks were committed to social work among the needy, including cremating the bodies of Covid victims and providing oxygen cylinders and the like. It also provides a strong legal assistance base for Muslims indicted for crimes, and it provides scholarships to those studying law, provided they return to work for the group. It has also linked itself to a plethora of Islamic groups elsewhere in the country. In other words, this is a formidable organisation that also seems to be well funded.
Show me the money
All this, however, also required money. Again, there are allegations of its involvement in gold smuggling, but no evidence has turned up in what is a murky case involving political elements. That it gets donations from believers is no crime while recent reports allege that it is sourcing money from its cadres employed in the Gulf (again, no crime) and more seriously directly from outside the country. If this was true, enforcement agencies should have put a stop to this before. Far more serious is, however, a specific report early this year of a Chinese businessman funding the group, after its office bearer KA Sherif visited China in 2019 and 2020. That is not just worrisome, it is entirely likely.
Exporting radicals
About a decade ago, it was the custom of counter-terrorism officials to point with pride to the fact that not a single Muslim went out to join the Taliban or other ideological groups. That changed in 2008 when a group from Kannur, including the PFI cadres, joined the Islamic State in Afghanistan. The cancer has spread inwards was evident in 2016 when the NIA broke into a meeting in Kannur, where a group of youth formed a collective called ‘Al Zarul Khallefa’ to wage war against the country. Most people consider this the first home-grown IS cell in the country. In later years, PFI cadres were among 14 who joined the Islamic State Khorasan, and worst of all, there is a suspicion that the group was involved with the Easter bombers in Sri Lanka, though this has yet to be proved. The sum of it is that, a small percentage of the several thousands of PFI cadres are primed for violence. Worse is that they were so easily picked by online recruiters shows a high degree of radicalisation. It doesn’t help that other ISIS cases are also from Kerala.
There is a problem here. It has to be dealt with firmly but with efficiency, fairness and transparency. Already rumours are likely to run riot among the community worsening matters. This requires all concerned to work at their levels against an ecosystem that is propagating radicalism. That means, first, moderate and influential Muslims have to stop the mullahs who lay down most regressive interpretation of Islam to willing ears. Second, media and intel agencies must guard against a huge amount of fake news on conversion, ‘love jihad’ and the like; third, the police need to be as transparent and quick as possible in investigating who was responsible for the present violence; Hindus need to understand that fuelling suspicion of the ‘other’ will ultimately affect them in their streets; and finally, the general public needs to not forward messages, which are sent on such sensitive issues. Most of all, however, while the action against the group is welcome, they may shout of political vendettas. Equally vital is the necessity to being seen to deliver justice where it is deserved, and clemency where it is not. Not to do so is to take this internal war into the next level — and the next decade.
The author is a Distinguished Fellow at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, New Delhi. She tweets @kartha_tara. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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