TALIBAN IN GOD'S OWN COUNTRY

“There are plans to Islamise Kerala in 20 years using money and marriages. Popular Front of India (PFI) is trying to multiply Muslim numbers in the state by influencing youth of other religions and converting them by giving money, marrying them to Muslim women and thus producing kids of the community”.

Who uttered this unspeakable communal gibberish? I won’t be surprised if you think that this “rabidly communal” statement is either from Nitin Gadkari or Parveen Tokadia or some hard-core Hindu fundamentalists. But the surprise is that this was the statement of a chief minister whose party has always been a great benefactor of the minorities and whose cause they always upheld while deriding the majority community in the country in one sweeping statement as “communal”. How can we forget that it was the CPM chief minister EMS Namboodiripad was who responsible for the creation of a separate Muslim majority district, Malappuram, which has now become the hotbed of Islamic terrorism.

Yes, the statement was from Kerala chief minister VS Achutanandan. He also said that the radical Muslim outfit –Popular Front of India (PFI) was aiming to convert Kerala into a “Muslim Country”. Let us not mistake him that he was trying to score political points over his home minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan. CPM general secretary Prakash Karat did not differ from his CM either. A day earlier Karat also warned the state against the threat of Muslim terrorism in the context of the PFI activities.

Achutaanandan being the head of the government was probably concerned about the terrorist activities in the state. He says the PFI in its earlier avatar as National Development Front had given training, money and weapons to youngsters to eliminate opponents. Now they were trying to create a clean image by organising freedom parades on the Independence Day. Several district administrations had already banned the parade, he said.

It is no secret that Kerala which has around 25% Muslim population with lot of Gulf connections has become the hotbed of terrorism in the South. Even as early as in 2008, Kerala’s links with global terrorism came to light when three Keralites were killed in an encounter in Kashmir. It is now the CPM has woken up from its deep slumber.
What triggered the wrath of the Communists in the state was the attack on a college professor T J Joseph whose hand was chopped off in Taliban style. What was his crime? He was reported to have set a question paper for internal examination in the college which allegedly hurt Muslim sentiments.

Since the PFI role was suspected in the case, Police raided its offices and “it exposed PFI’s pan-Islamist network fed by a heady mix of Wahhabism and hawala”. The raid also brought to light al-Qaueda training, tapes,Taliban style courts that dispense justice according to Shariat law, literature on conversion, explosives enough to kill dozens and documents indicating unusual interest in the Indian Navy. It was also reported that it was one of the PFI’s Taliban-style courts in Kottayam district that drove them to sever the limbs of Joseph.

Interestingly, however, the state home minister K Balakrishnan does not subscribe to the view that Taliban style courts are functioning in his state though his own Police were aghast while viewing the CDs seized from PFI. According to the police, the CDs showed brutal punishment like severing of limbs of the enemies of Faith. Activists were also made to slaughter animals so as prepare them for human slaughter.

Well, the question is whether it is genuine transformation for the Kerala communists to realise the true colours of Muslim extremists and contours of jihadi extremism, especially after they passed a resolution in the Kerala Assembly for the release of Abdul Nasser Madani from Coimbatore jail where he was incarcerated as an accused in the Coimbatore Bomb blast case in which 58 were killed and hundreds injured. After his release, he formed a political party which supported the Left Democratic Front in 2007 elections. After Madani’s Islamic Sevak Sangh was banned, it was renamed as NDF in 1993. The strategy was not to have a name which will sound Islamic or Arabic, but national so as to hoodwink the people. Therefore, he latest avatar of NDF is Popular Front of India formed in 2006.

PFI’s activities include “Love Jihad”. The modus operandi is to finance Muslim youth for getting the latest gadgets and attire to lure non-Hindu girls with promises of marriage, convert them into Islam and drop them at terrorist training camps. According to crime record bureau of Kerala police, 8 girls are reported missing every day in the state. In 2007 alone, 2167 girls and 2530 girls in 2008 were reported missing. Kasargod tops the list of jihadi conversions with 568. But only 123 cases were registered with the Police. According to one estimate, 4000 girls have been converted under Love Jihad all over India. That is why Kerala CM apprehends that his state would become Muslim country in 20 years and points his finger at outfits like PFI.

PFI, however, says it is ironical that both the CPM and RSS which have a long history of being actively involved in all criminal activities are speaking against the PFI. It was a sort of poetic justice when PFI says in its website “CPM in spite of its tall claims of secularism is basically a Hindu party in Kerala. The CPM is trying to consolidate the Hindu and Christian communal votes”. CPM which considered itself “ultra secular” is paid back with its own coin.

The PFI does not spare the Christian missionaries as well. It says “evangelists financed by rightist groups in the US are behind the Church in Kerala. They are high pressure missionary groups who raise money on the number of people converted – a charge that is often levelled by the Sangh parivar against the missionaries.

It is also felt that since the Congress at the national level and UDF at state level are wooing the Muslim votes, the Left is trying to consolidate Hindu and Christian votes. The CPM, for a change, is likely to play Hindu card in the coming Assembly elections. After all, both the CPM and RSS are speaking the same language on “Love Jihad”.