Modi Government’s Ban Of Controversial Muslim Organization Popular Front Of India Worries Critics
NEW DELHI — The Indian government has banned one of the country’s top and controversial Muslim organizations for at least five years, claiming the Popular Front of India has links to terrorists. PFI denies the allegation and has hosted protests nationwide against the ban.
Critics of the government have two main concerns: The proof that the PFI has participated in terrorist activities is unclear, and the government does not appear to be similarly motivated to investigate Hindu extremist organizations that have participated in or instigated violence.
The central government decision comes as a part of a series of crackdowns on the group, including arrests or detentions of at least 270 people in seven states and raids on its offices across the country.
A government statement about the Sept. 28 ban said that the Ministry of Home Affairs found PFI has been involved “in serious offenses, including terrorism and its financing, (and) targeted gruesome killings.”
The Indian Home Ministry claimed that PFI has links to the international terrorist group ISIS as well as the Students Islamic Movement of India, a banned youth extremist group formed in the 1970s that aimed to make India an Islamic country, and the Jamat-ul-Majahideen Bangladesh, designated a terror group by India, Malaysia, Bangladesh and the U.K. for aiming to make Bangladesh an Islamic country. The Home Ministry did not elaborate on the evidence of PFI’s links with the three extremist organizations.
“The PFI and its associates or affiliates or fronts operate openly as a socio-economic, educational and political organization but, they have been pursuing a secret agenda to radicalize a particular section of the society working towards undermining the concept of democracy,” the Home Ministry said in its statement.
On Sept. 22, India’s National Investigation Agency stated that “a large number of criminal cases have been registered by different states over the last few years against the PFI and its leaders and members for their involvement in many violent acts.”
Right-wing Hindu organizations, including the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, have frequently accused PFI of carrying out violent attacks on its members in Kerala and Karnataka, South Indian states. The PFI sparked controversy in Kerala in 2010 after it was alleged that some of its members were involved in the chopping off of a college professor’s hand for committing blasphemy against Islam. Thirteen members of the organization were convicted as responsible for the crime in 2015. Members of PFI were also linked with the beheading of a Hindu man in Rajasthan in June. In 2012, the Kerala government accused PFI of links to at least 27 murders, mostly members of the Hindu nationalist rival group RSS.
PFI’s stated mission is to defend the rights of Muslims, low-caste Hindus and other minorities. PFI leaders claim that the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is carrying out a witch hunt against the organization because of its human rights work.
“The PFI has been working with a clear vision for the socio-economic and cultural empowerment of the underprivileged, downtrodden and marginalized sections of the society for the past three decades,” said PFI State General Secretary A. Abdul Sattar in a statement announcing the group’s dissolution.
“The ban is discriminatory in nature and a politically motivated attack to shut the rising Muslim voices of the country,” said a Muslim student at Jamia Millia Islamia, a Muslim minority university. Jamia warned its students and teachers not to gather on or near the campus because the government banned protests for 60 days amid the crackdowns on PFI.
The Muslim student, who chose to remain anonymous, asserted that “the ruling government banning the PFI is absurd, as the Modi-led BJP itself has open affiliations to the fanatic Hindu organizations that are on a pattern calling for a genocide against Muslims."
The ban includes a network of groups under PFI’s umbrella
The five-year ban impacts an entire network of Muslim organizations that partnered closely with PFI. Affected organizations include Rehab India Foundation, Campus Front of India, All India Imams Council, National Confederation of Human Rights Organization, National Women's Front, Junior Front, Empower India Foundation and Rehab Foundation, Kerala.
PFI was formed in 2006 from the merger of three rights groups from South India: the National Democratic Front in Kerala, the Karnataka Forum for Dignity in Karnataka, and the Manitha Neethi Pasarai in Tamil Nadu. NDF is a controversial organization in Kerala created in the wake of the 1992 Babri mosque demolition by Hindu extremists, which resulted in mob violence that killed more than 2,000 people, mostly Muslims.
Two years later, PFI declared the Social Democratic Party of India its political arm and an independent party. The SDPI has gained sway in Kerala and Karnataka over the past decade. The party won 14 seats in four municipalities in the 2010 local body election in Kerala.
While the SDPI has not been banned, several of its leaders have been arrested. The SDPI said in a statement that the ban on PFI and its associates is a result of an undeclared emergency by Modi’s Hindu-first Bharatiya Janata Party government.
Campus Front of India, the PFI’s student wing, denounced the ban as undemocratic and vowed to fight against it in court.
The Jamaat-e-Islami Hind’s student wing, the Students Islamic Organization of India, described the ban as “a threat to the freedom of all citizens” in a press release.
“The way this has been preceded by raids and detention of hundreds of activists and common people without any evidence of wrongdoing, makes us fear that this is another instance of selective criminalisation of those who try to represent the voice of marginalized groups,” said Mohammad Salman Ahmed, national president of organization, in a statement.
Zafar-ul-Islam Khan, a Muslim activist and former chairperson of the Delhi Minority Commission, also criticized the PFI ban.
“The PFI ended up irking the current rulers because it built up a strong all-India cadre-based organization to work and fight for minority causes and its upliftment,” Khan said. “Such an organization is viewed as a hurdle to the Hindutva (Hindu nationalist) dream to turn India into a Hindu Rashtra (Hindu Nation). Hence, for some years, the PFI and its allied organizations have been the target of the current rulers of the country.”
PFI charged with inciting violence at anti-Citizenship Amendment protests
The PFI has also been charged with inciting violence and supporting demonstrations against the polarizing Citizenship Amendment Act. Tens of thousands of Indians protested in the streets in 2020 against the act, a law that expedites Indian citizenship for non-Muslim minorities from neighboring nations but excludes Muslims. Several of the PFI activists who led the demonstrations have also been arrested.
Shoaib Ahmad, a first-year student at Delhi University’s Zakir Hussain College, was arrested from his home in Shaheen Bagh, New Delhi on Sept. 27 as part of the second phase of the nation-wide crackdown on PFI. Shaheen Bagh was one of the epicenters of the iconic protests against the Citizenship Amendment and where police detained dozens of activists.
“I woke up due to noise outside our house, and noticed so many police personnel banging on our door,” said Mumtaz, Shoaib’s mother, to the Indian news site Newslaundry. “They took away his books, his laptop, his phone. They didn’t tell us why they were taking him away. There are so many disturbing thoughts about the safety of my son. He never did anything wrong.”
Karnataka’s state government has also charged the organization with instigating demonstrations against a ruling made by authorities in February that forbade students from wearing hijabs to school.
Shadab Farooq is an independent journalist based in New Delhi, India.