Popular Front of India first rose to infamy 12 years ago, when its activists attacked Kerala professor T J Joseph
An Indian security officer stands guard beside a banner installed by members of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party during a protest demanding a ban on the Popular Front of India in New Delhi on Feb. 28, 2021. (Photo: AFP)
The Islamist group banned by India on Sept. 27 first gained national infamy when its members chopped off the hand of a Kerala-based Catholic professor over 12 years ago.
Way back in March 2010, T. J. Joseph, the head of the Malayalam language department at the Newman College in Thodupuzha, set a question paper for his students that allegedly included derogatory remarks about Prophet Mohammed.
What followed was a storm like no other with both radicals and moderates painting Joseph as an Islamophobe.
The professor was arrested and released on bail but on July 4 as he was on his way home from Sunday Mass in Kerala’s Idukki district, a group of seven men stopped his car, dragged him out and chopped off his right hand at the wrist with an axe.
An Indian court in 2015 convicted and jailed 13 people for the crime, but the state or the federal governments failed to act against their organization, the Popular Front of India (PFI), which was often accused of terror-related activities.
Around seven years later, the federal government in a notification issued on Sept 27 declared that the PFI and all its associates or affiliates or fronts have been banned as unlawful associations with immediate effect for five years.
“It has become a major threat to the internal security of the country”
The move followed two rounds of countrywide raids on PFI offices and houses of its leaders since Sept 22 and arrests of over 200 of its leaders and associates from 13 states in the country.
Indian authorities referred to the PFI cadres’ involvement in criminal violent acts like “chopping off the limb of a college professor, cold-blooded killings of persons associated with organizations espousing other faiths, obtaining explosives to target prominent people and places and destruction of public property.”
The federal government in its notification said: “PFI is involved in several criminal and terror cases and shows sheer disrespect towards the constitutional authority of the country with funds and ideological support from outside, it has become a major threat to the internal security of the country.”
The banned organizations include PFI and its associates or affiliates including 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.
“There had been a number of instances of international linkages of PFI with global terrorist groups and some activists of the PFI have joined Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and participated in terror activities in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan,” the government notification said.
Many in India believe that a mere ban on the outfit will not solve the problem.
“The law can ban an organization but not its ideology”
Father Varghese Vallikkatt, a former spokesperson of the Kerala Catholic Bishop Council (KCBC), told UCA News on Sept 28 that “the law can ban an organization but not its ideology.”
The priest appealed to society to keep heightened vigil against the ideologies of such outfits that are working against the interest, security and safety of India and its citizens.
In 2001, the federal government banned the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), a radical Islamic outfit like PFI for its involvement in unlawful activities.
Many believe the PFI was successful in bringing all the SIMI activists under its umbrella.
India is home to some 200 million Muslims or 14.2 percent of its 1.3 billion people, according to the 2011 national census.
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