Red’s Shade of Saffron

The CM has accused PFI of trying to turn Kerala into a Muslim country.

Sending communal messages is not uncommon in Indian politics, but when the CPM does this, it hints at a desperate move by a besieged party to save at least one of its forts from falling in next year’s Assembly elections. Kerala Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan’s controversial remark on 24 July that the PFI was trying to convert the red bastion into a “Muslim country” may well be fuelled more by electoral considerations than by the actual threat posed by religious extremists.

The PFI or the Popular Front of India, whose activists were accused of chopping off the hand of a college teacher, has accused the Marxist party of playing the soft Hindutva card in view of the elections to local bodies in September and the Assembly early next year.

 “The PFI is a social organisation engaged in educational and employment generation activities for Muslims. We never preach Islamic religion and the government has not been able to substantiate its charge,” says PFI national executive member Professor P Koya, “The ruling CPM is playing a dirty political game to consolidate Hindu communal votes at a time when Muslim and Christian minorities have started drifting towards the Congress.”

The CM has even accused the PFI of pumping in money to lure youth into Islam and persuade them to marry Muslim girls. “In 20 years, they want to make Kerala a Muslim majority state,” he says.

While the Congress, with an eye on the substantial minority population, has echoed the PFI line, the CPM has closed ranks. Even Achuthanandan’s adversary, Pinarayi Vijayan, the powerful CPM state secretary, has defended the CM.

Asserting that the lecturer, who had prepared a question paper allegedly insulting the Prophet, was assaulted by “those who have nothing to do with PFI”, Koya says, “The incident was blown out of proportion to blame an organisation and a community.”