It has been a couple of weeks since the ruling regime of India began hounding a Muslim social organisation in the country. The  leaders and members of Popular Front of India (PFI) were arrested and their offices raided across several states of India. Though this group had been subjected to such state excesses in the past, the latest episode started with a fabricated document that, the state allege, was a secret communique of the group to its constituent units. This fabrication was reported in the media as “Vision 2047”. In fact, this is the exact name under which Rehab India Foundation, a sister concern of PFI, published a document outlining their charity initiatives, proposed to be concluded by the year 2047.

The first stop in the series of raids was made in the state of Bihar, followed by Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and then the rest of the country. The final round of arrests in this series, conducted last Friday, included the surviving founders and top rung of leaders. The arrests were carried out by the regime’s “counter-terrorism” handle called the National Investigative Agency (NIA) in association with battalions of ‘Central Reserve Police Force’ (CRPF). In most of the places that they made these arrests and raids, which they named “Operation Octopus”, they were greeted by protestors. PFI is an organisation with hundreds of thousands of members in its ranks and an even greater number of well-wishers. The regional conference it had conducted in the South Indian city of Calicut, merely a few days prior to this operation, was attended by about a half million people and was considered to be the largest single event ever against the ruling junta of India conducted anywhere in the world. In the states ruled by Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (“Indian Peoples’ Party”, or BJP) the net of arrests have been even wider, with state police conducting its own set of arrests and raids in addition to those by the NIA. At the same time, opposition groups such as the Indian National Congress and the Communist Parties – (such as CPI-M and CPI) have welcomed this step, a standpoint that reveals quite a lot about the nature of politics in India.

The arrested members have been charged under draconian laws, and the infamous Indian tradition of complicated and long drawn out investigative and judicial processes, coupled with the harsh and retributive nature of the ruling party, means that these activists are poised for indefinitely long prison terms. Meanwhile, a two-month long stringent curfew has been clamped upon the area in Delhi which houses PFI’s headquarters, with drones deployed. In countries with some degree of actual rule of law, such measures may be taken after banning the organisations concerned. However, the Indian regime, with its steeply authoritarian tendencies, undertook these measures prior to banning PFI- or in other words, while it was an absolutely legitimate organisation. The ban was pronounced on Wednesday.

The entire process was merely a show of strength, something that it did not dare to undertake against an increasingly aggressive China or its avowed arch-enemy Pakistan in the aftermath of an air force pilot’s arrest. This incident calls for reflections through various angles to understand the larger picture.

State of falsehood

Several observers have pointed out in the past that in India, there is tendency in the minds of the dominant elite to blur the demarcations between fact and mythology. A lot of myths built up by the European imperialists, such as the Hindu community and faith, yoga, ayurveda, the heritage status accorded to Indian vernacular tongues, false histories and victimhood, along with ancient mythologies that have been implanted as elements of faith, have contributed to this skewed sense of  reality. This is reflected in the nature of allegations raised against PFI. Most of these are prima facie imaginary and fail basic tests of logic and natural justice. An instance of mythology entering the realm of administrative process are the words of a Central minister of the cabinet, who compared PFI to “Bhasmasur”, a demon of Brahmin mythology. Vilification campaigns around this organisation are peppered with terms from Islamic beliefs and jurisprudence, such as Kafir and Jihad. Some of the allegations could be analysed as follows –

• Attempt to murder Modi : In spite of the raids and  arrests been done in the most vengeful manner, agencies have not found any weapons. To believe that anyone could attempt to the murder the leader of the ruling junta of a nuclear state, who also happens to hail from a fascist organisation called Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (“National Volunteer Corps”, or RSS), with no weapons or arms training and in the face of extensive security is one prime example of the magnitude of lies upon which the regime of India builds its cases against opponents, especially Muslims.

• Hitlist to murder many prominent Hindu figures: Accusing PFI of conspiring to do something that it could not do in its three decades of existence holds no water.

• Links to Islamic State group “IS” : As admitted by Praveen Swami, a prominent PR voice of the Indian intelligence agencies, it is the intelligence agencies that have nurtured and  channelled corps and arms to IS in Afghanistan, by the route of the Iranian port of Chabahar, using their special relationship with Iranian regime and agencies. Moreover, IS of Iraq or Syria is not yet reported to have attacked any Indian interests in India or abroad. In addition, among the hundreds of thousands of members and sympathisers, no tangible evidence could be brought forth regarding the existence of any such flux towards this group. PFI is on record to have conducted a public campaign against IS. To top it all, to its own peril, PFI cadres are generally found to be conditioned to develop a gross disinterest in developments outside India, barring a few people and that too to a very limited extent. Meanwhile, the ruling junta and its bodies have no qualms in coordinating with people and organisations of their choice. Various think-tanks affiliated to the RSS have in the past invited people associated with regimes in Arab dictatorships, Fethullah Gulen, Zionist entities, etc.

• JMB connections: Jamaat-ul-Mujahidin Bangladesh is a group that existed in the late 1990s till 2007, when its leaders were hanged to death. After this point of time, JMB has been a bogey used by the Bangla establishment to discredit Pakistan, conduct false flag operations and settle political scores against its opponents. The current avatar of this label has been similar to an IS in Bangladesh.

• Former SIMI connections: Students’ Islamic Movement of India was a youth organisation that functioned legally for 25 years. Throughout its lifetime, it was not blamed even by detractors of conducting anything warranting its ban. It was illegitimately banned in 2001 by the erstwhile Atal Behari Vajpayee government, after a demonisation campaign, in its zeal to prove its place in the camp of the United States in the outset of George Bush Jr.’s “war on terror” – much like the current scenario with regards to PFI. The SIMI bogey has been used widely by the Indian state to stage false flag operations and keep, indefinitely, a very large number of Muslim youth behind bars. Affiliation to a lawful organisation is not something any establishment in its senses would quote as a wrong-doing. By common-sense, membership in SIMI could be a crime only if possessed after 2001. Using past membership in a lawful organisation as something wrong shows that the State itself has no respect or trust in its laws. In the same vein, there has also been usage of the Indian Mujahedeen, Deccan Mujahedeen and Lashkar-e-Taiba bogeys in India for false flags and arrests. Interestingly, most of such explosions and blasts took place after the establishment of open diplomatic relations with the Zionist entity in 1991.

• Lack of respect to constitution, democracy, national integrity and sovereignty: PFI has repeatedly sworn its loyalty, affection and affiliation to these concepts, and has been persistent in its efforts to sanctify the Constitution and related terms. On the other hand, the ruling junta’s own allegiance to the Constitution and its enshrined values have been called out several times, from several quarters. The last conference and campaign of PFI days before its witch-hunt was itself labelled “Save the Republic”. With the embedded media of India conducting discussions on expansionism by the name of “greater India” (“akhand bharat”) comprising Pakistan, Bangladesh, South East Asia and Arabian Gulf states, it is questionable as to what the term ‘integrity’ essentially means to this group. The junta’s trolls keep suggesting the indefinite suspension of even the five-year ritual of elections.

• Financial transactions and generation of funds : Prior to the action by means of NIA, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) was widely used to trap PFI. Different kinds of claims, involving different amounts of money, were time and again made against PFI. A couple of months ago, many of its bank accounts were frozen by the regime. Raids, akin to the present ones, done in the past by the ED, had given the junta nothing to show. Ultimately, the bigger question pertains to what is wrong in a legally registered and lawfully functioning organisation receiving funds and using them. In its infinite wisdom, the Indian government has decided that the relevance of this question has diminished. The top 100 receivers of foreign funds in India are the various entities affiliated to the regime itself and various Christian bodies. Those who had parked their money in offshore tax havens were invariably people in the good books of the regime and did not have to face any unpleasant experiences due to the same. Corruption to the tunes of billions of dollars by members of ruling junta hardly makes news in India; rather, some of them get rewarded with plum political posts.

• Radicalisation of Muslims, by generating “feeling of insecurity” : The most visible radicalisation in India has been that of the Brahmin faith. There have been an ever increasing circle of rites, beliefs & rituals into the same with the passage of time. As for the feeling of insecurity, it is quite justified and natural in a place where no anti-Muslim carnage or violence even against children has been punished and where even employing Muslims in an organisation has the potential to become problematic (as was visible recently in the case of a Covid call centre in Bangalore) and where every demand for equitable representation is looked down upon as motivated by the aim of secession.

• Seeking to establish Islamic state: Just as a Communist would seek to establish a Communist state and a Brahmin seeks to establish a Brahminic state, like how Indian republic is, any Muslim ought to seek to establish an Islamic state – a state which ensures justice, rule of law, fairness and good governance. Mentioning a charge as this is, in effect, criminalisation of adherence to Islamic faith itself or criminalisation in seeking renaissance of any historical glory and good.

• Criminal, unlawful activities: An incident that is quoted in this regard is the hand-chopping of a professor who was protected by the state after insulting the Prophet. In a country where the state arms gangs like the Salwa Judum, lets loose various “senas” and “dal”s for committing mass murders and where parliamentarians and ministers give open calls for murder, projecting this incident as something grave and serious is nonsense – to say the least. Local skirmishes with RSS, and cases where PFI has denied involvement have all been cited in this regard. Limited defence offered by the residents of Northeast Delhi in the face of killer mobs allied with the ruling junta is associated with the PFI and criminalised – while the attempts for genocide are rewarded.

• The NIA dossier further makes mention of ties of PFI with the Muslim Brotherhood, Palestinian struggle etc. Regardless of the truth of these stories, it is pointless to criminalise sympathising with somebody or some group that has no stakes in India – for good or bad. These stories merely further another narrative put forth by Indian security agencies that the Muslim pilgrimages to Saudi Arabia constitute a security threat for being able to meet outsiders and a statement by the first Army Chief of India that Muslims are inherently enemies of the state. By the same logic, Modi would need to stand trial for his out-of-way support for Donald Trump and his failed re-election campaign.

• There are further points brought out time and again vis-a-vis PFI like its involvement in campaigns for Babri Majid restoration, repealing of CAA, etc. More than any matter of law and order, these arguments only show that the political manifesto of the ruling junta is being considered as law.

Implicit factors

The biggest lesson in the manner in which the world has functioned since WW2 has been that regimes and forces work in collusion with one another. There is no exception in the case of the evolution of India since the 1980s.

Rajiv Gandhi’s meetings with Ronald Reagan in June 1987 was a watershed moment which decided to empower the fascist strain of Hindu politics. While public declarations of Reagan and Gandhi were to cooperate on “countering terrorism” and defence, it has been followed by with the Shah Bano controversy, opening the locks of Babri Masjid for shailanyas and facilitating the meteoric rise of BJP. It needs to be noted here that Rajiv Gandhi was a representative of BAE prior to being brought into politics and cabinet by Indira Gandhi. It also needs to be noted that Le Monde (France) had reported that following the 1991 Parliamentary elections that Manmohan Singh would be brought up as the finance minister, irrespective of the winner. It is this former employee of UN offices of Geneva whom we could see instrumental in making sweeping policy changes, both as Finance Minister and as Prime Minister, and cementing India’s place in the US bloc.

Narasimha Rao, the first Prime Minister affiliated to the RSS, unveiled the shroud of secrecy from relations with the Zionist entity. The facilitation of successful campaigning by RSS and the demolition of Babri Masjid, along with a spree of genocidal incidents in Kashmir and India and the imposition of the draconian law of TADA en-masse against Muslims, happened alongside a deepening of relations with the West and the ever-increasing clout of RSS. It was the RSS network that benefitted the most from relations with the Zionist entity.

During the reign of Vajpayee, William Clinton made India a strategic partner of the US with all that it implies, and even the Pakistani establishment was subdued to India. With the advent of George Bush Jr., there were no bounds to this relationship. Both became frontliner states in the war on Islam (aka “terror”). Indians were given the charge of all communication- related agendas of the new world order. Wikileaks exposed the utmost interest with which the US had monitored the National Development Front (NDF), the predecessor of PFI. Modi was out for all to see – beginning with the television debates in the aftermath of September 11 attacks and then presiding over Gujarat carnage as Chief Minister. A major false flag in the form of Parliament attack was staged using the captives of the US in the aftermath of their Afghan occupation.

Manmohan Singh furthered this relationship with his Nuclear deal with Bush – which was conducted after utmost secret negotiations and brought no nuclear installations but for which he had to sacrifice his own government. At the time, Bush made statements lauding accomplishment of such steps through the “democratic process”, following which Manmohan Singh could be seen facilitating rise of Modi to power with all that he possessed – silence at allegations, charging no cases against him, bringing in flawed electronic voting machines in spite of protests, bring in of National ID card system (Aadhar), introduction of the concept of National Population Registry (NPR), etc. Zionist entity & Indian regime are the most privileged in the current setup of world affairs reflected in the free rein for both of them to meander through both the blocs – of the West as well as that of Russia. Recent spike in xenophobia & electoral frauds have been directly associated with coordination of Modi with Vladimir Putin. Today, Modi has embarked upon this ban only after the Quad summit with Joseph Biden and concluding agreements – public and secret. The timing of this ban ought also to be seen in synchrony with the PM race in Britain bringing Rishi Sunak, followed by Leicester attacks by RSS affiliates there, which was officially supported by India. Leicester attacks, with its support of British agencies, was a miniature model of the mob lynching and micro-rioting done by RSS in India and it represented a leap ahead for the client duty of this junta. Further to this is the ecosystem of virulently anti-Muslim regimes installed in Arab states in the aftermath of coup over President Morsi of Egypt. It is the norm of the United States to install extremely rogue regimes in the countries they get involved in. Their role in monitoring the popular revolution in Libya and then its sabotage by means of a rogue colonel, viz. Khalifah Haftar, is a typical example of their action. It needs to be borne in mind that Libya still bleeds badly from the perils imposed through this proxy.

Messages conveyed

While the first ban on major Muslim organisations in India took place during the era of Indira Gandhi with the ban on Muslim League (AIML) and Jamaat-e-Islami, during what was termed as “Emergency”, further down the lane was the ban by Rao, in the aftermath of Babri Masjid demolition, on Jamaat-e-Islami and Islamic Swayamsevak Sangh (“Islamic Volunteer Corps”) founded by the famous orator of Kerala viz. Abdul Naser Ma’dani. ISS was not revived. During this period, Ziauddin Bukhari, the National President of AIML (which by then had merged into the establishment-contained faction called IUML), had been assassinated in Bombay. This assassination, which was then blamed on a proxy gang of the state, was never allowed to be subjected to due legal procedures. Then came the ban on SIMI by Vajpayee which was to be a permanent one. Thereafter, there have been different labels, unknown to the public, banned at different times. Now it is the turn of PFI and its sister organisations. The first characteristic of organisations that are subject to these bans is that they could not be easily contained by the establishment or infiltrated to a significant degree by their elements. A stark example was the episode of T Naseer in the late 2000s – a person who was employed as a bogey by the Intelligence Bureau (IB) to associate with various Muslim organisations and put them in trouble. Despite repeated attempts, he could not infiltrate NDF and those groups with which he could associate were all invariably hounded by the agencies to different degrees. Later, Naseer was arrested on the charges of a false flag operation conducted in the populous South Indian city of Calicut and recently freed. During the 2010s too, there were numerous similar attempts to infiltrate PFI ranks and associate them with people who were later led to Afghanistan by the agencies. The first lesson, as such, is that Muslims have no option in India to work uncorrupted and uninterrupted within the framework set by the laws in the Indian state. No amount of declaration of loyalty to the state nor abidance to democratic and legal processes nor shedding of sweat on innumerous social services which were culpable shortfalls of the state (and thereby covering their lacunae) nor their strong following could achieve any clemency for them. Sympathetic voices have been almost silenced – with PFI’s daily newspaper in Kerala choked to closure in the past and social media pages taken off in the latest episode. While the political party most sympathetic to them, viz. the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI), is yet to be banned, it is merely the a matter of time to either bring some legislative amendments to the Representation of Peoples’ Act (1951) – which is a cakewalk for the regime-  to enable it to ban them or to infiltrate it with their elements and turn it off course. Legislative process in India has become a sham & merely a tool to criminalise Islam & affiliation to it – UAPA, Triple Talaq, Media related laws, scrapping of Article 370, CAA, ban over the use of many words in the parliamwntary proceedings, etc. are all different prominent instances. It is in line with what Bush had mentioned – suicide of democratic process until the point where it would be as “democratic” system as that of Sisi regime or Asad regime to it. As for the judicial process, kangaroo courts have the distinctive repute of not delivering justice in any of the thousands of incidents of anti-Muslim violence & ocassionally, like the case of Mohsin Shaikh, justifying it too. As such, the question looms over the possibility of any peaceful functioning in India. In the carnages of Delhi of 1947, the then Home Minister, viz. Vallabh-Bhai Patel, who has been deified by the current regime for his anti-Muslim zealotry, accused the Muslim refugees of attempting to stage a coup & displayed kitchen knives to the then Governor General, Louis Mountbatten, as his evidence. Hence, it would not be surprising to see crocodile tears over some damages done during general strike called for by PFI in Kerala in the wake of these arrests while no amount of killings, damages, loot of public wealth by the regime & its people are worth any concern.

Indian regime has no concern for the common people of India, nor any element of shame in committing its rogue deeds. It keeps creating newer enemies, deeper crises & miseries of unknown destiny for them.

Topping it all, the whole episode is yet another example of repeated falsehood being accorded the status of truth. This happens in case of history as well as the present in India.