Home Featured Updates Radical Socialist Statement on Ban on PFI and its associate organisations

Radical Socialist Statement on Ban on PFI and its associate organisations

Details
Published on Thursday 
29 September 2022 02:03
Written by Radical Socialist

Condemn and Oppose the Aggressive Anti-Muslim Hate Campaign!

Demand  the Repeal of the Ban on the PFI and its associate  organisations

Yes to Due Process, No to Special Powers and Bans

The ban on the Popular Front of India and its associate organizations is supposedly because the government knows it is trying to “radicalize” a section of the population. The organizations that have above all pushed large sections of the Indian population to violence are the RSS, the VHP, the Bajrang Dal, and other Hindutva organizations. They occupy honoured places, including in cabinets and high posts of various kind. As for the PFI, the action comes in a definite pattern. A number of people are arrested at random. Till now no chargesheet has been filed, let alone cases proved in court. Way back in 2001, the NDA government, then too led by the BJP, had banned the SIMI. Over 125 persons had been arrested by the Gujarat police that year. All were Muslims and charged with being members of SIMI and with being associated with terrorist activities. The case dragged on for twenty years. Many remained in jail, some got bail, but all were tarnished by the image of being terrorists, since the police and the media successfully painted them as such. In March 2021, however, all were found totally innocent. Meanwhile they had lost twenty years of their lives. And even more than just those people, a step had been taken in portraying to  large numbers, especially numbers of Hindus, that Muslims could not be trusted, all Muslims were potentially terrorists. In another notorious incident, eight arrested persons, alleged to be SIMI activists, supposedly escaped  from prison and were killed in an “encounter” that civil rights activists deemed an extra-judicial killing of undertrials.

There is gross misuse of the term ‘terrorism’. Terrorism must not be seen as primarily a reference to any particular category of persons but as a reference to a means or tactic or technique that is used to threaten or carry out actual physical injury or death to innocent civilians. Precisely because of this, there are three kinds of agencies of terrorism—the individual, the group and, of course, the apparatuses of the state. All these agencies can be, and so often are, guilty of ordering or carrying out terrorist actions and those responsible for them, no matter how high up or powerful, must be punished. But this must only be after due and fair process of law is followed, (rather than special laws that deny fairness and justice), and proof established of such behaviour. No democracy can justify arbitrary punishments or bans without following such a process. Nor must we forget that the biggest culprits –in terms of the greatest scale of casualties caused by terrorist acts as well as the ones most able to get away with such terrorist actions– are governments and the groups that enjoy their patronage and protection in civil society. So much so that there is no comparison of scales possible.

The raids in several provinces, the arrests, the bare claim with no incident to back it up, all show that the claim about the PFI is a repeat performance of past practice of intensifying anti-Muslim hatred. Its aim is to portray all Muslims, especially any Muslim who takes part in any social or political activity as actual or potential terrorists. We condemn this unequivocally. We call on citizens to protest and demand a retraction of the ban.

Radical Socialist,  28/9/2022

  •  
  •  
RELATED ARTICLES

Radical Socialist Statement on the Legalisation of the EWS Quota

Details Published on Tuesday 08 November 2022 14:07 Written by Radical Socialist

Radical Socialist Statement on The Karnataka Verdict and the Future

Details Published on Sunday 14 May 2023 09:51 Written by Radical Socialist

Radical Socialist Statement on Women Wrestlers’ Agitation

Details Published on Sunday 14 May 2023 17:06 Written by Radical Socialist

Most Popular

GREECE The victory of the “no” announces decisive battles against the Troika

Details Published on Thursday 09 July 2015 06:28 Written by Radical Socialist GREECE The victory of the "no" announces decisive battles against the Troika Wednesday 8 July 2015, by Fourth...

From Democrat to Socialist Revolutionary: The Legacy Fidel leaves

Details Published on Sunday 27 November 2016 17:34 Written by Radical Socialist From the late 1980s, the bureaucracy dominated states posing as socialist entered their terminal crisis....

Ukraine: NATO, imperialism and the war

Details Published on Sunday 20 March 2022 01:45 Written by Radical Socialist BY PHIL HEARSE   Version imprimable Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine seems to have caused some disorientation on the...

The Egyptian Mirror

Details Published on Wednesday 09 February 2011 15:37 Written by Radical Socialist The Egyptian mirror By Glenn Greenwald AP President Barack Obama meets with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in the White...

Bhopal disaster 25 years on — bring corporate killers to justice

Details Published on Friday 11 December 2009 08:57 Written by Radical Socialist

The Path of Naxalbari

Details Published on Monday 20 September 2010 05:30 Written by Radical Socialist The Path of Naxalbari: An Appraisal Kunal Chattopadhyay In this essay, the discussion will remain mostly confined to...

Portugal: A programme against the debt tyranny

Details Published on Thursday 19 July 2012 17:17 Written by Radical Socialist Portugal: A programme against the debt tyranny A resolution by the National Council of the Left Bloc...

Towards a new permanent global war? NATO’s a new strategic concept’

Details Published on Friday 08 July 2022 15:00 Written by Radical Socialist JAIME PASTOR   Version imprimable After the costly and patriarchal spectacle of this summit held for the greater...

Some thoughts on “Care”

Details Published on Friday 23 April 2021 17:56 Written by Radical Socialist  Susan Pashkoff One of the most obvious things that has become clear during the pandemic is...

Before the Indian elections: The remaking of Narendra Modi

Details Published on Saturday 19 April 2014 10:51 Written by Radical Socialist