Reported By – Salik Khan
On July 12, the Patna Police booked 26 people, including one from Karnataka, for their alleged allegiance to the PFI and arrested three people, including a retired Jharkhand Police sub-inspector, for allegedly trying to foment communal disharmony and waging war against the state. While the Popular Front of India (PFI) has dismissed the Patna Police’s allegations of the outfit working on a “new terror module”, a seven-page pamphlet, ostensibly of the PFI, outlines a roadmap for ‘India 2047: Towards Rule of Islam in India’, say police.
The pamphlet, which police said they seized during the arrests made on Wednesday from the Phulwari Sharif area of Patna on Wednesday, talks of the need to check the rise of “sectarian Hindutva forces” and about bringing Scheduled Castes and the poor into the PFI fold to counter the “upper caste-centric” Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). According to police, the arrests were made following intelligence alerts that some people were gathering in Patna to “foment trouble” ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit on Tuesday. On the need to check the “advances of the Hindutva forces”, the pamphlet, allegedly seized from a house in Phulwari Sharif, reads: “The rise of sectarian Hindutva forces has further aggravated the socio-economic and political conditions of Muslims. The political deprivation of Muslims is such that the Government of India does not bother to consult Muslims even on matters concerning the Shariat. The Muslim community of India, being the second largest in the world, bears the heavy responsibility of providing a successful survival model to the world against the onslaught of the anti-Muslim forces. But it is severely deprived of good organisation or leadership”. It talks of the need to make “the community stronger and bolder”.
Laying out a clear political roadmap, the pamphlet, which police released, says the “party” must work towards bringing SCs/OBCs into its fold. “The party should gain the trust of 50 percent of Muslims and 10 percent of SCs/STs/OBCs at this stage… We need to create a split between the RSS and SCs/STs/OBCs by projecting that the RSS is an organisation interested only in the welfare of upper-caste Hindus. We need to discredit so-called secular parties by questioning their secularism and projecting the need for Muslims and SCs/STs/OBCs to have their own parties to project their interest.”
