I AND MY WORDS

Popular Front of India's Pamphlet Spreading Radicalism (courtesy: ANI ) (Warning - Long Read) News cycles this week are claiming to be horrified about the Popular Front of India (PFI) being caught training people in dealing with weapons and its pamphlet for making India an Islamic nation by 2047. However, those who have followed the organization know very well that there is nothing new about this. I had in the wake of the Delhi Riots of 2020 pointed out the troublesome body that is PFI. The very umbrella of a radical ideology, the disturbing signs about the origanization have been all too clear for the observers. In this long essay, written and published in different parts in 2020 and now compiled for the first time, I present my observations of that time, which have only been further reaffirmed. There is only one solution - ban the organization. Unlike the mistakes made at the time of the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), the intelligence network is far more equipped and...

(Courtesy: India TV) The Indian government’s decision to put 59 applications originating from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has literally sliced through the Chinese economic propaganda of ‘interdependence and harmony’ that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its propaganda arms, especially Global Times has been boasting about since the soldiers’ clash in the Galwan valley. This hits the Chinese where it hurts them the most, since these application developers and software companies represent the high-end Chinese software and hardware prowess that was being used to project CCP’s soft power push of an advanced hi-tech society, an alternative to the democratic virtues and ideals that mean so much to countries like India. One must bear in mind that this step has not come out in isolation. Concerns about Chinese apps have been doing the rounds for months on a stretch now, with politicos and people alike raising questions on privacy concerns arising from them. Policy experts have not...

Image Courtesy (DNA) As the Delhi Police filed a chargesheet in the court with respect to the mayhem resulting from the Delhi Violence, the name of the organization Popular Front of India (PFI) has come up once again. Given this context,  I decided to look at the PFI and its history, and found a disturbing picture of Islamist supremacy emerging, with uncomfortable questions on its activities within India, its troublesome origins, and promoting religious bigotry. Troubling Origins of the PFI As per the website of the PFI, the organization came into existence after the merger of the Karnataka Forum for Dignity (KFD) of Karnataka, National Development Front (NDF) of Kerala, and Manitha Neethi Pasarai (MNP) of Tamil Nadu) among other after the a National Convention on Reservation in Higher Education was organized jointly with All India Milli Council at New Delhi on 29th August 2006. Once the leadership of these organizations decided to merge for better coordination among t...