Why do they want to Islamise Kerala?

By John Cheeran
Comrade VS Achuthanandan has finally blurted out the truth. He said in New Delhi the other day that the Muslim fundamentalist organization Popular Front of India has plans to convert Kerala into a Muslim-majority state in 20 years and is using money and love to achieve its aim.
Now, obviously, truth has few takers.
And Muslims in Kerala are mighty upset at the statement of VS Achuthanandan.
But why should they?
Shouldn’t they be happy at the thought that in the next 20 years Kerala will truly become Allah’s Own Country with rest of the Kerala converting into Islam?
Crescent will replace hammer and sickle. Paradise, Period.
Can any devout, God-fearing Muslim be unhappy about such a scenario?
Think of it, Kerala will be a Saudi Arabia without desert! The variety of mind-boggling burqas that one can lech at gives me goose bumps.
E Ahmed, minister of state for railways in Union cabinet and a Muslim League MP, says Achuthandan’s statement is meant to create communal divide in the state. In an edit-page article written for Mathrubhumi, Muslim League leader P Kunhalikutty has called Achuthanandan a communalist.
Muslim leaders, especially that of Indian Union Muslim League (think of it, can there be any more fundamentalist party name in Indian democracy than the IUML?), are saying that as the chief minister of the state VS should not have said what he said.
What has VS said?
He has only shared the information the Kerala Police have ferreted out especially after the Taliban attack on Professor TJ Joseph. Literature seized during raids at the offices and homes of Popular Front members clearly show the Islamisation agenda at work in the state. Muslim youth are encouraged to take the path of Love Jihad to marry girls from other religions and produce as many kids as possible.
The Times of India report quotes VS: “The outfit (Popular Front) was attempting to do this by influencing youth of other religion and converting them by giving money, marrying them to Muslim women and thus producing kids of the community.”
A chief minister is duty bound to speak out against such a divisive agenda.
Kerala’s Muslim community should introspect what is happening within its fold. Popular Front is not a right wing Hindu organization. All its members swear by Koran. They have turned some of the mosques in the state, if not all, into magazines. When police seize weapons from masjids and madrasas, shouldn’t the Muslim community be alarmed?
And this has been happening for the last many years.
LeT South India commander and Bangalore blasts accused Tadiyantavide Nazeer had told his interrogators that the plan was to Islamize the state by 2050. Also in August 2009, the Kerala High Court had asked the police to investigate charges that there was a racket operating in the state which aimed at luring youth to Islam by feigning love.
From North Kerala, Muslim youth went to Kashmir to be part of the Jihad against the government of India. IUML workers, a few years ago, hoisted the Muslim League flag at the Kozhikode international airport. These are facts, not cooked-up charges.
Every time a Muslim youth get caught in terrorism related charges, the propaganda is that the state is on a witch hunt against the community. If there were sensible leaders within the community, they would have urged its members not to pursue the narrow, divisive and destructive agenda in the name of Koran and Islam.
In Kerala, Muslims are a powerful community. It has access to everything that that state provides as much as other communities in the state. So what’s the Muslim community’s grouse? Why do they want to chop off kafir hands? Why are they involved in havala deals? Why do they want to Talibanise Kerala?
It is an utterly lame response to say that Popular Front is a fringe group and one should ignore them. In fact, it is not. Is Jamat Islami a fringe group? No. In fact, even among Muslims, there is utter confusion about which is the lunatic fringe, and which is not.
Is Abdul Nasar Madani’s People’s Democratic Party a fringe group? Is he a fundamentalist? There have to be answers for such questions.
Every time investigations expose terrorist and other nefarious links among Muslim members in the state, the community leadership shies away from confronting the truth. It’s time it engaged with reality.
If anyone harbours fantasies of altering Kerala’s cultural and demographic map, if not today, there will be a backlash tomorrow. And it would be worse than Gujarat. I hope better sense will prevail among those who swear by the fantasies of Shariath.

Popular Front wants Islamic Kerala: VS (The Times of India Report)

Editor's note: The Sunday Times of India carried this report in all its editions across India on July 25, 2010

TIMES NEWS NETWORK
Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala chief minister VS Achutanandan dropped a bombshell on Saturday alleging that the Popular Front of India had plans to convert the state into a Muslim-majority one in 20 years and was using money and love to achieve its aim.
Speaking to reporters in New Delhi, VS slammed the PFI, which is alleged to have masterminded the attack on Kerala college lecturer T J Joseph accused of hurting Muslim sentiments.
The PFI, VS stated, was trying to multiply Muslim numbers in the state and believed that Kerala would be a Muslim-majority state after 20 years. “The outfit was attempting to do this by influencing youth of other religion and converting them by giving money, marrying them to Muslim women and thus producing kids of the community,” the chief minister claimed.
The statement of the chief minister has i nv i t e d sharp reaction from the PFI. Its state-unit p re s i d e n t N a s a r u d - deen Elam a r a m said, “The charges are baseless and not suited to the CM’s office. It will only aid communal polarisation in Kerala. This is to get Hindu votes. The CPM leadership should clarify if this is the official view of the party.”
Achutanandan’s comments gain significance given that LeT South India commander and Bangalore blasts accused Tadiyantavide Nazeer had told his interrogators that the plan was to Islamize the state by 2050. Also in August 2009, the Kerala High Court had asked the police to investigate charges that there was a racket operating in the state which aimed at luring youth to Islam by feigning love.

Birla, Ambani and Achuthanandan

By John Cheeran
Despite Monsoon, Kerala’s current political climate remains hot. Anti-bourgeoisie grandstanding is a box-office hit there. CPI (M)’s Chief Minister incumbent V.S. Achuthanadan is against the rich and might in Kerala.
Achuthanandan has been declaiming that Ambani’s Reliance will not be welcomed in Kerala to open their retail chain. V S wants to get applause from the thousands of retailers in Kerala who act as obscurantist middlemen as far as consumers are concerned. And these retailers rarely contribute to the tax kitty.
Once Reliance comes to Kerala, these retailers will have to shut their shops, though it will take a long time to happen such a thing. Consumers will and should get a better value from for their money from hypermarkets such as Reliance is planning.
To oppose such business ventures, as Achuthanandan and his acolytes are doing, is not good Communism or good economics. I’m afraid that CPI (M) secretary Pinaryi Vijayan can, for once, see eye-to-eye with his bete noire on handcuffing Anil Ambani.
But is that the course the LDF, and CPI (M) in particular, must be adopting when Kerala is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first democratically elected Communist government in the world?
Let me remind comrades that EMS Namboodiripad as Chief Minister of Kerala in 1957 wooed north Indian industrialists to set shops in the state. EMS always believed in subjecting the society to the hammer blows of industrialization, ostensibly to advance the class struggle. But the point is that EMS also wanted Kerala to prosper and to that end he was willing to set aside puerile dogmas. Comrades did not hesitate to woo the private sector in 1957.
Let me quote from Sarvepalli Gopal’s biography of Jawaharlal Nehru, volume 3.
“Curiously what gave the planning commission concern was that the state government appeared to be unduly favouring the private sector. The Birla group was given permission to set up a wood-pulp plant, and plans were drawn up to invite a private company to construct a refinery for the manufacture of lubricating oil, in contravention of the industrial policy of the Government of India. There was, in fact little that was Communist in the official activities of the state ministry and even the Communist Party disapproved of some provisions of the agreement with the Birla Group.”
Ah, how I wish VS Achuthanandan abandoned his phoney ideological posturing and build on the advantages that Kerala has.