PFI is not as clean as it claims; the truth is that it hides behind a carefully constructed veil

Fans of psychological thrillers rate Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde as one of the best novellas ever written. The story published in 1886 by RL Stevenson is about Dr Jekyll, a gentleman, and Mr Hyde a murderous criminal, and a series of murders that shook society. It turns out that Jekyll and Hyde are the same person with Jekyll transforming into Hyde with the help of a chemical concoction. A real-life drama of the Jekyll and Hyde genre is being staged in India with the Popular Front of India and the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI) as the main characters. The SDPI is the political face of PFI, a terrorist organisation that is responsible for murder and mayhem in the many States of India. Nobody was surprised when the National Investigation Agency and Enforcement Directorate swept down on the leaders of the PFI and SDPI across the country on Thursday and arrested nearly 100 prominent faces of these outfits. The PFI called for a hartal in Kerala last Friday to protest against the raids and arrests of its establishments and leaders respectively. Unlike the previous hartals, the one on Friday turned out to be the most violent.

Police looked the other way when the Popular Front of India workers damaged the Karnataka SRTC buses and made shopkeepers down the shutters. Shop owners who refused to heed the hartal call saw their shops and establishments getting destroyed. Policemen were attacked and there were a couple of attempts on the lives of policemen who were on patrol. It was the suomoto intervention of the Kerala High Court which made the police take action against the hartal mongers. Strangely, neither chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan nor the Opposition Congress were heard condemning the widespread rioting by the PFI activists. The recent rallies staged by the PFI and which were attended by lakhs of activists stand out for the kind of slogans raised by the participants. All one could say is that they were despicable of the highest order. The SDPI, the political arm of the PFI plays a double game by washing its hands off the words and deeds of the latter. This is a ploy to facilitate the growth of the PFI, an organisation known for its religious bigotry. There is no space in Indian society for organisations that promote religious hatred and communal divide. It is time we identified real cancer that is eating up the age-old Indian psyche.