The Uttar Pradesh police claims that the anti-Citizenship
(Amendment) Act protests in the state were engineered by the Kerala-based
radical Islamist organisation, PFI (Popular Front of India). That claim,
however, runs into several serious logical inconsistencies and difficulties,
raising doubts on its veracity.
The violence left at least 19 people dead and nearly 300
policeman injured (the UP DGP has claimed many of them have firearm injuries).
Over 1,000 people have been arrested for their alleged involvement and over 100
notices have been issued for recovery of damages to public property.
The police have arrested PFI’s state head Wasim, besides 25 workers, and
sought a ban on the outfit from the Union home ministry. For all we know, the
claim of their involvement might be true. However, if it is indeed so, the
question is what the state intelligence department and the Intelligence Bureau
were doing all these years. How is it that the PFI – which until last year was
believed to have a strong presence only in Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and
Rajasthan, with links in states such as Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Assam, West
Bengal and Jharkhand – has developed such an effective organisation and
resources in UP, while the intelligence community remained blissfully unaware?
Let us face it, if the PFI has been able to mastermind, instigate and
organise violent protests on such a large scale, both in terms of their
geographical spread and intensity, this requires several prerequisites. First,
they would need a huge organisation with considerable outreach. A few masterminds,
however intelligent they be, would find it extremely difficult to pull off such
a feat using, say, their mobile phones, and sitting in some office or in a
university, as the police claim.
The intelligence agencies obviously had no idea of PFI’s organisational spread
and capacity before the violence, or they had grossly underestimated it. If
they claim that they knew about it, they would be guilty of an act of omission
in not having taken action against them before they could strike.
Second, PFI must have had a very large number of workers, supporters or
conscious sympathisers across the state. After all, during the violence, people
came out on the streets in large numbers. If the claim of the riots having been
‘organised’ is true, it would follow that these were not spontaneous rioters.
It is difficult to believe that the PFI could have had such a hypnotic mass
appeal amongst the people that the mere mention of its name or views by word of
mouth was enough to galvanise men disinterested until yesterday into rioting
and arson.
Third, it requires considerable time to develop such an organisation and
capacity to motivate people on a large scale. We cannot expect an organisation,
however great, to be able to organise riots in several places on short notice.
This means that PFI must have been preparing and conspiring for quite some
time. Obviously, the intelligence agencies were blissfully unaware all along.
If they say that they were aware, the question would be why did they not do
anything to prevent it.
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