On Friday, when the Popular Front of India (PFI) observed a violence-ridden flash hartal in Kerala to protest the nationwide clampdown on over 100 of its top leaders by the National Investigation Agency (NIA), along with the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the local police the previous day, the message it wanted to send across was loud and clear.
“Come to the streets face-to-face sans the NIA and the ED if you’ve got guts,” a speaker at a march taken out by the PFI in Ernakulam on the hartal day dared the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), amidst loud cheers.
Such sloganeering against the Hindutva forces and their perceived non-Muslim accomplices is typical of the PFI. Video footage of a minor boy raising communally loaded slogans, as he sat on the shoulders of a man at a ‘Save the Republic’ rally taken out by the PFI in Kerala’s Alappuzha district in May this year, had raised the hackles of the court and the general public.
