SIMI seen in true colours

Author: Editorial
Publication: The Organiser
Date: October 7, 2001

The Union Home Ministry's long overdue ban on the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) has come at an appropriate time. The Islamic set-up that followed a hardline militant posture on all issues concerning Islam and Muslims was put on the watch-list by the Government for long. SIMI's pan-Islamic links were no secret. Closely associated with the Riyadh based World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) and International Islamic Federation of Students Organisation, in recent years the SIMI had established active links with the students wings of Jamat-e-Islami of Pakistan. The outfit also had plans to strengthen its base in Bangladesh and Nepal. Needless to say, these links were worked out with a view to infiltrating into the political set-up of these countries and gain considerable influence in the portals of power. SIMI activists were trained to take over and wield control over various Islamic organisations in the country and among neighbouring countries. Money and material never seemed to be a problem for this outfit. SIMI activists were involved in several subversive activities and violence in many places in the country including planting explosives outside RSS headquarters in Nagpur. Going by the similarities in the bomb blasts and other subversive activities all around, it is not difficult to find evidences to prove the hand of SIMI in many such incidents. Several terrorist outfits like the Kerala-based National Democratic Front and the Islamic Youth Centre and the TMMK operating in Tamil Nadu are virtually run by the SIMI. The NDF that shot into prominence during post-Ayodhya years by circulating distorted maps of India without J&K was the main perpetrator of atrocities against Hindus in Kerala. This SIMI controlled outfit was instrumental in arranging the visit of Hurriyat leaders in Kerala during the Left regime. Besides these nefarious activities, one big business of SIMI and related organisations is to scout for donors in the Gulf and build huge mosques and madarsas and some of them have become the havens to carry out nefarious activities. Thousands of such ostensibly religious centres have come up all over the country, especially in the Left ruled states and border areas. The arms training that SIMI activists are reported to have received in Pakistan was on display in the streets of Uttar Pradesh when after the ban, SIMI activists attacked police personnel. Nothing new, if one were to study the pattern of the so-called communal riots in the country over the years. In case after case, be it the infamous Mumbai riots or the Hubli flag riots (where a group of Muslims objected to use a municipal ground for unfurling the tricolour on Republic Day) only to name a few, it was found that there have been pitched battles with the police. And as has always been the case, predictably, the self-styled human right leftists would fill newspaper columns with anti-India comments that would put some of the Pakistani papers to shame. Those who rush to extend support to the banned SIMI should sit and think, if any positive thinking still exists in their working methods about the nation. Political support to a communal fundamentalist terrorist organisation will amount to sowing the seeds of yet another Partition. The political parties and persons should stand warned that any attempt to fish in troubled water would recoil badly on them because 1947 and 2001 are different in many ways. One hopes that the Centre keeps a keen watch on those elements also who fan communal conflagration with a myopic view of Muslim vote-bank. SIMI is the Indian version of Taliban (literally meaning students). Those forces which are readying to take on the Taliban in their fight against terrorism should take note of such mini Talibans all over India and elsewhere.
 

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