Southern States - Kerala-Thiruvananthapuram   

DYFI plans 'secular family gatherings'

By Our Special Correspondent

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM June 4. The Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) is organising 25,000 `secular family gatherings' across the State on June 22 to oppose religious extremism and communal fascism.

The DYFI State president, P.R. Vasanthan, and the secretary, A Pradeep Kumar, told a press conference here today that the family gatherings were being organised in the context of attempts by the RSS-BJP-VHP combine and the National Development Front (NDF) to create sharp communal divisions in Kerala society in the name of the Marad violence.

Terming the killing of nine persons at Marad by Muslim extremists as most gruesome, they said the Sangh Parivar forces were engaged in a mischievous enterprise to whip up communal passion in the name of the killings. Urns purportedly bearing the ashes of those killed at Marad were being taken around in processions and gatherings of Hindu families being organised to carry forward the communalisation campaign. Around 500 Muslim families, including several innocent women and children, had been driven out of the Marad beach and the area converted into an RSS-control enclave.

On the other side, the Muslim extremists including NDF were turning mosques into arms dumps. The Muslim League cannot evade responsibility for the rapid spread of extremist tendencies in the community. The police had arrested a local Muslim League functionary following the Marad violence and seized arms from the mosques at Marad and Cherumoth. Several of those caught with deadly weapons were League workers. The Muslim League and Muslim Youth League were putting up a show of anti-extremist campaign without initiating action against such elements, they said.

They claimed that no DYFI worker was involved in the violence at Marad.

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