Munambam Waqf land row snowballs into political issue amid by-elections in Kerala
Union Minister Suresh Gopi recently met the 610 families of Munambam village who are protesting against the Waqf board's claim over their land.
Prof TJ Joseph, whose palm was chopped off allegedly by Popular Front of India (PFI) workers in 2010 has stated that RSS can’t be compared with the PFI.
In an interview given to a news agency published in a national daily the other day Prof Joseph, who is described as the first victim of the PFI’s atrocities, said that the RSS is a nationalist organisation with a fierce love for the country, with its culture and its yearning to make our great nation one of the best in the world and RSS could not be equated with the PFI.
When the interviewer of the news agency said ‘after the Popular Front was banned, there is an ecosystem developing in Kerala and the rest of the country that the PFI and RSS are two sides of the same coin and the RSS should also have been banned’ and asked for his comment on this, Prof. Joseph said, “How can you equate a nationalist organisation like the RSS with the Popular Front of India? The RSS is a nationalist organisation with a fierce love for the country, with its culture and its yearning to make our great nation one of the best in the world.”
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The Popular Front is having a different viewpoint and everyone knows what they have done here. The chargesheet given during the ban is itself a clear pointer as to what they were up to.”
On 4 July 2010, when Prof. Joseph along with his family was returning home after attending the Holy Sunday services at a nearby church in his hometown Muvattupuzha, a group of eight men in an Omni van waylaid him, blocked his car, dragged him out, and chopped off his right palm.
The reason for the chopping of the palm was a question paper Joseph prepared for the second-year B. Com students of Newman College in which the alleged PFI workers claimed he had used derogatory words against Prophet Mohammed. Following this, Joseph was sacked from the college by the Christian management. Later, his wife, Salomi committed suicide in 2014.
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