KOZHIKODE: The Youth League of the IUML has triggered a controversy by directing its cadre to ‘unfriend’ SDPI workers from their FB groups and individual pages.
This follows the efforts of the Social Democratic Party of India to convert social networking forums into ideological battlegrounds and get a foothold among the Muslim population by grabbing a share from the IUML followers.
An irate SDPI leadership retaliated by saying that the YL leadership was afraid of the ideological campaign and called for social ostracism of its workers at all venues, including online.
It may be recalled that IUML has been fighting against the infiltration of ‘extremist’ elements into it for the last many decades. The Youth League leadership is worried about the fiery debates triggered by the SDPI cadre on FB forums leading to ideological confusion and communal polarisation.
The Youth League, at the various state-level and regional meetings of its workers, had warned the party cadre of playing second fiddle to the SDPI unknowingly. Youth League state president P.M. Sadiq Ali told Deccan Chronicle that the move was to keep such venomous elements away from the online circles of its cadre. “We have asked the cadre to follow the same strategy with the RSS cadre to avoid fruitless exchange of fire and fury through debates,” he added.
“Our cadre have a wide friendship base cutting across religious barriers and when the SDPI cadre post messages of hatred on the walls of our members, that would result in communal polarisation,” he said.
“We have been facing the issue for quite some time as there are families in which a son may be a member of the SDPI while the majority would be in the mass organisations of IUML. Our call for the boycott of SDPI workers is limited to online forums, and not in family or social circles”, Mr Ali said.
“We had declared such elements as dangerous like the Hindutva fundamentalists,” said IUML leader Kutti Ahmed Kutti.
