Playing with fire

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) or the Islamic State (IS), as it currently calls itself, controls hundreds of kilometres of territory from Syria’s Mediterranean coast to the south of Baghdad. It is a chilling reminder that even in today’s day and age a non-state actor can physically capture and hold territory while ignoring or erasing national distinctions.

However, what is more perturbing is the radical Islamic theology that underscores its ideological basis that makes it an existential threat to European multi-culturalism to its West and the syncretic Indian ethos to the East.

For many centuries ascetic forms of Islam have held sway across the desert lands of the Greater Middle East. They were unable spread beyond its territorial confines as there were strong civilisational buffers on either side in addition to the moderating and modernising impulses at play within the region itself.

However, the desire of the Western powers to once again re-order the Middle East has bared the deep faultlines that run through the region. It has allowed the lava of religious and sectarian differences to violently bubble up to the surface.

In the process a number of European countries, with predominantly Muslim populations, have estranged themselves from public opinion as a consequence of their participation in operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, other parts of the Middle East and North Africa. Muslim citizens have not taken very kindly to these engagements. Evidence of this is emerging in the form of sporadic attacks in various countries. The attack on the Jewish Museum of Belgium, in Brussels, by a terrorist who had returned from Syria is a case in point.

The German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution estimates that over 300 Islamists from that country alone have gone to Syria. A number of them have returned with combat experience. Nato ally Turkey is also in the cross hairs of the ISIS. With Al Qaeda veterans from Afghanistan and Pakistan regrouping in Syria under the tutelage of the so-called Khorasan group, the possibility of high visibility terrorist assaults has increased significantly.

The European Union has started conferring as to how border controls within the Schengen zone can be beefed up to screen travellers. It invited representatives of social networking companies, including Twitter, Facebook and Google, to the EU interior minister’s meeting in Luxembourg to help develop a counter narrative that can deprive the ISIS of its exceedingly effectual and exploitative use of the Internet. There is a growing realisation that the most effective ballast to radicalisation is the prevention of further alienation, especially among minority populations.

Moving towards the East, India was able to withstand three decades of proxy war unleashed by Pakistan because the bonds and threads between communities remained strong notwithstanding the stresses and strains that cross-border terrorism imposed upon them. However, even these ties have now started wilting and falling apart at the seams.

The principle reason is that three decades of the politics of polarisation has now come home to roost. It all commenced way back in the second half of the Eighties, with the campaign started by the current ruling party to demolish the Babri Mosque and build a temple in its place. A climate of hate and distrust was perpetrated. It culminated in the demolition of the Babri Masjid in December 1992. These actions laid the foundations of estrangement, alienation and polarisation and not essentially in that order.

While wounds of the Eighties and Nineties were still raw, the Gujarat pogrom of 2002 was unleashed on a hapless minority with the active collusion of the then state government. This was followed by the killings of innocent Muslim boys and girls in police encounters, encounters admitted to as fake by the Gujarat government in affidavit before the highest court of the land.

The silver lining on this otherwise ominous cloud was that there was a secular government in office for 10 years at the Centre. It gave a sense of reassurance to the minorities that there was an institutional commitment to the doctrine of pluralism and equality. This changed in the May of 2014 with the emergence of India’s first Right-wing government since Independence that is wedded to the politics of revivalism. From the day it assumed office, the Bharatiya Janata Party has been attempting to instil a sense of insecurity among the minorities in an orchestrated and calibrated manner. Whether it is articulating the need for the repeal of Article 370, exhortations for a Uniform Civil Code, statements that minorities should consider themselves as second-rate citizens, or the vile campaign against “love jihad”, all are attempts to morph India into a de facto Hindu state.

What the government and its politico-cultural instrumentalities seem to be oblivious of is the extremely radicalised region we live in and that their rhetoric is no longer perceived as the raving and ranting of a fringe but has the force of the state behind it. Each utterance, therefore, only reinforces the sense of estrangement among the minorities.

This is where the ISIS fits in and why it may pose a real existential threat to India unlike in the past when Pakistan’s proxy war, the Al Qaeda or even the Indian Mujahideen all failed. Given the reach and the efficacious use of the Internet as a conscripting tool by terrorist organisations, it becomes easy to influence impressionable young minds when they juxtapose the narrative of persecution and ignominy with the bigoted and prejudiced approach of this government in an ostensibly representative democracy.

A decade earlier, in 2001, the US went after Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. But it will not pull the chestnuts out of the fire by going after the ISIS. Its attempts to de-fang the ISIS will be at best halfhearted if not perfunctory. As things stand, the ISIS would continue to hold large areas of ungoverned space that would provide both the launch pad and a safe haven for terrorists and their operations.

Unlike Europe that is walking the extra mile to rejuvenate the culture of pluralism, the current Indian government is falling over itself to enhance alienation, thereby providing a fertile ground to every extremist who wants to tear the idea of India asunder. This government is sowing the wind; the nation will have to reap the whirlwind.

The writer is a lawyer and a former Union
minister. The views expressed are personal. Twitter handle
@manishtewari