The M-deal

The terror attacks in Bangalore and Ahmedabad and other recent bombs in other places seem to be indicating home-brewed radicalisation. If that8217;s the case, we need to understand, we need to talk about the politics that informs this radicalisation. But that8217;s difficult when the government of the day makes a dreadful political error by convincing itself that talking about this is more dangerous than terrorism. One error leads to another: the current political establishment8217;s refusal to acknowledge that terrorism may have been evolving in India does the most harm to those very Indians whom politicians seek to 8220;protect8221;.

Indian Muslims need certificates from no one 8212; but they keep getting them whenever India and radicalised Islam are discussed. They also get politicians claiming to have a special understanding of how 150 million-plus Indians are thinking and then enlisting their support in a manner that suggests these politicians have very little respect for them. Therefore, the government shows Muslim citizens very little respect when it treats as taboo the question whether some young citizens are getting radicalised without too much help from a cross-border or a transnational hand.

The assumption that a debate or a discussion about the possibility of homegrown terrorism will affect Indian Muslims is shown up to be particularly grotesque when you consider that provocations created by possibly homegrown terrorism haven8217;t succeeded. From the Ayodhya attack in 2005 to Ahmedabad now, there8217;s been no communal fallout. Undoubtedly, there are people who wished an act of terror could be leveraged into a nice little riot. But there has been no community profiling at the popular level. Not even in Narendra Modi8217;s Gujarat. Modi has been praised by nearly everyone for having changed his style and substance of administration. The question then is, if Narendra Modi can change why can8217;t the Congress?

Why is the Congress caught in this bind of its own making? As has been evident during the UPA8217;s term, no one is communalising terrorism. But the government appears to communalise the response against terrorism. The Congress rightly ignored the rubbish about the so-called Muslim opposition to the nuclear deal. In parliamentary debates, Muslim MPs supporting the trust vote motion asked why politicians think they can casually say Muslims are against the deal while they never ascribe such collective, herd-like sentiments to other communities. The Congress8217;s cool dismissal of the false but apparently politically sensitive proposition about Muslims and the nuclear deal was very fine politics 8212; it did India and Indian Muslims a power of good. It would not be too much to say that the Congress8217;s handling of this aspect of the nuclear deal politics has freed foreign policy from the fear of a communal veto. No such luck for internal security, though.

Shivraj Patil makes it easy to blame Shivraj Patil. But notwithstanding the home minister8217;s heroic efforts to not provide clear, firm leadership to security efforts he is still the symbol, not the cause, of the Congress8217;s political failure. The party8217;s top brass is implicated in this. We can only conclude that the Congress leadership is terribly afraid that its political product cannot be differentiated from the BJP8217;s as far as internal security goes. The BJP8217;s anti-nuclear deal politics was based on somewhat similar apprehensions 8212; the party will look like the Congress. The BJP is paying for that kind of politics. How does the Congress assume it won8217;t pay, especially when the issue of citizens8217; protection is electorally more marketable than global nuclear status?

It is already evident that the government8217;s approach to the question of homegrown radicals is affecting security work. If the problem is not officially recognised the ability of security agencies to operate on a scale required to combat diffused groups in a big country is severely restricted.

India has been in these kinds of conflicts before 8212; groups of young Indians have contested the state8217;s and democratic polity8217;s ideas about legitimate rules of engagement. Punjab militancy, Naxalite liquidations, portions of Northeast violence, they are all examples of citizens-state confrontation. The communities, the regions and the idea of India have survived these confrontations, sometimes they have been strengthened. So India and Indian Muslims are perfectly capable of talking about and then trying to meet the challenges of any Islamic radicalisation at home. But the Congress seems to have little faith in the country which it always says it knows best.

The terrorists know this. They may not have been able to provoke the people so far, they may have even failed in Modi8217;s Gujarat but they have the Congress-led government where they want it: keeping quiet and therefore letting their politics trump our politics.

saubhik.chakrabartiexpressindia.com