India Has
a Perverted Democracy For Muslims Which Invites Al-Qaeda
By
Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar
SOME TIME ago, the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman
posed the question, why do Muslims join Al-Qaeda in so many Arab
countries but not in India? The answer, he said, lay in India
being a secular democracy.
In
autocracies across the Arab world, protest against local oppressors
was sublimated into protest against the US, seen as the power
propping up the autocrats. This trend was strengthened by the
autocrats suppressing any local press criticism of themselves,
while tacitly encouraging criticism of the US (even in supposedly
pro-US countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt). Thus the autocrats
cleverly diverted local protest from themselves to the US, and
in the process stoked international terrorism.
But
India, said Friedman, was a secular democracy where Muslims could
give free vent to their grievances. In this milieu of freedom,
not even aggrieved Muslims became terrorists. Similar encomiums
have been paid to India by other analysts, and by US Deputy Secretary
of State Richard Armitage. I am sure this made many Indians feel
very good.
Alas,
we must reject this as a myth that may have been true at some
time, but has ceased to be true after the Gujarat riots last year.
Bomb blasts by Muslim terrorists with international connections
now occur in several states, no longer just in Kashmir or Gujarat.
In
the past nine months, Mumbai alone has been at the receiving end
of seven bomb blasts, culminating in the horrendous two on August
25. The suburb of Ghatkopar has witnessed two attacks, Mulund
railway station suffered a major blast on March 13 when 12 people
died, and other blasts took place near Vile Parle station (January
27) and Mumbai Central station (December 6, 2002). So, the latest
blasts on August 25 were not an exceptional outrage, they were
part of a continuing pattern of terrorist attacks. Al-Qaeda is
already here.
For
a long time, most Indians have regarded Muslim terrorism in India
as something without local roots, and basically manipulated by
foreigners. In Kashmir, officials are fond of saying that local
home-bred insurgency was tamed a long time ago, and the militants
operating are Pakistani or international Islamic outfits like
the Lashkar-e-Toiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed and Harkat-ul Ansar.
But
after the recent blasts in Mumbai and other parts of India, we
must abandon this dubious theory, and acknowledge frankly that
Muslims in many parts of India have joined terrorist groups that
have intimate links with some of the most feared international
groups.
The
1993 Mumbai blasts could be explained away as the work of the
Muslim underworld led by Dawood Ibrahim. But the latest blasts
involve Muslim doctors, engineers, computer professionals and
even MBAs. No longer can we explain away bomb blasts as the work
of foreigners or the underground. The problem has now spread to
the Muslim mainstream, including highly educated and sophisticated
Muslims.
This
is not the result of fundamentalist preachers misleading gullible
Muslims. It is the outcome of the crassest Hindu outrages in Gujarat.
These were the first communal riots to be captured live on TV,
and so they had a far deeper impact than any previous conflagrations.
The unabashed communal hate displayed by sundry Hindus on TV must
have infuriated the most moderate Muslims.
In
this atmosphere, fundamentalist groups that earlier failed to
enthuse Indian Muslims are now attracting sizable numbers. The
police have named the Tablighi Jamaat and Ahle Hadis among the
organizations recruiting Muslim militants, and these bodies have
links with the Wahabi groups that gave rise to Osama bin Laden.
Osama also has links with the Lashkar and Jaish. These feared
outfits are no longer confined to Kashmir but are gaining ground
among Muslim communities in several parts of India.
Let
me not exaggerate. The overwhelming majority of Muslims still
steer clear of terrorism. But no longer can we claim that our
secular democracy tames terrorist tendencies. The Gujarat riots
showed that neither democracy nor secular institutions like the
police and courts provided protection or redress. The party that
spearheaded the mass murder was re-elected with a huge majority.
India
has a moth-eaten, perverted form of democracy that looks as oppressive
to some Muslims as the worst autocracies of the Middle East. The
same sort of outraged Muslims that strike at American civilian
targets are now striking at Indian ones. Al-Qaeda is not a formal,
centralized movement controlled by Osama. It is a loose network
of autonomous militant units spread across the globe. After 9/11,
the US State Department reckoned that the network was active in
23 countries. India can now be added to the list.
Brute
force alone cannot solve the problem. We must revamp our democratic
and secular institutions to provide protection and redressal to
all groups. We need this not to earn praise from the New York
Times but for our own pride and safety.
The
writer is a well known Indian columnist
