A spate of recent deadly bomb blasts across the country, the latest being in New Delhi, has only further reinforced the tendency to view Muslims solely within a real or imagined ‘security’ lens. One does not quite know who exactly the perpetrators of these dastardly acts really were. Speculation continues to be rife, and various theories abound. Some accuse Islamist radicals owing allegiance to the banned Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). Others blame disgruntled Muslims seeking revenge for the massacre and hounding of their co-religionists in Gujarat and elsewhere. Yet others blame Hindutva forces or various intelligence agencies. It is also possible that all these elements could be separately involved in planning and carrying out various terror attacks. However, the ‘mainstream’ Indian media and intelligence agencies continue to focus entirely on Muslims as prime suspects, giving a clean chit to Hindutva forces who are known to be actively engaged in promoting anti-Muslim (and, as now in Orissa and Karnataka, anti-Christian) violence and even in acts of terror which they have sought to pass off as engineered by Muslims.
A public hearing that I attended in Hyderabad last month provided a glimpse of the terrorizing of innocent Muslims in states ruled both by the Congress and the BJP who have been falsely accused of being engaged in various terrorist activities. As their testimonies suggest, elements within the state apparatus as well as Hindutva forces are actively engaged in a witch-hunt against innocent Muslims in the name of combating terrorism. Muslims are already heavily marginalized in terms of almost all socio-economic indicators. They are routine victims of violence by the police and Hindutva forces on an ever mounting scale, and have continually been denied justice by the state. Clearly, such hounding of innocent Muslims who have nothing to do with terrorism can only make the 150-million strong community further insular, ghettoized, insecure and lose complete hope in the system. The ominous implications of that for peace in the country and for communal harmony and peace are obvious.
If the state is truly concerned about curbing terrorism, it ought to adopt an even-handed approach to the issue. Hounding of innocent Muslims must stop, and all elements proven to be responsible for terror attacks, no matter what their religious or communal affiliation—Muslim, Hindu or other—must be dealt with sternly according to the law. Continuing to turn a blind eye to terror being unleashed by Hindutva groups or the police must cease, for it can only further embolden these elements to act with complete impunity, spreading murder and mayhem on an increasingly menacing scale, and leading to a probably never-ending spiral of attacks and counter-attacks that can threaten to destroy the country.
As mentioned above, the possibility of some Muslims, including those associated with some fringe radical Islamist outfits, being behind some of the blasts that India has witnessed in recent years cannot be ruled out. All the Muslims I know condemn such violence and insist that even if the perpetrators of some of these terror acts are Muslims, they deserve the sternest punishment, for such acts are against the law and Islam. They are also against the interests of the wider Muslim community, for they only further embolden and strengthen Hindutva forces and their anti-Muslim agenda. They point out that as a consequence of bomb attacks which have been, rightly or wrongly, attributed to Muslims, anti-Muslim prejudice in India has assumed frightening proportions, forcing Muslim groups to focus much of their energies simply on trying (generally, in vain) to counter anti-Muslim propaganda rather than on community development and empowerment. One indicator of this unfortunate development is how the findings and recommendations of the Sachar Commission Report about Muslim marginalisation and the need for state initiative to address the issue have now been effectively banished from public discourse, even in Muslim circles, as the issue of terrorism has taken centre-stage. It is for this reason that many suspect that some of the blasts we have witnessed in recent years might actually have been engineered by fiercely anti-Muslim elements, who clearly stand to gain from the enormous Islamophobia that these attacks have generated, for they de-legitimise Muslim demands on the state, further reinforce the demonisation of Muslims, widen the communal divide and enable Hindutva forces to whip up a fear psychosis among Hindus on a massive scale and thereby garner their votes.
At the same time as stern action must be taken according to law against the real perpetrators of the blasts, no matter what their communal affiliation, the struggle must continue against the ideologies that inform and impel terrorism in its various forms. True spirituality and humanism demand that we do so. It is for Hindus to denounce the hate-driven ideology of the Sangh, and for Muslims to declare that the venomous and completely bizarre theology of groups like the SIMI, based on the vacuous notion of a global Khilafat and ‘Islamic’ imperialism and predicated on a blind hatred of people of other faiths, is a complete distortion of their faith.
Ultimately, however, the struggle against terrorism can only succeed if it is linked to the broader struggle for social justice. Terrorism, as the Indian case shows, can stem from the perception of persecution and denial of justice (for instance, the possibility of some Muslims taking to terrorism angered by the lack of justice to the community or driven by a quest for revenge). It can also as serve as a means for hegemonic elites to clamp down on struggles for justice on the part of subaltern groups (for instance, some would argue that Hindutva terror against Muslims and Christians is driven largely by a desperate urge on the part of ‘upper’ caste elites to clamp down on the struggles for justice of Dalits and other oppressed castes by diverting their wrath onto these communities by making them scapegoats). There are, of course, no quick solutions to the growing challenge of terrorism, but, obviously, it cannot be eliminated in the absence of social justice. Clearly, then, a mere law-and-order approach will not do, although, of course, proven terrorist offenders need to be tackled according to the law. This must be co-joined with a broader ideological struggle to shift the terms of discourse to the central issue of social justice—for marginalized communities and castes. Only then can the purveyors of terror—and these include radical Islamists and Hindutva forces—be effectively sidelined.