There is
something farcical about the Indian campaign against the Islamic State. On one
hand, you have the Union Minister of Defence Manohar Parrikar declaring India’s
intent to take on the IS, provided there is a UN resolution authorising the
move. On the other, you have a bunch of assorted Hindutva figures like Pramod
Mutalik of the Sri Ram Sene and Ramesh Shinde of the Hindu Janjagruti Samiti
fighting their own private war against the IS. As for the police, their
behaviour at times resembles that of Inspector Clouseau. They are chasing
shadows all over the place because the fact of the matter is that the IS is not
up to very much in this country.
So, where
countries are bombing and strafing the IS, India’s attack on the entity remains
mainly verbal. Which is all for the good. Speaking to a conclave of Directors
General of Police last week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke of the need to
deal with the issue with sensitivity in a “flexible instructional framework”
with local communities. This appeared to have been an important theme of the
meeting of the Directors General of Police that was held in the Rann of Kutch
with the attendance of the prime minister. Instead of speaking about the muscle
needed to combat what remains an amorphous threat, the officials have spoken of
the need to rope in clerics and community leaders and seek their assistance in
counselling and deradicalising the youth.
The big
event last week was the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorist Squad blocking 80 websites
allegedly purveying IS propaganda. Fortunately, they have not acted in a heavy
handed fashion and detained young people for accessing such sites. Even so,
they should know that (1) banning never works, (2) the real jihadists are
skilled at their work and quickly change sites if they have to, (3) despite
years of activity, the IS recruiters have not been particularly successful and,
(4) it is difficult to see under what sections of the IPC they could charge
people for viewing certain websites.
As for
the IS threat, all that the police have are accounts of a fantasist, Areeb
Majeed, who returned from the ‘Caliphate’, and three young men who could be
anywhere in West Asia. They also have a clearly disturbed 17-year-old girl who,
they say, was planning to travel to Syria and was an associate of Sirajuddin,
an Indian Oil Corporation officer who has been detained in Jaipur. Now, they
say three more missing young men may be off to join the IS. This is not quite a
clear and present danger to the Indian state, especially since Majeed’s account
of his stay in the ‘Caliphate’ is that it was less than glorious — far from
being the sword arm of Islam, he was made to clean toilets and carry out menial
tasks.
Union government
officials claim that there are some 23 Indians who went to join the IS and of
them, 19 were still fighting alongside them. Even if the report is taken with a
pinch of salt, all we can say is that the number of Indians with the IS is less
than the estimated 200 Maldivians who are supposed to be with the IS. That
itself should tell you as to how effective the IS propaganda is in India.
There is
a need to get a proper measure of the IS issue. The rise of the brutal
‘Caliphate’ has shaken the world, but its immediate impact has been in the area
around Syria and Iraq. An important aspect of being a Caliphate is that the
entity should have the accoutrements of a state and it is only after seizing
substantial territory and consolidating his hold that Abu Bakar al Baghdadi
declared himself to be the Caliph, a title that has a special resonance in
Islamic history. However, the counter-pressures — such aerial bombardment by
the US and its allies, and counter-attacks by Syrian, Iraq and Kurdish forces —
led to the IS decision to mount an operation abroad in Paris. Subsequent to
that, France and then Russia have joined the informal coalition fighting the
IS. The IS has a lot on its hands and India is clearly not a priority target
for it.
In India,
and perhaps in other parts of the world, sometimes claiming allegiance to the
IS is a means of protest. Stupid, certainly, but not necessarily criminal. Last
year, a Tirupur-based Imam had
T-shirts with the IS slogan emblazoned across them distributed to a number of young men who wore them and posed for a group photo. Even here, it is not clear what crime was committed. IS flags and Lashkar-e-Tayyeba flags are a regular feature of demonstrations in Jammu & Kashmir, but it would be foolish to extrapolate the state of militancy in the state from them. In actual fact, if there is one organisation making a comeback of sorts, it is the Hizbul Mujahideen, rather than the non-Indian outfits.
T-shirts with the IS slogan emblazoned across them distributed to a number of young men who wore them and posed for a group photo. Even here, it is not clear what crime was committed. IS flags and Lashkar-e-Tayyeba flags are a regular feature of demonstrations in Jammu & Kashmir, but it would be foolish to extrapolate the state of militancy in the state from them. In actual fact, if there is one organisation making a comeback of sorts, it is the Hizbul Mujahideen, rather than the non-Indian outfits.
The
police must certainly keep an eye on potential terrorists and it is a good
thing that the police are talking about community outreach and deradicalisation
instead of slamming young men in jail and ensuring that they become hardened
terrorists. What they should do, however, is to carry out their
deradicalisation work in a low profile instead of making them into PR events
which only end up generating suspicion against people.
Fighting
the attraction of the IS is a complex process, especially since it is largely
carried out on the Internet. We have to understand that those radicalised, or those
who say they have been radicalised are often reflecting personal problems and
resentments, and the process does not necessarily represent any kind of a
religious movement.
Mid Day December 22,2015
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