Two recent episodes of The Interview With Karan Thapar constitute an early warning of an impending atrocity that this country so desperately needs.
Towards the end of both interviews, the interviewees respectively articulate that each is apprehensive of the direction the nation is headed. While one despairs that India is facing an ‘existential crisis’, the other confesses to ‘sleepless nights’ mulling over the future.
An open letter to Prime Minister Modi by a set of former government officials echoes their words.
The letter informs of the ‘extreme anxiety and insecurity’ prevalent in India’s minorities and that the confidence of secular Indians everywhere stands shaken. The trigger appears to be the recent focus on medieval religious places by fringe groups, culminating in their eyeing the Ajmer Sharif Dargah.
The apprehension
The first interviewee says that majoritarians tearing apart the social fabric holding India together will prompt rise of extremism in the minority. Currently, the fear of reprisal is keeping Muslims down, but an explosion of sorts could result from their resisting second-class status foisted on them. He does not see any ray of hope, since no one is ready to take up cudgels on their behalf.
The second interviewee credits Muslims for keeping the faith in the Constitution by not joining co-religionists elsewhere turning out suicide bombers, there having been only one suicide bombing in India – at Pulwama. Should the situation get any worse, it may not remain so and India would be waylaid.
On its part, the missive paints a nebulous picture of the future, restricting itself to ‘disturbances’ disrupting the prime minister’s Viksit Bharat dream.
It appears that the well-meaning conveyers of the early warning believe that Muslims may resort to a violent pushback, causing untold misery, if the right wing – with state backing – continues down a majoritarian path.
On the face of it, the scenario appears plausible – Muslims disrupting law and order in reaction to India’s disruption of rule of law.
One, precedence has it that when pushed to the wall as in the Mumbai riots in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition, Muslims have struck back. They could do so again, when pushed into a corner.
The second assumption takes for granted that terrorism India witnessed in wake of the Gujarat pogrom were largely by Muslims seeking retribution, abetted by an inimical neighbour.
Questioning assumptions
My reservations on the scenario of future Muslim indulgence in political violence bordering on violent extremism flow from questioning the assumptions and from strategic logic.
Firstly, the Mumbai bomb blasts apart, there is enough evidence brought to fore by progressive forces busting the mythology of externally-aided Muslim-perpetration of terrorism. That such evidence is dismissed in national security circles as ‘conspiracy theories’ is part of the manufacture of the narrative, especially done to hide identity of actual perpetrators and motives of their masterminds.
That films need to be made, subsidised and propagated by the highest executive authority, like The Kashmir Files and Sabarmati Express, suggest that a narrative of Muslim villainy is being pushed. Such over-compensation is to compel counter narratives (as here) to trudge uphill in the battle of ideas.
Take my case, I quit being a quarterly contributor on strategic affairs for a well-regarded journal when it twice in quick succession excised my arguing that Muslims were unnecessarily arraigned for terrorism, while masterminds were out trying to make a vote bank out of the majority community by propping up a Muslim ‘Other’.
The expectation that Muslims will fight back against the majoritarian onslaught is therefore based on unconsciously imbibing the right-wing trope of Muslim propensity for aggression. Even some sane people cannot see stone throwing as an act of communication (Kashmir), of desperation (Sambhal) and as self-defence (Jehangirpuri).
Strategic logic
My second argument is that the relative power of the politically emaciated Muslim community when gauged against the capture of the state by the majoritarian forces makes for strategic prudence on its part.
There is consensus that the past ten years have been rather trying for the community:
- Muslims have been subject to micro-terror by cow vigilantes.
- They are ghettoized. This makes them easy prey of both lawless state security forces and empowered majoritarian mobs, as Rahul Bhatia’s The Unmaking of a Democracy brings out.
- Many are displaced, through riots (Muzaffarnagar) or demolitions (Bahraich), and the displaced are now being disenfranchised (Assam).
- Psychological war is unabated (Ajmer).
- Cohesion of Muslims is first being cut up for them to be later devoured piecemeal (‘Turk vs. Pathan’ in Sambhal).
- They already have the lowest indicators of social and economic wellbeing among all communities.
- Even in Kashmir, where per some counts the numbers of Kashmiri dead touches six figures, security forces boast that the shelf-life of a budding militant is rather short.
In contrast, the national security establishment is manifestly suborned. National security minders are well able to think through both consequences and unintended consequences.
India is thus in a position to control temperatures, turning up the heat only so much that the frog in the slow-to-boil cauldron does not skip out. If the frog misbehaves, there is always the police and paramilitary that have been militarised over the past decade.
The Shah-Vanzara model of controlling the police has gone national.
Witness the dragnet maintained in Kashmir since the reading down of Article 370 and the insouciance with which a central university campus in the national capital was invaded.
Evidence of a Kashmir-like take-no-prisoners approach (after a lone surrenderee in 2017 after many years, no surrenderees were recorded in 2018-19, with 9 featuring in early 2020) is from the bullet-holed backs of the 10 Kukis last month to one injured security forces’ trooper; and from 31 Maoists killed in one recent instance a month prior to no security forces’ casualty.
Given such power asymmetry, it would be strategic imbecility for a disjointed and widely spaced out Muslim communities to attempt take on the majoritarians.
Recall for the 800 odd Hindu dead by Razakar action prior to Police Action, mobs of Hindu extremists – in instances reportedly even aided by the invading army – exacted a 20-to-40-fold price in its immediate aftermath.
Any violent reaction to forthcoming pressures will only play into the hands of the authoritarian regime, giving it excuse to clamp down further, thereby enabling more pressure – both programmatic and physical.
It is not poor foreign policy that keeps India at odds with its neighbours, Pakistan and Bangladesh. It is also to give fresh life to the hostage theory of Partition, that provides excuse for majoritarians to leash, India’s Muslims.
In reaction, Muslims can at best throw stones defending their dargahs and mohallahs. At worst, as last resort against outbreak of atrocity crimes is a Warsaw Uprising.
Muslims have already expended the political capital they had, administering the nation an early warning of their own. Amongst the signatories to the mentioned letter are Muslim gentry (Qureishi, Shah and Jung), who had earlier engaged with the leadership of the right wing parent formation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, urging restraint on its affiliates, militant camp-followers and ideological bedfellows.
Their warnings were two years back, with little changing since. It’s now a period of heightened preparatory response.
The battle has to be fought within the majority community, without waiting for the first shots to be fired by Muslims. The interviewees did not dwell on what might transpire after Muslims reach the end of their tether. Articulating that scenario might goad the silent majority to heed Niemöller better.
This article first appeared on the author’s Substack.
Ali Ahmed is a strategic analyst.
