BJP Needs New Ideas About Muslims

(Dr. Shashi Tharoor is a two-time MP from Thiruvananthapuram, the Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs, the former Union Minister of State for External Affairs and Human Resource Development and the former UN Under-Secretary-General. He has written 14 books, including, most recently, Pax Indica: India and the World of the 21st Century.)

With the sombre anniversary of 26/1l now behind us, talk of the combat against terrorism has dwindled while the nation focuses on other priorities. But the issue simply won't go away. We have all been reading the tale of the young Mumbaikar who joined ISIS, was trained for two weeks to use weapons but never given a chance to use them, got tired of cleaning toilets in Syria and returned home unrepentant but disenchanted. Indian security agencies have no idea what they can do with him; some argue he is not guilty of any terrorist act in India.  Might he be an ISIS plant, others wonder? What sinister intentions might be lurking behind his return, and what dangerous designs does ISIS have on India?

Such concerns, of course, feed into mounting concerns about the possible radicalization of India's largely quiescent Muslim community - concerns that run the risk of dividing our society in ways that can be more dangerous than the prospects of an ISIS plot against us. Domestically, this is a time in our national evolution when the BJP, now in power for a stable five-year term, must rethink the assumptions of its political philosophy and rise to the need to refurbish itself with new ideas about India's Muslim minority.

This means firmly rejecting any word or deed that could fan the flames from whose cinders have emerged extremist groups like the Students' Islamic Movement of India and the "Indian Mujahideen", made up largely of young Muslim men disaffected from the Indian state. There is no doubt that the tragic Gujarat pogrom of 2002 served as the perfect recruiting poster for such terrorist groups, since it enabled them to argue that the only answer to a state that allowed such things to happen to Muslims was to fight fire with fire and state power with terror. A state in which communal disturbances are prevented by enlightened action, and where inflammatory rhetoric and worse, rioting, is put down with a firm hand, will be a state in which terrorism has little chance to flourish.

India must protect its largest minority population, empower them politically, and enable them to partake fully of the opportunities the state offers. This would require education, training and resources to take advantage of such opportunities, from recruitment to the police forces to seed capital for entrepreneurship. If the BJP disdains quotas for Muslims, it could offer them a helping hand through special training schemes that equip Indian Muslims to, for example, take the entrance examinations to the police services. The government consciously needs to send regular signals of reassurance to minorities - and to Muslims in particular, since their vulnerability is accentuated by the circumstances of India's Partition, and because so many terrorist groups derive support and funding from Islamist groups across the border.

It is not yet clear that the BJP regime of Prime Minister Narendra Modi fully appreciates the importance of this. In professing to be religion-neutral, but giving free rein to Hindu chauvinists to spew bigotry and division for petty political purposes, including electorally useful "polarization", the government is missing an opportunity to embrace the Muslim minority in its narrative of aspiration. Promoting development and integration of minorities into the national mainstream is essential for India if it wishes to minimize the numbers of those who might be seduced by the siren call of terrorism.

Whether India has the second or third largest Muslim population in the world (depending on the exact numbers in Pakistan), there is no doubt that India's is by far the largest Muslim minority in the world, both in numbers and as a proportion of the population. At the same time, Islam is deeply rooted in Indian soil, with few Indian Muslims - even those of relatively recent Persian, Afghan or Arab origin - having links, or owing allegiance, to the lands of their forebears. Though conservative Islamist doctrine has sprung from Indian minds (the Deoband School, whose doctrines inspired the Taliban, is situated in India), none of the dozens of prominent Islamic seminaries or theologians has ever advocated armed insurrection against the Indian state.

The migration to Pakistan, upon Partition, of a significant proportion of the Muslim elite and its educated middle-class, meant that India's Muslims were always disproportionately poorer and less educated than their counterparts in other communities. Successive governments have tried to address this problem with only a modest degree of success, and many Muslims objectively suffer from unfavourable socio-economic conditions - which some ascribe to discrimination against them. If a narrative of injustice and discrimination gains ground across the community, it can provide propitious conditions for terrorists to exploit. It is all the more in the interests of the Indian state to ensure that the economic development of India fully embraces its Muslim minority.

India's democratic politics undoubtedly complicate both the perception of the problem and the response to it. Bomb blasts in Indian cities have often led to crackdowns and arrests of suspected terrorist sympathizers, which have inevitably swept up large numbers of young Muslim men, many completely innocent, but whose lives and livelihoods are ruined by their detention. Politicians have been quick to seize on such arrests as proof of malice, if not downright discrimination, on the part of government and security agencies, and in the process have often declaimed support for many whose innocence is somewhat more questionable.

Combating terrorism in a pluralist democracy is never easy, and it is particularly complicated in India, given that our hothouse politics rarely observes the restraints that are common in democracies elsewhere. Still, preventing and combating terror are both essential, and it is the duty of the government to be both adept and sensitive to all aspects of the challenge.

An India led by rational, humane and open-minded ideas of itself must develop a view of the world that is also broad-minded, accommodative and responsible. Prime Minister Modi has shown signs of understanding this in his many "U-turns", from embracing the Bangladesh Land Boundary Agreement to shelving his party's irresponsible line on Article 370 in the election campaign in Kashmir. A policy of inclusion and respect for India's Muslims must follow. That would be in keeping with the aspirations that the predecessor he prefers to disown, Jawaharlal Nehru, launched us on when he spoke of our tryst with destiny.

As we embark on the second decade of the 21st century, the time has indeed come for all of us in India - the BJP included - to redeem his pledge.

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