Author: Sadanand Dhume
Publication: Wall Street Journal Asia
Date: July 29, 2008
URL: http://wsj.com/article/SB121727252464290655.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
In recent years few countries have changed
their public image as dramatically as India. But though pictures of starving
peasants and rutted roads have given way to those of svelte supermodels and
bustling call centers, in at least one respect India remains more a basketcase
than a potential great power. As Friday's bomb blasts in India's software
capital, Bangalore, and Saturday's in the industrial city of Ahmedabad show,
India is singularly ill-equipped to deal with the scourge of terrorism.
The Bangalore and Ahmedabad bombings, which
killed one and 49 people respectively and cumulatively wounded more than 200,
are only the most recent in a spate of attacks. In the past two years terrorists
have targeted the northern city of Jaipur, the high-tech hub Hyderabad, the
temple town of Varanasi and India's financial capital, Mumbai.
Officials have pinned the most recent attacks
on Indian Mujahedeen, a homegrown group linked to the Bangladesh-based Harkat-ul
Jihad-al-Islami and the banned Students Islamic Movement of India. Both Pakistan
and Bangladesh -- carved out of British India to create a homeland for the
subcontinent's Muslims -- give shelter and succor to terrorists. But the fact
that the most recent attacks were carried out by a made-in-India group shows
it's about time that India comes to terms with its own counterterrorism failings.
Among India's worst mistakes is that instead
of uniting behind the minimal goal of providing security for all citizens,
India's constantly bickering politicians have played football with counterterrorism
policy. In 2004, one of the first acts in office of the ruling Congress-led
coalition government -- at the time supported by Communist allies -- was to
scrap a national terrorism law that allowed for enhanced witness protection
and extended detention of suspects in terrorism cases. This had the twin effects
of demoralizing law enforcement agencies and signaling to terrorists that
the Indian state lacked fight. The paucity of arrests and convictions in the
string of bombings that have followed have only strengthened this perception.
For its part, the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party has stalled the creation
of a much-needed federal antiterrorism force.
The problem is that India's counterterrorism
effort falls between two stools. As a democracy, it cannot adopt the heavy-handed
but effective measures favored by, say, Russia or China. At the same time,
India lacks the sophisticated intelligence and law enforcement capacities
that allow European countries such as France, Spain and, of late, even Britain
to safeguard individual rights and yet uncover terrorist plots before they
are executed.
Yet although this may be an explanation, it's
hardly an excuse given that other countries have surmounted their own counterterrorism
hurdles. Even Indonesia, a Muslim-majority nation where public sympathy for
terrorism in the name of Islam runs deeper than it does in India, has done
an infinitely better job of protecting its citizens. Thanks largely to Detachment
88, a special police unit equipped and trained by Australia and the U.S.,
it has been nearly three years since the last major terrorist strike on Indonesian
soil.
Ultimately, though, terrorism is only the
tip of the proverbial iceberg. The larger question is whether India's Muslims
will embrace modernity like so many of their Turkish, Tunisian and Indonesian
co-religionists, or reject it like increasing numbers of their militant cousins
in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
On this front too India's leaders have failed
to get to the heart of the matter. The country tends to exercise a hands-off
approach to its 140-million-strong Muslim community. Unlike in Europe or America,
Muslims in India are governed by Shariah law in matters such as marriage,
divorce and inheritance. This parallel legal system slows integration into
the national mainstream and perpetuates backward practices such as polygamy
and the neglect of education for girls. The result has been a disaffected
minority, largely lacking the skills to compete in a modern economy and susceptible
to calls for violence in the name of faith.
If India is to live up to its potential --
and indeed to its hype -- it must embrace both the short-term goal of upgrading
its counterterrorism capability and the long-term goal of modernizing and
mainstreaming its Muslims.
India's Muslims have enriched national life
in countless ways. The vast majority, like people of any faith, are nonviolent.
But contrary to popular belief, Indian Muslims have not been immune to the
rising global tide of orthodox practice and militant politics. Indian doctors
played a role in last year's failed attacks in London and Glasgow. At home,
Muslim groups have assaulted critics such as the exiled Bangladeshi author
Taslima Nasreen. A survey by the distinguished Pakistani scholar Akbar Ahmed
revealed that most educated Indian Muslims view as role models the late Islamist
ideologue Abul Ala Maududi, the 19th century Muslim supremacist Sayyed Ahmad
Khan, and an influential Bombay-based cleric named Zakir Naik, who eulogizes
Osama bin Laden and calls for Shariah for all Indians.
India's Muslims hardly have a monopoly on
either violence or obscurantism. Nonetheless the challenges they face are
particularly acute. Will the community be forward-looking, eager to seize
new economic opportunities, and at peace with a rapidly changing world? Or
will it forsake the future for an idealized past, foster a culture of grievance
that condones violence, and view globalization as a mortal threat? Depending
on the answer, the Bangalore and Ahmedabad bombings are either a passing event
or a dark harbinger of things to come.
- Mr. Dhume is a fellow at the Asia Society
in Washington D.C., and the author of "My Friend the Fanatic: Travels
with an Indonesian Islamist" (Text Publishing, 2008).