By dressing up “militants” as Muslims wearing skullcaps in a mock anti-terror drill, Indian police exposed not only communal mentality but low IQ and poor general knowledge negating Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of SMART — Strict and Sensitive, Modern and Mobile, Alert and Accountable, Reliable and Responsive, Techno savvy and Trained — law enforcers voiced at the recent conference of directors-general of police in Guwahati.
Footage of the drill showed commandos capturing “terrorists” in white-knitted skullcaps before bundling them into police jeeps. But do terrorists — even if they happen to be Muslims — don the Islamic skullcap to unleash murder and mayhem? I don’t think so.
Ajmal Kasab and company who attacked Mumbai on Nov. 26, 2008 wore blue jeans and colorful T-shirts as they went about their diabolical mission, which was rightly condemned universally. That they were dressed in casuals is common knowledge because the Mumbai attacks were telecast live by several channels; Indians had a ringside view of terrorists in action. The drill also showed “terrorists” wearing skullcaps raising Islamic slogans as commandos take them on. In the video of the drill doing the rounds, a dummy terrorist shouts: “Kill us if you wish. We are not afraid of death. Islam Zindabad (Long Live Islam).” The skullcap and the slogan serve one and the same purpose — demonizing Muslims and Islam.
Such racial profiling and stereotyping of a religious minority by Indian police is not new. After the 2008 Batla House encounter in Delhi, the police paraded the suspects before the media in red-and-white keffiyehs — the Palestinian headscarf. The police faced a lot of criticism but no action was taken against officers who made the suspects wear keffiyehs. The response of the government after videos of the anti-terrorism drill went viral is no different. Inaction is bound to ensure a repetition before long.
Concerns about religious intolerance in secular India are rising since Modi came to power in May, fueled by reports of Muslims and Christians being forced or induced to become Hindus once again in mass “re-conversions.” Attempts are also under way to clamp a new law banning conversions. But Muslim and Christian religious leaders, besides secular and liberals, regard the proposed legislation as an assault on religious freedoms, which include the right to convert to a religion of one’s choice.
The drill, described as atrocious and highly condemnable by many, was in preparation for a Jan. 11-13 investment summit in Gujarat, whose speakers will include US Secretary of State John Kerry as well as Modi himself. The media was invited to film it to underscore India’s preparedness to foil terrorist attacks. But portraying terrorists as flag-bearers of Islam reduced the drill to a mockery of both commonsense and secularism. Regardless of the drill, India is forever projecting itself as a victim of Islamic terrorism unleashed either by the homegrown Indian Mujahideen or foreign Islamic outfits, particularly in Kashmir, to milk international sympathy and consolidate Hindus domestically. But Bharatiya Janata Party leaders like Modi or Home Minister Rajnath Singh rarely talk about Hindu and tribal-led insurgencies, which are wreaking far greater havoc.
The latest Global Terrorism Index (released by international think tank Institute of Economics and Peace) reveals that while jihadists were responsible for 15 percent of terrorism-related killings in India, Maoists accounted for the lion’s share of casualties — a whopping 50 percent — in 2013. The remaining 35 percent of deaths were caused by guerrillas fighting for statehood or independence in states like Assam, Manipur and Nagaland.
Maoists have created a Red Corridor from the India-Nepal border to south India but the worst-hit states are Chattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Orissa. Their goal is to overthrow the Indian government by force. The writ of the administration doesn’t run in large tracts of central India where there are no police stations, post offices, revenue collectors or even cellular network.
Similarly, the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB), which gunned down 75 Adivasis or tribespeople, just before Christmas in its devilish pursuit of a separate homeland for ethnic Bodos in Assam, is one of the deadliest separatist outfits in business. New York survived 9/11. Mumbai is doing fine despite 26/11, thank you. I think that armed rebellions like the Maoist insurgency or secessionist uprisings in the northeast pose a far graver challenge to the Indian State. New Delhi should focus on neutralizing anti-national groups trying to seize power or dismember India instead of maligning Muslims who have never challenged the state till today.
