The multiple bomb attacks on Bombay last November were but the latest in a series of terrorist attacks that rocked India during the second half of 2008. In total, five cities were targeted killing over 200 people. While almost daily the Indian media launch yet another story “proving” that the hand of Pakistan is behind it all, most experts do not believe that either country can afford do be drawn into a war. There is a growing fear, however, that Indian Muslims may be drawn into the conflict.
The Bombay attacks have been claimed by the Lashkar-e- Toiba (LeT), an Islamist organization based in Pakistan that fights for the “liberation” of Kashmir and has close links with the Pakistani military intelligence (ISI). The consensus among Indian security agencies is that the series of attacks required such a level of training, coordination and funding that it could never have been pulled off without the support of Pakistan.
“Most terrorist attacks in India are executed with the help of Pakistan,” says Animesh Shroul, a scholar at the Institute of Conflict Management in Delhi. “Pakistan cannot fight India directly. It needs proxies. The aim is to create a climate of political and economic chaos, which ultimately would force India into negotiations over disputed Kashmir.”
Bombay is of course the economic engine of India. In addition, India’s tourist sector has taken a hit. Captain Alok Bansal of the Institute of Defense Studies and Analyzes believes there is a second, more fundamental reason for Pakistan to disrupt communal harmony in India. “A successful pluralistic India is a negation of the very reason for Pakistan to exist as a safe haven for Muslims on the subcontinent,” he says. “Pakistan, like Israel, is a state based on religion. It needs an outside enemy to keep its ranks closed inside.”
Although the perpetrators of the Bombay bombings arrived by boat from Pakistan, most experts believe they could not have operated without some sort of Indian help. People tend to forget that India is home to the second largest Muslim population in the world. It is feared that Pakistan and terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda may aim to incite some of India’s 140 million Muslims.
The main suspect to have offered “a hand” in the Bombay attacks is the Indian Mujahideen (IM), which claimed responsibility for the four attacks that preceded Bombay. A violent off-shoot of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India, IM believes jihad is the only option to improve the socio-political situation of Indian Muslims.
“If the Muslims are terrorized, the Hindus can never live in peace,” stated an IM e-mail posted after the Delhi bombing last October. The 13-page letter also called upon the youth of Gujarat to join their ranks. In 2002, a Hindu mob killed some 2,000 Muslims in the western state of Gujarat. It is widely believed that the state’s right-wing Hindu authorities were (partly) involved in the massacre, yet no one was arrested. Until today, many of the bloodbath’s survivors live as refugees in their own country.
Gujarat remains a serous stain on the image of India being a tolerant nation, while it serves as a main battle cry for Indian Muslims. In sharp contrast with the quite sensational tone of the Indian media, both Shroul and Bansal believe that IM is a relatively small group.
“It is possible that some Indian Muslim youth are involved in terrorist activities,” says Dr. Zafurul-Islam Khan, editor of The Milli Gazette. “Their motive is not Kashmir, but revenge for what happened in Gujarat and other places. Some of them may have been used by the ISI, but these claims have so far never been proven.”
India could prove a fertile ground for extremist organizations to find new recruits. According to a 2006 government study, Muslims are economically worse off than any other community on the Indian subcontinent. While they make up some 14 percent of the population, less than five percent enjoy higher education or have a government job. In fact, the report concluded that many Muslims in India are worse off than Dalits — the untouchables.
It seems, however, that the older generation of Indian Muslims stands in the way of a rapid radicalization of Indian Muslim youth. Aware of the delicate position of Indian Muslims in light of the recent terrorist attacks, roughly 2,000 Muslim clerics of the Jamaat Ulama-e-Hind (JUH) in November 2008, mounted a “peace train” to Hyderabad where they met with some 4,000 other clerics to ratify a fatwa against terrorism, which had been issued earlier in 2008.
With some 10 million members, the JUH is arguably India’s leading Muslim organization. “Please do not use issues of justice or discrimination with our plea against terrorism, and our plea for communal harmony,” JUH President Maulana Qari Usman told Tehulka Magazine. “They are different stories.”
In issuing the world’s first fatwa against terrorism, the Indian Muslim community proved it is more than able to speak with its own distinct voice, one that deserves to be heard elsewhere around the world.
Peter Speetjens is a Beirut-based journalist
