How not to counter terror

India would be mistaken to pursue a `tough' anti-terrorist strategy post-Glasgow that rejects human rights and legality in the name of `national security'.

An irony in history is that those who fashion stereotypes and rely on shibboleths sometimes become victims of their own creations. A prime instance is the disbelief and complete incredulity with which the arrest of three Indian Muslims for the attempted London and Glasgow bombings was received in this country. The presumption was this could not have happened: highly educated, "normal" Muslims from middle-class, professional families living in Bangalore - "the software capital [sic.] of a world flattened by globalisation" - could not have embraced wahhabi or salafi fundamentalism. Surely, they did not feel so personally aggrieved as to want to wreak revenge upon the West. A secular, inclusive democracy like India's could not have possibly bred suicide-bombers.

Did Prime Minister Manmohan Singh not boast two years ago that "not one" of India's 150 million Muslim citizens had joined al Qaeda or the Taliban because India is a "functioning" secular democracy "where all sections" of society can participate equally in national life?

Confronted with unpleasant reality - Kafeel Ahmed's involvement in the Glasgow attack in partnership with an Iraqi - many commentators have taken recourse to two more stereotypes. The first attributes quasi-mystical, demonic power to wahhabism's appeal for devout Muslims. The other stresses the "grave blunder" the Indian state has committed in regarding Muslims as "permanent victims" and treating them with kid gloves. The subtext is, their feet should be held to the fire as regards their professed commitment to the nation over religion.

In reality, the "no-Indian-Muslim-in-al Qaeda" shibboleth was an expedient way of scoring points against Pakistan, while affirming an increasingly weak, steadily eroding, proposition. Many of our policymakers complacently reassured themselves that democracy would shield our religious minorities from extremist ideologies.

Or else, they would not have sung for years the all-too-familiar refrain of Pakistan being the "epicentre of global terrorism" by virtue of not being democratic. Nor would our television channels have revelled in Pakistan's predicament over the Lal Masjid episode as an instance of a country being hoist with its own petard.

The inconvenient truth is that Indian leaders and the media largely chose to ignore the indigenous origins of many recent episodes of terrorist violence, rooted in the communalisation of society and politics, the growing demonisation of Muslims, their butchery in Gujarat, and the state's abject failure to bring the culprits of communal violence to book. Even as reports recently came in of Gujarati Muslim youth being recruited as operatives by Kashmiri jehadis, we kept deluding ourselves that Kashmiri militancy remains insulated from the rest of India. The true effects of the Gujarat pogrom and its terrible aftermath - through the ghettoisation and impoverishment of Muslims, continued detention of hundreds of youth under draconian laws, and the community's total political exclusion - were erased from public memory. Its long-term impact in alienating a large number of Indian Muslims, the erosion of their faith in Indian democracy and in the ability of the political system to deliver justice was excised out of the consciousness of policymakers.

Thus, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) did virtually nothing to bring justice and even relief to the pogrom's victims, barring the paltry grant of Rs.106 crore. The carnage was treated not as a symptom of a grave systemic disorder but as an aberration that warranted no special correctives.

To compound matters, the Indian state has condoned the minorities' social and political marginalisation and punished nobody for the "encounter" killings of suspected "Islamic terrorists" - in Delhi, Gujarat, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kashmir. Our public discourse has got increasingly communalised.

This has contributed to the feeling among our minorities that they are beleaguered. Corrective steps, like those recommended by the Rajinder Sachar Committee, including affirmative action, were greeted with derision by the Right. Much of the media went along with it. No wonder Muslims feel increasingly besieged.

The incredulousness about educated, middle-class youth being drawn to religious extremism takes one's breath away. It is the middle class, not the poor who suffer the greatest discrimination, that has led fundamentalist movements - of the Islamist, Hindutva, Zionist or Christian variety. A study of 172 al Qaeda operatives by forensic psychiatrist Marc Sageman found that 90 per cent came from a relatively stable, secure background. Three-fourths came from upper or middle class families. Two-thirds were graduates, typically professionals.

None of this remotely minimises the importance of Glasgow: it is tragic that some Indian Muslims were drawn to violent salafist extremism - even as loners. None of their motivations - local grievances, Karnataka's growing communalisation (the State is being called "the next Gujarat"), resentment and anger at the West's demonisation of Islam and at the unspeakable horrors being perpetrated in Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan - can justify their readiness to kill hundreds of innocent civilians. This must be unequivocally condemned.

However, the vigour of the condemnation must not be perversely translated into irrational and militarist ways of dealing with extremist groupings, of whatever stripe. That, unfortunately, is the knee-jerk response of the United Kingdom government - and ironically, of many Indian commentators too. Prime Minister Gordon Brown has hinted at greatly tightening immigration controls and surveillance of applicants for jobs in the UK. He is pressing India to give more information on immigrants. He has inducted retired Admiral Alan West into his government as Minister for Security and Anti-Terrorism.

It has given a glimpse into the kind of approach that the government is likely to take, including intrusive surveillance into citizens' personal lives and records. The UK is considering a law that would allow the use of wiretapped telecommunications as evidence and extend terrorist suspects' detention without charges from 28 to 90 days.

Like US leaders (for instance, Vice-President Dick Cheney), who spoke of an eight-to-ten-year "global war on terror" immediately after 9/11, Alan West, too, talks of a "10-to-15-year long" fight. He calls for some "snitching" by the public (in plain words, informing the state on other citizens) to help the cause: "... in this situation, anyone who's got any information should say something because the people we are talking about are trying to destroy our entire way of life. We will have to be a little bit un-British, I think... " This looks like a recipe for citizen vigilantism and a "police informer" regime of the worst kind.

Strangely, instead of warning against such excesses and their consequences, many Britons of Indian origin have welcomed them.

For instance, social scientist Meghnad Desai, once a radical socialist, writes: "these terrorists are sick, and no amount of effort is too much to protect citizens against such people... There will be heightened vigilance and I, as an immigrant of Indian origin, welcome it."

There are more intemperate echoes of such reactions in India, including calls for intrusive wiretapping, interception of Internet and email communications, profiling along religious lines, third-degree methods of interrogation of suspects, and revival of discredited laws such as Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act and Prevention of Terrorism Act . Some analysts have singled out the UPA for failing to resolve the plots behind numerous recent terrorist incidents (as if the National Democratic Alliance was any better) and attributed its failure to pressure on the police after last year's Mumbai railway bombings to go slow on intrusive searches and interrogations. (These searches were humiliating and aggressive: hundreds of Muslims were rounded up for no reason other than their religion.)

All this is creating a climate in which what may be termed the "M.K. Narayanan" approach to terrorism is likely to prevail. This consists in giving a religious character to terrorism after wrongly depicting it as an ideology when it is only tactic or technique; in demonising one particular religion (Islam) for allegedly recommending or legitimising violence against innocent civilians; and advocating indiscriminate counter-violence to put down "terrorist threats". Such excesses can only produce greater discontent and fuel yet more extremism, besides creating a "garrison state".

All sensible citizens who value democracy and freedom must resist this. We must mobilise ourselves against the gathering onslaught of the communal Right on Islam and its obstreperous demand that Muslims must "speak out" against terrorism - when any number of Muslim organisations have already done so. The "patriotism" test being set for Muslims is an insult to all Indians.

We must take a clear stand against it. Or else, we will be drawn into the violent vortex of terrorism-counter-terrorism, which undermines our rights and freedoms, degrades democracy, and demeans this society.