India is going through a critical phase in its history. In 2014, when Narendra Modi was sworn in as Prime Minister, at first, it seemed to be a usual change of guard. However, post-2014, India started showing signs of some fundamental changes in its foreign policy, force posturing, internal security, terrorism policy, economic policy, and politico-constitutional set-up. The surgical strikes and Balakot air strikes of 2016 and 2019, respectively, showed that India was breaking out of its fold of a soft state which believed in strategic restraint in the face of the worst kind of terrorist attacks. After Modi’s election in 2019, the pace of fundamental changes in the aforementioned areas became faster.
India’s Muslim Question
With such fundamental changes in full swing, India, once again, comes face-to-face with its most sensitive issue with massive historical baggage, i.e., the Muslim question. India’s Muslim question has haunted India’s collective psyche and strategic subconscious for the last 1,000 years. It resulted in fierce military resistance by Hindus against Islamic invasions, temple demolitions, forced conversions, and socio-religious Bhakti reform movements to counter the spread of Sufi Islam amongst the lower caste Hindus. The dominant current of fierce resistance and conflict was, at times, interspersed by brief spells and trends of communal harmony, tolerance, and the integration of the Muslims in India’s cultural and spiritual landscape. Finally, the ‘Muslim question’ led to a bloodied partition of the Indian subcontinent, giving birth to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the Kashmir issue, a perennial bone of contention between the two nascent republics.
Though India chose to be a secular country with special rights and privileges for the Muslim minority, the Muslim question remained unsettled. In an officially secular India ruled by the Congress party, the ‘Muslim Question’ continued to simmer and grow, only to be placated by the dose of populist appeasement and accommodation of the Islamist elements within the Indian political and administrative mainstream. However, on the ground, the historical animosity between Hindus and Muslims prevailed and intensified over time, manifesting in some of the most brutal riots, such as the Gujarat riots of 1969 and Bhagalpur riots (1985), and the Assam riots (1983).
Notably, all this happened when the much-reviled BJP was an insignificant political force, and India was ruled by the INC, a self-proclaimed secular entity. Simultaneously, in the late 1980s, India also witnessed the growth of Pakistan-supported Islamist terrorism in Kashmir, the massacre of Kashmiri Pandits followed by their ouster from Kashmir. Parallelly, Islamist outfits such as Jamaat-e-Islami and Popular Front of India and fundamentalist Islamic ideologies like Wahhabism and Deobandism were also making solid inroads in the Indian Muslim community, radicalising them and alienating them from the Indian mainstream. After the Babri mosque demolition, the communal fault lines became broader and sharper. Communalism was always a significant challenge; however, post-1992, Islamic terrorism, influenced by the foreign Pan-Islamist movements, became an all-India phenomenon, manifesting in a series of bomb blasts in major cities like Jaipur, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Mumbai, and Coimbatore.
Final ‘Showdown’ with the ‘Muslim Question’
Today amidst intense religious radicalisation of Muslims and the rise of Hindu nationalism, it seems India has finally arrived at a stage of a frontal show-down with its ‘Muslim question,’ a question that always simmered under the surface and was either avoided or brushed under the carpet by parroting the superficial and skin-deep pronouncements of Indian secularism, which in effect became politically expedient Islamic appeasement. However, today the thin veneer of Indian secularism hiding the dark underbelly of the deep communal animosities and rising jihadism among the Muslims stands shattered with BJP’s strong drive against terrorism and radicalisation, perceived and projected by Islamist organisations like the Popular Front of India (PFI) as anti-Islamic. Since these organisations have substantial clout among the large section of the Muslim population in India, it can be reasonably argued that legitimate state action against their terrorists and radicalisation activities has ended up alienating a significant chunk of India’s Muslim population.
A series of developments, including the legislation on triple talaq, SC judgement in favour of Ram temple, Gyanvapi mosque-related developments, survey of madrasas, abrogation of Article 370 and concomitant Internet lockdown and security crackdown, ban on Jamaat-i-Islami, toughening of positions against Pakistan on terrorism, NIA’s massive country-wide crackdown on terror funding and the foreign funding of Islamist organizations and charities have unsettled the foreign-funded and supported Islamist groups like PFI, and foiled their extraneous designs of political nature. They feel that under the BJP government, their nefarious goals, including that of making India an Islamic country by 2047, have come under threat and their activities under rigorous official scrutiny. Further, the measures like CAA/NRC have dampened the hopes of effecting a demographic change by settling Rohingyas and illegal Bangladeshi Muslim migrants in India.
The street-level protests against some of the perceived anti-Muslim measures began with the passage of CAA/NRC act. Initially, it seemed that protesters assembling at Shaheen Bagh in Delhi were a bunch of civil rights activists registering a peaceful protest. However, the reality underneath was much more profound, darker, and devious, involving a range of national and international Islamist groups supported by India’s state adversaries and acting in cahoots with Khalistan activists and left-liberal intellectuals, and civil rights activists. Shaheen Bagh turned into a well-planned and coordinated countrywide movement, ultimately culminating in a spree of brutal and violent communal riots in Delhi coinciding with the first state visit of US President Donald Trump to India. While he was in Delhi, the capital city was engulfed with massive rioting in which at least 38 people died (February 2020). The timing of the rioting was allegedly well planned to coincide with Trump’s visit.
The PFI, an Islamist outfit with alleged terror links and a track record of radicalising young Muslims to join ISIS, played a crucial role in the Delhi riots. After the Delhi riots, Islamist groups like the PFI continued their resistance and fierce opposition to the Modi government. Then came the hijab controversy and Nupur Sharma saga, resulting in massive nationwide protests. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the deceased Al Qaeda chief, intervened in the hijab controversy, presumably to find greener pastures for AQIS (Al Qaeda in Indian Subcontinent) amidst the sharpening communal divide in India.
The Nupur Sharma saga, an episode that interestingly transformed into a major national crisis with ripples beyond Indian borders, thanks to the machinations of some of India’s Islamist and liberal activists and their foreign benefactors and terror funders in Qatar. Nupur Sharma protests marked by “Sar Tan Se juda” slogans began the trend of ISIS-styled beheadings in India and blasphemy killings. In all these protests and country-wide riots, PFI’s name figured prominently. NIA, alarmed with the rapid country-wide expansion of PFI and its terror links and radicalisation agenda, launched a massive crackdown on PFI on 22 September 2022. In a nationwide raid, the NIA apprehended its key 230 leaders to investigate PFI’s links with terror groups and terror funding and finally banned the outfit for five years.
Current scenario
In today’s scenario, it can be reasonably argued that PFI has successfully created a narrative of ‘Muslims under persecution’ and ‘Islam in danger’ in BJP-ruled India. They could accomplish this with deft use of social media and by forging tactical alliances with left-liberal intellectuals and activists. Though the online news portals and mainstream media reports suggest that many Barelvi Muslim organisations have demanded a ban on PFI.
PFI adheres to Salafi Islami, which is at odds with the Barelvi beliefs of the majority of Indian Muslims, which are close to relatively moderate Sufi Islam. However, PFI’s influence cannot be underestimated. It has spread its tentacles across the country in more than 20 states. PFI activities have been witnessed in North Eastern states like Assam and Manipur and extreme Western states like Rajasthan. Though ideological differences persist between Barelvis, Deobandis, and Salafis and their respective socio-political organisations, Muslims across the ideological spectrum massively participated in the recent PFI-orchestrated anti-Nupur Sharma riots in various parts of the country.
Also, based on my interviews with different interlocutors among the Barelvi Muslim organisations, I can argue that PFI is not focusing on religious differences. Instead, it is making a nationwide effort to create a pan-India Muslim movement against the Modi government. It is imparting training to young Muslims in armed combat and unarmed combat skills. Hence, to argue that only a small segment of Salafi or Wahhabi extremist factions are behind the communal riots and anti-BJP Muslim movement is a fallacious argument.
This is Part 1 of a two-part series. The second part will deal with the Islamist game plan for India.
The author is a Cornell University graduate in public affairs, and bachelors from St Stephen’s College, Delhi, is a policy analyst specialising in counterterrorism, Indian foreign policy and Afghanistan-Pakistan geopolitics. Views expressed are personal.
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