Bomber
FULL MEMBER
- Joined
- Jan 11, 2015
- Messages
- 259
- Reaction score
- -9
- Country
- Location
SEEMA SENGUPTA
Published — Monday 19 January 2015
Last update 18 January 2015 10:56 pm
Days before US Secretary of State John Kerry landed in Indian Premier Narendra Modi’s home state of Gujarat, the provincial police created a storm of controversy by making dummy terrorists wear skullcaps and chant pro-Islamic slogans during a mock drill aimed at securing the visiting dignitary. While Gujarat Chief Minister Anandiben Patel — a Modi protégé — acknowledged that it is “unethical to link any religion with terrorism,” she refused to act against the erring policemen.
Though, there cannot be any disagreement over the necessity of ensuring Kerry’s well-being on Indian soil, this despicable conduct of Gujarat police personnel however lead us to a fundamentally important question. Has the country’s security agencies — working under a right-wing Hindutva regime presently — hatched a devious conspiracy to demonize the minority Muslim community and consequently a great religion like Islam?
Or is the dangerous pattern of singling out Muslims for differential law-enforcement treatment an unconnected yet random act of hatred and prejudice demonstrated by individual officers periodically? Alarmingly, such stereotyping is gaining momentum under Modi’s regime though it is not a new phenomenon.
The police in Delhi forced terror suspects to wear keffiyeh while being paraded live on camera after a controversial encounter in 2008. It was later discovered that the law-enforcing agency had bought these red-and-white scarves in bulk anticipating such event. Was it not a premeditated act of profiling the Muslim community or how else did the police pinpoint the faith of terrorists in advance who would later sneak into India’s capital to create mayhem? Interestingly, many of the publicly paraded offenders have since been honorably acquitted by the judiciary.
Again, down south, the Bangalore police forced suspected terror detainees to wear skullcaps while being photographed by an over-enthusiastic media. And not long ago police authorities in Mumbai issued an official circular, ordering under-cover cops to keep a strict watch on a female wing of a mainstream Islamic organization for “motivating girls toward Islam and asking them to live in accordance with the Holy Qur’an and Hadith.”
Unfortunately, India’s security establishment too has fallen into the trap of believing the widespread myth of verses from the Qur’an being responsible for orienting ordinary Muslims toward militancy.
This distorted discourse of radicalization in India is vitiating societal harmony as it allowed unnecessary stigmatization of Muslims. More often than not, security experts would spend quality time segregating good Muslims from the moral reprobates in the community, which is conventionally considered to be bad as a whole. But, anybody interpreting the verses of the Qur’an in right context would inevitably concede that Islam promotes love, peace, tolerance, brotherhood and not militancy.
Like Hindu scriptures, the Holy Qur’an only enjoins the devoted followers to fight against tyranny, oppression and injustice. If authentic sources are to be believed, modern police-curriculum and all classified anti-terror training material of India’s myriad security agencies are biased and discriminatory against Muslims. This anti-Muslim tinge in training protocol will gradually but steadily give rise to an alarming tendency of the professional integrity of a Muslim member of India’s security establishment being questioned by his fellow colleagues from the majority community.
Can any honest official put a hand on his heart and confess that India’s security apparatus has overwhelmingly discarded the exclusionary narrative and stopped treating Muslims as a potential threat to the state? Is it not a fact that combating terrorism has become synonymous with identifying (wittingly or unwittingly) the Muslim faith of the offender? The message has gone down deep in the society and for an average Indian a terrorist today is inevitably a member of the Muslim community who wants to harm Hindus.
An intruder is no longer treated as an illegal trespasser but is projected as a Muslim aggressor who is a “real threat” to India’s Hindu identity.
India is indeed changing and changing for the worse. But then, when the prime minister of the nation sets precedent by showing an open prejudice against anything associated with Islam, is it at all surprising that India will be grappling with a heightened threat to her long cherished social cohesion and religious harmony?
By bluntly turning down a request to wear a skullcap (despite putting on all kinds of non-Muslim socio-religious headgears previously) and not hosting an official Iftar party (nor attending the President-hosted Iftar deliberately) as the premier of a pluralistic nation,
Modi ended up fanning “Islamophobia” in India. Modi’s subtle depiction of Muslims as the problematic other (except during the CNN interview) is not only inspiring his fellow Hindutva travelers to unleash an insidious communal agenda nationally but also emboldening those hardcore irrational elements in India’s security apparatus who advocates criminalization of Muslim identity as a potent counterterrorism tool.
Perhaps, it is time that India’s security establishment realizes the folly of their counterterrorism modus operandi of ghettoizing Muslims and keeping them under constant pressure. Unlike a primarily monolithic Europe, a multicultural India will implode and disintegrate in no time if the majority Hindus starts perceiving Islam as a threat under Hindutva influence.
In fact, militancy has been emphatically rejected by India’s patriotic Muslim community historically and Indian Muslims (except Kashmiris) were in no position to take up arms for redressing their grievances. Therefore, creating irrational fears and insecurities in Hindu-mind purposely and spreading them to intimate spaces would be extremely detrimental to national unity. As US President Obama rightly said — Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism, rather it is an important part of promoting peace.
Published — Monday 19 January 2015
Last update 18 January 2015 10:56 pm
Days before US Secretary of State John Kerry landed in Indian Premier Narendra Modi’s home state of Gujarat, the provincial police created a storm of controversy by making dummy terrorists wear skullcaps and chant pro-Islamic slogans during a mock drill aimed at securing the visiting dignitary. While Gujarat Chief Minister Anandiben Patel — a Modi protégé — acknowledged that it is “unethical to link any religion with terrorism,” she refused to act against the erring policemen.
Though, there cannot be any disagreement over the necessity of ensuring Kerry’s well-being on Indian soil, this despicable conduct of Gujarat police personnel however lead us to a fundamentally important question. Has the country’s security agencies — working under a right-wing Hindutva regime presently — hatched a devious conspiracy to demonize the minority Muslim community and consequently a great religion like Islam?
Or is the dangerous pattern of singling out Muslims for differential law-enforcement treatment an unconnected yet random act of hatred and prejudice demonstrated by individual officers periodically? Alarmingly, such stereotyping is gaining momentum under Modi’s regime though it is not a new phenomenon.
The police in Delhi forced terror suspects to wear keffiyeh while being paraded live on camera after a controversial encounter in 2008. It was later discovered that the law-enforcing agency had bought these red-and-white scarves in bulk anticipating such event. Was it not a premeditated act of profiling the Muslim community or how else did the police pinpoint the faith of terrorists in advance who would later sneak into India’s capital to create mayhem? Interestingly, many of the publicly paraded offenders have since been honorably acquitted by the judiciary.
Again, down south, the Bangalore police forced suspected terror detainees to wear skullcaps while being photographed by an over-enthusiastic media. And not long ago police authorities in Mumbai issued an official circular, ordering under-cover cops to keep a strict watch on a female wing of a mainstream Islamic organization for “motivating girls toward Islam and asking them to live in accordance with the Holy Qur’an and Hadith.”
Unfortunately, India’s security establishment too has fallen into the trap of believing the widespread myth of verses from the Qur’an being responsible for orienting ordinary Muslims toward militancy.
This distorted discourse of radicalization in India is vitiating societal harmony as it allowed unnecessary stigmatization of Muslims. More often than not, security experts would spend quality time segregating good Muslims from the moral reprobates in the community, which is conventionally considered to be bad as a whole. But, anybody interpreting the verses of the Qur’an in right context would inevitably concede that Islam promotes love, peace, tolerance, brotherhood and not militancy.
Like Hindu scriptures, the Holy Qur’an only enjoins the devoted followers to fight against tyranny, oppression and injustice. If authentic sources are to be believed, modern police-curriculum and all classified anti-terror training material of India’s myriad security agencies are biased and discriminatory against Muslims. This anti-Muslim tinge in training protocol will gradually but steadily give rise to an alarming tendency of the professional integrity of a Muslim member of India’s security establishment being questioned by his fellow colleagues from the majority community.
Can any honest official put a hand on his heart and confess that India’s security apparatus has overwhelmingly discarded the exclusionary narrative and stopped treating Muslims as a potential threat to the state? Is it not a fact that combating terrorism has become synonymous with identifying (wittingly or unwittingly) the Muslim faith of the offender? The message has gone down deep in the society and for an average Indian a terrorist today is inevitably a member of the Muslim community who wants to harm Hindus.
An intruder is no longer treated as an illegal trespasser but is projected as a Muslim aggressor who is a “real threat” to India’s Hindu identity.
India is indeed changing and changing for the worse. But then, when the prime minister of the nation sets precedent by showing an open prejudice against anything associated with Islam, is it at all surprising that India will be grappling with a heightened threat to her long cherished social cohesion and religious harmony?
By bluntly turning down a request to wear a skullcap (despite putting on all kinds of non-Muslim socio-religious headgears previously) and not hosting an official Iftar party (nor attending the President-hosted Iftar deliberately) as the premier of a pluralistic nation,
Modi ended up fanning “Islamophobia” in India. Modi’s subtle depiction of Muslims as the problematic other (except during the CNN interview) is not only inspiring his fellow Hindutva travelers to unleash an insidious communal agenda nationally but also emboldening those hardcore irrational elements in India’s security apparatus who advocates criminalization of Muslim identity as a potent counterterrorism tool.
Perhaps, it is time that India’s security establishment realizes the folly of their counterterrorism modus operandi of ghettoizing Muslims and keeping them under constant pressure. Unlike a primarily monolithic Europe, a multicultural India will implode and disintegrate in no time if the majority Hindus starts perceiving Islam as a threat under Hindutva influence.
In fact, militancy has been emphatically rejected by India’s patriotic Muslim community historically and Indian Muslims (except Kashmiris) were in no position to take up arms for redressing their grievances. Therefore, creating irrational fears and insecurities in Hindu-mind purposely and spreading them to intimate spaces would be extremely detrimental to national unity. As US President Obama rightly said — Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism, rather it is an important part of promoting peace.
