The meteoric rise of Islamic State into a state-like apparatus from the detritus of the civil war and insurgency-riven Iraq and Syria has been well-documented. How the terror group has managed to retain control over territory it holds, through a mixture of brutality, fear and immense money power, has also been noted widely. What is perhaps less understood is how it has managed to draw recruits from all over the world. A tentative reason being offered is the radicalisation of some alienated Muslims even in countries that promote multiculturalism and the ease of assimilation of minority identities within the nation-state. Another is the spread and reach of exclusivist ideologies such as Wahhabism and Salafism that are being promoted by West Asian state actors. IS practises with virulence even more extreme versions of these.
It is in this context that the Union Home Ministry’s decision to formulate a coherent national strategy to take on IS and prevent Indians being recruited by it must be seen. Reports have indicated that less than a dozen Indians have joined IS in the past year, even as IS symbols have been seen in places such as Kashmir at rallies led by separatist groups. The NDA government and the Prime Minister have gone on record saying that IS has negligible support among Muslims in India. This is accurate. IS’s millenarian and medieval notions of Islam treats Muslims who do not adhere to its ideology, especially members of other non-Sunni sects of Islam, as apostates. Islam in India, on the other hand, has a broad syncretic reach; despite the presence of a fundamentalist streak among certain pockets, Islam in India has generally been spared from the overweening influence of West Asian Wahhabism or the Saudi version of Salafism. In other words, the possibility of the ideological influence of groups such as IS coming to play in India is limited. Yet, there is the distinct possibility of IS targeting or influencing disaffected youth among the community. Radical groups have spread their influence in the last decade owing to grievances and disaffection, following incidents such as the Babri Masjid demolition and the Gujarat riots, and some of them have linked up with terrorist groups. The Indian state’s ability to hold true to its secular fabric and to its Constitution will determine how far it can stem such disaffection. The threat of IS in India has to be tackled not just by means of a security-oriented response — through coordination among police and intelligence agencies as has been proposed by the Home Ministry — but also by ensuring that the grounds of this disaffection among India’s largest minority community are addressed in a just way.
