Enemy in the mirror

The Indian Mujahideen: The enemy within
Author: Shishir Gupta
Publisher: Hachette India
Language: English
Binding: Hardback
ISBN: 978-93-5009-252-1
Pages: 324
Price: 550

'We must – and will – meet terror with more democracy, not less,' said Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, to Norway in distress, as it mourned the death of 92 citizens in one of the most cold blooded terror attack in its capital, Oslo, in July last. In a political context where the rhetoric of fear reigns, Stoltenberg's call for 'more democracy’ carries tremendous weight. Especially, when the ever thickening fear is often cited as an excuse to strip off  citizen rights, to break in to  mail boxes, to keep conversations tapped, and many a times to topple governments in the pretext of ‘establishing democracy’.

In a horrifying world where the other is literally hell, in the exclusivity of the small barricaded communes, we are often shell-shocked by the enemy within. Under the forbidding weight of the fear of the other, our safety walls cave in, pulling us down to the ground, squeezing. The feeling that they have come for us for certain – and that they have come from within – sends shock waves through spine. It was this incurable feeling of terror, of being fearful of your shadow that Shishir Gupta, senior journalist and writer, is trying to unravel in 'Indian Mujahideen, the enemy within.' The title itself is telling, the content predictable, but the reading leaves you with a strange foreboding- the age of the fear thickens further.

Shishir Gupta, editor with Express News Service at the Indian Express and member of the International Institute of strategic studies, terms the book a study into the “motivations of the Indian Mujahideen and other jihadists operating in India and how religion was deliberately misinterpreted by vested interests and subversives to justify violence in the country.” And he adds, “Contrary to public belief the rise of the Indian Mujahideen has little to do with religion and is better interpreted as an act of revenge against perceived threats and biases towards the minority community.” The elaborate research on the rank and file of the underground terror group that rooted in the Indian soil, drawing nourishment from outside and well fed on the pan-Islamic feeling of being discriminated, do have some points to make. The author is not blinded to the fact that the home grown terror does not limit itself to a pack of radical Islamists. The right wing Hindu 'reaction' also gets mentioned, to make the narrative politically balanced.

The evolution of Indian Mujahideen (IM) from SIMI and the ideological difference with in the mother organization is dealt with elaborate life sketch of leaders, functionaries full with a brief on Jamat-i-Islami ideologue, Maulana Abul Ala Maududi, and his preachings on Islamic Nationhood - Ummah. Every bits and pieces of available data on the IM leaders and functionaries are provided in great detail, from their schooling to how each of them grew up, made their career and finally took the call for the deadly cause.

Home grown terror is traced back to its roots, with travels to Azamgarh in UP and to Bhatkal in Konkan coast, towns known as the nurseries of IM radicals. Socio-economic factors and the communal history of these towns briefly draw a social map dangerously strewn with shards of hatred. But the author, it seems, have concentrated more on the history of the organization, its leaders, and to unearth international terror links and missed a much valuable chance of a deeper socio-cultural analysis that go beyond the obvious. Bhatkal and Azamgarh would have provided key insights into the “perceived threats and biases” that works in the mind of the radicalized youths who keep a deadly device ticking in an unsuspecting crowd and do not turn back in remorse. In that sense, the book leaves behind valuable clues for a social scientist to pursue an exploration into a social psyche that grooms enemies within.

Indian Mujahideen follows a linear narration planned to perfection with a predictable cause-reaction mode of analysis. Radicalization of  Muslim youths in India is linked to the demolition of Babri Masjid and the Gujarat carnage. And their cause of disillusion is traced to deprivation, poverty, and memories of underdevelopment that makes a perfect (vicious) circle. The life history of Indian Mujahideen functionaries are delivered in detail as one can have it from official documents and narratives. The book finds it difficult to shrug off an overdose of intelligence input. More often it depends solely on confessions of detained IM activists and charge sheets filed against them.

An elaborate chapter on IM links to ISI and LeT vigorously draw from David Coleman Headley, a Pakistan born Chicago resident arrested by FBI for terror links across the world. Despite the possibility of Headley having worked as a double agent for ISI and CIA – a veritable doubt aired by many – the book prefers to build on his 'revelations' to FBI and National Intelligence Agency (NIA) with out an iota of doubt.

Lack of governance and intelligence failure are blamed for the spread of home grown terrorism and the solution, the author says, “lies not with the religious clerics but economic development, good governance, better infrastructure, more security and superior investigation tools...” Clinical and predictable in the treatment of terrorism, the book goes into logistical issues but leaves the larger area of symbolism upon which the ruthless walls of communal hatred are being built. Nor is there a try to define terrorism in the Indian context. IM and Abhinav Bharat is termed as terrorists groups, but Gujarat massacre and Babri Masjid demolition are considered as just incidents in background.

The concluding chapter is a critic of Indian intelligence apparatus and a call for the need for more effective counter terror regime, more stringent laws to contain communal violence. But a call for ‘more democracy,’ is not loud and clear enough to be heard above a clamor for better security and vigil. When discussing the economic and social development need of the Muslims in India, the book quotes from the now sacked Vice Chacellor of Deoband Seminary, Maulana Ghulam Mohammed Vastanvi who praised Narendra Modi model of development under which ‘all communities including Muslims were prospered.’

Despite references to Abhinav Bharat and right wing terror groups in the book, the definitive the in title- (…the enemy within), deceives a preoccupation apparent through out. Yet again, the book keeps value as an elaborate attempt to put together scattered data on the home grown terror groups and their internal architecture.