Radical Islam Presents Indian PM a Statesman’s Chance: India can be a bulwark of moderate Islam, built on inter-faith trust, but lack of this trust can make Muslims susceptible to exploitation by radical forces

By K.C. Singh

Oct 19, 2014

Campaigns like ‘love jihad’ can increase alienation of the largest minority and thus make it susceptible to exploitation by radical forces. A good counter-terrorism strategy includes both a battle for the mind and heart.

Prime Minster Narendra Modi concluded his first cycle of foreign policy moves with his United Nations General Assembly speech and his interaction with US President Barack Obama on September 30. There was strategic logic in the sequencing, beginning with the neighbourhood; then the Brics partners, including two permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, China and Russia, and a principal nation each from the continents of Africa and Latin America i.e. South Africa and Brazil; and finally, the global stage at United Nations General Assembly and lastly the significant engagement with the US.

A Modi doctrine has gradually emerged. It encompasses theatrical openings, diplomatic words, behind which is attempted re-drawing of some terms of engagement, including new red lines, particularly with Pakistan and China. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee in 1998, by India’s nuclear tests, similarly challenged the status quo of a post-Cold War US dominance. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, to which India objected as it perpetuated inequities of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, became a means to push India into a subordinate global role. The gambit succeeded as the then government read correctly that an emerging India could not be ignored by the US. Genuine India-US strategic convergence thus commenced after India levelled the strategic playing field.

The success or failure of the incipient Modi doctrine will depend on how India counters its contemporary challenges and thus influences outcomes as global disorder reassembles either into a new, fair and balanced paradigm or spirals into multiple regional points of chaos and contestation. The forces at play are the non-state actors fuelling radical religious forces; the rise of China with external and internal destabilising factors; the nationalistic impulses of nations like Russia, China, Japan, Vietnam and India; the future of Muslim nations, both Shia and Sunni, in an arc from Pakistan to the Mediterranean; the impact of energy independence of US and global transition to renewable energy on the fate of mostly authoritarian regimes now producing fossil fuels; impact of social media in expediting cataclysmic change, etc.

India cannot be immune to their effect and India’s sheer size and diversity dictate that it share the responsibility to shape constructive outcomes. Take the rise of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), or Daesh in Arabic. Its declaration of a caliphate after seizing Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, on June 9 has been followed by many Al Qaeda-associated groups in the Afro-Asian region declaring their “bayat”, or loyalty, to it. Its flags first appeared in Pakistan’s tribal regions and eventually in Srinagar. The battle for the Kurdish Syrian town Kobani, on the Turkish border, pits the high-tempo combat of ISIS, which hybridises tactics of terrorists, urban guerrillas and conventional armies, against US air-power and the grit of the Kurds. Turkey is literally watching from the sidelines while negotiating terms. Its loss of election to the non-permanent seat at the UNSC reflects its dropping support even amongst the Islamic countries. Riots in its Kurdish cities over its inaction may be just early signs of more internal tension as Kurds of the entire region are forced to sink their differences for self-defence and survival.

That ISIS influence percolating to South Asia will impinge on Indian security is a given. It has been speculated that President Obama asked Prime Minister Modi during their Washington talks for Indian help. This raises the larger debate of the impact any such action may have on the 18 crore Indian Muslims. It is a debate that goes back a century to the Khilafat Movement, when Congress took up cudgels on a pan-Islamic issue on behalf of Indian Muslims. After independence an unwritten rule has been a veto of foreign policy decisions thought to effect the Indian Muslim psyche, i.e. relations with Israel, Palestinian issue, etc. India in addition has a large Shia population, which had recently begun recruitment of volunteers to protect Najaf and Karbala when the ISIS’ initial advance seemed to imperil those holy cities.

PM Modi’s challenge is to outgrow his stereotyped Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) trained understanding of Islam and what ails it. Besides counter-terrorism cooperation with a swathe of nations threatened by jihad, India can be a bulwark of moderate Islam, built on inter-faith trust. Campaigns like “love jihad” and banning cow slaughter can increase alienation of the largest minority and thus make it susceptible to exploitation by radical forces. A good counter-terrorism strategy includes both a battle for the mind and heart as indeed good intelligence and policing.

The debate between the revealed word and reason is an old one and faced by all religions. The Bhakti Movement questioned many extant doctrines and practices in Hinduism, as did Thomas Aquinas in Christianity. In Islam the debate was robust in the 9th century as Islam encountered Greek philosophy. Caliph al Ma’mun (813-33 AD) saw Aristotle in his dream and learnt that good had to be “rationally good”. He patronised the Mu’tazilites who balanced the revealed word against reason. Unfortunately, while the next two Caliphs followed the same line, Caliph Ja’afar overturned this and allowed an imprisoned Hanabal to emerge and propound the literalist school. Al Qaeda, and now ISIS, are merely extending this intolerance of reason to a violent and medieval rejection of modernity, human rights and democracy.

PM Modi has a great opportunity to rekindle moderation and inter-faith harmony based on genuine trust and not merely mutual fear. Winston Churchill correctly said: “If we open a quarrel between past and present, we shall find we have lost the future.” It is hoped that Indian leaders of all parties like Caliph Ma’mun do encounter a philosopher in their dreams some times.

K.C. Singh is a former secretary in the external affairs ministry.

Source: http://www.asianage.com/columnists/radical-islam-presents-pm-statesman-s-chance-142

URL: https://newageislam.com/war-terror/radical-islam-presents-indian-pm/d/99600