It took might of a pandemic
for Kasargod, to find a place in the mindscape of ordinary Indians. Even
as the nondescript town in North Kerala emerged as a Covid-19 hotspot, it has
skipped popular attention that this was the hometown of Muhammad Muhsin, one of
the terrorists who massacred Sikhs at the Kabul Gurudwara on 25 March 2020. Kerala’s linkages with the international
terror landscape had come into transitory limelight post Sri Lanka’s Easter-weekend
terror strike in 2019. However, it got drowned in the sea of corona-related
broadcasts even after Al Naba, the propaganda wing of ISKP (Islamic State Khorasan
Province) published Muhsin’s (alias Abu Khalid Al-Hindi) photograph flaunting
the one-finger Towheed gesture.
Kerala used to take pride in
its socio-religious syncretism, where Islam arrived peacefully and communal
relations soured only for a brief period in its entire history, during Tipu’s
reign. The Mappilla
rebellion, support for Jinnah and flirtation with the idea of a sovereign Moppilistan on the eve of independence never
affected the region’s social harmony. Today, the Malayali muslims enjoy
superior economic status, political say and literacy rates than any other part
of the country. Why is it then that the state has accounted for nearly a
quarter of the IS related cases in India?
Abul A’la Maududi’s ideas of
political Islam found roots in the state through Jamaat-e-Islami, post the 1979 Iranian revolution. Even
as the communist dream fascinated the Malayali population at large, subtly-secularised
intellectual Islam captivated the educated Muslims. Salafism which has existed
as a minor strain in Kerala’s polity for over a century, gradually gained
ground. Outfits like Islamic Seva Sangh and National Democratic Front (now the
notorious Peoples’ Front of India / PFI) gained from political opportunism of
those in power and facilitated radicalisation. The leadership of these groups
has had close ties with the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). The
Kerala Muslim who was not influenced by the likes of Al Qaeda and Taliban
because of the language barrier, found resonance with the ideology of IS as it gave
them the hope of realising their utopian fantasy of living in a “pure Islamic milieu”.
It is this dream of the caliphate conveyed in Malayalam by internet-based
influencers that ignited in the already radicalised minds. Kerala’s links and
easy connectivity with the gulf-region, money pumped into already-subsidised Islamic
educational institutions and the onset of social media acted as catalysts in the
process, as they took flight to Syria and Afghanistan.
There has been a recent
realisation in the Indian security establishment that it is the radicalisation
that has to be tackled rather than merely the symptoms of terrorism and Kerala
is leading the way in de-radicalisation drives. The security agencies and
police have been endeavouring to exploit the critical time of movement of radicalised
persons from ideas to action, to intervene and bring them back to the
mainstream. This approach however, is woefully inadequate in these times of “Do-It-Yourself
terrorism”. When will the utopian dream in distant Syria or Khorasan transform
into strife for a caliphate right here in Kerala, is anybody’s guess. Do we
have to wait till the signs emerge?
What would the great Kautilya have done under these circumstances? My
guess is he would have envisioned and laid out an ingenuous long-term course
rather than go for symptomatic responses. The root of the problem lay in the
seemingly harmless organisations (Jamaat-e-Islami, Tabliqi Jamaat, Towheed Jamaat and the like), that ingrain the seeds of
fanaticism in impressionable minds. They act as system drivers of the “terrorism
software” with an inherent capability to take over the hardware as well, under
favourable circumstances. The solution is to corrupt these drivers, firstly by targeting
their credibility in the eyes of their adherents and secondly by gradually crippling
their strength financially. I trust, that the decision makers of India’s security
apparatus are well-versed in Kautilyan thought and are capable of implementing
his counsel despite our largely “secular” media, minority-rights narrative and naïve
population.
