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A demonstration by Muslim advocacy groups led by the Raza Academy, a Barelvi faction, in Mumbai’s Azad Maidan on 11 August 2012 to protest against the killings of Muslims in Kokrajhar, Assam and the Rohingya Muslims in the Rakhine state of Myanmar had resulted in violent clashes, leaving 2 dead and over 65 injured. Placards abusing “Burma” and “Buddhists” were seen at the rally. The protests subsequently spread to many cities in the country. In Bengaluru there were reports of some students from the Northeast (NE) being targeted by these elements with shouts of “Burma”.
The country in the past has witnessed peaceful and largely symbolic protests and demonstrations on issues not originating or having direct relevance to the country (US invasion of Iraq for example). The significance of the Azad Maidan demonstration and the violence in other cities that followed was not lost on the security establishment, especially since the trigger for the violence, the morphed photos/video clips of the Rohingya violence in Myanmar saw local residents being targeted by the demonstrators. Nor was the fact that the Azad Maidan incident, the clashes in other cities across the country and the resulting exodus of the NE community had the potential to severely impact communal harmony and national unity. Targeting of the NE community by these mobs threatened to undo years of pain staking efforts made to integrate them within the social fabric of rest of the country. Also, this incident in Mumbai saw the first case of attack on women police personnel by male protestors.
A best case analysis of the incident would treat it as two parallel events (one with illegal Rohingya or Bangladeshi immigrants venting their ire on Myanmarese asylum seekers and the second, targeting of Bodos/Assamese in retaliation for Kokrajhar) only connected by the organisation of a common protest. Clubbing all NE residents as Assamese would be incidental. However, when viewed more realistically the event leads to a worrisome conclusion; Indians being targeted by Indians for the Rohingya violence in Myanmar.
The issue had also surfaced when alleged Indian Mujahideen (IM) operatives arrested for their role in an aborted attack in Pune last year, were reported to have told their interrogators that they had conducted a recce of the Buddhist pilgrimage site of Bodh Gaya with an intention to carry out a suicide attack on the shrines to avenge atrocities committed on Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. The thought process of the IM, which wanted to attack the religious shrine of the Buddhist community in India to avenge attacks by the community in another country (Myanmar) points to a thinking where religion trumps blood-ties.
In an article “The Return of Toxic Nationalism,” published in the Wall Street Journal in the last week of Dec 2012, Robert D Kaplan points out that regressive and exclusivist forces — such as nationalism and sectarianism — are reshaping our future. Citing Egypt as an example, he says “Freedom, at least in its initial stages, unleashes not only individual identity but, more crucially, the freedom to identify with a blood-based solidarity group. Beyond that group, feelings of love and humanity do not apply. That is a signal lesson of the Arab Spring.”
Clifford D. May the President of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism, commenting on the article felt that Kaplan was right on all points save one: The Islamists who are coming to power are not a “blood-based solidarity group.” They are a religion-based solidarity group. Egyptian Islamists feel no solidarity with Egyptian Christians — despite blood ties going back centuries. He underlines a crucial distinction that Islamists insist that one’s primary identity is— and must be — based on religion, not nationality, not citizenship, not race, not class. The Syrian strife too supports this observation to an extent.
But this may not be necessarily true when one looks at friction between Afghan Pashtun refugees and the local Pashtuns in FATA, Pakistan, or the clashes between the Rohingyas and the Myanmarese in Rakhine state. Muslim Rohingya are ethnically and linguistically closer to the Bangladeshis than the Buddhist Rakhines with whom they are in conflict in Myanmar.
However, many analysts, if asked to put a finger on the single most important factor in success of al-Qaeda would point to its ability to get people to put religion ahead of nationality, race, class or any other distinguishing feature. Formation of religion-based solidarity groups, which violently espouse transnational religious causes and cause friction and conflict between different communities within the bounds of a nation would indicate influence of pan-Islamist terror groups.
India has been on al-Qaeda’s radar, though the public focus has been more on its affiliates. The terror group is said to have had a role in planning the 26/11 Mumbai attack and the training of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) assault team. According to Sayed Zabiuddin Ansari, the alleged facilitator of the Mumbai attacks, al-Qaeda was associated with training the Mumbai attackers in a LeT training camp close to the Pakistan-Iran border. Several documents recovered from Osama bin Laden's compound indicated a much larger direct al-Qaeda role in the planning of the 26/11 attacks than what the initial assessments had indicated.
Recently Asmatullah Muawiya, a former Jaish-e-Mohammed commander who is affiliated with both al-Qaeda and the so-called Punjabi Taliban, and now serves as one of several al-Qaeda "company" commanders, praised two terrorists who were recently hanged in India. Muawiya's statement was published on the jihadist Jamia Hafsa Urdu Forum on 24 February 2013. Muawiya also said that India will become a major target of terrorist attacks once the US withdraws from the region.
Besides internal security, in a politically sensitive environment this issue also affects articulation of country’s foreign policy in multilateral platforms (OIC) as well as in bilateral relationships as Indian has felt with Myanmar on the Rohingya issue. The only mitigating action with a reasonable measure of success against this conundrum is education and economic empowerment. But even then, how do you get people to put nation ahead of religion in their priorities when their access to a sizeable portion of government welfare is determined by their religion and caste and not their needs.
By Special Arrangement with The Centre For Land Warfare Studies (CLAWS) (http://www.claws.in)