India’s bitter half

The gloves are off in Europe. Lord Alexander Carlile, QC, was appointed by the British government to review the country’s anti-terrorist legislation. The publication of his final report strongly states that Britain’s long-standing efforts at “multiculturalism” in respect to immigrant communities does not seem to be working. In fact, it is turning Britain into a safe haven for terrorists, especially from immigrant communities, primarily because of rulings by the European Court of Human Rights that made it difficult to deport people considered terrorist risks, and other decisions that curbed the application of British anti-terrorist laws.

Since 1960s, Britain has practised a policy of “enlightened liberalism”. But Prime Minister David Cameron felt sufficiently alarmed by the growth of religiously radicalised militancy within the country to bite the bullet and move away from political correctness. He publicly expressed serious concerns about “segregated communities where Islamic extremism can thrive”.
Speaking at a security conference in Germany on February 4, Mr Cameron referred to the “hands-off tolerance” in Britain and other European nations that had encouraged Muslims and other immigrant groups “to live separate lives, apart from each other and the mainstream”. He said that the policy had allowed Islamic militants leeway to radicalise young Muslims, some of whom went on to “the next level” by becoming terrorists.
He went on to say that the multiculturalism policy — based on the principle of the right of all groups in Britain to live by their traditional values — had failed to promote a sense of common identity centered on values of human rights, democracy, social integration and equality before the law.
He urged European governments to practice “a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and much more active, muscular liberalism”, reverberating and amplifying what French President Nicholas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel had said elsewhere about the situation in their own countries.
Immigrant groups in Britain are dominated by Muslims, whose numbers have been estimated in some recent surveys at 2.5 million in Britain’s population of 60 million. Britain’s domestic intelligence service, MI5, has said that as many as 2,000 Muslims in Britain are involved in terrorist cells, and that it tracks dozens of potential terrorist plots at any one time, all with a very substantial Pakistan connection.
In Britain, organisations like al-Muhajiroun founded by the cleric Sheikh Muhammad Umar Bhakri openly proselytise and recruit second- or third-generation British Pakistanis. They motivate them to attend jihadi training camps in Pakistan and join the holy war in Afghanistan where some have fought against British troops.
Britain plans to tackle extremism by barring “preachers of hate” like Sheikh Bhakri or Abu Hamza al-Masri from visiting the country and not allowing them to speak in mosques and community centres. Often, neo-jihadi groups masquerade as social organisations and receive government funds. They divert the funds to develop platforms that are hostile to British perceptions of gender equality and other Western social values.
India needs to carefully assess the impact of Mr Cameron’s speech. This can have inevitable side effects on the way the Hindu and Sikh diaspora in Britain is perceived by the British. Hindus and Sikhs are also from South Asia but are separate from their Pakistani counterparts. They are now trying to move out from the blanket of South Asian coverall by demanding specific classification as “British Hindus” or “British Sikhs”.
Eastern Europe — with a turbulent history of indigenous Euro-Muslim populations in the Balkans and the North Caucasus undistinguishable from their non-Muslim compatriots — is experiencing its own ethnic turbulence. In the Balkans, the disintegration of Yugoslavia ignited religious conflict in Bosnia and Kosovo along historical Serb-Muslim faultlines that had been kept in check by the former Communist government.
In North Caucasus, two no-holds-barred wars in Chechnya against the Russian government have given rise to the Imarat Kavkaz or the Caucasus Emirate. It was proclaimed by rebel Chechen leader Doka Umarov in the troubled Stavropol region of Russia bordering the Caspian Sea in the southernmost republics of Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria and North Ossetia.
These five Russian republics are home to fundamentalist separatist insurgencies that carry out regular attacks against Russian security forces and government officials not only their “near presence” in the Caucasus, but also the “far enemy” in Moscow itself.
Europe has experienced a series of major terrorist attacks over the past decade. Attacks like the Madrid train bombings of 2004, the London Tube cum bus bombings of 2005, the Beslan School hostage crisis of 2004, have portrayed Russian security agencies in extremely poor light. The perpetrator of the January 2011 suicide attack at Moscow’s Domededovo airport was a militant of the North Caucasus Nogai tribal Jamaat. He was allegedly trained in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In India, the country’s earliest encounter with European militancy began with the hijacking of Indian Airlines flight IC 814 in December 1999. Sadly, the Indian authorities mishandled the situation and released Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and two other Pakistani terrorists. Sheikh was a British passport holder. That sequence was re-enacted in October 2009 when David Coleman Headley (aka Daud Gilani) was caught by the Chicago police as he was boarding a flight from the US to Pakistan. Headley — an American citizen of Pakistani-American parentage — was allegedly involved in the planning and management of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks. It is alleged that he carried out five reconnaissance visits to Mumbai between 2006-2008, posing as an American businessman.
Back home, India on its part needs to congratulate itself, and count its blessings at the success of its own social integration post-1947 which has been hugely inclusive. We must thank the wisdom of the founding fathers who insisted on strong secular roots in an enormously multicultural society.
As a result, in spite of massive external provocations and sponsorship from Pakistan, global jihad has not been able to establish indigenous foundations in India. Neither Akshardham nor Malegaon can be tolerated in India. The watchword is eternal vigilance.

Gen. Shankar Roychowdhury is a former Chief of Army Staff and a former member of Parliament