The "Idea of India" after Mumbai

The "Idea of India" after Mumbai. By Apoorva Shah
AEI, Friday, April 24, 2009

India's founding ideal of multicultural democracy is critical to both domestic cohesion and geopolitical interest, and it has defined how the country confronts terrorism at home. Modern India has much experience with terrorism, but most attacks have been rooted in separatist and ethnic insurgencies in rural frontier provinces. In the last decade, however, India has seen a steep rise in the number of attacks in urban areas, aimed at civilians, and committed not by rural insurgents but by young, middle-class jihadists. These domestic threats, which expose fault lines in the "idea of India," have been welcomed and at times supported by Pakistan, whose existence is founded in opposition to India. In fact, the apparent paradox between Pakistan's tolerance of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorist group leading up to the November 26, 2008, attacks in Mumbai and Pakistan's internal struggle against extremists can be understood in the framework of these conflicting ideologies. For India, countering the threat of domestic jihadism is not only a security imperative; it is also a strategic necessity. This merits a new counterterrorism response by the Indian government and a renewed understanding of Indian Muslims and their place in India's pluralistic society.

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