Delhi, Bangalore, Jaipur, Ahmedabad and now Delhi again. Take the names of these cities together and it conjures up images of terror; of innocents unconnected with the larger politics dying when they were out shopping, or at work. It also conjures Islamist militant groups misinterpreting religion to wreak violence, and of an incompetent state machinery that regularly fails on the intelligence front and then responds by nabbing innocents.
The story was no different with the blasts that rocked parts of central, west and south Delhi on 13 September, killing more than 20 people and injuring almost 100. A group called the Indian Mujahedeen has claimed responsibility, which in recent months has emerged as the key outfit giving sleepless nights to officials of the Indian state. What is different from the past is that the hawks of Delhi can no longer hide their own inadequacies by blaming Pakistan and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). The Indian Mujahedeen, most reports suggest, may have connections with other Islamist groups, but it is a locally grown outfit at its core – a group of young Muslims who have been radicalised by events such as Babri Masjid and the Gujarat riots.
India is now getting caught in a vicious cycle. Policies and actions are breeding alienation and discontent. There are enough political elements happy to mobilise this sentiment, to organise and arm it both with an extremist ideology and weapons, and the alienated respond with violence. And the state responds with its own violence. The two cannot be equated, for the state has a legitimate monopoly over the coercive apparatus and is armed with democratic legitimacy. But under pressure to deliver, it nabs innocents, targets particular communities, flouts procedures and tramples on rights. And, inevitably, this breeds further alienation, especially among Muslims, sections of whom are already radicalised by a global Islamist ideology coupled with the Indian state's dismal track record in dealing with minorities.
The post-mortem has begun on the Delhi blasts. Rightwing commentators and security establishments are clamouring for a tougher law, along the lines of the Prevention of Terrorist Act (POTA). Their solution to the problem is further empowering the security establishment, and enhancing the surveillance of Muslims. Past experience, however, tells us that draconian laws have consistently been used by the previous government to target innocent people, besides being completely ineffective in tackling militancy and terror. The current ruling combine had made a promise to scrap such legislation in the run-up to elections, and even followed it up after forming the government. The problem lies in intelligence gathering and poor investigation, not in the absence of laws to convict the arrested and guilty. Bringing back any such law as POTA would only help to make the lower levels of the bureaucracy – much of which is ruthless, corrupt and responsible for the alienation in the first place – significantly stronger. The other instinctive response of the government is to engineer encounters, many of which are fake, and raise questions about both extrajudicial killings and the identity and guilt of those killed. To take the word of the police sources would obviously be a mistake.