Majoritarianism fuels extremism: lesson for India from Sri Lankan blasts

The exact trigger for the Easter Sunday attacks on churches and hotels in Sri Lanka may never be established. While the Islamic State (IS) has been quick to claim responsibility, it has not offered any reason for targeting Sri Lanka, of all places. Initial reports that it was in retaliation against the Christchurch mosque killings by a white suprematist have been discounted after the New Zealand government denied it had any such intelligence.

But a more credible theory gaining ground is that the attacks which claimed more than 250 lives were a backlash against Sri Lankan nationalists’ hate campaign against Muslims in recent years. It has often led to violence against innocent Muslims.

And, here, there are lessons for India to learn from the events in Sri Lanka. Because the treatment of Muslims there has an eerie echo of the systematic targeting of Muslims in India under the Narendra Modi government. Particularly notable are the parallels between the activities of India’s anti-cow slaughter zealots and the campaign of Buddhist Sinhalese nationalists in Sri Lanka against halal meat certification and hijab.

There have been attacks on shops selling halal meat, akin to attacks in India on establishments suspected of selling beef. Last year, anti-Muslim riots in Kandy saw hundreds of Muslim homes and businesses set on fire and vandalised by mobs of Sinhalese youths. Several Muslims were killed.

Sri Lankan intelligence sources have been quoted as suggesting a link between the April 27 attacks and the recent cycle of anti-Muslim violence. It’s believed to be a factor behind the radicalisation of Muslim youth who staged the Easter Sunday atrocity.

A “top” Sri Lankan military intelligence source told The Hindu’s Meera Srinivasan: “The spate of anti-Muslim violence in Sri Lanka in recent years could have been a reason for more youth to turn radical and mobilise... “While screening records of conversations among the suspects, we found references to the communal tensions in the recent past. They have spoken of the need to retaliate. We believe those tensions could have been a motivation.”

What is believed to have further fuelled Muslim anger (another parallel with the Indian situation) is that they struggled to be heard by the government, let alone find justice, accentuating their sense of insecurity and simmering anger. They were a sitting duck for anyone looking to fish in troubled waters; the IS saw its chance and grabbed it using disillusioned local Muslim youth and an obscure radical group as proxies to do its dirty work.

It’s well-known that IS has been trying to recruit in India but so far it has had only limited success. That’s because by and large Indian Muslims are moderate and, for all their frustrations, until now they still had faith in Indian institutions. Their votes counted, political parties wooed them, they had representation in Parliament, governments sought them out for ministerial posts to burnish their secular credentials. They felt a part of the system even if nominally. Not anymore.

Five years of systematic marginalisation under Modi has left them feeling excluded —and effectively disenfranchised. Muslim representation in the last Lok Sabha hit an all-time low. There were only 22 MPs in the last Lok Sabha, the worst-ever tally in the history of Indian Parliament overtaking the previous low of 23 in 1957. Even passionate Modi supporters admit that Islamophobia has gone mainstream under Modi along with the general climate of hate and intolerance.

“If Narendra Modi’s most ardent supporters are no longer certain about what he truly stands for, it is because in his wake he has brought a very ugly kind of Indian whose political motivation is hate. I witness this first hand on social media every time I write anything critical about Modi. Currently, the hatred has reached epic proportions...In the ranks of Modi’s followers, it has to be said, there are mostly people who have more understanding of hating Muslims than of the ‘Right wing’ ideology they claim to profess. In their very narrow worldview, if you hate Muslims, then you belong, but if you speak out against innocent Muslim dairy farmers and cattle traders being lynched, then you are a Pakistani. So those who vote once more for Modi will have to keep in mind that he brings with him some very bad people with very bad ideas.”

This from Tavleen Singh, once a fervent Modi fan (Indian Express, April 28). To be fair, she has consistently warned Modi against the danger of keeping the kind of company he keeps.

I don’t wish to sound alarmist, but India is sitting on a powder keg and it’s astonishing that someone as astute as Modi and his clever advisers don’t get it that their strategy of Hinduisation plays straight into the hands of Islamist extremist groups like IS. BJP’s “hate Muslim” campaign is an open invitation to extremist groups looking for new targets.

Indian Muslims may be moderate but they are also human beings and their capacity to tolerate daily humiliation and provocation has its limits. Their patience is running out, and ultimately—as in Sri Lanka—it takes only a handful of disaffected youth to light the fuse.

A point often ignored because it suits both the government and the Muslim community for different reasons is that the scale of radicalisation among young Indian Muslims has been grossly underestimated. Just because no major attack has happened doesn’t mean that it’s all hunky-dory. It’s the same sort of complacency that caught the Sri Lankan authorities napping.

The fact that some of the Sri Lankan suicide bombers reportedly had links in Kerala points to the existence of so-called “sleeper cells” or IS-inspired “lone wolves” in India. And they are there for a purpose—waiting for the cup of Muslim disaffection to over-run.

The idea that you can publicly humiliate and effectively disenfranchise 180 million citizens without risking consequences is the stuff of hubris. Because nothing has happened so far is no guarantee that it will never happen. That’s what Sinhalese nationalists thought, and it’s a mistake Modi’s Hindu nationalists are repeating. Sri Lanka is a wake-up call for India which it can ill afford to ignore. After its defeat in Syria, IS is looking for new pastures to deploy its unemployed troops. Could India be next?

(The author is a London-based commentator)