It is claimed that currently the West is fighting an onslaught from ‘so-called’ Islamic terrorists and an all important worldwide ‘war on terror’ led by USA is going on for containment of threat posed by these Islamists. Though this brand of terrorism does not enjoy any known state support from any Muslim countries but interestingly it is projected as a big threat like communism was projected in the past. Only Iran, Libya, Sudan and Syria are alleged as somewhat supporters of Islamic terrorism but their involvement and capability to support such a worldwide campaign is still under dispute.
It is alleged by many neutral observers that Islamic terrorism is not real but created and blown out of proportion by Western media under the state guidance. To justify their policy of keeping military build-ups intact, USA and its Western allies are using this threat as a pretext. It seems that they always need an adversary. During Cold War era it was communism; now it is Islamic terrorism.
It is also alleged that to make this threat projection more convincing, the West is trying to show a worldwide spread of Islamic terrorism. India, which was already reeling under Pakistan-backed ‘cross boarder terrorism’, was one country which was easy to be shown as another target of Islamic terrorism and by using that threat, the point of a need for India to have a closer military tie with the West, can also be scored with much ease. One can see recent terror incidents across India in this light as well.
Every time there is such an incident immediately the Police, security agencies and the media declare that it is done by some Muslim organisation like HuJI, SIMI, LeT and Harkatul Mujahideen without much concurring evidences. According to them the perpetrators of these blasts are Muslims because nobody else has a reason like Kashmir or sympathy towards Pakistan or religious teachings in madrasas to destabilise the country. After that hundreds of innocent young boys are picked up. What follows are illegal detentions, torture, humiliation, arrests and harassment of their families. The cacophony of stricter laws rises so that the Police can extract a confession by third degree torture and present that as evidence. Usually for years these helpless victims are tortured in jails, denied legal aid, even lawyers who try and fight their cases are attacked openly in courts. Their images tarnished for life. If they are lucky they get let off after years as neither the agencies or the police have any evidence against them. Through this systematic vilification campaign the process of demonization of minorities continued unabated.
One can say, the torture by Police in India is a common practice and is generally accepted by officials in private as a widespread reality. But acknowledgment of the recent incidents of religious insults mixed with torture meted out to the so-called Muslim terrorist-detainees is difficult to come by even from liberal officers. If we believe the testimonies from Hyderabad, UP, Gujarat and Maharashtra, this phenomenon is not an aberration. One may wonder from where these disturbing practices are emanating and are they Indian in nature or part of some foreign design? While one cannot deny the fact that a systematic infiltration of Right Wing Hindu elements has occurred in security forces since independence and they can play the main role in such incidents of torture mixed with religious insults and the entire thing may have its own indigenous roots, parallels can also be drawn with similar incidents happened in Guantanamo Bay and in prisons of Israel, orchestrated by CIA and Mossad respectively.
We need to explore the mindset and politics behind such occurrences and will try to find out if these incidents are the result of penetration of Hindu Right wing in the Indian security forces or reflect the formal linkages between Indian intelligence agencies and CIA-Mossad combine.