Lessons of terrorism

What are the lessons India should draw from the terror attack in London? It goes without saying that it needs to strengthen its defences against terror by beefing up security and intelligence. However, what’s noteworthy is that the London attack did not require the acquisition of weapons and explosives or perhaps even the cultivation of teams of militants. As French terrorism expert Sebastien Pietrasanta observed ‘‘it is often a case of individual action, they can be quite spontaneous’’. To minimise such attacks, it is also important to guard against social alienation and the ghettoisation of groups.

Groups like IS hold hardly any attraction for Indian Muslims. However, recent BJP poll wins have ignited in some minds visions of going ahead with the Hindutva project, or the creation of a kind of Hindu Pakistan where minorities would be relegated to second class status. There is already a disturbing similarity between Pakistan’s blasphemy laws and persecution of people on grounds of meat consumption in India: in both cases mobs can level flimsy accusations at people, usually belonging to minorities, with the assurance that authorities will side with them which becomes a spark for violence. Luckily, India is still some distance away from being Pakistan. However, progress along this path will also come freighted with the kind of outcomes we see in Pakistan.