The case against banning outfits

The Indian police, alas, have such a bad image that even when one of their officers dies in an encounter, there are those who charge them with killing their own man. May I put on record that I think those who believe that the Jamia Nagar encounter was fake should be ashamed of themselves? They should apologise to the family of Inspector Mohan Chand Sharma for making such a charge. But, it is a sign of how little credibility the police have that such a charge can be made.

If in Pune they have arrested the right men, then we face a problem that both our secular and communal politicians are refusing to address. If young men in their early twenties earning Rs 19 lakh a year are being lured by jihad, we need to start admitting that the battle for India’s values of secularism and religious tolerance is already lost. At least let us admit we have failed to convince Muslims that these are real values.

If looked at in reverse, we could say that organisations like SIMI and the Darul Uloom in Deoband have been infinitely more successful at making their case than those who are supposed to defend the values of India. Personally, I do not believe that banning anything is ever a solution. We can ban SIMI and the Bajrang Dal in one fell swoop and they will only return in some uglier, more insidious guise as long as the ideas that create them are compelling. When SIMI was set up in 1977, the stated idea behind its creation was to ‘liberate’ India by making it an Islamic society. In 1986, SIMI organised a national convention whose slogan was ‘liberation of India through Islam’.

This was long before Osama bin Laden began the worldwide jihad against the West and us ‘idol-worshipping infidels’. SIMI was an idea that was ahead of its time. After 9/11 it must have been ripe for the picking when bin Laden’s lieutenants came looking for recruits. If the police are right when they tell us that a faction of SIMI broke away to emerge as the vile Indian Mujahideen, it would not be hard to believe.

Islamism is the antithesis of the idea of India and must be fought but is banning SIMI and closing down the mother ship, the Darul Uloom, the solution? Personally, I do not think so. Nor can the Bajrang Dal ever be our bulwark. What we need is a police force that is manifestly fair in its behaviour and political leaders who genuinely believe in the values that define India as a nation. Since both are in short supply, what we get from the jackals who constitute the bulk of our political class are howls in the name of secularism and communalism. Meaningless sloganeers all. Inevitably, all they offer by way of solutions are demands for banning the Bajrang Dal and SIMI. They know it will make no difference.