Any proud and self-respecting Indian would share the prime minister’s anguish and loss of sleep over the arrest of some Indian Muslims for suspected Al-Qaeda links. Similarly, you’d also understand his statement that, being a Sikh, he particularly understands the implications of a community being tarred with the charge of terrorism. Where it hurts every Indian, whatever his religion, is that it dents the one claim, the one fact we have been so proud of since 9/11: that so many Muslims have been caught or identified around the world for links with pan-Islamic terrorism, but not one was from India, despite the large Muslim population here. That significant, and remarkable, phenomenon has been analysed and studied in great detail, and generally credited variously to Indian democracy and secularism as also to the unique fact of Indianism, where national, ethnic, regional and linguistic identities often transcend or mask those of religion. Just a few arrests here and there, and that too in an isolated case now, do not change the picture. But these raise some other questions that even the prime minister needs to answer, and also must ask his own government and its allies.

While profiling of any community is bad, it should equally be imprudent to profile one for being a permanent victim. In the business of democratic, secular, one-law-for-all system of governance, all citizens and communities must be equal and innocent unless proven otherwise. Or let me put it even more simply: just because you cannot simply presume a person to be a terrorist because he belongs to a particular community, you cannot presume a suspect to be innocent just because he happens to come from ‘a’ particular community. The question the prime minister needs to ask/answer is, has his government — and, even more precisely, the political formulation that keeps it in power — been true to this test?

... contd.