Wanted: A prime minister to fight ISIS

The single-biggest question which we ought to ask in India’s general election to find a new prime minister is—who is a suitable candidate to defend against what might be emerging as perhaps the deadliest threat to the country? Allow me to explain.

The most devastating news that you are not worrying about at this moment is this—India is at risk of infiltration by ISIS, an Islamist terrorist group, at a level almost no one imagined, and if some did, they certainly did not share the news widely.

If there is one thing that should be—but isn’t—at the top of India’s general election, it is the news steadily flowing in, but failing to make headlines, that India is now declared key priority for ISIS.

There is a man called Abu Muhammed al-Bengali who has been named by ISIS as its ‘emir’ in Bengal with the sole declared purpose of conducting terror attacks in Bengal in India and in neighbouring Bangladesh. Why that part of the world? What is special about it? Why would ISIS choose that area? It is a question whose answer should keep us awake at night.

It cannot be forgotten, but indeed has, that Islamist preacher Zakir Naik, who finally fled India after years of spreading extremist propaganda, was finally investigated when terrorists in Bangladesh confessed to being influenced by him. What was Naik doing for years in India? Why was he not investigated for years? How did he amass funding of hundreds of crores?

We still do not have clear answers to those questions.

That’s not all. The devastating terror attack in Sri Lanka, and there is no point denying this, had links to Islamist groups in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu and Kerala. That this radicalisation was going on had never really made any headlines until the Lankan attack stunned everyone.

There are, at the moment, no clear answers as to what kind of radicalisation has already happened in parts of southern India: why was this not highlighted, was anyone tracking this, what did the state governments know, did they do anything to prevent this, is it still happening, and are there sweeping enquiries taking place?

We just do not know.

Meanwhile, critical questions are being asked about how small terror groups could pull off the Sri Lankan attack, as Adil Rasheed, research fellow at the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses has pointed out, and there are increasing telltale signs that suggest a deep and insidious ISIS network across India and Bangladesh, perhaps under a web of aliases.

All this not only means grave threats to India’s security but also a potential collapse of its signature distinction from Pakistan—that Indian soil is not used by terrorists. But if attacks like the one in Sri Lanka start to find back linkages to India, that would be a stunning rebuke to one of the country’s most preciously held mark of distinction from its northern neighbour.

What India desperately needs in a new PM is someone who understands this threat and gives it top priority. Someone who can ask hard questions of the state governments about growing ISIS networks in their territory. Someone who comprehends that if this spreads in India, it has the potential to utterly destabilise the country at a time when it must aim to become a $5-trillion economy in the near future.

But tragically there is little discussion about this threat in the constant quarrelling in the general election. There are no hard questions being asked about this, and of course, none are being answered.

The single greatest threat to the nationhood of India might well be a PM who is unable to comprehend the importance of this hydra-headed mushrooming of Islamist terror networks across India and their connections with neighbouring countries, and fails to ask which states in India are most vulnerable to this ideology, and why? What are those states doing wrong?

One more 26/11-style attack—god forbid in India’s capital or financial capital—might have the capacity to deliver a crippling blow to India’s economic ambition at this crucial juncture. This scenario should never fail to haunt a country which has lived through a terror attack on its parliament.

What India needs is a PM who stays awake thinking about this, a PM who gets nightmares about this. Anything less will not do.

Views are personal.