Books | Designs on India

Abhinav Pandya

In May 2022, AQ chief Ayman Al Zawahiri released a video in which he compared Kashmir with Palestine and called it a ‘recurring tragedy’. Drawing parallels between Indian policies in Kashmir and Israel’s policies in Palestine, he categorized the former as the cause of the ‘oppressed Muslim ummah that had its natural resources stolen and land divided’. Inciting the Kashmiris, he said that repealing Article 370 is like a ‘slap on Kashmir’s face’, and the masses should rise in revolt against this. The video also praised terrorists like Burhan Wani, Zakir Musa and Adil Dar. In 2017, AGuH had emerged as the AQ’s Kashmir affiliate. Its commander, Zakir Musa, stated that they struggled to make Kashmir a Shariah-governed state and part of the Islamic caliphate-making it clear that the fight was not for political freedom but the Islamic cause.

AQ has also established sleeper cells and proxy units in the Indian hinterland. The thirteenth report of the UN Analytical and Sanctions Monitoring Team mentions that AQIS has changed the name of its magazine from Nawa-i-Afghan Jihad to Nawa-i-Ghazwa-e-Hind, which suggests its renewed focus on the Indian subcontinent. The reports confirm that AQ’s relationship with the Taliban continues to be strong and cordial. After the Taliban’s return, AQ has consolidated in Afghanistan. The UN report also says that JeM and LeT maintain training camps in Afghanistan. The former has ten camps and three of them are directly under Taliban control. During the recent hijab row in Karnataka, Ayman Al Zawahiri released a video message purportedly to radicalize Indian Muslims on communal lines.

Over the last three decades, religious radicalization among Indian Muslims has been fast and intense, primarily due to an increased awareness of religious knowledge, their exposure to global Islamist movements, the spread of Islamist organizations like PFI, and extremist ideologies like Deobandism and Wahhabism. Additionally, Hindu fundamentalism has also intensified and hastened Muslim radicalization. After PM Modi’s Hindu nationalist BJP came to power in 2014, Muslim polarization on communal and extremist lines has picked up at an unprecedented pace. Abetted by global Islamist organizations and Pakistan, rising Hindu nationalism, and a perceived sense of alienation, deprivation and discrimination, a significant segment of India’s Muslim leadership and Islamic organizations see the Modi government as anti-Islam and anti-Muslim. Getting into the details of this debate is not the main focus of this study; however, in such a communally polarized socio-political milieu, TTGs like AQ and Taliban are likely to get traction in India. The reason for the renewed interest of Zawahiri and AQIS in India, expressed in some of his recent videos, seems to be the presently fertile environment of Hindu-Muslim comm