SAVE India
India Country Profile
India is both a target of, and a recruitment ground for, violent extremism.
The bombings of Mumbai and Delhi in July and September 2011 are just the most recent and serious of some 700 terrorist attacks carried out every year in the country. The frequency and violence of such attacks has led to increasing criticisms of the state’s counter-terrorism strategy.
While India has a history of terrorist attacks being funded and coordinated from neighboring Pakistan, there has also been a recent rise in home-grown violent extremism. The most prominent terrorist group is the Indian Mujahideen, a loose coalition of jihadists linked together by ideology and informal personal networks.
At the international level, the United States continues to place a strong foreign policy focus on al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups in South Asia, including Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taeba (LeT), which was blamed for the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.
In May of this year, India’s first female parliamentary speaker, Meira Kumar, launched the India-Pakistan Parliamentary Friendship Group, and called on both legislative bodies to work together to combat terrorism. However, intergovernmental peace talks have so far failed to lead to tangible and enduring solutions.
Domestically, institutions such as the National Intelligence Grid, the National Centre for Counterterrorism, and the National Investigation Agency, all proposed in the wake of the 2008 attacks on Mumbai, are underfunded and making slow progress. Neither international collaboration nor national institutions are having much success in tackling the ever-evolving terrorist threat.
However, while India may be hampered by a weak state, its strong society and community networks are invaluable resources that can be harnessed in the fight against violent extremism.
As well as taking action to bolster effectiveness at legislative and institutional levels, SAVE believes that tackling the causes of radicalization at the grassroots will be vital for the future safety and security of India.
Indian participants in The Women's Dialogue, Mumbai, November 2010, guide Pakistani participants around the city, showing them the sites targeted by terrorists during the 26/11 attacks.
Policemen in Mumbai
The Women's Dialogue, Mumbai meeting, November 2010
The Leopold Café in Mumbai