Both Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah gave a calibrated and speedy response to the November 10/11 Red Fort terror blast in New Delhi. Forensics experts are combing through the debris of the car bomb, in order to try and get a fix on where the ammonium nitrate used in the blast was procured. Of course, they have to confront the reality of the chemical compounds used in the substance being more easily accessible than is the case with a far deadlier explosive, RDX. There has been much finger pointing about the “intelligence failure” leading to the blast, but it needs to be remembered that despite 900 successes in identifying the perpetrators of such attacks and thereby foiling them, the odd one will very likely slip through the net of investigation, as this one did. There may or not be a linkage to the Assembly polls in Bihar with the blast, but what is clear is the symbolism of the location. The Red Fort is a national monument, the ramparts of which are used by the Prime Minister to deliver addresses to the nation on Independence Day. The purpose of the chosen location was to remind the people of India that no part of the country is safe from such an attack. While this may technically be true, the reality is that despite having two hostile nuclear armed neighbours, Pakistan and China, overall the safety record of the country has been good. The terror module of the Jaish and Lashkar took care to involve only ladies, that too doctors, in its Red Fort attack, thereby assisting in having the module slip under the security net. Although care would have been taken to avoid any physical interaction with Pakistan, an examination of the online trail would reveal the years of extremist indoctrination through the Dark Web. Such schooling from outside the module would most probably have been given to only to the leader of the group, who would thereupon pass on the word to colleagues, mainly directly. That several in the module were associated with the same medical college would have facilitated such contact.
While headlines were captured across the world for a brief period, too much was happening in other countries to keep the headlines going for longer. The explosive device was hidden in the small vehicle driven by the suicide bomber, leading some police pickets to target other small vehicles for inspection, allowing bigger vehicles to pass by unobstructed. Although a repeat attack is unlikely, were it to happen, the vehicle of choice could be a much bigger vehicle. It is not an easy task to spot out the intended terror perpetrator from the swarm of vehicles flowing through the roads of the national capital. Wearing black conservative dresses on the part of ladies is commonplace in cities across India, and by itself, would hardly be grounds for suspicion. The level of hate-fuelled motivation required for an individual to become a suicide bomber is high, very high, but barring a few colleagues in the module, may be concealed while dealing with the rest of society. Until the attack, there appears to have been no complaint from anyone in the wider public that any of the perpetrators of the Red Fort atrocity were acting suspiciously. This indicates that there was an effective network of terror sympathisers who provided the ecosystem in which the level of hate burning in the minds of the perpetrators were fanned and made to rise. And from where the materiel and training for the blast was carried out.
Swift action by the police and the investigative agencies ensured that significant numbers of the members of the terror network were identified and subjected to interrogation. Given the pan-Indian as well as the external (with countries such as Turkey, where radicalisation has spread over the past period, breaking away from the moderate, modernised mould fashioned by the founder of the Turkish republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk) spread of the network, much effort is required to ensure that no future attack is possible for the network. For many years, barring Jammu & Kashmir, terror attacks were practically absent. With the Red Fort terror blast, that perception of immunity has ended. It is evident that while those with evil intent towards the future of the Republic of India were lying low, they continued to harbour such designs. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and posed players have been used to generate venomous content about select minorities. The objective of the terror handlers is to make segments of a segment of the population of minorities believe that they are not just unwelcome in India, but unsafe. False propaganda is being spread not within India (where it is clear such tropes are false) but in other countries. As a consequence, several within such countries believe wrongly that minorities and their practices are unsafe in India. The effort of external handlers is to make policymakers in some countries believe in such falsehoods, and express views in public that are at variance with the facts. Over and over, falsehood by falsehood, the lie gets repeated in platforms set up for the purpose. Through this, rather than drawing attention to Pakistan, where minorities have almost become extinct, attention gets diverted onto India, where minorities are growing in number and where several are a credit to the nation. To the foes of India, truth is expendable in the service of propaganda.
Where effort needs to be concentrated is being prepared for battle on all fronts of the hybrid war being launched by them. The focus of the Government of India on the country achieving the ten trillion dollar GDP level is what is needed. Handouts need to be replaced through the force of increasing economic growth with jobs. Of course, there will for some time be people who need a helping hand to get by, and the government will be there to give them that. Administration geared to results and a continuation of the relentless war on corruption will enable the Ten Trillion Dollar economy to be reached even faster than is the case now. The youth of India are the most valuable resource we have, and they need to be utilised in ways that are socially and economically progressive. In the meantime, incidents such as the Red Fort terror blast show the path that needs to be avoided, the path of crime and recourse to terror. Countries where ruling systems use terror as a weapon of hybrid war, implode, in the way Pakistan under the military visibly is.
