Internal Security Challenges in India
India today is poised on the cusp of Great Power status. It has the fifth largest and fastest growing economy in the world; by 2028, Morgan Stanley expects the Indian economy to be the third largest after China and the United States at US$6.5 trillion and generating a per capita income of around US$5,000. As a military power, India is ranked fourth after the United States, China, and Russia, with an annual defence budget of US$78.4 billion. Internationally, India is a major leader of the Global South and a key player and founding member of BRICS. During the Covid-19 pandemic, India’s vaccine diplomacy solidified India’s standing as a Vishwaguru (teacher to the world) within the international community. But while India’s power, influence, and international reputation are on an upward swing, domestically the country is grappling with a plethora of security challenges, which stem from India’s immense population, vitriolic politics, and complex ethnic diversity. More specifically, India today is confronted with six core internal security challenges: Violent political mobilization by ethnic groups in support of new provinces/states and preferential public policies for sons-of-the-soil; Pakistan-backed political mobilization and secessionist politics in Jammu and Kashmir; Attempts to revive and re-start, with foreign support, a violent secessionist campaign for an independent Khalistan in Punjab; Growing ethnopolitical unrest in the Indian northeast; Intensification and spatial spread of an ultra-radical Maoist agitation in India tribal heartland; And growing Islamist radicalization among Indian Muslims. How successful the Modi government will be in neutralizing these internal security challenges will determine how quickly India will emerge as a Great Power in world politics.
According to the Census of India, 2011, India's 1.4 billion population is divided into all the major religions of the world, with Hindus making up 80 per cent of the population, Muslims 11 per cent, and Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Christians, Parsis and Jews combined around 7 per cent. The Hindus are sub-divided into various religious traditions and hierarchically ranked castes (jatis). Indian Muslims mostly follow Sunni traditions although other traditions such as Shia, Aga Khani Khoja, and Bohra are present as well. India’s tribal population (Scheduled Tribes) is around 84 million or 8.2 per cent of the total population. India’s ‘Dalit’ (Scheduled Castes) population is around 170 million or 16.6 per cent of the total population. While the two most common languages spoken in India are Hindi (national language) and English, the Indian Constitution recognizes 18 major languages and over 780 minor languages and dialects. All the major ethnic groups in India have their own mother tongue. Urdu is widely spoken by Muslims in northern India.
The framers of the Indian Constitution were aware that unless effective safeguards were put in place, it would be difficult to manage India’s ethnic diversity and prevent the balkanization of the state. Accordingly, they created a secular, democratic, and multi-party federal polity, and laid down a set of fundamental rights and certain specific provisions in the Constitution to safeguard the interests of ethnic and religious minorities. Indian secularism, however, was not intended to create a strict separation between church and state; rather, the framers believed that the state would equally recognize and promote all religions. A federal polity was designed to accommodate ethnic plurality but without letting any single ethnic group to dominate the political space. The Indian Constitution, however, denied ethnic groups the right to secede from the federation. Indian political elites’ choice of a welfarist development model (quotas and preferential treatments in education and public sector jobs, for instance) after independence further attempted to put a check on fissiparous ethnic sentiments. Through a multi-party system, the framers of the Constitution sought to manage ethnic conflict by allowing ethnic communities to form political parties to voice their grievances and interests. The administrative reorganisation of the Indian state after independence further tried to prevent ethnic separatism by accepting the demand that the main administrative units (states or provinces) of the federation should be created on the basis of ethno-linguistic criteria. The States Reorganization Commission was set up in 1953, and through the States Reorganisation Act of 1956 new states were created by following the basic principle that ethnolinguistic groups ought to have their separate provinces within the Indian Union.
While the creation of ethnolinguistic states went some way to satisfy ethnic nationalist aspirations, a key drawback of the process was that it encouraged parochialism based on language and religion. In many newly formed states, parochial sentiments gave rise to militant nativist movements that demanded preferential policies for the sons-of-the-soil (particularly in education and government employment) at the expense of ethnic outsiders. Regional political parties sprang up to take advantage of such parochial sentiments and capture power in the state; once in office, these parties had to promote and protect the interests of the indigenous communities. For instance, in 1960, mainly due to the agitations of Marathi and Gujarati speaking populations of the state of Bombay, the Bombay Reorganisation Act was passed, and the ethnolinguistic states of Maharashtra and Gujarat were created. In Maharashtra, the local Shiv Sena party, founded in 1966 by Bal Thackeray, took advantage of the socio-economic grievances of the Hindu Maharashtrian community to demand ‘Maharashtra for Maharashtrians’ and launched targeted attacks on Muslims and people of South Indian origins. In Tamil Nadu, the local Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) party championed Tamil ethnicity and nationhood and clashed with the Indian government over perceived Central ploy to impose Hindi as the sole official national language. The DMK framed the Centre’s language policy as cultural imperialism of the North over the rest of the country. The DMK’s anti-Hindi language agitation ultimately forced the Central government to back down and allow major regional languages to co-exist with Hindi and English as national languages.
The agitational process of creating and reorganizing states along ethnolinguistic lines is far from over. In the early-2000s, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the centre sanctioned the creation of three new states by breaking up existing states: Jharkhand by breaking up the state of Bihar; Uttarakhand by breaking up the state of Uttar Pradesh; and Chhattisgarh by breaking up the state of Madhya Pradesh. More recently, after years of vitriolic agitation and political deal making, in June 2014 the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government at the centre sanctioned the breakup of the state of Andhra Pradesh to create the new state of Telangana. Further agitations for statehood and state breakups look inevitable. In West Bengal, the Gorkhas of Darjeeling and the Rajbonshis of Cooch Behar have for long agitated violently for the creation of separate Gorkhaland and Kamtapur states. In Assam, the Bodo tribe has demanded a separate Bodoland and launched a violent campaign. Movements for a separate state of Vidarbha, Harit Pradesh, and Jammu have a long history of political agitation.
Jammu and Kashmir and Sub-conventional Warfare
British India consisted of two categories of territories. One, the areas directly under the British Government. And two, a large number of ‘Princely States’ whose rulers enjoyed substantial autonomy as long as they accepted the ‘paramountcy’ of British power and were willing to be guided by the British. At the time of independence, India included around 565 Princely States. The choice given to these Princes was that they must join either India or Pakistan. In making this choice, the princes had to keep in mind their State’s geographical location and also the wishes of their population. All but three Princely States joined India or Pakistan. The ruler of Hyderabad (the Nizam) wanted to join Pakistan, but his state was located inside India and his people were mostly Hindu and therefore wanted to join India. The ruler of Junagarh followed the Nizam. Both these states were forcibly annexed by India. But the largest Princely State, Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), was contiguous to both India and Pakistan, hence coveted by both. Its ruler was a Hindu (Maharaja Hari Singh), but a majority of its population was Muslim. But the most popular political movement within J&K, represented by the National Conference (NC) party, wanted the state to join India. The Maharaja, however, kept stalling. Becoming impatient and fearing that J&K could join India, Pakistan tried by seize the state by force by launching a tribal military invasion in October 1947. Facing certain defeat at the hands of this tribal force, the Maharaja formally joined India and Indian military forces were airlifted to J&K to repel and chase out the tribal invaders. Regular Pakistani forces joined the war at this stage, leading to the first Indo-Pakistan war. When the war was stopped through an UN-sponsored ceasefire in early 1949, Pakistan occupied roughly one-third and India two-thirds of the original territory of J&K.
J&K’s incorporation in the Indian state was governed by a special provision in the Indian Constitution–Article 370–which granted J&K substantial autonomy except for matters of defense, foreign affairs, currency and communication. In 1954, through a Presidential Order, the Indian government added Article 35A, which gave the local Kashmiris almost exclusive rights to land, government jobs, and welfare schemes. While these provisions benefitted the NC party and its leader Sheikh Abdullah politically, it alienated the small but powerful Hindu Pandit community, which historically had exerted power in the erstwhile princely state. The Hindu Pandits, therefore, questioned Kashmir's special status under the Indian Constitution and demanded the full and irrevocable integration of the state with India. Fearing that the Central government might give in to the Pandit community’s demands, Sheikh Abdullah began to call for the implementation of the 1948 UN Security Council Resolution on J&K, which sought to resolve the dispute regarding the state’s accession by holding a plebiscite. Alarmed by Sheikh Abdullah's aggressive stance on the issue of plebiscite in J&K, the Indian government had him arrested and jailed in 1953.
In the years after Abdullah's ouster, with the help of self-serving Kashmiri politicians, the Indian central government brought J&K into tighter political control. The Indian central government’s approach to J&K was influenced by Cold War politics. Pakistan joined the US-led CENTO in 1956, for which the US flooded Pakistan with American weapons and economic aid. This led India to formally reject the UNSC Resolution of 1948 on J&K, particularly the provision of holding a plebiscite. Prime Minister Nehru also became a key leader of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), which irritated the US. In the late-1950s, India developed a major conflict with China after the Chinese annexed Tibet and the Dalai Lama had to flee Lhasa and seek shelter in India. The friction with China led to the Sino-Indian war of 1962. Sensing an opportunity provided by Nehru’s death in 1964, Pakistan tried a second time to seize J&K by force in 1965. The plan did not succeed and after Soviet mediation, the status quo ante was restored.
With Prime Minister Shastri’s death during the Soviet-mediated talks in Tashkent to end the 1965 Indo-Pakistan war, a power struggle within the Congress party catapulted Indira Gandhi, daughter of Nehru, to the top leadership position. Indira Gandhi was an advocate for India’s military modernization and essentially junked Nehru’s non-alignment foreign policy in favor of close strategic ties with the Soviet Union. When the Bangladesh war with Pakistan broke out in 1971, Indira Gandhi showed exemplary courage in the face of US and Chinese threats to order the Indian military to liberate Bangladesh. But her biggest strategic failure was that she did not get more concessions out of Pakistan Prime Minister Bhutto during the 1972 Shimla Agreement. Under the Shimla Agreement, Pakistan accepted India’s position that the J&K dispute was a bilateral dispute between the two states that can only be resolved bilaterally (that is, ruling out any role for any international mediation); in return, Pakistan got back the 93000 prisoners-of-war that India had captured during the Bangladesh war.
The 1980s catapulted Pakistan to the status of a frontline US ally, after the Soviet Union invaded and occupied Afghanistan in December 1979. America sponsored an anti-Soviet jihad (holy war) by mobilizing Afghan fighters who had taken shelter in Pakistan. This force, called the mujahideen (holy warriors), was based in Pakistan and armed, funded, and trained by the American CIA and the Saudi Arabian government. Everything was channeled through Pakistan, as a result of which the Pakistani Army’s covert intelligence service, the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), developed close links with the Afghan mujahideen. Pakistan’s president and military ruler, General Zia-ul-Haq, was a confirmed Islamist, who saw a golden opportunity to divert huge quantities of US and Saudi funds to terrorist groups operating in India. This fitted-in with Zia’s stated desire to “make India bleed from a thousand cuts.” President Zia’s death in 1988 paved the way for a return of civilian rule in Pakistan. But civilian governments were extremely weak, and the Army exercised veto powers over all foreign and security policy matters.
In 1989, India was wracked by the outbreak of an armed insurgency in the Kashmir Valley. The proximate cause of the insurgency was blatant vote fraud during the 1987 state elections in J&K, carried out jointly by the Congress government at the center led by Rajiv Gandhi and the National Conference party in J&K led by Farook Abdullah, the son of Sheikh Abdullah. This blatant electoral abuse led initially to widespread student protests against the central and state governments. The high-handed security measures authorized by Governor Jagmohan to crush the protests kick-started a full-blown armed insurgency in the Kashmir Valley. Initially, this insurgency was led by pro-independence forces such as the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF). But soon, the insurgency was hijacked by Islamist groups based in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) and Pakistan proper. These forces framed the insurgency as a jihad against India and the Hindu Pandit minority in the Valley. Faced with a challenge to its authority, New Delhi resorted to harsh military actions in the Kashmir Valley. Since these groups were being supported by Pakistan, India-Pakistan relations became extremely fraught with tensions throughout the 1990s. In 1999, a border war eventually broke out (the Kargil war) when Pakistan pushed insurgents (many were Pakistani soldiers in civilian clothes) across the Line of Control (LoC) in Kargil in J&K. The Kargil war lasted around three months, and the status quo ante was eventually restored with the help of US mediation.
In the new millennium, several developments have impacted the intensity and trajectory of the insurgency in J&K. Although Pakistan has remained under civilian rule since 2008, it is widely accepted that the civilian governments are mere puppets of the Army/ISI. Various non-state armed Islamist groups operate out of Pakistan and are used by the Army/ISI against domestic opponents and neighboring states. Hence, the question who runs Pakistan and who is accountable for its actions is difficult to answer. This confusion, along with domestic socio-economic and political instability, has adversely affected Pakistan’s ability to interfere in neighboring states like India and Afghanistan. Since 2024, the Pakistani Army has been involved in a border war with neighbouring Afghanistan, controlled by their once-upon-a-time ally and proxy, the Afghan Taliban. The border war was precipitated after the Afghan Taliban regime refused to take punitive action against their blood brothers, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP, or the Pakistani Taliban), which has taken control of large swathes of territory in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province. The internal security scenario has become further complicated by a spike in insurgency violence in Balochistan. In recent days, Baloch insurgents have ambushed a train and taken as hostage over two hundred Pakistani soldiers, who were subsequently killed.
Within days of this attack, the Baloch insurgents carried out a suicide attack on a military convoy that killed another ninety soldiers. Baloch insurgents have warned Pakistani Army personnel and Chinese construction workers to leave Balochistan or face attacks. Politically, too, Pakistan seems to be a rudderless ship. Former Prime Minister Imran Khan is languishing in jail with his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) party threatening mass unrest. Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif lacks mass following and his government’s management of the economy has been inept and his relations with the Army Chief, General Asim Munir, has been fraught. Unstable politics and ineffective governance have exacerbated the deep economic and financial troubles being faced by Pakistan. Foreign exchange reserves are just around US$8 billion, and that too with the latest International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout and emergency loans from China and Saudi Arabia. The Pakistani currency is trading below Rs300 per US$1 and there is no saying how far it may fall yet. On top of this, the inflation rate has hit stratospheric levels, and the country is facing acute fuel and food shortages. In a nutshell, the economy is close to breaking point.
The coming to power of Narendra Modi and the BJP in 2014 was a watershed moment in Indian politics. For his swearing in ceremony in May 2014, PM Modi invited the leaders of all the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) nations. But the initial goodwill disappeared when Pakistan based Jaish-e-Mohammad carried out terror attacks in Uri and Pulwama in Indian J&K. These were major attacks after the attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001 and infamous Mumbai attack of November 2008. These attacks convinced PM Modi that Pakistan’s interpretation of India’s previous restraint as a sign of weakness must be corrected. PM Modi, therefore, authorized a commando raid across the Line-of-Control (LOC) in Kashmir after the Uri attack and an air strike on a terrorist camp in Balakot, Pakistan, after the Pulwama massacre, in which 45 Indian soldiers died. The Balakot air strike was a major signal to Pakistan that India will now retaliate for the actions of the armed non-state groups based in that country.
Western countries, including the United States, became very critical of Pakistan and accused it of not doing enough to eradicate terrorism factories from its soil. Pakistan was also taken to task by key Muslim states like Saudi Arabia and the UAE. While Pakistan’s stock went down internationally, India’s stature in the world strengthened under PM Modi. Western states, including the US and France, have become major strategic allies of India. India’s ties to the Middle East have strengthened by leaps and bound, particularly with major powers such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Israel. India’s relations with Russia under Modi have been rock solid and Moscow has been appreciative of New Delhi’s stance with regard to the Ukraine war. Pakistan is thus without friends today. Its main ally, China, which has bailed Pakistan out economically and diplomatically in the past, has been critical of the way Islamabad has failed to protect Chinese investment projects and workers in Pakistan, particularly in the restive Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces.
Finally, under Modi since 2014, India has worked to lower the scope and intensity of the insurgency in the Kashmir Valley through a two-part strategy. First, it has starved the insurgent groups of funds and military support from across the LOC through policies such as demonetization and military retaliation against Pakistan. The Indian security forces have also eliminated key insurgent leaders and forced the groups to go underground. Second, the government has taken steps to fully integrate J&K within the Indian state. In this regard, the most important step taken by the Modi government was the abrogation of Article 370 and Article 35A in August 2019, which conferred a special status on J&K. The Modi government also stripped Jammu and Kashmir’s statehood status and bifurcated the province into two Union territories (Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir and Union Territory of Ladakh) to be governed directly by the Centre.
Ever since the abrogation of Art370 and Art35A, the insurgency grid in Jammu and Kashmir has shown a marked improvement. The gradual improvement in the law-and-order situation in the Kashmir Valley saw the return of tourists, which helped to improve the condition of the local economy that had been severely impacted by the insurgency and the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2022, 2023, and 2024 record numbers of tourists visited Jammu and Kashmir. The Modi government also held important G20 meetings in J&K in 2023, which allowed foreign diplomats to see and assess the improvements on the ground. Local insurgents, badly dented by the Indian government’s moves and the drying up of the supply chain from Pakistan, have resorted to target killings of Kashmiri Pandits and non-Kashmiri people from other parts of India who have come to J&K for work or tourism purposes. These attacks are clearly desperate attempts to drive a wedge between locals and outsiders and to vitiate the atmosphere and build support for the armed insurgency once again.
The Khalistan Movement and Insurgency Violence in Punjab
The Sikhs in India constitute a numerically small ethnic group, which has achieved tremendous economic success because of the agricultural revolution that occurred in Punjab from the late-1960s. But the Green Revolution, which brought immense prosperity to Punjab, produced certain adverse effects, which had a direct bearing upon the political agitation of Sikh religious fundamentalists for a separate state of Khalistan in the 1980s.
The Green Revolution introduced large-scale, mechanized agriculture in Punjab, which disposed small farmers of land and thus increased landlessness among sections of the Sikh peasantry. Those who became landless either performed menial jobs or were forced to work for big farmers, the main beneficiaries, for meagre pay. The Green Revolution-induced economic prosperity of Punjab further attracted agricultural laborers and economic migrants from nearby states. Landless Sikh farmers now had to compete with these outsiders for menial jobs, sparking anger among lower-class Sikhs that they were being reduced to a second-class status within their own ethnic homeland. Punjab’s growing prosperity brought about by the Green Revolution ironically created high unemployment among the educated Sikh youth who were no longer willing to perform agricultural tasks and sought employment in the industrial and service sectors, which had not been developed in Punjab on account of it being a high-risk border state. This led to out-migration of Sikhs from Punjab in search of better opportunities elsewhere within India and abroad. Influenced by growing prosperity and modernization, younger Sikhs were also less willing to steadfastly stick to their religious and cultural practices.
Religious fundamentalists capitalized on these developments to construct a narrative that in Punjab the Sikh identity was being diluted and Sikhs were being discriminated against in favor Hindu Punjabis and outsiders. Militant leaders like Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale raised the demand for a separate Sikh state—Khalistan—and called on the Sikhs not to discard the symbols of their faith. Bhindranwale also started a violent political movement in Punjab, which created a rift within the Sikh community. Some Sikhs, particularly the youth, were drawn to Bhindranwale’s campaign while others remained loyal to the traditional Sikh political party in Punjab, the Akali Dal. It was strongly rumored at the time that PM Indira Gandhi and her Congress party covertly supported Bhindranwale. Indira Gandhi’s calculation may have been that the split within the Sikh community would enable the Congress party to win state elections and come to power in Punjab.
The situation, however, went out of hand after secessionist violence flared up in Punjab in the early-1980s. Bhindranwale and his immediate followers had taken up shelter in the Golden Temple in Amritsar, from where he was directing operations. To flush out and capture the militants, in June 1984, PM Indira Gandhi ordered the Indian Army to force its way into the Golden Temple complex (codenamed Operation Blue Star). In the fighting that followed, the Indian Army suffered major losses; the Golden Temple complex and the temple itself were also severely damaged, which inflamed Sikh anger towards the Indian government. In an act of retribution, two Sikh bodyguards assassinated PM Indira Gandhi on 31 October 1984, which, in turn, led to anti-Sikh riots all over the country. These riots, which killed over 3000 Sikhs, were allegedly planned and orchestrated by some senior leaders of the Congress party.
In April 1986, the Indian Army had to enter the Golden Temple complex again (codenamed Operation Black Thunder) to evict militants who had moved back there and were using it as a shelter and a base of operations. The Punjab police also launched a harsh counterinsurgency operation against Sikh insurgent groups such as the Babbar Khalsa International, the Khalistan Zindabad Force, the Khalistan Commando Force and the Khalistan Liberation Army, which gradually weakened the potency of Sikh militancy.
In recent years, the sentiment for Khalistan has again raised its ugly head in Punjab. During the so-called farmers’ agitation during 2021-2022, a large contingent of farmers from Punjab blockaded a major highway in the outskirts of Delhi. Many within this group raised Khalistan flags and pro-Khalistan slogans. They also unleashed a violent campaign at the Red Fort in Delhi during the Republic Day celebrations on 26 January 2021. Once the Modi government took back the three farm laws that these groups were protesting against, these groups returned to Punjab and reorganized for further political actions. They were mainly responsible for blockading PM Modi’s convoy on a major highway overpass to prevent Mr Modi from attending an election rally. After the state elections were over, these pro-Khalistan groups began to show their strength against a weak Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government. The Punjab police finally cracked the whip on the main group, Waris Punjab De, and arrested many of its leaders and supporters. Pro-Khalistan elements outside India, particularly in the U.K., U.S., Canada, and Australia, have joined with the Punjab farmers in demanding Khalistan. These groups have attacked Indian high commissions and consulates Brisbane, London, San Francisco, and Toronto, creating serious diplomatic strain between India and these countries. For instance, India’s ties with Canada took a nosedive after Indian consulate officials were attacked by pro-Khalistan groups and the Trudeau government accused Indian covert agencies of being involved in the assassination of a prominent pro-Khalistan Sikh leader in Canada. India has also demanded of the Albanese government in Australia that stern steps must be against pro-Khalistan groups that threatened the security of the Indian consulate and diplomats in Brisbane. After the attack on the Indian High Commission in London by Khalistan supporters, the Indian government retaliated by withdrawing high security cover from the British high commission in Delhi. The situation in Punjab continues to be tense, but hopefully timely steps by the Central and Punjab governments will prevent the outbreak of another round of full-blown insurgency.
Ethnic Violence and Armed Insurgency in the Indian Northeast
The Indian northeast, comprising of seven states (called the Seven Sisters, which includes Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Meghalaya, and Tripura), is an economically backward and sparsely populated area but which is of tremendous strategic and geopolitical significance. The area borders China, Myanmar, and Bangladesh; it is also proximate to the Bay of Bengal and Southeast Asia. The ethnic mosaic of the region is complex, with religious and tribal identities often intersecting with ethnic identity.
In the initial post-independence years, India’s territorial integrity in the northeast was threatened by secessionist insurgencies launched by the Naga and Mizo tribes. These insurgencies were finally settled through the creation of separate states. In 1963, the Indian government accepted the Nagas’ demand for a separate state of Nagaland. Thereafter, Meghalaya, Manipur, and Tripura were created in 1972, followed by the creation of Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram in 1987. But the problem did not end there. The Nagas continued to agitate for the creation of a ‘Greater Nagaland’. The simmering unrest in Nagaland led to clashes between the Naga insurgents and the security forces and non-Naga populations in the region. In neighbouring Manipur, similar clashes between the Hindu Meitei and the Christian Kuki/Zo have occurred regularly. The Kuki/Zo have threatened that if a separate Kuki/Zo state is not created by dividing Manipur, they will intensify their agitation. To deal with the ethnic violence in Manipur in recent times, the Indian Central government decided to impose President’s rule in Manipur in February 2025 and deployed the Army. Another state, Mizoram, has seen periodic clashes between the majority Mizo and the minority Bru or Reang tribes.
Another grave challenge to India’s territorial integrity in the northeast has come from Assam. Historically, Assam has been a resource rich area known for its tea plantations, agricultural productivity, and oil reserves. However, over the years the Assamese population developed strong feelings of resentment towards the Indian state for several reasons. Under the British, the absence of an indigenous English-educated middle class had encouraged the in-migration of mostly Bengalis into Assam for the performance of administrative tasks and to run the plantation industries. The native Assamese found themselves pushed out of lucrative private and government jobs and had to settle for employment in the low-paying agrarian and plantation sectors. After independence, the resentment of the Assamese grew when greater Assam was split up to create the new states of the northeast. The reduction in Assam’s size further increased the pressure on land and aggrieved small farmers. The economic plight of the Assamese farmers took a turn for the worse in the early-1970s when Bengali Muslim immigrants from neighboring East Pakistan started pouring into Assam, initially to escape the Pakistani genocide and later because of severe economic conditions in the newly created Bangladesh.
Under these circumstances, the Assamese politically mobilized and showed their growing resentment against the Assam government and the Indian state. Led by the All-Assam Students Union (AASU) and the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA), the Assamese demanded the raising of Assam's oil royalty and preferential public policies for the bhumiputra or sons-of-the-soil. The AASU and the ULFA also demanded the setting up of petrochemical industries in Assam so that Assam's annual crude-oil production could be refined within the state and employment could be provided to an estimated 1.5 million unemployed Assamese youth. Further, both the AASU and the ULFA wanted a tighter control of migrants and the repatriation of those who had settled in Assam illegally. Throughout the 1980s, Assam was rocked by massive ethnic unrest and violent conflict, most notably the Nellie massacre of 1983. Eventually, through the Assam Accord of 1985, the Indian government was able to bring some degree of normalcy to Assam although the ULFA continued its violent campaign for an independent and sovereign Assam. The Indian government banned the ULFA in 1990. Thereafter, ULFA leaders continued to operate from hideouts in Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Myanmar.
After 2014, the Modi government made the northeast, an insurgency prone area of the country, a major focus of its development agenda. Prime Minister Modi visited the northeast numerous times; he also asked his ministers to visit the region regularly to better understand the problems confronting the region and to take prompt decisions to resolve them. The Modi government also made a strong push to develop infrastructure in the northeast, particularly in the border areas. Significant investments have been made in building roads, bridges, tunnels, airports, and train connectivity. The Modi government has further encouraged private investments in the local economy with the intention to create employment opportunities for the local youths. The Home Ministry has initiated dialogues with several ethnic insurgent groups active in the region, with the aim to hear and resolve their grievances and persuade them to give up the path of violence. The Indian government has also promised to seriously consider withdrawing the AFSPA from certain ‘disturbed’ areas if the level of violence comes down. While these efforts are noteworthy, there is still a lot of distance to go before normalcy can be fully restored to the northeast.
Naxalism and Armed Resistance against the State
The Maoist insurgency in India has grown spatially and intensified over the past decade. Termed as the biggest threat to national security by former PM Manmohan Singh, the Maoist insurgency is spread across nine states: Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. At least 12 different Maoist groups are known to be active across these nine states. Of these groups, the Peoples’ War Group and Maoist Co-ordination Committee are the best organised and most active. These groups are known to be in possession of large quantities of weapons and ammunition (many of which have been forcibly seized from the police) and conduct periodic military training for their cadres that include jungle warfare and ambush skills. The Maoists typically attack class enemies such as the rural landed elite, police and security personnel, government officials, bureaucrats, politicians and suspected informers acting on behalf of the state. The Maoists have also attacked public buildings, railway property, banks, and police stations.
The Maoist insurgency traces its roots from historic peasant revolts in India. These peasant revolts resulted mainly from abysmal levels of rural poverty, widespread hunger and malnutrition in the countryside, and abject caste- and tribal-identity based exploitation and discrimination. Following independence, the Indian state’s failure to implement radical agrarian reform–promises on which the hopes of millions of rural families were pinned–led many poor farmers to see the state as controlled by rich landlords, bureaucrats and capitalists. The Indian government’s development schemes further marginalised the small farmers, the landless peasantry, and the tribal populations. Feeling betrayed and disillusioned, a number of peasant leaders started drawing inspiration from Mao Zedong’s ideas of guerrilla warfare, protracted armed struggle by peasants, and the forcible seizure of state power. A major peasant uprising took place in 1967 in Naxalbari in West Bengal. The aim of the Naxalbari uprising was to capture state power by encircling cities. Although this uprising caused massive political turmoil in West Bengal in the 1960s and 1970s, eventually the state security forces ruthlessly crushed the movement. Still, some Maoist leaders and cadres were able to evade capture and from the early-1980s the movement began to slowly re-emerge and spread spatially, especially in the densely forested and backward tribal areas of West Bengal, Bihar, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. When Bihar and Madhya Pradesh were broken up to create the predominantly tribal states of Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, these states became a hotbed of Maoist activities.
In the densely forested and remote tribal areas, the Maoists have run a parallel state. Cases of theft, robbery, rape, prostitution and the exploitation of lower castes by upper castes are decided promptly in people’s courts; punishment can range from maiming to death sentences, with the decision of the ‘kangaroo court’ being final and binding. Besides enforcing law and order, the Maoists have been reported to take responsibility for providing basic education, maintaining irrigation reservoirs, running community kitchens and mobile medical units, and enforcing a minimum wage for labourers. Furthermore, the Maoists collect money from forest contractors, traders, and landlords and distribute it to the poor and needy. They have halted the extortion of tolls by local goons from poor tribal people, forced wealthy farmers to raise their employees’ wages, and enforced social reforms such as bans on alcohol and extravagant expenditure at weddings, a custom that sends poor families deeper into debt.
As the Maoist insurgency gained in strength and spread spatially across the heartland of India, the Indian government reacted by allocating larger budgets for the security forces involved in anti-Maoist operations and even deployed central paramilitary forces to fight alongside state forces in affected areas. Very controversially, the Indian government turned a blind eye to the efforts of some states to arm civilians in affected areas and instruct them to fight the Maoists; this practice of creating a vigilante force (called Salwa Judum) was discontinued in 2011 by the order of the Indian Supreme Court after strident criticism from human rights and civil society groups and the media. While unconstitutional and illegal practices have been discontinued, the Indian state has deployed a massive paramilitary and police force in the so-called ‘Red Zone’ (comprising of areas in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Odisha, and West Bengal). The main aim of the crackdown on the Maoists seems to be to try and kill the movement’s top leaders and cadres, disrupt the Maoists’ planned activities, encourage defection, and spread disarray within the insurgents. However, in spite of the state’s best efforts, which did result in the capture and killing of several top Maoist leaders, the insurgency has remained potent.
Under the Modi regime since 2014, neutralizing the Maoist insurgency has been accorded the highest priority by the Home Ministry. While Home Minister Amit Shah has kept the door open for negotiations, he has instructed the security forces to go hard at the insurgents. On 13 November 2021, a top Maoist leader, Milind Teltumbde, was killed in an encounter by Maharashtra Police in Gadchiroli near the Maharashtra-Chattisgarh border along with 26 of his insurgent colleagues. This was a major setback to the Maoists. It affected morale within the ranks and led to desertion and surrender by mid-level leaders and cadres. Speaking in the Parliament on 21 March 2025, Home Minister Amit Shah announced that the security forces have been able to kill over one hundred Maoists in Chattisgarh in the past 80 days. After lauding the forces for their bravery and efficiency, the Home Minister announced that by March 2026, India will be rid of the Maoist menace.
Islam, Jihad, and Ghazwa-e-Hind
The trauma of the partition of India and the ruling Congress leaders’ penchant for Muslim appeasement for electoral gains after independence created tense communal relations and contributed significantly to the empowerment of Islamist forces within India. In the initial decades after independence, Islamist forces in India were concentrated in certain pockets—Kerala and coastal Karnataka, parts of Andhra Pradesh, western Uttar Pradesh, parts of Bihar and Assam, and Jammu and Kashmir. The rise of the BJP as a Hindu political party and the onset of the Ram Janmabhoomi andolan (agitation for reclaiming the birthplace of Lord Ram) in the 1980s further strengthened Islamist forces across the country.
In December 1992, Hindu pilgrims destroyed the sixteenth-century Babri mosque in the town of Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh, disregarding the orders of the Supreme Court and warnings from the Indian government. Hindus consider the site of the mosque as the birthplace of Lord Ram, a revered figure in Hindu religion, where a magnificent Ram temple had once existed, and which was demolished to build the mosque. This incident sparked major communal rioting across the country. The criminal underworld of Mumbai, dominated by Muslims, orchestrated a series of bomb blasts in the city in March 1993, which killed around 350 people and injured many others. To avenge the bomb attacks, Hindu mobs carried out a nine-day massacre of Muslims in the city. In February 2002 further communal carnage took place in Gujarat when several compartments of a train (the Sabarmati Express) carrying Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya caught fire just as it pulled out of Godhra station, killing 58 people. Rumours spread that the train had been attacked by Muslim mobs (Godhra station was located in a predominantly Muslim area of the town). This led to one of the worst cases of anti-Muslim riots in Indian history.
Indian Muslims’ drift towards Islamist ideology and politics was further shaped and influenced by the kind of politics that was being played at the national level in the name of secularism. During the Emergency in 1976, through the 42nd Constitutional Amendment Act, the words ‘secular’ and ‘socialist’ were added to the Preamble of the Indian Constitution. PM Indira Gandhi’s government carried out this amendment at a time when Parliament was suspended, and opposition leaders were languishing in jail. Critics argue that these words were inserted in the Preamble to appease two groups of political forces—Islamists and Leftists—whose support Indira Gandhi desperately needed for political survival. This development drastically empowered the Leftist and Islamist forces in the country who could now dictate terms to the Indira Gandhi government for political support. The politicisation of state institutions under Indira Gandhi also weakened the capacity of these institutions to deal firmly with radical ideology and politics, thus contributing significantly to the growth and empowerment of such forces.
Regional developments, particularly in the early-1980s, also contributed to the growth and empowerment of Islamist forces within India. The most important developments in this regard were the onset of the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s transition to becoming an incubator of modern terrorism under the military dictator Zia-ul-Haq. Zia had seized power in Pakistan through a coup d’etat in 1977. To consolidate his rule and bolster his fragile legitimacy, Zia empowered Islamist forces in Pakistan and used funds obtained from Muslim states to open hundreds of thousands of madrassas (Islamic seminaries) where kids from poor families were indoctrinated with Islamist ideology and the waging of jihad (holy war). Zia also encouraged the ISI to build ties with Afghan warlords who were resisting the occupying Soviet forces in Afghanistan. American and Saudi supplied weapons and cash were channelled into the hands of the Afghan mujahideen (Islamist warriors) by the ISI. Zia also offered sanctuary to the Afghan militants, while his patronized religious organizations provided a steady stream of committed fighters.
After the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, the ISI turned its attention to the Kashmir Valley, where a local student movement had transformed into an armed Islamist and secessionist insurgency against India. Pakistan based terror organizations such as the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad became active in the Valley and slogans for azadi (freedom) were replaced by slogans for jihad (holy war). These groups unleashed a campaign of terror against the Hindu Pandit community, and many Hindu families were massacred or forced to leave the Valley. Kashmiri Muslims with moderate views were intimidated into accepting the jihadi agenda. Over time, Pakistan-sponsored terror attacks expanded beyond Kashmir into other parts of India. For instance, the Lashkar-e-Taiba carried out major attacks against the Indian Parliament in December 2001 and the city of Mumbai in November 2008. More recently, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad militants carried out attacks in Uri, Pathankot, and Pulwama. The sponsorship of non-state Islamist groups to carry out terror attacks in India fitted into Pakistan’s low cost but effective strategy to tie down Indian forces into prolonged, unpopular, and costly counterinsurgency and counterterrorism campaigns.
The rise of Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) and more recently the Islamic State Khorasan (ISK) has strengthened Islamist forces in India and in neighbouring states like Bangladesh. Indian intelligence forces are deeply worried by the growing popularity of AQIS and ISK among Muslim youths across India. These youngsters, many of them well-educated, have found resonance with global jihadi ideology and its desire to create an Islamic Caliphate stretching from northern Africa to Southeast Asia. As part of that agenda, radical Islamist organizations in India, such as the banned Students Islamic Movement in India (SIMI), the Indian Mujahideen (IM), and the Popular Front of India (PFI), openly talk about waging Ghazwa-e-Hind, the battle to take control of the Indian sub-continent through a jihad and convert it into a part of the global Islamic Caliphate. They are joined in such calls by Islamist organizations in Bangladesh such as the Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh (JeIB), the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami Bangladesh (HuJI-B), the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), the Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), and the Hifazat-e-Islam (HeI).
Conclusion
India today is at a crossroads. The country is developing rapidly and aims to become a developed state by 2047, when it celebrates its centenary year of being independent. India’s power capability and international standing are also rapidly growing. However, it is beset with a plethora of domestic problems that if not effectively and skilfully dealt with may endanger India’s rise as a global power and may even threaten its territorial integrity and sovereignty. I have alluded to the main internal security threats to India’s wellbeing and existence. The Modi government seems to be aware of these threats and are putting in place policies that will allow India to gradually neutralize and eradicate these threats and problems.
Yet, in spite of Modi’s best efforts, conflict and war, especially sponsored by Pakistan, do not seem to leave India behind. On 22 April 2025, in a meadow in Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), 26 Hindu tourists (all men) were systematically executed by Islamist terrorists belonging to The Resistance Front (TRF), a front organization for the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET) in the Kashmir Valley. The terrorists first asked the victims to identify their religion by reciting the Kalima (declaration of faith, specifically the Shahada, which most Hindus will not know) and then confirmed their Hindu faith by checking their genitalia (to confirm that the men were not circumcised); thus confirmed, the victims were then shot execution style in front of their families.
This attack, which most experts believe was directly ordered by the Pakistan Army Chief General Asim Munir, led to military attacks by India and Pakistan on each other between 8-11 May 2025. India has systematically destroyed Pakistan’s military infrastructure and also the training camps and headquarters of terrorist groups like the Jaish-e-Mohammad, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and the Hizbul Mujahideen (HUM). Eventually, after four days of fighting, which threatened to spiral out of control, both sides agreed to halt hostilities after America and China played peacemaker. An uneasy calm prevails in J&K at the moment and India-Pakistan relations have hit rock bottom. Prime Minister Modi has warned that if any terror attack on India is carried out by groups based in Pakistan, he will reduce Pakistan to rubble. A potentially dangerous situation thus prevails in the Indian subcontinent at the moment.
Rajat Ganguly is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs (Sage) and Journal of World Affairs: Voice of the Global South (Sage). He is also a faculty member of the Global Security program at Murdoch University, Western Australia. He received his PhD in Political Science from Tulane University (US) and has held academic positions at Murdoch University (Australia), the University of East Anglia (UK), Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand), the University of Southern Mississippi (US), Tulane University (US), and the University of West Florida (US). He has also been a Visiting Research Fellow at McGill University (Canada). He is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of South Asian Development, South Asian Survey, Journal of Human Rights and Peace Studies, Journal of Law and Policy, and the Journal of North-East Indian Studies. He specializes in international relations and international security, particularly great power politics and interstate war, ethnic conflict and insurgency movements, terrorism and political violence, Indian foreign and security policy, and Asian international and strategic affairs. He is the author/editor of several books, and his articles have appeared in scholarly journals such as Small Wars and Insurgencies, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, Third World Quarterly, Asian Studies Review, Strategic Analysis, and India Quarterly.
