`We're fighting the same extremist enemy.''Charles Brooks, Capital Region Director of the American Jewish Congress, on thealliance between India and Israel (quoted in Ramer, 2002)

IntroductionOn September 11, 2001, India's national security adviser, Brajesh Mishra, was in aclosed-door meeting in NewDelhi with his Israeli counterpart Major General Uzi Dayandiscussing `joint security strategy' when theWorld Trade Center towers and the Pentagonwere attacked. As the images and events unfolded, the two countries decided right thento formalize their relationship with biannual meetings on counterterrorism. The newcooperative measures are a departure from India's historic pro-Palestinian position.Indeed, it was only in 1992 that full diplomatic relations between India and Israel wereinitiated. The new strategic alliance is based on trade and military agreements throughwhich Israel has emerged as India's second-largest defense supplier after Russia.Coupled with the trade and military alliances, in this paper I am concerned with theway in which India's relationship with Israel during the time when the Hindu Right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was in power was articulated. In particular, Iexplore the manner in which the relationship between the BJP and the Likud beganto cohere around strategies to combat the `same extremist enemy'. This discourse of acommon enemy is used (differently) by both India and Israel to position themselvesalongside the United States in its `war on terror'. Consequently, a geopolitical triad hasemerged between the United States, India, and Israel based in a shared vision of threatand security.

Contrapuntal geographies of threat and security:the United States, India, and Israel

Rupal OzaTheWomen's Studies Program, Hunter College,The City University of NewYork, 695 Park Avenue,New York, NY 10021, USA: e-mail: rupal.oza@hunter.cuny.eduReceived 24 March 2004; in revised form 22 June 2005

Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 2007, volume 25, pages 9 ^ 32

Abstract. This paper is concerned with discourses of threat and security deployed by the United Statesand India after September 11. In the context of the United States these discourses have been used tojustify war in Afghanistan and in Iraq and have revolved around the subject of the Muslim male asperpetually dangerous. Eager to support the United States in its war against terror, India echoed theconstruction of the Muslim male as dangerous, which served to fulfill India's own internal and regionalsupremacy agendas. Bolstered, therefore, by the emerging discourse of Muslim terrorists, in 2002 theHindu Right was complicit in orchestrating genocide against Muslims in Gujarat where 2000Muslims were killed and 150 000 Muslims were rendered homeless. Examining these and otherincidents, I examine the similarity in discourses of threat and security deployed by the United Statesand India. I argue that the similarity in discourses emerges because of a particular understanding oftime and space. I make two interconnected arguments: first, time and the very understanding andconstruction of history are distorted, collapsed, and twisted such that revenge for past atrocitiesand the threat of future ones are used to justify preemptive military action. Second, there is aparticular geography to this doctrine of threat and security that is being established by demarcatingus against them. This new spatial arrangement is being formed contingent on a particular under-standing of time and history as a linear singular narrative and on the creation of political alliancesbetween India, the United States, and Israel.

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In an effort to foster the India, Israel, and United States triad, Mishra spent hisonly evening in Washington DC in May 2003 giving a talk at an event entitled`A tribute to US allies'' hosted by the American Jewish Congress. Speaking to a1200-strong crowd composed of diasporic Jewish and Indian communities, Mishraemphasized the ` shared interests and common dangers'' between the United States,Israel, and India (Sirohi, 2003). He said, ``India, the US and Israel have some funda-mental similarities.We are all democracies, sharing a vision of pluralism, tolerance andequal opportunity. Stronger India ^US relations and India ^ Israel relations have anatural logic'' (2003). In response to the close alliance between India and Israel,Jason F Isaacson of the American Jewish Committee comments that both countries` face the common threat of Islamic extremist terror'' (quoted in Kumaraswamy, 2002,page i). The emphasis on a common, even natural, bond rests on a discourse thatidentifies Islam and Muslims as the common extremist enemy', which is then able tocalibrate a geographical bond among India, the United States, and Israel. The collec-tive vision is sutured through an emphasis on a shared vision of plurality and tolerancethat is contrasted against `their' intolerance.

I am concerned with the emergence of this contrapuntal geography' based on amacabre camaraderie anchored in a discourse of strategic alliance and common enemy.I borrow the term contrapuntal' from Edward Said (1993), who explored the ways inwhich the US, French, and British empires maintained hegemonic dominion overdistant peripheries. The contrapuntal reading that Said called for entailed ` a simulta-neous awareness both of the metropolitan history that is narrated and of those otherhistories against which (and together with which) the dominating discourse acts''(page 51).

The discourse and history of the metropole that I engage with are the constructionof threat and the political justifications surrounding security deployed by the UnitedStates after September 11, 2001. For instance, bolstered on the now nonexistent claimsof links between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, George W Bush justified the waragainst Iraq in an effort to prevent future threat. On the eve of war, addressing thenation, Bush said ` responding ... only after they have struck first is not self-defense, itis suicide. The security of the world requires disarming Saddam Hussein now.''(1) Thewar against Iraq marked a paradigm shift in the protocol for war, where preemptivemilitary action could now be justified on the basis of perceived imminent threat(Sanger, 2003). Securing the rational for preemptive action the White House generatedThe National Security Strategy of the United States of America in which it argued that` the US has long maintained the option of preemptive actions ... even if uncertaintyremains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack'' (2002, page 15). I am con-cerned by the justification for military and coercive state action in the present, basedon an alleged past atrocity and on the possibility of future ones.

US justifications for war make their way halfway around the world and resonate withdiscourses of threat deployed by the Hindu Right in India and by the Zionist Right inIsrael. For instance, according to Praveen Togadia, president of the Vishwa HinduParishad (The World Hindu Council), the past and the present are linked by a lineartemporality such that: ` the Mosque constructed by Babur at Ayodhya 450 years ago bydestroying the Ram temple and the September 11th attack on theWorld Trade Center aresymbols of Islamic jihad. It is necessary for India, Jews and the Western world to cometogether and fight Islamic militants'' (quoted in Communalism Combat 2002).

(1) Bush's speech to the nation, 17 March 2003 justifying a military strike against Iraq(http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030317-7.html).

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I examine the epistemological similarity between the US construction of threat andthe deployment of security and those crafted by the Hindu Right in India throughpolitical events that followed September 11. The political circumstances of the collab-oration shifted when the Hindu right-wing-led government was defeated in generalelections in 2004. The change in government in India may qualitatively change thestructure of the alliance formed with the United States and Israel. However, the presentCongress-led government is continuing its alliance based on military and strategic ties.Further, despite electoral defeat, the Hindu Right-wing continues to foster its allianceswith the respective Right-wing constituencies in the United States and Israel on thebasis of a shared discourse of Islamic terror. Within the confines of this paper myprimary emphasis is on exposing the architecture of alliance during the time the HinduRight was in power (1998 ^ 2004).

Drawing on discourses of threat and security deployed by the United States and bythe Hindu Right (the Sangh Parivar) in India,(2) I make two interconnected arguments:first, time and the very understanding and construction of history are distorted,collapsed, and twisted such that revenge for alleged past atrocities and the threat offuture ones are used to justify preemptive military action.(3) Second, there is a partic-ular geography to this doctrine of threat and security that is being established bydemarcating us against them. This new spatial arrangement is being formed contingenton a particular understanding of time and history as a linear singular narrative.

This paper is divided into three parts. I begin with the United States by brieflyexamining the discourses of terror and patriotism that emerged after September 11.As buildings, homes, and people were draped in the national flag, dissent markedthose who were unpatriotic and consequently a threat to the nation. Muslims becamesuspect and Islam became a religion that engendered hate. Security was establishedwithin by detaining South Asians, Muslims, and Arabs and established without bywaging war against Afghanistan and Iraq. Shifting to India in the second part I focuson two incidents that occurred soon after the September 11 attacks in the UnitedStates. Both incidents reveal the Sangh's agenda of crafting Muslims as an internaland external threat to the nation through particular discourses of time and space. In thethird and concluding section, I examine the significance of the doctrines of threat andsecurity deployed in the United States and in India. I draw on the political allianceswhich the Sangh in India is developing with Israel to explain the formation of spatialarrangements between India, Israel, and the United States.

Threat and security: the doctrine of civilizing missionsIn the discourse of the US war against Iraq and Afghanistan as a civilizing mission, ofterrorists as barbarians, and of the overarching threat to the civilized world, time andhistory were understood and deployed in particular ways. The continual and persistentprogression of time on a path to infinity informs a linear construction of history as atimeline that marks our progression from uncivilized to civilized. I argue that thisunderstanding of time as moving inexorably forwards is collapsed onto the under-standing of history as a singular linear narrative. In this understanding of history,subjects, cultures, and civilizations will progress through similar milestones on theroad towards modernity. As a consequence, those that do not follow this road or arefurther behind need to be brought to grasp the tenets of modernity as decreed by those

(2) The Hindu Right in India is a highly organized and systematic broad base of organizationscalled the Sangh Parivar (family of organizations), whose political and ideological goal is to createa unified Hindu nation-state. This is discussed further in footnote (30).(3) I draw on Tanika Sarkar's (2002) eloquent conceptualization of time in the context of the 2002Gujarat pogrom.

Contrapuntal geographies of threat and security 11

at the helm of civilizational progress. Assuming the responsibility of being at the helmof civilizational progress, Bush claimed on the first anniversary of September 11 that` we will use our position of unparalleled strength and influence to build an atmos-phere of international order and openness in which progress and liberty can flourishin many nations. A peaceful world of growing freedom serves American long-terminterests, reflects enduring American ideals and unites America's allies ... humanityholds in its hands the opportunity to offer freedom's triumph over all its age-old foes.The United States welcomes its responsibility to lead in this great mission'' (quoted inHarvey, 2003, page 4).

There is an epistemological and ontological continuity between the contemporaryimperialist discourse of `offering freedom's triumph' to those parts of the world that donot enjoy it and the civilizing missions of colonialism. In exploring the discoursethrough which European colonialism justified its mission, Said wrote, `` `they' misbe-haved or became rebellious, because `they' mainly understood force or violence best;`they' were not like `us', and for that reason deserved to be ruled'' (1993, page xi). Thosein the contemporary moment embodied with the displaced othering as `they' aresimilarly barbaric, uncivilized, and violent and thus must be taught the `enduringAmerican ideals' through force and occupation. These ` biased or empty geographicalknowledges'', according to David Harvey, ` provide license to pursue narrow interests inthe name of universal goodness and reason'' (2001, page 211).

In the construction of the United States as the embodiment of universal good itsauthority to lead in the mission of `freedom's triumph' remains unquestioned as isits position as the civilised nation against barbaric uncivilized terrorists. In fact, in theweeks following September 11, the `war against terror' became a `war for civilization'.On one of several instances, the attack on September 11 was, according to the GermanChancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, an attack on the entire civilized world (quoted inBowden, 2002, page 30). As the war rhetoric developed, drawing on innate civiliza-tional differences, war become a civilizing missionöone that would rescue Afghaniwomen and bring freedom and democracy to Iraqi people. Max Boot of theWall StreetJournal went so far as to claim that a ` dose of U.S. imperialism may be the bestresponse to terrorism. Afghanistan and other troubled lands today cry out for thesort of enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident Englishmenin jodhpurs and pith helmets'' (quoted in Harvey, 2003, page 4). The uncivilized, there-fore, could be civilized, and some of the most violent and gruesome methods inhistoryöcolonization and waröstand as proof of the claim.

While the distorting of time and history provides a rationale for dealing withthreat, security is restored in the production of spatial boundaries. Space is beingcarved up in the either you're with us or with the terrorists' rhetoric, which drawsboundaries between `us' and `them' and between `here' and `there' and shifts in crucialways the political configurations of the world. These boundaries occur at differentscalesöso that entire regions of the world (the Middle East), specific nation-states(Afghanistan, Iraq, North Korea), and marked bodies (South Asian, Arab, and Muslim)are considered threats to security. Within this context, security is being constructedas monochromatic and sectarian, structured through shifts in political economiesanchored in large defense budgets and nuclear arsenal. In this new economy, pluralismand mongrel histories have no place.

In the months after September 11 the doctrines of threat and security entailedmapping the threat within and without. External threat was vested in those countriesidentified as the axis of evilöa list that continues to be updated. Internal threat wasvested in the bodies of men from twenty-five countries who were subject to a specialregistration process and in the early detention of hundreds of Arab, Muslim, and

12 R Oza

South Asian immigrants. Reinstating security required that the threat be identifiedand policed externally, in distant lands, as well as internally within the homeland.

In the discourse of external threat the geometry of us versus them set us up as `thegood guys' based on the repeated identification of Americans as good god-fearingpeople who value democracy and freedom. In his `state of the Union Address' Bushsaid, ` on September the 11th, enemies of freedom committed an act of war against ourcountry ... where freedom itself is under attack ... . They hate our freedomsöour free-dom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagreewith each other.''(4) In contrast to such freedom, the `enemies of freedom' are barbaricand undeveloped, and perpetuate atrocities against their people, particularly women:such as the manner in which the difference between us and them was orchestrated byexposing the brutal treatment of Afghani women under the Taliban regime. The treat-ment of women was used as the barometer through which to gauge civilizationalprosperity. This use of women is not new, as Lata Mani (1998) shows in her intricatereading of social reform around sati (widow burning) in colonial India. Mani deftlyargues that women became the ground over which tradition came to be debatedbetween British colonial authority and the Indian male elite. Consequently, the socialreforms were not `about women', rather women were the symbolic economy over whichcivilizational progress could be determined.

Echoing this colonial framework, Laura Bush in her infamous radio addresssought to garner support for the war in Afghanistan by suggesting that the Americanmilitary and capital (Revlon)(5) intervention in the region would liberate Afghaniwomen from the Taliban.(6) The somewhat similar positions taken by both the pre-dominantly white liberal feminist groups and the Republican Party (the DemocraticParty is not exempt from this either) in seeking to liberate Afghani women starklyexpose the racism in the belief that Western white feminists can `teach' Third Worldwomen about liberation, freedom, and modernity. In this context, to borrow GayatriChakravorty Spivak's (1988) famous phrase, it is `white women saving brown womenfrom brown men'. Such First World feminist political positions are not only racist butalso complicit in the structures of imperialism in late capital. Consequently, theconjuncture between white liberal feminist organizing and the US state requires aserious rethinking of discourse surrounding Third World women.(7) This narrative is

(4) State of the Union Address, by Bush, 20 September 2001 (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/01/20040120-7.html).(5) In 1996 Mary MacMakin founded Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation Support for Afghanistan(PARSA), which has been working with women in Kabul. PARSA provides job training for widowsincluding silk weaving and handicrafts. With the plight of Afghani women under the Talibanbrought to light in the latter half of the 1990s, PARSA has gained extensive support and endorse-ment including by USAID and the Feminist Majority Foundation. In a demonstration of US stateendorsement of the work done by PARSA, Laura Bush wore a silk scarf made by Afghani womenthrough PARSA during the signing of the bill to fund Afghan women's causes. MacMakin andPARSA form the inspiration for the founding of The Body and Soul Wellness Program forAfghanistan (http://www.bodyandsoulprogram.org/index/html). The program, which was started byPatricia O'Connor, trains Afghani women in beauty and styling and has started beauty salons allover Afghanistan. For its project the program raised money for the beauty salons from corporategiants such as Mac and Revlon.(6) Laura Bush repeated the effort to `liberate' Muslim women as part of the justification for USpresence in the area during her tour of the Middle East in May 2005.(7) Several feminists of color have written on this (see, for instance, Frankenberg and Mani, 1993;Kapur, 2002; Mohanty, 2002; Ong, 1988).

Contrapuntal geographies of threat and security 13

persistently overdetermined by a `Third World women as victims' discourse, which fuelsrescue fantasies that serve the empire and fundamentalist regimes.(8)

Afghani women were being rescued from a regime stuck in the past and were beingrescued into modernity. Thus, not only were the place and people of Afghanistan in farand distant lands but also they were also stuck in premodern times from which thehelpless vulnerable women needed to be rescued. Description of the landscapes asremote, harsh, and primitive, of American military intervention as `smoking themout of their caves', and of the punitive punishments for disobeying laws as beingsymbolic of primitive governance all set out to create an uncivilized place. The contrastbetween the civilized world and the uncivilized world was articulated by Bush in hisaddress to the nation: ` what is at stake is not just America's freedom. This is theworld's fight. This is civilization's fight.''(9)

What is remarkable about the civilization and modernity narrative is its relentlessreiteration over the last several hundred years. This narrative was evidenced in a rangeof works from those discourses that justified colonial dominion, to Samuel Huntington's(1998) clash of civilizations thesis, to its most recent manifestation in a report by theNational Intelligence Council for the Central Intelligence Agency released in December2004 entitled Mapping the Global Future. Throughout its 123 pages the report consis-tently intertwines Muslim with terrorist and with the likely threat that is posed tothe civilized world by `radical Islam'. In the report, four fictional scenarios imagine thegeopolitical landscape in the year 2020. One of these fictional scenarios, entitled `a newcaliphate', is grotesquely dramatized in the form of a letter written by a hypotheticalgrandson of Osama Bin Laden to a family member who comments on a clash of civi-lizations between those in the Muslim world and those outside it (the United States,Europe, Russian, and China). The scenario is used to depict `radical religious ideology'and the havoc it could potentially wreck for theWest. At the end of the letter are `lessonsdrawn', recommending that theWest use to its advantage what the report understands asa conflict within the Muslim world between the dictates of the caliphate and the materialbenefits of globalization (National Intelligence Council, 2004, page 91).

The construction of Afghanistan as primitive and uncivilized was contrasted withthe US hypermodernity symbolized through its democratic governance, military prow-ess, and national tenets of individual freedom. The United States and Afghanistanin this discourse represented points in time, with America positioned in the futureand Afghanistan positioned in the past in a model of linear modernity. If the war inAfghanistan was revenge for September 11, the war in Iraq was in order to prevent itsrecurrence. Both Afghanistan and Iraq are framed as barbaric and uncivilized placeswhose undemocratic governance relies on premodern forms of rule that foster terror-ism. In Afghanistan rests the proof of this claim, and in Iraq lay its future possibility.It is this framework that justifies the claim of imminent danger from Iraq and thesubsequent war.

It is this understanding of linear time and history, I argue, that creates spatialarrangements of the civilized against the terrorists. For instance, in the often repeateddictate, Bush told the world to make a choice, ` every nation, in every region, now has adecision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.''(10) For the firsttime in history, Article 5 of the NATO alliance was evoked where ` an armed

(8) The unraveling of this narrative requires much more nuance than is possible here given spaceconsiderations. I want to acknowledge Rosalind Petchesky for drawing attention to this throughorganizing a panel at the 2004 Socialist Scholars Conference entitled ` Feminist dialogues: Women'sMovements Confronting Global Capitalism, Fundamentalisms and War''.(9) State of the Union Address by Bush, 20 September 2001.(10) State of the Union Address by Bush, 20 September 2001.

14 R Oza

attack against any of the allies in Europe or North American shall be consideredan attack against them all'' forming a joint alliance against terrorists. The linearconstruction of time and history that organized the civilized versus the uncivilized isalso a spatial arrangement of nation-states allied with the United States versus thosethat were not.(11) The implications for security therefore entail, according to theMapping the Global Future report, an entirely new set of global boundaries such that,

`Defense of the US Homeland will begin overseas. As it becomes more difficult forterrorists to enter the United States, they are likely to try to attack the Homelandfrom neighboring countries ... [consequently] The Middle East is unlikely to be theonly battleground in which this struggle between extremists and reformers occurs''(National Intelligence Council, 2004, page 114).Externally, once countries were arranged in terms of allies and terrorists, the threat

within also needed to be dealt with. It is here that Muslim men within the United Statescame to embody threats represented by Afghanistan and Iraq and all Islamic countries.As a consequence, racial profiling, which in the months prior to September 11 had beenseverely criticised, was now the modus operandi of national security. By November2001, 1200 men of Middle Eastern and South Asian decent were held in detentionwithout recourse to due procedure. The war abroad and at home converged at thepoint of those identified as demonic and suspect. New and intrusive powers legislatedby the US Patriot Act(12) and managed by the Department of Homeland Security(DHS) demanded that men from twenty-five predominantly Muslim countries reportto the Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS).(13) Reporting to INS entailedbeing fingerprinted and monitored through specific databases that trace all movementboth within the United States as well as externally. The reporting procedures of menfrom the twenty-five countries led to further arrests, most of which were for minorinfringements and visa violations. This discourse of suspicion, based on religion andnationality, naturalized faith and origin as the causes of terrorism. This doctrine ofspecial registrations and detentions of Muslim men was based on preemptive measuresof security which involved monitoring those that could be threats to US security fromwithin the homeland. If Afghanistan and Iraq are barbaric and evil then securityentailed control over both place and people. While war ensured external control overplace, new measures of security needed to be deployed against those people who

(11) An entirely new geography of the world began to emerge between those nation-states for whomalliance with America was a choice that could be made without political and monetary conse-quences. Choice, therefore, for countries within the European Union was relatively unfettered andwas structured through a different set of issues than for those countries such as Yemen for whomthe cost of not being allied with America was paid in the withdrawal of critical monetary aid andsupport. Explicit political alliances with the United States also lent themselves to other politicalmaneuvers with nation-states jostling for regional supremacy. For instance, the right-wing govern-ment in India offered immediate help and support to America's `war on terror' in a maneuver togain strategic political advantage over Pakistan, with whom India has fought three wars and hashad long conflict over the embattled region of Kashmir. Pilger (2002) reports that during the firstgulf war an entire range of tactics was used to coerce countries in the Middle East to vote in favorof US intervention in 1991. Egypt, for instance, was rewarded with $14 billion in `debt forgiveness'for voting along with America. Within days of Cuba and Yemem's holding out, a $70 million USaid program to Yemen was canceled. Ecuador, Sudan, and Zimbabwe have all faced similarsanctions and warnings.(12) The US Patriot Act is available at http://www/fincen.gov/hr3162.pdf(13) These countries were Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Egypt, Eritrea, Indonesia,Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, North Korea, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar,Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. On 1 March2003 the INS was brought under the jurisdiction of the DHS.

Contrapuntal geographies of threat and security 15

managed to infiltrate the homeland. The same understanding of threat that claimedthat Iraq posed imminent danger also turned its gaze within towards the homeland todetain and monitor those who could be threats in the future.

If external spatial arrangements for security were based on those countries alliedwith the United States versus the terrorists in the `either you're with us or with theterrorists' decree, internal demarcations unfolded around patriotism. You were eitherpatriotic or suspect. As a consequence of this, a very specific and particular under-standing of patriotism began to emerge in the weeks and months after the attacks.Prior measures of fiscal austerity asked of citizens during times of war were invertedso that shopping and spending were urged as acts of patriotic duty. The loss of civilliberties was understood as a minor and brief curtailment of rights that should, forthose who are true patriots, be an acceptable part of being at war. Concern over thesuppression of civil liberties in a state of emergency, however, was understood as anunpatriotic response.(14) This discourse rests fundamentally on the myth that civilliberties are the same for everyone and that patriotism is a choice, a measure of one'strue pledge to the nation.

Patriotism was displayed in the adornment of the flag, its most visible marker, atmultiple scalesöfrom the body to homes, cars, and buildings.(15) Signs of allegiance tothe nation in the draping of flags were particularly visible and immediate in severalimmigrant communities. Cars, homes, and shops were quickly covered with flags andpledges to `never forget'. These signs became attempts to distinguish `good citizens'from the other and as `passports of safety'. With the identification of the Taliban asthose responsible for the attacks therewas an immediate palpable fear among SouthAsianand Middle Eastern immigrants that they would be targets of rage and blamed forthe attacks. These fears were realized when on 14 September 2001 Balbir Singh Sodhi, a49-year-old Indian Sikh man, was shot dead at a gas station inMesa, Arizona; a Pakistaniman was shot inYuba City, California; and the Sikh temple in Richmond Hills, Queens,NewYorkwasburnt.These instancesprompted someSikhmen to cut their hair, shave theirbeards, and stop wearing turbans.(16) Other efforts to distinguish identity through bodymarkers included a rumor that the Indian consulate in New York had advised Indianwomen in the United States to wear the `bindi'öthe dot on the headöas a way todifferentiate good `Hindu' Indians from Muslims. The consulate denies any suchdirective (Prashad, 2005, page 585). In spite of the attempts to safeguard their safety,in the months after September 11 there were hundreds of other incidents against peopleof South Asian and Middle Eastern descent. Several of the reported incidents wereperpetuated by white people and people of color. Within these communities of color,demonstrations of grief, anger, backlash, and patriotism entailed a reworking ofallegiance and implication to the very state that imprisons them.

(14) At a Department of Justice hearing on `preserving freedoms while defending against terrorism',John Ashcroft said those who are critical of the loss of civil liberties ``scare peace loving peoplewith phantoms of lost liberty ... your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unityand diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies and pause to America'sfriends. They encourage people of goodwill to remain silent in the face of evil'' (Human RightsWatch, 2002a, page 5).(15) In America flag sales broke all previous records and, with the overwhelming demand, 2.3 millionAmerican flags had to be imported from China and Taiwan (Barnes, 2001).(16) Cutting their hair and shaving their beards resurrected memories of the brutal attack againstSikhs in 1984 in Delhi after the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her two Sikh bodyguards. Bothin 1984 and after September 11 the response was to remove visible markers of religious identity(the turban and beard) in an attempt to assimilate and pass as other South Asians, which did notguarantee safety either. I thank Manu Bhagavan for drawing attention to this point. For furtherinformation on the 1984 riots see Chakravarti and Haksar (1987).

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Wearing the bindi fits into a range of other bodily marked ways such as theadorning flag pins and scarves that were used to display patriotism, safety, and differ-ence. From the scale of the body to other scales, people and nations were beingorganized into us and them. Geography, both internally within the United States aswell as externally, was rearranged. This rearranging of geography rested on a particularunderstanding of time, whereby potential threats needed to be identified, monitored,and policed, justifying an entire range of preemptive measures. National securitythrough this doctrine of the preemptive strike was redefined so that the measures takenin the present were justified to secure the future. These negotiations of internal andexternal threat through particular discourses of time and space in the United Statesfind resonance with the Hindu Right in India. In the next section I examine twoinstances; the first of external threat where the Indian Parliament was attacked byarmed men from two extremist organizations originating in Pakistan and the second ofthe doctrine of internal threat in the construction of Muslim minorities in India asthreats to the nation by the Hindu Right. In the second instance I examine discoursesjustifying a brutal pogrom against Muslims in the western state of Gujarat. In boththese instances the Hindu Right crafts an image of the Muslim perpetrator asunchanging through history. This understanding of history then justifies the recraftingof geography in the subcontinent.

Geopolitical alliance among neoconservativesAddressing the nation on 14 September in response to the September 11 attacks in theUnited States, the prime minister of India, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, said; ``I have assuredPresident Bush that we stand ready to cooperate with him in the investigations intothis crime and to strengthen our partnership in leading international efforts to ensurethat terrorism never succeeds again.''(17) Since September 11 the alliance between Indiaand the United States has been growing stronger. For the United States, India is ageographically strategic location with proximity to China, Afghanistan, and the MiddleEast. For the Hindu right-wing BJP-led coalition government, in its attempt to positionitself along with the United States it was framed as being on the same side as theUnited States fighting a common Muslim extremist enemy. This was a deliberatepolitical and geographical maneuver that served the Hindu Right's agenda of craftinga pure Hindu nation by dismantling the place of Pakistan and Muslim minorities inthe subcontinent.

India has persistently constructed Pakistan as its external threat to security. SinceIndependence in 1947, India and Pakistan have fought three wars in 1965, 1971, and themost recent in 1999 in Kargil where both countries came closest to nuclear exchange.The BJP's political maneuvers with the United States were in effort to use the strategicalliance in order to gain advantage over Pakistan. For instance, in Vajpayee's addressto the nation, he remarked, ` for years we in India have been alerting others to the factthat terrorism is a scourge for all of humanity, that what happens in Mumbai one dayis bound to happen elsewhere tomorrow, that the poison that propels mercenaries andterrorists to kill and maim in Jammu and Kashmir will impel the same sort to blow uppeople elsewhere.''(18) Following the tenor of Bajpayee's address, the Deputy PrimeMinister of India, Lal Krishna Advani, offered the help of Indian intelligence agenciesin capturing terrorists both in Afghanistan and in Pakistan. The coupling of PakistanwithAfghanistanwas deliberate andColin Powell's response acknowledged themaneuver

(17) Prime Minister's address to the nation, 14 September 2001, Government of India(http://www.indianembassy.org/special/cabinet/Primeminister/pm September 14.htm).(18) Prime Minister's address to the nation, 14 September 2001, Government of India.

Contrapuntal geographies of threat and security 17

by agreeing that the war against terror included terrorists in the embattled region ofJammu and Kashmir. He said, ` as President Bush has made clear ... we are going afterterrorism in a comprehensive way, not just in the present instance of Al-Qaeda andOsama Bin Laden, but terrorism as it affects nations around the world, to include thekind of terrorism that affects India'' (quoted in Rajghatta, 2001).

If Pakistan embodies an external threat to national security, Indian Muslims, whoconstitute approximately 11% of the population and are the third-largest concentrationof Muslims in the world, are deemed by the Hindu Right as an internal threat to thesovereignty of the nation. Since September 11, the discourse on terrorism that inter-twines terror with Muslims and Islam, influenced particularly by the United States,was used by the Hindu Right to further bolster its claims of threat from Pakistan andthe Muslim minority in India. Praful Bidwai (2003), a popular Indian columnist,articulates the implications of the US discourse on terror for India, ` since September11, terrorismöstrictly of the non-state, and preferably Islamic, varietyöhas become apowerful shibboleth which is not easy (or popular) to attack. Given today's Islam-ophobic climate, particularly in the United States, many Indians who would havepreferred to be fence-sitters on the issue of religion and politics, now sympathizewith the view that there is an `organic' link between Islam and terrorism, and thatIndian Muslims are partial to jihad.''

Attack on the Parliament buildingOn 13 December 2001 the Indian Parliament House was attacked by a small group ofarmed men. In the attack six Indian security personnel were killed, and twelve otherswere injured, and all the armed men were killed. Before it was even known who wasresponsible, speculation was flooded with references to Islamic terrorism. To bolsterthe speculation in an already `Islamaphobic' climate, the Deputy Prime Minister,Advani, alleged that the group of armed men were of Afghan origin because they didnot have `Indian faces' (quoted in Khare, 2001). A discourse of chromatic and inherentdifferences between us and them is a persistent lexicon of the Hindu Right in distin-guishing Hindus from Muslims. However, the ability to make public statements thatthose responsible were Afghani relied on the global discourse after September 11linking Afghans and Muslims with terrorism. The similarity between the attack on theIndian Parliament and the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center andthe Pentagon did not go unnoticed. In an explicit linking of the two incidents, Vajpayeesaid, ``acts of terrorism are sought to be justified in the name of religion, although noreligion sanctions hatred and violence. We saw it on September 11th and we have seenit again on December 13th'' (quoted in Bhattacharya, 2001). In addition to linking theincidents directly, the discourse after the attack echoed in rhetoric those discourses thatwere apparent after September 11. The show of nationalist strength and capability,calling for revenge against the perpetrators, and the display of patriotism were evi-denced in statements by the prime minister and the state in manner and rhetoric.For instance, in its official statement the Union Cabinet said, ` we will liquidate theterrorists and their sponsors wherever they are, whosoever they are'' (quoted in Khare,2001b). The similarities of the attacks on September 11 and December 13 were alsomade apparent through the significance of the buildings that were targets. In bothcases the buildings were symbolic icons of the nationödemocracy (Indian Parliament),military prowess (the Pentagon), and financial strength (the World Trade Center).Vajpayee said that the attack ` was not just on a building, but a warning to the entirenation, and we accept the challenge. We will defeat each one of their attacks'' (quotedin Khare, 2001b).

18 R Oza

In the context of the September 11 attacks, when the world rallied behind Bush'swar in Afghanistan, retribution became an unchallengeable imperative. Bush's doctrinedid not differentiate between the nation-states and the so-called `terrorists' who residedin them. The crucial difference between people and the state collapsed such that it wasnow justified that retribution on the actions of a small group could be met by theinnocent many. Thus, in the midst of heady speculation that Islamic terrorists wereresponsible for the attacks on the Indian parliament building, the early tremors ofanother war with Pakistan began to be felt. As soon as Lashkar-i-Tayyaba and Jaish-e-Muhammad, groups that are based in Pakistan, claimed responsibility for the attacksthe drumbeats of war become deafening.

India and Pakistan had already waged their third war in 1999 and exchangednuclear threats several times in the past.(19) With the attack on the parliament thepossibility of another war loomed and threatened to undo the diplomatic advancesthat India and Pakistan had made over the last couple of years. The thaw in relationswas initiated in February 1999 when on the invitation of the Pakistani Prime Minister,Nawaz Sharif, the Indian Prime Minister, Vajpayee, crossed the border between Indiaand Pakistan at Wagah. This was the first visit to Pakistan by an Indian prime ministerin over a decade, the last being by Rajiv Gandhi in 1989. The event itself, more symbolicthan substantive, was filled with celebration and exchange of goodwill and indicated aprogress in the relations between the two countries since the nuclear tests. The Wagahmeet also opened the possibility for relatives across the borders, separated by partition,to visit each other. In July 2001, a few months before the attack on the Parliament,Pervez Musharraf (20) met Vajapyee in Agra to follow up on the talks during the Wagahmeet. The diplomatic moves need to be contextualized as part of the maneuvers thatthe BJP needs to make as a national party presenting itself as moderate and clean'and at the same time not alienating its traditional base within the Hindu right-wingmovement.(21)

The moderation which the BJP presents can be read not as an ideological shift butrather as one informed by political opportunism.(22) Therefore, the very politicalopportunities that factor in to the diplomatic advances with Pakistan also inform theBJP's attempts to appease the more conservative factions within the Hindutva pan-theon (discussed below). Thus, soon after the parliament attacks and in the context ofincreased `threat perception' through a discourse of Islamic militancy, the BJP-ledNational Democratic Alliance (NDA) set out to enact antiterrorist legislation. Accord-ing to the NDA's Union Home Secretary, Kamal Pande, antiterrorist legislation wasjustified because ` after the September 11th terror strikes in the United States, thelocus of a major international conflict has suddenly shifted to our neighborhood''

(19) After India and Pakistan tested nuclear devices in 1998, according to Bidwar and Vinaik (2001),they exchanged nuclear threats thirteen times before the Kargil war.(20) Sharif was deposed from his post after a coup in October 1999 that installed Musharraf as chiefexecutive'. For further details see Baruah (1999).(21) Sections within the Hindu right were cautious if not outright critical of the Wagah meet. Forinstance, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) advised Vajpayee on the eve of his visit to Wagah thathe should consider traveling across the border in a tank. On the other side of the border, theconservative Jamaat-i-Islami, which draws considerable street support in Pakistan, led protestsduring Vajpayee's visit.(22) By accusing the BJP in particular of political opportunism, I am not suggesting that otherpolitical parties such as the Congress Party are absolved of it. The Congress has a long history ofpandering to particular constituencies for votes. However, BJP plays a significant role within theSangh, whose larger political project is to craft India as Hindu. Even though one can accusethe other political parties of opportunism and weak ideological positions, they do not have acomparable political agenda.

Contrapuntal geographies of threat and security 19

(Press Trust of India, 2001). First proposed to replace an earlier actöthe Terrorist andDisruptive Activities (prevention) Act(23) which lapsed in 1995öthe new bill, thePrevention of Terrorism Act (POTA), was passed in March 2002, despite strongpolitical opposition, in a rare joint session of parliaments. POTA is remarkably similarto the US PATRIOT Act and other antiterrorism measures passed in the UnitedKingdom. It authorizes the government wide-ranging power to detain suspects forup to ninety days, to set up special courts for trial of terrorists, to sanction surveillancemeasures such as wiretapping and electronic databases, to obtain student records, aswell as to detain and deport foreigners.(24)

Much like the PATRIOT Act in which security was crafted through the surveillanceof those who could be terrorists in the future, POTA also created a list of organizationsdeemed terrorist and potential threats to the nation. For instance, organizations suchas the International Sikh Youth Federation, the Students Islamic Movement of India(SIMI), and the Communist Party of India (Marxist ^ Leninist) ^ People's War Groupwere among POTA's list of twenty-five terrorist organizations. Whereas SIMI wasdeclared a terrorist organization, Hindu right-wing militant groups such as the BajrangDal that have incited violence against minority Muslim populations are exempt from beingdefined as terrorist. In a manner that is unabashedly against Muslims, POTA became alegislative sanction for state-sponsored terror. This was particularly evident in the mannerin which POTA was used against Muslims after the Gujarat pogrom. After the BJP wasdefeated in the 2004 general elections, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA)promised to review POTA. On 9 December 2004 POTA was repealed by a parliamentaryvote.(25)

Gujarat genocideOn 27 February 2002 a carriage on the Sabarmati Express was burnt at Godhra, asmall town in Gujarat, killing fifty-eight people, many of whom were women andchildren.(26) Many of those killed in the fire were Kar Sevaks (Hindu activists), whowere returning from Ayodhaya in the state of Uttar Pradesh, where they were partici-pating in ceremonies to construct a Hindu Ram temple. After the incident, the BJP-ledgovernment in state alleged that the attack was preplanned by Muslims and called for

(23) Full act available at http://indiacode.nic.in/qryACTshtitle1.asp?txtact=disruptive&submit1=submit.(24)Available at http://indiacode.nic.in/qryACTshtitle1.asp?txtact=prevention+of+terrorism&submit1=submit(25) For further information see Venkatesan (2004). Even though POTA was repealed in December2004, it was replaced by the Unlawful Activities (prevention) Amendment Bill which was put inplace to fight terrorism (http://indiacode.nic.in/qrysection2.asp?txtact=Unlawful+Activities+%28Prevention%29+Amendment+Act8submit1=submit). I owe some of these points to Girish Agarwal.(26) The genocide in Gujarat has been justified as a response to this incident which the HinduRight along with the Gujarat government claimed was preplanned by Muslims. They even allegethe involvement of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence. However, in an affidavit submitted to theinquiry commission led by Justice G T Nanvati and K G Shah, Armish Patel claims thatthe attack on the train was not premeditated (affidavit before the inquiry commission, 1 July2002, Ahmedabad; on file with the author). Further, forensic evidence about the fire casts doubton the allegation that the fire was set from the outside, further damaging the argument made bythe state of Muslim premeditated attack (The Week 7 July 2002). After the defeat of the BJPgovernment in May 2005, the UPA's railway minister, Lalu Prasad Yadav, ordered an inquirycommission into the train fire at Godhra. The commission was headed by a former Supreme Courtjudge U C Banerjee, and the report was released on 17 January 2005. The report claimed, ` Withthe elimination of the `petrol theory', `miscreant activity theory' as well as the ruling out of anypossibility of electrical fire', the fire in S-6 coach of Sabarmati Express can at this stage beascribed as an `accidental fire' '' (http://www/rediff.com/news/2005/jan/17godhra.htm), full text ofthe report is available at http://www.combatlaw.org/information.php?article id=537&issue id=21

20 R Oza

a statewide closure of offices and businesses to protest the killings at Godhra. Duringthe two days of the statewide closure (from 27 February to 2 March) Hindu mobs inGujarat went on a retaliatory killing spree that left hundreds, mostly Muslims, deadand thousands homeless. The retaliatory killing spree extended into months of violenceleaving more than 2000 Muslims dead and 150 000 Muslims homeless in what becameevident as a systematically planned genocide against Muslims. Several reports byindependent and international fact-finding missions document proof that the killingsin Gujarat were preplanned with the complete if not tacit support of the stateötheywere, indeed, a pogrom.(27) The pogrom reveals the incredible material and ideologicalbase of the Hindu Right in India given that even three years after the genocide theperpetrators have yet to be indicted, whereas 132 Muslims were charged under POTAfor their alleged involvement in the Godhra train incident.

The preplanned nature of violence against Muslims in Gujarat was evident inthe months of preparatory work required to facilitate the pogrom. For instance, severalmonths prior to the violence, there were extensive surveys documenting Muslim homesand businesses, which were conducted by the Hindu Right pretending to be a marketsurvey group. It is now known that the surveys conducted were used to target Muslimhomes and businesses specifically. Evidence of a Muslim business that was burnt whileits adjoining Hindu-owned business was left intact could only have come from detailedknowledge of Hindu and Muslim homes and places of business. Several months priorto the incident in Godhra, weapons were distributed in the surrounding areas andin the first few days Hindu activists came by the busload, in shifts, one after another,with maps and lists of homes to be targeted, and armed with weaponsöpropane gascylinders used to destroy homes and places of businessöand cell phones to coordinatethe effort. In the months after the pogrom, Gujarat's landscape bore the signs oferasure, with Mosques desecrated and bulldozed, and an unmarked anonymouspaved-over road in place of the shrine of Wali Gujarati, a famous Muslim poet. Thelandscape bore visible signs of the massacre, and women's bodies in particular were sitesof `inexhaustible violence' (Sarkar, 2002).Women were raped and murdered in the hun-dreds, their genitals and wombs mutilated in a manner that brutally reinscribed thecorporeality by which women's bodies bear the signs of culture and community. Hinduwomen participated in the rape and mutilation of Muslim women by inciting Hindu mento rape, forcing feminists to rethink the framework that places women predominantly asvictims of violence rather than as its perpetrators.(28) The rape of Muslim women wasalso encouraged by Hindu right-wing pamphlets that claimed that to `dominate foreigninvaders' was proof of Hindu men's sexual potency and a sign of their manhood

(27) There are over forty independent reports as well as reports by international human rightsagencies such as the Human Rights Watch (2002a; 2002b; 2003) and Amnesty International amongothers. These reports are available at http://www.coalitionagainstgenocide.org/reports.php.(28) The dilemma for Indian feminists arose in the genealogy of Hindutva women's extensiveparticipation in violence, disrupting an essentialist notion that women would not be prone toinflicting violence, particularly on other women.Writing about these and other instances, feministsTanika Sarkar (1995) and Urvashi Butali said that Hindu right-wing women's participation in incit-ing violence ``pulled many of our assumptions into a state of crisis for we have always seen womenas victims of violence rather than its perpetrators and we have always perceived their public,political activity and interest as a positive, liberating force'' (page 3). This realization was alsoinformed by the fact that the construction of women as victims was one that was appropriatedby Hindu right-wing women and deployed to justify their discourse of revenge and protection.Lastly, the extensive feminist critique on gender and nation has informed us about how theseconstructs are oppressive and disempowering for women; for the Hindutva women, however, it isprecisely their symbolic identity as tied to the nation that is a site of power and propels their publicparticipation.

Contrapuntal geographies of threat and security 21

(International Initiative for Justice, 2003, page 35). Hindu men who did not participatewere sent bangles as a sign of their emasculation. In a detailed feminist analysis of theGujarat pogrom, the International Initiative for Justice (2003) points out that the sexualassault onwomenwas not random, impulsive, or isolated but rathera fundamental axis thestrategyofwhichwas vested in eliminating the possibility for the community to reproduce.

There was an excessiveness, a macabre exuberance, to the destruction of Muslimpresence and to human pillage in Gujarat, which in fundamental ways could not havebeen possible without state participation and extensive organizing. The direct involve-ment and support of the state were evidenced when the Chief Minister of Gujarat,Narendra Modi, directed members of the state bureaucracy and police officers not tointerfere in the violence against Muslims in Gujarat. Modi, a prominent member of theRashtriya Swayam Sevaksangh (RSS),(29) justified the violence by the Hindu Rightafter the Godhra train incident as ` every action has an equal and opposite reaction''[Times of India (Delhi) 2 March 2002]. This `action ^ reaction' thesis has been used overand over again to validate the retaliatory killings by the Hindu Right. In one instance,Modi even called the rampage against Muslims `secular violence', claiming that ` whathappened is secular violence which happens during communal violence'' [Indian Express(Ahmedabad) 6 March 2002].

The Gujarat pogrom came to be understood as the successful manifestation ofHindu right-wing ideology. The excessive brutality, the rhetoric of justification, andthe erasure of Muslim presence from the landscape need to be understood not as therampant uncontrolled violence of a riot, but rather as part of a deeply ingrained politicalproject of religious nationalism. This project, called Hindutva, entails the HinduRight's efforts to create a Hindu rashtra (nation-state). The ideological and politicalinvestment in the Hindu rashtra owes its genesis to the formation of high-caste Hinduorganizations such as the Arya Samaj towards the end of the 19th century and theHindu Mahasabha in the early 20th century.(30) The contemporary Hindu Right,however, emerged with the formation of the RSS in 1925.(31) From the relatively modestorganization in the 1920s, the Hindu Right has, in over ninety years of its existence,grown extensively with over sixty organizations including labor unions, studentand women's groups, as well as schools and associations for indigenous people. Themultiple organizations within the Hindu Right together form the Sangh Parivar.(32)

(29) The RSS loosely translates as the `national volunteer corps', which is the main organizingstructure through which the Hindu Right operates.(30) For an extensive examination of the Hindu Right see Christophe Jaffrelot (1993) and John Zavos(2004).(31) The RSS is an exclusively male space and fits within the framework of heteropatriarchy, whichserves the rhetoric of virile Hindu men protecting the motherland (Bharatmata) to which they pledgetheir allegiance. However, in 1936 the women's wing of the RSS, called Rashtriya Sevikasamiti,was established by offering Hindu women a parallel space to participate in Hindu nationalism.For further information see Paola Bachetta (2004).(32) The Sangh Paravar today consists of approximately 60 different organizations. For example, theBajrang Dal is the paramilitary wing of the Sangh and is trained in combat and was in the mainresponsible for the Gujarat pogrom. Seva Bharti is the service wing of the Sangh that sets up variouscommunity service centers. Service to the community is a way to spread the Hindutva movementand to gather political support. In addition to the political and cultural organizing efforts the Sanghunderstood early in its inception that the large labor pool in Indiawas an important arena to organize.Thus the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) labor union was formed in 1955 and claims to have7.6 million members. In its mission BMS makes its links to the Sangh clear, stating ``BharatiyaCulture forms the ideological basis of Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh'' (from http://www.bms.org/in).In 1991 with India instituting neoliberal policies of economic liberalization and globalization theSangh created Swadeshi Jagran Manch, whosemission is to spread the idea of national self relianceor swadeshi.

22 R Oza

These organizations are guided by three main branches of the Hindutva movement: theRSS forms the umbrella structure through which members of the community arebrought into the fold; the BJP is the political wing of the Hindutva movement andgains power through electoral politics; and the VHP makes links with the Hindureligious community in India and coordinates efforts in reaching the Hindu Indiandiaspora.

One of the barometers of gauging success in mobilizing constituencies towardsHindutva has been through the electoral process. In the 1990s the BJP grew from aregional party to the leader of the opposition in 1991, and in 1998 it led a coalition ofthirteen regional parties to form the government at the center. In its political growthfrom a regional party to a national party, the BJP is often accused by the VHP andRSS of diluting its position on Hindutva and of adopting a more tempered stance.For instance, after the unexpected defeat of the BJP-led coalition government in the2004 general elections, the defeat of the party, according to the VHP, was attributableto its weakened position on several key Hindutva issues.

Despite the extensive organizational network, the Sangh's reach remains confinedto the central and western states known also as the `Hindi belt'. The reasons for thegeographical confines lie in the Sangh's upper-caste and middle-class support base.(33)

Additionally, Jaffrelot (2004) notes, in his study of the BJP's challenge in gainingelectoral success in the south, that ``the subversion of upper-caste political dominanceand assertion of non-Brahmin and popular identities in the political field has a longhistory in south India and Maharashtra, where it provided central underpinnings forthe assertion of regional identities'' (page 3). Consequently, since 1996, the BJP's politicalstrategy has been to make alliances with these regional parties.(34)

One of the most persistent countervailing forces in the expansion of the Sangh hasbeen the politics around Other Backward Classes (OBC) and Scheduled Castes (Jaffrelot,2003). OBCs constitute 52% of India's population and have been disenfranchised forgenerations. Efforts to redress the historic inequality have led to strong affirmativeaction policies and to political affiliations on the basis of these identities (2003).(35)

These efforts have resulted in what Jaffrelot (2003) calls a `silent revolution', where inthe states of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh, within the Hindi Belt, theBJP has had to give seats to OBC members within the party (such as Kalyan Singh andUma Bharti) as well as to contend with the rise of oppositional OBC leaders such asMulayam Singh Yadav, Lalu Prasad Yadav, and Mayawati Kumari. Recognizing thattheir upper-caste and upper-class bias is a significant liability to expansion, the BJPattempted to redress the issue by making room within the party for those of the lowercastes. The policy has been called `social engineering' (Jaffrelot, 2004, pages 22 ^ 23).

(33) Basu et al (1993) explain that the Hindutva movement in the early 20th century was centeredaround Nagpur in Maharashtra. During this period Muslims were a small minority in the state,thus Basu et al suggest that the reasons for the establishment of the RSS in Maharashtra was not inresponse to a Muslim threat, rather, ` Maharashtra had witnessed a powerful anti-Brahmin move-ment of backward castes from the 1870s onwards ... [therefore] Hindutva in 1925 as in 1990 ^ 91,was an upper caste bid to restore a slipping hegemony'' (page 10).(34) The NDA government led by the BJP after the 1998 elections, for instance, was made up of acoalition of thirteen regional parties. Thirteen months later after a no-confidence vote and subse-quent general elections the BJP came back to power in 1999, this time with a coalition of twenty-threeregional parties.(35) Andhra Pradesh recently raised its reservations in the state to 51%, Kerala has 60%, Karnatakahas 61%, and Tamil Nadu has 69%. For further details see Alam (2004).

Contrapuntal geographies of threat and security 23

The challenge for the BJP is in sustaining a policy of social engineering while at thesame time remaining faithful to its upper-caste base.(36)

Despite the challenges with the OBC and Dalit movements as well as internaldifferences, the Sangh shares fundamental ideological beliefs. Of particular significanceis that the Sangh deploys a particular construction of time, history, and geography thatclaims that Hindus are the original inhabitors of India. This claim of `original inhab-itors' forms the fundamental tenet of the Hindutva movement and is the basis onwhich the discourse of belonging is structured. The discourse of belonging is basedon the claim that Hindus are descendents of Aryans. This claim is based on referencesto Aryans found in the Rig Veda, one of the oldest and most revered texts in Hinduism(Bhatt, 2001).Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1989 [1923]öwho was the ideological spear-head of the Hindutva movementöfor example, claimed, ` a band of the intrepidAryans made it [India] their home and lighted their first sacrificial fire on the banksof the Sindhu, the Indus'' (pages 4 ^ 5). In his influential book Savarkar asserts thatthe essential qualifications of a Hindu are based on two criteria: one ` to him [sic] theland ... is his fatherland and motherland the land of his patriarchs and forefathers ... .The second most important essential of Hindutva is that a Hindu is a descendant ofHindu parents, claims to have the blood of the ancient Sindhu and the race that hassprang from them in his veins'' (page 110). Savarkar repeatedly seeks to prove thatthere is an organic deep-seated connection between the land, blood (race), and religionof Hindus in Hindustan. Consequently, those who have lived in India for generationsbut are not of the Hindu race are outsidersöforeigners. He says,

` some of our Mohammedan and Christian countrymen ... who have inherited alongwith the Hindus, a common fatherland and greater part of the wealth of a commonculture ... are not and cannot be recognized as Hindus. For though Hindustan is tothem fatherland ... yet it is not to them a Holyland too. Their holyland is far off inArabia or Palestine ... . Consequently their names and outlook smack of a foreignorigin (page 113).There is a geography to the discourse of belonging that places Muslims, Christians,

and Jews outsideöas foreignöbecause their holy land is located outside the borders ofIndia. Savarkar did not advocate a discourse of racial purity, but rather adopts mis-cegenation into the discourse of Hindutva where he says, ` any convert of non-Hinduparentage to Hindutva can be a Hindu, if bona fide, he or she adapts our culture and

(36) This tension between attempts at political expansion and upper-caste hegemony was particularlyevident when, on the recommendation of the Mandal Commission report, the government led byVishwanath Pratap Singh decided to implement 27% reservation in educational institutions,administration, and public sector jobs to OBCs. This reservation policy directly challenged theupper-castes' hegemony by giving access to the lower castes and classes. The announcement wasfollowed by the upper-caste agitations all over the country, with some students even immolatingthemselves. The Sangh in response to the Mandal Commission report set into play a strategiccountermove where it increased the mobilization around Babri Masjid and efforts to construct aRam temple. Lal Krishna Advani, who was by then the leader of the BJP, stated a rath yatra(chariot procession) from Somnath in Gujarat to Ayodhya to build the temple. Since Babri Masjidwas still a disputed site, V P Singh's government prohibited the continuation of the yatra andAdvani was arrested in Bihar. Predictably, Advani's yatra was accompanied by Hindu ^Muslimviolence, the most extensive in Bhagalpur, Bihar, where most of the Muslim population was killed.The political agitation around the Mandal Commission and the arrest of Advani led to the collapseof the Singh government when the BJP withdrew its support. However, the BJP had succeededwith the political agitations around Advani's procession to deflect the issue from one about upper-caste hegemony to one about Hindu victimization, thereby changing the political battlegroundwhere backward-caste Hindus were placed in opposition to Muslims. For further information seevan der Veer (1994, page 4).

24 R Oza

thus adores our land as the Punyabhu. The children of such a union as that would, otherthings being equal, be most emphatically Hindus'' (1989 [1923], page 130).(37) Savarkargreatly admired Nazi Germany and drew comparisons between German Jews and IndianMuslims, claiming that both were `illegitimate' because they were suspect of harboringloyalties outside the nation (Bhatt, 2001). It was Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, whobecame the supreme leader of the RSS in 1940, who explicitly adopted a racial argumentto his discourse of Hindutva and like Savarkar drew on Nazi Germany as inspiration.In his bookWe, or our Nationhood Defined Golwalkar says

`To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world byher purging the country of the Semitic racesöthe Jews. Race pride at its highesthas been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well nigh impossible it isfor Races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated intoone united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by'' (quotedin Jaffrelot, 1993, page 55).

This definition of race and the obvious admiration of Hitler's policies are particularlysignificant because, towards the end of the 1990s and after September 11, 2001, thereare efforts by Hindutva organizations in India and in the United States to find parallelswith the Zionist lobbies (I explore this in more detail in the next section).

Whether through Savarkar's construction of belonging or through Golwalkar'sdiscourse of race purity, the allegiance of Muslims to India was constructed as suspect.In this discourse by the Sangh there is a particular construction of time and geographyin which, on the one hand, Muslims and Christians in India are always-already suspectas descendents of invaders through the Mughal and British empires. On the otherhand, they are suspect because their `Holy land' is outside India in Arabia andPalestine'. Present-day Muslims, according to this doctrine, are held responsible forevents that occurred hundreds of years ago. Muslims in India are thought to be some-how organically tied to events and motivations in the past and thus cannot be trustedin their loyalty to the nation. Sarkar (2002) explains the construction of history by theSangh as ` all Muslims are a threat to faith and nation, and especially women at alltimes, and therefore, revenge must be taken on present-day Muslims both for historicalwrongs and for the future danger that they embody.'' History here is collapsed suchthat historical `wrongs' in an undifferentiated continuous past can be drawn upon asreasons for revenge. In this framework of the past, history is rewritten with Muslimsas perpetually barbaric and dangerous and with Hindus as innocent subjects of brutalviolence. This understanding of the history of Muslims and Christians as invaders andthus alien concurrently places Hindus as `native' to India and as innately connected to theland. It is this frameworkofhistory that fundamentally informs the Sangh's understandingof geography and homeland.

Informed by a distorted history, present-day Muslim communities are sites ofthreat crafted through a discourse of their hyperfertility and growth. Thus, during theGujarat pogrom, Tanika Sarkar astutely points out, bodies of women and childrenbecame specific targets of attack because they symbolized fertility and regeneration.Women were not only raped and killed by gangs in huge numbers but their genitaliaand wombs were specially targeted. Case after case of the sheer brutality of violence onMuslim women defies the parameters of understanding, incapacitating our vocabulary.

(37) Referring to the diversity of religious communities, Sikhs and Jains in particular, Savarkarargues that these communities have over generations intermingled and are Hindu by the definitionof Hindutva that he employs. He says, ` Sikhs are Hindus in the sense of our definition of Hindutvaand not in any religious sense whatever'' (1989, page 125). He goes on to suggest, then, that ``LetSikhs be classed as Sikhs religiously, but as Hindus racially and culturally'' (page 126).

Contrapuntal geographies of threat and security 25

It was not just the fact that within the patriarchal order of societies the rape of womenis an act of collective dishonor, rather, as Sarkar (2002) asks, what was the point of theexcess that was part of the violence in Gujarat? Why were the womb and genitaliaspecific targets? Women's genitalia symbolized the site of Muslim men's pleasure; thewomb embodied the site of infinite future generations; Muslim children became` a promise of future growth, of community self-strengthening, of survival of the commu-nity beyond the pogroms'' (2002). Thus the brutality that specially marked Muslimwomen and children was fed on this threat; security in the future entailed the annihilationof the possibility of a community to regenerate.

The rewriting of history is not an arbitrary political maneuver of the Sangh.Attempts to rewrite history in India have already occurred in India in the changing ofthe national curriculum framework in subtle ways to infuse school textbooks withreligious doctrines. Religious instruction in schools is prohibited by the Indian constitu-tion. However, the Hindu Right has managed to rewrite textbooks wherein Hinduism isconstructed as innate to India and other religions are presented as alien, even asinvading. Thus Praveen Togadia, the president of the VHP, can say with confidencethat ` a Hindu rashtra can be expected in the next two years ... we will change India'shistory and Pakistan's geography by then'' (Rediff News 15 December 2002).(38)

Togadia's triumphant declaration directly references the Sangh's effort to recon-struct India as a pure undivided (Akhand) Hindu nation. These efforts have entailed aprotracted conflict and battle over Muslim shrines such as the Babri Masjid as well asnationwide pilgrimages (Ekatmata Yatra, which translates as pilgrimage of unity or one-ness) that literally map the country as Hindu.(39) Despite the successes of the Sangh'sstrategy to control space, its ultimate goal of defining India as Hindu has remainedpersistently deferred. Consequently, as I have argued elsewhere, since the 1980s theSangh has engaged in a strategy of progressively increasing violence where it is nolonger enough to relegate Muslim presence to the margins or to the confines of theprivate; rather as the Gujarat pogrom demonstrated the effort was to erase the space ofMuslim presence altogether (see Oza, forthcoming).

For the Sangh a linear and collapsed construction of time and history articulatedthreat, while security is guaranteed by erasing the space of Muslim presence. Similarly,for the United States, through a modernist discourse of time and history, threat wasconsolidated in the bodies of South Asian, Arab, and Muslim immigrants as well as inthe potential of places (Iraq) to become threats. In both India and the United Statesthere are gendered and sexualized discourses of hypermasculinity and fear or threatof emasculation such that restoring the patriarchal community or nation is achievedin the annihilation and emasculation of future threat (Puar and Rai, 2002). Withinthis framework, security unfolds through detentions and preemptive strike. Theconvergence of the narrative of the Muslim terrorist in India and in the UnitedStates is also echoed by Israel in its relation with Palestine and the Arab nations.

(38) Available at http:www.rediff.com/election/2002/dec/15guj13.htm.(39) Babri Masjid is a 16th-century mosque built during the reign of Babar. The Sangh argues thatthe mosque was built on the site of a Ram temple. Since the 1940s the mosque has been a site ofdispute and a deliberate strategy used by the Sangh as an example of Muslim barbarity andsubsequent Hindu victimhood. The use of Babri Masjid functions according to Satish Deshpandeas a hetrotopia which enables ``people to see themselves reflected in some utopia'', (1998,page 250). Therefore, sites such as Babri Masjid not only function in the limits of the particularspace they inhabit, in this case as the site of the Ram temple, but generate the possibility to use thelocal to calibrate the national. The significance of the local as a hetrotopia for Deshpande ` isnot ... in terms of what it is able to achieve within its own spatial limits, but rather in thepossibilities it creates for inserting such localities into a large grid of ideological discrimination andpolitical action'' (page 250).

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In the concluding section I examine how these different contours of time and historyconverge and are able to craft new contrapuntal geographies.

Contrapuntal geographies: India, the United States, and IsraelOn the second anniversary of the September 11attacks on the United States, Ariel Sharonmade history as the first prime minister of Israel to be welcomed by the Indian state.Sharon's visit signaled the growing alliance between the two countries and indicatedthe emergence of a triad between India, Israel, and the United States. This triademerges through shared political discourses on security and terror and is consolidatedthrough military and economic linkages. The geographical triad emerged in 1991 whenIndia initiated neoliberal policies of economic reform by accepting the structuraladjustment policies of the International Monetary Foundation and as a consequencesought to increase US foreign direct investment. In the same year India voted to repealthe 1975 UN General Assembly resolution that equated Zionism with racism andbegan talks with Israel to formalize relations between the two countries. Given thatIndia was one of the original sponsors of the 1975 UN resolution, the repeal was all themore indicative of the shift in political stance. A decade later in 2001, at the WorldConference Against Racism in Durban, India colluded with Israel and the United Statesand refused to join the Arab and Islamic countries in equating Zionism with racism.The shift in position in the 1990s brought with it increased bilateral trade betweenIndia and Israel, reaching over $1.27 billion within the decade. And, since 2002, Indiaand Israel have also agreed to increase military cooperation with Israel, spending anestimated $2 billion annually on Israeli military technology and equipment (Waldman,2003). With the strategic military alliances, almost half of Israel's total military saleshas gone to India and it has emerged as India's second-largest defense supplier afterRussia (Jayachandran, 2003).

Prior to 1991, India was resolutely pro-Palestinian and, in 1980, even granted thePalestinian Liberation Organization full diplomatic status with a mission in its capital,New Delhi. During the 1947 UN General Assembly, India in solidarity with Arab andPalestinian people opposed the partition of Palestine, and advocated a federal Palestinewith local autonomy for Jews. India's early position vis-a© -vis Palestine reflected itsefforts at collaborative relations with the Arab League as well as being in response tothe large Muslim minority within the country. Later, in the mid-1950s and 1960s,during the Suez crisis, when Israel positioned itself along with the French and Britishforces, India stood in solidarity with newly postcolonial African nations, which furtherdistanced India and Israel.

Although the emergence of the triad was initiated when the Congress Party was inpower in 1991, it was with the BJP that the link between India, Israel, and the UnitedStates achieved particular significance. The Sangh has since its inception been pro-Israel. In fact, Savarkar favored a geopolitical alliance between India and Israel,arguing that, ` if tomorrow there breaks out a war between Pakistan and Bharat[India], almost all Muslims will be arrayed on the side of Pakistan in opposition tous, and their enemy Israel will be our only friend. Therefore I say that Bharat shouldgive unequivocal recognition to Israel'' (quoted in Prashad, 2003, page 23). In thecontemporary moment, Vijay Prashad (2003) points out that it is Israel's strategy ofoccupation through illegal settlements and its control over economic networks thatappeals to the Hindu Right (page 54). In fact, there is a remarkable similarity betweenIsrael's strategies of control and those of the Sangh. The similarity was particularlyevident during the reconstruction efforts after the Gujarat earthquake in 2001 and inthe economy boycott during the pogrom in 2002.

Contrapuntal geographies of threat and security 27

Prashad (2003, page 55) notes that between 1967 and 1977 the Israeli state built ninetysettlements in the West Bank and between 1993 (the Oslo Accord) and 2000 (al-Aqsaintifada) the settler population increased by 77%. The strategy of controlling andtaking over space to recraft and erase from it the presence of the other evidenced inthe Israeli occupation through settlements is starkly similar to the Sangh's reconstruc-tion of towns and villages after the Gujarat earthquake. Simpson (2004) documents theproduction of a communal geography in reconstruction efforts in which Muslimpresence was either relegated to the margins of these new towns or completelyneglected. The other method of control that Prashad points out is that after Oslorepeated closures of borders resulted in the systematic devastation of the Palestinianeconomy. Roy shows that ` the reasons for Palestinian economic regression are manyand interrelated but turn on one primary axis: Israel's closure policy, which restricts andat time bans the movement of labor and goods from the occupied West Bank and Gazastrip to Israel'' (quoted in Prashad, 2003, page 56). In Gujarat after the BJP came topower it too adopted a system of boycott of Muslim workers from the labor pool(Breman, 2001). The use of economic boycott became an explicit strategy during theGujarat pogrom with the VHP distributing pamphlets appealing to Hindus to ` Wakeup! Arise! Think! ... economic boycott is the only solution ... the way to break thebackbone of these elements is: an economic non-cooperation movement'' (quoted inChenoy et al, 2002, page 10). The pamphlet goes on to direct patriotic Hindus to nothire, buy from, sell to, use the services of, rent homes or office space to, or work withMuslims.

The political alliance between Sharon and the Likud and Vajpayee and the BJP isbolstered by respective lobbies in the United States. For instance, the recently formedUnited States India Political Action Committee (USINPAC) has been seeking assis-tance from the American ^ Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) to lobby theUnited States on domestic and foreign-policy issues. Indian lobbyists aim to emulatethe extensive influence and access which the Israeli lobby enjoys with the US state.Recognizing the potential of the diasporic community's influence on the US state, theIndian External Affairs Minister, Yashwant Sinha, asked people of Indian origin to` emulate the Jewish diaspora by bringing all their organizations under one roof to worktowards a common goal'' (Diplomatic Correspondent, 2003). It is the shared basis of acommon goal' articulated as a common extremist threat' that drew together for thefirst time the powerful American Jewish Committee, AIPAC, and USINPAC for ajoint Capitol Hill forum on 16 July 2003. According to a senior lobbyist of AIPAC,Jeffrey Colman, ``When India, Israel and the U.S. are under attack by extremists,there's a great deal of common ground and common interest in opposing them''(Ramer, 2002). The event featured a dozen US congressmen, diplomats from Indian,and Israeli embassies and political activists. Commenting on the alliance formed thatevening, congressmanTom Lantos (DemocratöCalifornia) said,` We are drawn togetherby mindless, vicious, fanatic, Islamic terrorism'' (quoted in Farees, 2004). Echoing thesentiments of Lantos, Congressman Gary Ackerman claimed that the concerns thatbrought the lobbies together were that while Israel was ``surrounded by 120 millionMuslims ... India has 120 millions Muslims [within it]'' (Farees, 2004). One of theindicators of the collaboration between the conservative Jewish lobbies and the Indianlobby is USINPAC's unequivocal support of the HR3077 bill, titled The InternationalHigher Education Act of 2003.(40) The bill proposed amendments that would policeTitle VI funding of international studies programs that are critical of US foreign policy.

(40) Full transcript of the act available at http://www/house.gov/ed workforce/markups/108th/sed/hr3077/917main.htm.

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Even though USINPAC is relatively new, it draws both formal and informalsupport from the larger Indian diaspora, parts of which are extremely conservativeand actively support the Hindu right in India. This professional class of immigrantswho came in the 1960s and 1970s has significant disposable incomes and strong linkswith the home country, supporting charities that work in India. So, for instance, theIndian diaspora in the United States raised millions of dollars for the devastationcaused by the earthquake in Gujarat in January 2001; however, nothing commensuratewas raised for Muslim victims during the Gujarat pogrom. The right-wing during the1990s in India understood the significance of the political and material support bythis large diaspora and was able to easily harness it. For instance, according to arecent report ` The foreign exchange of hate: IDRF and the U.S. funding of Hindutva''(Campaign to Stop Funding Hate, 2002), the India Development and Relief Fund (IDRF),a Maryland-based nonprofit organization which raises money for development and reliefwork in India, has strong links with Hindutva organizations in India. The report laysout in careful detail the political, material, and ideological links between the IDRFand the Sangh in India. According to the report, IDRF channels approximately twothirds of the funds it collects to organizations affiliated with the Hindu Right, whileabout half of the remaining funds go to other sectarian Hindu organizations. The reportstates, ` in the years from 1994 to 2000 for which the data is available, roughly 75%of the IDRF's total disbursements (over $3.2 million) went to the IDRF-designatedorganizations'' (page 18).

Along with growing material support from first-generation Indians, the HinduRight began to train and build its political base through second-generation Indiansin the United States and the United Kingdom. Thus, since the early 1990s, the VHP ofAmerica created Hindu student councils (HSC) in about fifty schools and colleges allacross the United States and Canada. HSCs in schools and colleges function as culturalarenas for second-generation Indians, a goal commensurate within the framework ofmulticultural education and opportunities. Biju Mathew and Vijay Prashad (2000)explain that, ``unlike the openly illiberal Hindu Right in India, its votaries in the USportray themselves as the benign champions of the neglected culture of the Hindus.Model minorityhood allows the orthodoxy among the community to utilize the spaceof multiculturalism to forward its politics discretely'' (page 525). Consequently, through`benign'cultural activities such as celebrating festivals, etc HSC becomes a political arenato represent a particular form of Hindu religion in keeping with Hindutva ideology.

At different scalesösuch as local conservative diasporic communities that supportlobbying groups that in turn collude with United States' and Israel's discourse of`fighting the same extremist enemy'öthere emerges a geographical pattern that seeksto remove, erase, and deport those whose loyalties are suspect. Suspicion, in turn, forthe Hindu Right is crafted through a discourse of Muslims as barbaric invadersunchanging throughout history. For the United States a discourse of civilizationaldifference informs and justifies preemptive action. In both cases, the reconstitutionof time and history is fundamental to realigning their internal and external geogra-phies. The rewriting of history and doctrines of preemptive strikes is a measure thatallows for the solidification of brutal regimes that craft the world in their image.

ConclusionIn this paper I have sought to outline the emergence of contrapuntal geographiesbetween India, United States, and Israel. I suggest that the emergence of this triadrests on a shared discourse of Muslim terror based on a collapsed understanding oftime and history that is then used to justify and deploy violent measures of repression.

Contrapuntal geographies of threat and security 29

These shared discourses are sutured by economic and military cooperation. For theUnited States, fostering these relations with India and Israel is understood in terms ofestablishing geopolitical allies in South and central Asia as a bulwark against Chinaand the Arab nations. For India and Israel, the military and economic cooperationfulfills domestic economic needs and regional supremacy agendas. I have focused pri-marily on the time frame between 1998 and 2004 when the BJP was in power in India,coinciding with Bush's first term in office and with Sharon's term in office in Israel. Sincethen, the BJP was defeated in the general elections in 2004, bringing a coalition govern-ment to power with the Congress Party at the helm. Although the defeat of the BJP iscertainly cause for relief, it does not signal a weakening of the triad. The Congress Partyperhaps may not articulate its link with Israel on the basis of common Islamic threat',which had particular resonance for the BJP, but these alliances nevertheless advanceestablished grids of power rather than address the needs of those that are persistentlydisenfranchised. The same would have been true should John Kerry have prevailed inthe US elections, particularly given his position vis-a© -vis Israel.

In the diaspora those allied with the conservative Hindutva lobbies have renewedtheir efforts to generate and create linkages in light of the BJP's defeat. Indicative ofthese efforts, most recently, Narendra Modi, the Chief Minister of Gujarat, who wascomplicit in using state machinery in the pogrom against Muslims, was invited as theguest of honor by the Asian American Hotel Owners Association (AAHOA) for itsannual convention in Florida in March 2005. In addition to AAHOA, a new organiza-tion, the Association of Indian Americans in North America (AIANA), whose keymembers are tied to the conservative Indo-American business community, organized atalk by Modi at Madison Square Garden in New York. These events were used tobolster Modi's image within the United States and represent him as a national leaderin India. Modi was denied a diplomatic visa at the last minute by the US consulate inNew Delhi on grounds of religious persecution.(41) But perhaps most significant werethe efforts by multiple secular groups in the United States that organized extensivelyagainst Modi's visit and brought attention to the lack of justice to the victims andsurvivors even three years after the Gujarat pogrom. Despite Modi's inability to bephysically present, the AIANA organized buses from the tristate areas to bringsupporters to Madison Square Garden and used video conference to broadcast Modi'sspeech live. Given the political and economic support that these events generated, thelinkages that I have attempted to explore in this paper are far from waning. Thus,the struggles by groups who continue to fight for the social justice against the persistenceof those who deny it remain all the more crucial.

Acknowledgements. An early version of this paper was presented as part of a panel on 9/11ö`whatdoes it mean for the left' at the 2002 Socialist Scholars Conference in New York City. I would liketo thank the following for comments on earlier drafts: Manu Bhagavan, Laura Y Liu,Vijay Prashad,Neil Smith, Shaubnam Tejani, and Usha Zacharias. I am particularly grateful to Derek Gregoryfor his insight and guidance as well as to the two anonymous reviewers for their suggestions forrevision.

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