Primarily, two types of ideological terrorism are being actively promoted by the high and mighty: 1) Religious and 2) Left-wing. They have perfected the art of using real or imaginary grievances to their advantage, across the globe. This game is not new, but modern centres of power are equipped with far more sophisticated physical, economic and psychological tools to play the game than any time in known history.

Digressing from global machinations behind terrorism, the main thing is how India can effectively counter terrorism of both the leftist and religious variety?  What measures are required beyond intelligence and effective policing to counter terror?

The first and foremost measure to counter terror is cutting the inflow of foreign funds to all types of ideological NGOs, think-tanks, and religious organizations inside the country. The seeds of terror and sedition are nurtured by these poisonous funds. They are conduits to the agendas of forces inimical to the country.

The second important step is to ban organized religious conversions. Organized religious conversions are psychological and demographic aggressions driven by agendas of power. If somebody is voluntarily convinced about a particular faith he might convert, but corporate style organized efforts to brainwash people have to be discouraged and banned. The southern states, particularly Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, are witnessing huge changes in religious demographics with evangelical dons running empires financed by foreign evangelical funds.

The third and most important long term step is to assimilate religions born outside, which came into India by force, and refuse to assimilate.  To begin with, every citizen irrespective of religion and creed has to be brought under a common legal framework. The role of the religious bureaucracy has to be limited to prayer and worship.  Passages in religious books that promote hatred with an objective to achieve universal dominance in the name of God should not be allowed to be part of religious education.

A godless insipid secular state can only create vacuum in society that could be exploited by different groups with agendas to usurp power. The state should represent the culture, history and ethos of land. In the Indian context, the state has to act as a representative of the Divine in the form of Dharma, the eternal source of justice and righteousness. It shouldn't shy away from being representative of the history and culture of the land. The symbols and essence of civilization should reflect in statecraft. The state shouldn't force, but it has to conduct itself in a way that enables assimilation of different groups into the broader cultural roots of the nation.

Multiculturalism or composite culture is a non-starter. Like split personality disorder, it only creates schisms in the national psyche and can never inspire or create strong bonds in society. Assimilation of religious identity into national cultural roots is critical for fixing the religious faultlines haunting this nation for over a millennium. Everything else can only prolong pain and strife leading to final destruction.

Coming to Left wing terrorism, its core is power-mongering in the name of ideology, idealism. The ideology motivates adventurism to usurp power using rhetoric and symbols of oppression. It offers centralized power to party bureaucracy as an alternative to capitalistic and feudal oppression. All they want is power transfer to the party hierarchy from the established power centres. History is witness to the hypocrisy, cruelty and bitterness this ideology has unleashed.

The most effective way to deal with this monster is empowering grassroots and decentralization of political and economic power to prevent situations fertile to the growth of these weeds. The age old empowered panchayat system and cooperative economic structures at grassroots level with people’s participation are perfect antidotes to this poison. Left extremism in India is actively financed by enemies of this country. India mired in internal struggles keeps them dominant and strong.

India has to overcome these twin menaces for its wounded soul to recover; the solution lies in its history, roots and ethos. Any superficial fancy ideas imposed from the top can only aggravate pain and confusion.

The author is a software engineer from Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh, currently working in the US. His twitter handle is https://twitter.com/