For nearly a decade and a half, India’s cities have felt secure—calm streets, crowded metros, and a quiet faith in the invisible shield of our intelligence and police networks. The explosion outside Red Fort metro station in New Delhi will shake that sense of safety. Whether it was an intended terror act or an accidental detonation, the intent behind it was unmistakable—to harm Indians, and thereby, India’s confidence.
The incident must not be viewed merely as an isolated tragedy, but as a symptom of a deeper malaise. It signals the quiet resurgence of ideological extremism in India’s urban underbelly—a phenomenon that has long simmered beneath the surface, particularly in parts of Jammu and Kashmir, but has now seeped into the social fabric of several metropolitan centres. No longer limited to remote valleys or border districts, it is travelling through cities, universities, prayer groups, and online echo chambers.
The unchecked spread of extremist ideology is today the most dangerous multiplier of terrorism. While our security forces and intelligence agencies have done exemplary work in shrinking the number of active terrorists in J&K and in curbing infiltration from across the Line of Control, radicalism has not been subdued. It doesn’t manifest daily, yet it builds the invisible scaffolding on which terror networks stand—those of sympathisers, financiers, propagandists and facilitators who blur the line between faith and fanaticism.
The difficulty is conceptual as much as operational. Around the world, nations have struggled to draw the line between religiosity and radicalism. Deradicalisation programmes, from Europe to Southeast Asia, show uneven results because the process requires theological engagement, psychological counselling, and community partnership. India faces this challenge acutely because its diversity makes any single approach inadequate.
Over the past 15 years, India’s intelligence and police services have kept terror geographically confined to J&K. Their record in preventing large-scale attacks in urban India is outstanding. Yet, sleeper cells have quietly rebuilt themselves in the shadows—from Bengaluru and Hyderabad to Lucknow and Delhi. These are not the crude, cell-phone-wielding modules of the past; they are educated, white-collared, networked, ideologically-wired, and often hidden behind respectable professional identities. That a group of doctors could turn radical despite their education in India’s premier institutions reveals the scale and subtlety of the challenge.
The radicalisation of professionals is not new. In the Islamic State’s early years, engineers, medics and graduates from Europe and West Asia joined its ranks in what analysts called ‘nihilistic seduction’—a search for purpose through destruction. India was largely spared that wave; only a few Indians travelled to Syria or Iraq, reaffirming our social cohesion. But that belief is shaken when a qualified Delhi doctor, reportedly with extremist leanings, drives into a crowded road junction with explosives. Even if intent is unclear, the pattern is deeply unsettling.
The challenge lies not only in ideology but in ecosystems. Terrorism endures through networks of finance, narcotics, media and over-ground workers. India has curbed many of these—the National Investigation Agency’s crackdown on funding and crossborder flows has choked resources. Yet, ideological networks of preachers and influencers remain a grey zone, operating within the thin legality of religious expression and using sermons and social media to quietly shape vulnerable minds.
Some of these networks have found new soil in India’s cities, where anonymity and mobility allow radical ideas to thrive unnoticed. This is where the danger multiplies. Urban radicalisation does not require direct instruction from across the border; it grows locally, often through grievance narratives amplified online. The convergence of faith-based grievance, political polarisation, and online propaganda makes deradicalisation extraordinarily complex.
We must also acknowledge the changing demographic of extremist sympathisers. They are younger, better educated, and more connected to global currents of resentment. In Kashmir, years of exposure to both conflict and counter-insurgency have hardened perspectives. Yet, in cities outside the valley, radicalisation stems less from personal experience of conflict and more from digital proximity—the consumption of global Islamist content that repackages victimhood as virtue.
In this context, India’s success in operational counter-terrorism—the neutralisation of thousands of terrorists, the containment of infiltration, the establishment of a robust grid—cannot automatically translate into success against radicalism. Bullets and barricades cannot penetrate ideas. This calls for a dual approach: technology to monitor and pre-empt, and community engagement to heal and persuade. The role of the moderate and nationalist clergy is invaluable in this.
The experience of nations such as Singapore offers useful lessons. There, a network of moderate clerics and community leaders has been mobilised to interpret Islamic teachings within a modern, plural framework, providing credible alternatives to extremist narratives. India, with its vast and diverse Muslim population, must craft its own model—one that draws upon the wisdom of friendly and patriotic religious scholars who can bridge the divide between faith and state. Such engagement cannot be cosmetic; it must be structured, resourced and sustained.
A worrying trend is the possible return of suicide terrorism to India’s discourse. While ‘fedayeen’ gun attacks have occurred in J&K since the 1990s, true suicide bombings—where the body becomes the weapon—have been rare and alien to India’s psyche. Pakistan’s tribal belt and Afghanistan normalised them, but if the Red Fort blast involved self-sacrifice, it marks a psychological shift. Cultivated through ideological grooming that glorifies death, such acts demand introspection. Technology can detect explosives, but only social resilience and understanding—through research, digital literacy and inclusive dialogue—can truly immunise minds against extremism. The lesson is simple but urgent; terror feeds on exclusion. The answer to its appeal lies in inclusion, dialogue, and opportunity. No community should feel targeted; no faith should feel besieged. India’s pluralism is its ultimate shield.
Urban India today stands at an inflection point. The security grid that has protected it for fifteen years will need augmentation with psychological insight and social intelligence. Technology can disrupt a plot, but only empathy can prevent one. As Delhi recovers from its night of fear, it must remind the nation that vigilance is not the task of the government alone—it is the collective duty of society.
Lt Gen Syed Ata Hasnain (retd) | Former Commander, Srinagar-based 15 Corps; Chancellor, Central University of Kashmir
(Views are personal)
(atahasnain@gmail.com)
