The base for internal peace and stability (Column: Spy's Eye)

Just as the handling of national security must be kept above party politics, law and order management must also not be allowed to be tampered with -particularly by internal politics. The democratic dispensation of India banks heavily on this for its stability since law and order determine in a basic sense how secularism and equality of citizen's rights built into the democratic state, would operate in this country. Further, a certain uniformity of standards in the handling of law and order by the concerned authorities would be necessary as a requirement of the federal character of Indian democracy that granted complete freedom to its citizens to visit or settle down in any part of the country.

In the Constitutional division of powers, Police and Law and Order fall squarely in the hands of the State governments. Still, if law and order management became an important substratum on which the nation's internal security, peace and stability rests, the Centre also becomes a primary stakeholder. Fortunately for India, the leadership of Police in the states is in the hands of the officers of the Indian Police Service (IPS) who are recruited through a nationally conducted examination where only merit would prevail and were trained by the Centre before being allocated to different cadre states. The Centre broadly keeps track of the performance evaluation of these officers and also provides them with certain administrative protection against any arbitrary action initiated against them by the state government. Experience, however, shows that the Central government needed to strengthen its oversight of the IPS and IAS for the sake of safeguarding national security interests.

In an important development a division bench of the Supreme Court issued on October 24, 2024, contempt notices to the Chief Secretaries of as many as eight states - Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, West Bengal, Jharkhand and Bihar- for appointing Acting DGPs in violation of the top court's 2006 ruling which required the Police Chief to be selected from among a panel of three names drawn up by UPSC in consultation with the state government, on seniority -cum -merit basis and given a tenure of at least two years. The September 2006 order of SC further called for the creation of Police Establishment Boards in the states to deal with transfers, postings and promotion as also the constitution of a Police Complaints Authority to examine complaints against Police officers.

These directions were followed by the states but on a perfunctory note. The Centre should completely throw its weight behind the procedure prescribed by the Supreme Court for the appointment of the DGP as this would go a long way in improving the law and order management in the states. The value system to be followed by the Police in this country flows top down and restoring the professional authority of the DGP was the very first step in the direction of pitching the accountability of the Police hierarchy at different levels. A DGP - and this could be said of the Chief Secretary as well - seemed often to be the weakest link in the chain, in matters of law enforcement which had to be carried out with a sense of public service. This situation needed to be rectified for the larger cause of internal security. In the conflict-ridden geopolitics of today, India has to look out for any covert acts of hostility indulged in by the Sino-Pak alliance, the impact of the Iran-Israel confrontation on other regions and the repercussions of a growing Cold War between the US and the Russia-China axis.

Beyond the Ukraine-Russia armed conflict and the Israel -Hamas confrontation, the era of "proxy wars" is upon us which is marked by the advent of social media as an instrument of "influence war", the rising threat of cyber attacks and the methods-open and surreptitious-used by the adversary for damaging the economic strength of the targeted country. Also, because of the spread of radicalisation in the Muslim world, the global threat of faith-based terrorism has now become a danger for the entire democratic world and this makes it important that the two largest democracies of the world - the US and India - acted together without India having to give up on its policy of developing mutually beneficial bilateral relations with all major powers including Russia.

In these times of multiple conflicts and covert offensives, India has to strategise to deal with a multi-polar world without getting aligned with any single power and opt for capacity-building in the spheres of defence, economy and technology to stand on its own in handling the challenges on various fronts. This is the best guarantee for safeguarding national security. India has taken to a higher profile in BRICS without reducing its active contribution to Quad in furtherance of its policy of balancing its international relations for serving the national interests without compromising the cause of humanity and world peace. What matters is that India should be able to effectively deal with the ever-changing global security scenario. The prime concern of India was to counter the danger posed to its "internal" security by "external" causes and threats. Apart from the doings of Pakistan and China, the exposure of India to radicalisation and separatism and plans hatched outside of the country to covertly attack the country's economic lifelines, are to be closely handled.

All of this is attributable to the global shift to the era of "proxy wars" that the world witnessed after the Cold War ended in the early Nineties. Developments in the Middle East bring out the alarming fact of faith-based divisions bolstering the return of the Cold War between the US and China with Russia remaining firmly aligned with the latter. Iran and its proxies are directly taking on Israel and the radicalised Hamas-that had originated as the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood with a history of being in the good books of the West- was also taken by Iran under its fold in the wake of the Israel-Hamas confrontation that broke out following the ‘terror’ attack of Hamas on Israel on October 7, 2023.

The deep-seated divide between Zionism and Islam seems to have crept into the political gulf that had been growing between the US and the China-Russia camp. It is extremely significant that Iran has aligned with China and Russia even as the Sunni extremist Saudi Arabia along with the UAE remained close to the US. Islamic radical forces carrying the historical legacy of Wahhabism were opposed to the US-led West whereas the Salafists represented by Saudi Arabia followed extreme Islamic fundamentalism but believed in the concept that an Islamic State could live "in competition not conflict with the West".

India had the second largest Muslim population in the world and had to be wary of radicalisation that made many elements in the community vulnerable to the call of Jehad "in defence of Islam" prescribed by the faith as a "fundamental duty". We have to find our own ways of countering radicalisation with the help of all communities. The threats to the internal security of India far outweigh the prospects of the country facing any open military attack from outside. India is once again vulnerable to communal, caste and regional conflicts- with enemy agents trying to add fuel to the fire. The critical infrastructure of the country and the establishments of strategic importance have to be closely protected against covert attacks.

Social media is fast becoming an instrument for recruiting potential terrorists through indoctrination, building "separatist" narratives and spreading misinformation. For countering terrorism, narcotics trade and human trafficking, the closest cooperation between national intelligence agencies and the state police was of crucial importance. The intelligence generated at the local level will often provide a breakthrough in such cases and that is why the role of the Local Intelligence Unit(LIU) of the district has acquired a newfound significance for internal security. This also makes law enforcement a component of the efforts to safeguard national security. India is passing through times when the nation’s unity, sovereignty and stability depended in a definitive way on competent law and order management and this is where the country was being tested as a Union of States.

D C Pathak (The writer is a former Director Intelligence Bureau)