Red Fort blast and the rise of white-collar terrorism: Time to confront Pakistan and its jihadi foot soldiers in Bharat

The car explosion near Delhi’s Red Fort has once again shattered the illusion that terrorism in Bharat is a closed chapter. For over a decade, security agencies had successfully prevented major attacks outside Jammu & Kashmir, but this deadly blast is a grim reminder that terrorism — especially the one rooted in political Islam — remains a live, mutating threat.

Whether the Red Fort blast was a carefully planned act or the one committed out of panic after the security and intel agencies busted the terror module that had been working for over two years to create large-scale mayhem and violence across the country, what’s undeniable is that Islamist terrorism remains a major threat. More worryingly, the threat for Bharat remains as much from Pakistan as from those radicalised ones within the country who get swayed by the idea of Caliphatism and political Islam.

As the Delhi blast episode shows, the adversary is no longer a typical jihadi, projected in the Left-‘liberal’ narrative as a poor, illiterate victim of majoritarian, capitalist order: He is now an educated person with a high-flying job. The white-collar radicalism, however, is not exactly a new phenomenon. One often finds engineers getting involved with such Islamist projects, but what has startled many this time is that doctors too have joined the jihad bandwagon. A profession that is aimed at protecting lives is now busy making plans to kill people.

Bharat’s enemy today is as much the insider as he is the outsider. He is a typical Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde figure who wears the garb of normalcy by day and plots terror activities by night. He may be your easy-going, fun-loving neighbour, a social media influencer, an engineer—and as the Red Fort case shows, a doctor as well. This makes the war against terrorism exponentially harder to fight and win.

As Umberto Eco observes in his book Turning Back the Clock: Hot Wars and Media Populism, “The enemy not only lives in your own country but also has the right to national health insurance.” The new-age war—or “neo-war,” as Eco calls it—has no front, no battlefield, and no clear identity of the two warring sides. Of course, Pakistan, Bangladesh, et al, remain busy setting up sinister terror plans against Bharat, but there are many within the country who are ready to push the enemy’s jihadi agenda.

In this era of “neo-war”, democracies find themselves uniquely constrained. Democratic systems are largely transparent and built on rule-based order. Terror networks misuse these very democratic systems and safeguards to push their terror agenda. Such anti-democratic elements exploit democratic rights, liberal values, media freedom, and a culture of political correctness to create a fertile ground for radical ideologies to breed.

One of the gravest errors of our age is the substitution of moral clarity with political correctness. In the name of pluralism, we have allowed fanaticism to masquerade as freedom of expression. In the name of secularism, we have turned a blind eye to systematic Islamic radicalisation. And in the name of peace, we have tolerated those openly preaching hatred against our civilisation.

Samuel Huntington’s ‘Clash of Civilisations’ thesis argues that future conflicts would be fought along cultural and religious lines. But the “neo-war” of the 21st century convolutes this framework. The clash may still be civilisational, as Huntington predicts, but most states, especially those pursuing democracy, have votaries of multiple civilisations residing within its frontiers. This often creates conflicting loyalties within the state.

Europe, for instance, may be culturally and civilisationally a Christian civilisation, but it is also home to millions of Muslims—many of whom believe in the supremacy of Shari’ah over democratic law. Bharat, too, faces a similar paradox. The country’s strength has always been its civilisational inclusivity and pluralism, yet these very strengths are being weaponised against it by those who exploit democratic freedoms to undermine democracy itself.

The cross-border infrastructure of terrorism — initial probe into the Red Fort blast broadly points at Jaish-e-Mohammed imprints — remains intact. Technology allows terror networks to recruit, radicalise, and coordinate operations across continents. Encrypted apps replace training camps; ideology replaces geography. A terrorist in Delhi can now be remotely guided by handlers in Karachi or Dhaka.

Another layer of difficulty comes from within the intellectual establishment. Much of the global Left reflexively defends Islamist extremism as “resistance” against imperialism or, especially in the case of Bharat, Hindutva. The Left-‘liberal’ intelligentsia is often quick to condemn counter-terror operations as “state excesses”, but slow to denounce the ideology that justifies slaughter in the name of faith.

As a result, the first casualty in any modern terror attack is not just the victim—it is the truth itself. The narrative war begins even before the first bullet is fired. Islamist propaganda and liberal defensiveness form a lethal alliance that confuses moral judgement and paralyses state response.

For security agencies, the new challenge is not just to intercept cross-border infiltrations but to pre-empt ideological contagion within. This demands a multi-pronged approach: better intelligence sharing, cyber surveillance, deradicalisation programmes, and above all, the political will to make difficult choices.

The Red Fort blast is more than a tragic event—it is a metaphor for how a fortress has historically been breached—more often by those inside the citadel than outsiders.

The political leadership in Bharat must realise that the war against terrorism would reach its logical conclusion when Pakistan’s Medina mindset is suitably neutralised. Merely targeting terrorists and jihadi outlets in Pakistan won’t desist the military of the rentier state to stop exporting terror; it’s time the generals too are made to pay for their jihadi acts of omission and commission. Only then will they be forced to desist experimenting with terror tactics. This, however, will only be half the battle won, for the other half should be aimed at crushing Pakistan’s jihadi sympathisers within Bharat.

The views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.