Two blasts took place on the same day – one in Delhi’s Red Fort area, killing 13 people, and the other in Islamabad. The normal reflex action from the governments on the two sides would be to blame each other. That’s how they have been conditioned and programmed for decades. But while the Pakistan government stuck to its default setting, the Modi government chose to abandon its familiar choice of bashing Pakistan, parroting its favourite chant of ‘ghar mein ghuss ke marenge’ or warning Pakistan of dire consequences.
This is particularly strange when the origin of the investigation of the Kashmir-Faridabad terror plot, which is linked to the Delhi blast by the investigators, were posters by Jaish-e-Mohammad. This terrorist organisation is headquartered in Pakistan. India’s ‘Operation Sindoor’ in May 2025, following the Pahalgam terror attack, was aimed at dismantling the same terror network. So, while the government and investigators are subtly dropping hints of ‘foreign conspiracy’ and ‘foreign handlers’, the perceived foreign enemy and perceived foreign space remain fuzzy, almost non-existent. From Afghanistan to Turkey, the word ‘Pakistan’ is conspicuously missing, and that’s odd unless Jaish-e-Mohammed has moved its headquarters elsewhere.
An Enemy That Can’t be Named
For some, this may be a breather. Who wants another war? Yet, this seeming restraint is no victory for peace, not even a sign of maturity.
India's reluctance to blame Pakistan doesn’t stem from a yearning to mend fences. After launching missiles deep into Pakistani territory in May, India learned the hard way that the world has no appetite for nuclear brinkmanship in South Asia, and that Pakistan’s military capability can’t be undermined. Donald Trump's repeated claims of Modi requesting him to end the war humiliated a government that had been muscle-flexing and chest-thumping.
The Modi-led Indian government is aware that war or any kind of limited escalation would get it in the crosshairs of international powers. By declaring that every act of terrorism would be deemed an act of war after Pahalgam terror attacks, the Indian government had decreased the threshold of war. India’s reluctance to name Pakistan thus stems from its own tangled web of rhetoric it weaved some months ago. It cannot go to war and yet it cannot let the ‘Delhi terror attack’ be left unavenged.
The Modi government, whose politics has thrived over terror attacks knows that the hurt and rage that such attacks trigger in the public will not evaporate without a villain that needs to be first constructed and then fully decimated. So, it is the enemy within the country that takes the centre stage - to be insidiously shaped up, vilified, and magnified.
The Convenient Scapegoat
Enter the "white-collar terror module", a phrase that has been used by security agencies in Kashmir in recent years. Now, with reports alleging involvement of a few doctors in a terror module and the Delhi blast, this phrase has been promoted to the national stage and can be turned into a mass-scale weapon.
While Kashmir is once again facing sweeping crackdowns, arrests, new verification processes in medical colleges and the home of the alleged ‘suicide-bomber’ has been demolished without any judicial oversight, on a pan-Indian scale, the arrests of three doctors in an alleged terror plot and investigating agencies reportedly naming the fourth doctor as the ‘suicide bomber’ in Delhi blast are being transformed and extended to a larger community - as if every Kashmiri doctor, and by extension every Muslim doctor, is an existential threat.
Though facts at this stage remain unverified and conveniently elastic, with official versions raising more questions than answering them, it is quite possible that some educated professionals were part of the plot, or some may have been radicalized enough to provide some level of logistical support.
Kashmir, particularly, is no stranger to educated men giving up their dreams in pursuit of rebelling against the state with arms, whether driven by ideology or religious radicalisation. But to confuse individual guilt with a collective suspicion is appallingly unjust and dangerous, as it threatens social cohesion and the moral and secular fabric of the country. Why should this collective stereo-typing happen only when Muslims are involved.
Remember Maya Kodnani – a doctor who was a minister in Gujarat under Narendra Modi’s chief ministership. In 2012, a trial court convicted her as the kingpin of the mass slaughters of Muslims in 2002, sentencing her to 28 years in prison. In a stunning reversal, the Gujarat High Court acquitted her in 2018, overturning the conviction while upholding sentences for other accused. Though acquitted and free now, she was an accused and a convict for years for a crime that is no less heinous. At no point did she become a metaphor for maligning all Hindu doctors of educated Hindus.
The doctors arrested in the Delhi blast and terror module case are still suspects. But even if their guilt is to be proved in a court of law, the collective shaming of an entire community will soak this country in the toxic poison of prejudice and discrimination.
Ideological Endgame
Kashmiris are already viewed with suspicion in the majoritarian Indian narrative. Now, with the unearthing of a terror plot that has links from Kashmir to mainland India, this is conveniently being linked to other Indian Muslims who are already facing the brunt of increasing Islamophobia amidst Hindu Rightwing upsurges. The terror plot and the framing of the narrative of “white collar terrorism” doesn’t not only blur the distinction between these two “perceived villains”, but it also promotes a narrative that educated and affluent Muslims are a threat to the security and integrity of the country.
The narrative is not born on the streets. It is manufactured by educated people who are or were in positions of power. A former Director General of Police in Jammu and Kashmir, for instance, peddled falsehoods about Muslims taking a larger share of seats in Jammu’s Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University, and suggesting that all of them will end up becoming “suicide-bombers”, which clearly amounts to hate speech and is unconstitutional. While this is a telling comment on how the top cop’s policing career, if there is ‘white-collar terror’, why can’t his pernicious ideology be deemed ‘white-collar hate’ that is far more dangerous and rips apart a nation – not with a blast but with slow and consistent poisoning.
The ex-DGP is not an aberration. He is one of the many actively creating a potentially explosive architecture of systemic marginalisation of a community. This aligns perfectly with the Hindu nationalist project Modi's government has pursued for over a decade.
This is a narrative and architecture that this government desperately needs – an enemy, large enough and hated enough, to replace the ‘enemy’ that can no longer be named. This is seductive enough for the Rightwing government whose politics thrives on invoking collective fear. This time, it is the fear of not just the madrassa-going or the illiterate ordinary Muslim, but it is feeding a much larger fear of the educated, enlightened, and elite Muslim.
Unjust and Security Risk
From harassing and hounding Muslims in public places, from targeted attacks against Muslims and lynchings, the manufacturing of "white-collar terrorism" gives this persecution a veneer of legitimacy, as if scrutinising every Muslim professional in Kashmir is a matter of security, and not bigotry will not only deepen discrimination and injustices, but it will also further marginalize them economically and ghettoize them further.
Already in housing societies and workplaces, Muslims are being profiled and subjected to denial of basic housing, employment and basic dignity. This sinister term of “white collar terrorism” will further shrink opportunities for them.
One of the prime reasons of why young Muslims are brainwashed into joining terror networks is the discontent and a sense of injustice within the community. By amplifying the very alienation that breeds discontent, the risk of fueling the next cycle of violence increases.
The right-wing government is choosing collective punishment over justice in the name of security. What it is instead doing is tarnishing its own global image further in the eyes of world leaders who are already questioning India on the plight of its minorities. Does it want to hand Pakistan exactly what it wants – a compelling narrative that Muslims cannot thrive in India.
The explosion near the Red Fort was an act of terror, must be condemned and the guilty must be punished. But a calculated, state-sanctioned campaign to terrorise an entire community under the guise of investigation is no less terrorising. Besides, it signals a major security risk.
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