So far, their activities are limited to recruitment and indoctrination
The international terrorist Islamist movement Hizb ut-Tahrir (banned in the Russian Federation) has intensified propaganda aimed at India. The arrests of several militants of the movement in the states of Central and Southern India (including Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Tamil Nadu) confirmed the hidden presence of the terrorist organization in the country. Experts agree that Hizb ut-Tahrir is trying to revive the former pro-Islamic anti-Indian discourse through preaching activities.
In May 2023, a coordinated operation conducted by several Indian security services, including the Intelligence Bureau, the Madhya Pradesh Anti-Terrorism Unit and the Telangana Counterintelligence Department, revealed secret networks associated with Hizb ut-Tahrir. Their members have been accused of abusing individuals from the Hindu community. It is reported that the organization's cells have infiltrated educational institutions in Madhya Pradesh and Telangana.
At the initial stage of the operation, 11 suspected members of Hizb ut-Tahrir were arrested in Bhopal and Chhindwar (Madhya Pradesh). In addition, five people were detained in Hyderabad, the capital of Telangana State. Among those arrested, at least three were converts from the Hindu community.
It is also noteworthy that most of those arrested were qualified specialists. Among them were a dentist, a cloud services engineer and a lecturer specializing in pharmaceutical biotechnology. The police also found that five of them had married Hindu women and converted them to Islam.
Subsequent police operations led to the arrests of several more Hizb ut-Tahrir militants, bringing the total number of arrested members of the organization to 17 by August 1. According to the investigation, the arrested Hizb ut-Tahrir militants were engaged in secret hand-to-hand combat and shooting training in the forests of Madhya Pradesh. They also communicated through encrypted web applications such as Rocket Chat and Threema, and listened to Islamist speeches on these platforms.
Their arrests were part of an ongoing investigation gradually identifying individuals and extremist networks following the arrests of the group's "influencers" Ziyavudin Bakavi and Bava Bakhrudin. Both were detained several years ago in the districts of Thanjavur and Thiruvarur in Tamil Nadu for recruiting Muslim youth via Facebook (the social network is banned in the Russian Federation).
According to a report by the Indian National Investigation Agency, Bakawi was the leader and main recruiter of Hizb ut-Tahrir in Thanjavur, Madurai, Erode and Salem districts of Tamil Nadu and Karaikal district of Puducherry State. Along with this, it turned out that the two leaders of Hizb ut-Tahrir held secret meetings at which they advocated the creation of an Islamic state in India with the ultimate goal of adopting a Sharia-compliant constitution in the country.
The activities of Hizb ut-Tahrir in southern India became known in April 2021, when the National Intelligence Agency of India began searching for the convert Mohammed Iqbal because of his posts on social networks dedicated to the Islamic State (IS, banned in the Russian Federation). This attracted attention, in particular, because Iqbal was a resident of Kazimar Street in Madurai (Tamil Nadu), an area of the city known for the fact that several hundred inhabitants of it came from the same family and lived on the same street for more than 800 years.
In May 2021, the National Investigation Agency accused Iqbal of facilitating the creation of an Islamic caliphate and publishing offensive materials against Hindus in order to incite Indian Muslims to unleash violence against the majority Hindu population. In response to these events and subsequent investigations, Hizb ut-Tahrir strongly condemned the activities of the department and the current Indian government under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The organization accused Indian intelligence agencies of trying to criminalize Islamic sermons related to the concept of the caliphate.
In recent years, Hizb ut-Tahrir's press releases on India have attracted increased attention from the country's security agencies, although the organization has not yet announced the creation of a regional Indian unit or appointed a local Islamist leader. In March 2023, Hizb ut-Tahrir's India-oriented press release hinted at the presence of militant groups in the interior of the country. It also highlighted various events during which calls were made for the restoration of the Caliphate.
The presence of Hizb ut-Tahrir in the interior of India will undoubtedly damage Indian democracy and its secular structure in the long term due to the group's use of inflammatory rhetoric against the Hindu majority. At the moment, the organization is engaged in indoctrination and other nonviolent activities, such as holding events in support of the Caliphate and converting to Islam. However, her fierce rejection of modern secular state structures, the principles of democracy and pluralism may revive extremist sentiments in India.
Larisa Shashok
Larisa Alexandrovna Shashok is an expert at the Institute for Advanced Strategic Studies of the Higher School of Economics.
