“In the weeks and months after 9/11, I saw the way that the idea of extremism and terrorism in the western popular mind and within the security community worldview, became invariably linked to ethnic and religious factors.”
9/11 had a profound impact on my work on international security and South Asia. In the weeks and months after 9/11, I saw the way that the idea of extremism and terrorism in the western popular mind and within the security community worldview, became invariably linked to ethnic and religious factors. This was deeply disturbing to me since the dominant history of South Asia is notable for tolerance and coexistence, despite highly plural societies. Besides, much of the post-9/11 analysis was from a U.S. policy perspective with little theoretical or historical content—and for a region with an overabundance of history and political complexity—this was completely misguided. I wanted to challenge what I feared was fast becoming conventional wisdom and ended up writing an entire book to do so! In my book, The Politics of Extremism in South Asia (Cambridge, 2008), I argue that the main drivers of extremism in South Asia are external geopolitical factors that combine with specific interests of state elites to subvert domestic historical identities that tended to be inclusive. Twenty years on, our academic understanding of extremism in South Asia has become better but our policies still leave much to be desired.