The Day After: 26/11
The recent Maharashtra polls passed without anyone even mentioning the 26/11 attack on Mumbai and all the money that was squandered in putting up ‘appearances’. If democracy is a very expensive charade, so is the business of security—more so the ‘trillion-dollar market’ of homeland security in India, in which a war-mongering Israel has a massive stake.
Navayana’s latest offering stories a paradigm shift in Indian security discourse: After 26/11: India, Palestine/Israel, and the Fabrication of Homeland Security. Author Rhys Machold, senior lecturer in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow, shows us how the idea of ‘homeland security’ is ‘fabricated’ by politicians, security experts, weapons and equipment manufacturers, bureaucrats and police personnel. His decade-long research took him to the UK, to Israel/Palestine and to India, where he met trade officials, contractors, arms dealers, fencing manufacturers, police trainers, politicians, bureaucrats, diplomats, scholars and journalists.
After 26/11 is a meticulous piecing together of the haphazard, paranoiac and opportunistic response of the Indian state to the 2008 attacks. Machold shows us how even as the attacks were underway, the Israeli state sprang into action, going so far as to suggest sending IOF personnel to lead counter-terror operations. TV news was rife with Israeli spokespeople criticising Indian handling, eulogising Israeli methods by comparison. The resultant diplomatic tensions, led to the Israeli state climbing down on its critical stance. Relations had to be normalised, for here was a chance for the massive Israeli security and arms industry to exploit a new market.
Machold charts the often-strained negotiations between the Indian state and Israeli firms. He shows the racist attitudes of Israeli experts. The disorderly response of the Indian state. The reluctance of Indian police personnel to make wholesale changes. The disappearance of funds, and the eagerness of government officials to show the people they were ‘doing something’. He describes how the landscape of Mumbai changed after 26/11. How the people of the city were trained and disciplined to be obedient subjects of homeland security.
The ‘homeland security’ goldrush is the result of the paranoia that states around the world mobilise to police and control the life of citizens. The idea was first floated in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in the US. Every brown-skinned person became suspect, and untold number of ‘suspects’ were tortured, killed and imprisoned without due process. The Israeli state was quick to the scene, claiming that it had perfected this model of security for decades in containing the Palestinian threat to its sovereignty, a ‘perfection’ so horrifically on display in Gaza even as we speak. India entered this discourse in the aftermath of the 26/11 attacks on Mumbai in 2008.
Since 26/11 and Narendra Modi’s assent to power, Israeli entry into the Indian security market has become even more pronounced. This has been aided by the Hindutva propensity to create an Other and fetishize the motherland. After 26/11 tells the story of how the groundwork for such intensified policing was laid in India. Former IB officer Avinash Mohananey has praised it as a ‘timely book for all in the Indian security establishment.’ ‘An unflinching interrogation which shows how the very idea of homeland security is a threat to the democratisation of our societies,’ writes investigative journalist Josy Joseph. Israeli political scientist Neve Gordon offers that it is an ‘essential reading for anyone interested in how contemporary practices of security and policing are traded in the market.’
As the world becomes more and more dictated by backroom deals, and citizens have been reduced to being perpetual defendants, read After 26/11: India, Palestine/Israel, and the Fabrication of Homeland Security to see how we got here. Read excerpts from the book that appeared in The Print and The Wire.
The book is available on the Navayana website for a discounted price of Rs 599.
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