Opinion | The Anatomy Of A Modern Extremist: Why 2025’s Radicals Don’t Fit Any Old Template |
Radicalisation in India has never been a single fire to extinguish; today, it is an entire electrical grid sparking at once. Kashmir, the North-East, university campuses, social media echo chambers, Pakistan’s propaganda ecosystem, and China’s strategic ambitions are no longer parallel problems — they are interlinked circuits in a larger architecture of destabilisation. Recent events — the Pahalgam massacre, the Red Fort bomber, Sharjeel Imam’s Siliguri thesis, banned secessionist literature, TRF’s resurgence, and Pakistan’s open admission of cross-border strikes — paint a picture far more complex than insurgency or alienation. What we are facing is a hybrid radicalisation system, where the terrorist with a rifle, the scholar with a footnote, the Opposition leader with a microphone, and the foreign intelligence officer with a map contribute to the same ideological continuum.
To understand how this system works, we must begin with the Pahalgam attack, where victims were separated by religion, forced to recite the kalima, and some inspected for circumcision. This was not militancy born of grievance; this was religious purification violence, consistent with Lashkar-e-Taiba’s early doctrinal manuals recovered by Indian agencies in the 1990s and 2000s. TRF — Lashkar’s “clean-skin" rebrand created after FATF scrutiny — now uses digital cells for recruitment, AI-edited training videos, and encrypted transit maps. The 2025 attack fits the global pattern identified by the UN Monitoring Team: terror groups increasingly outsource field operations to hybrid outfits while preserving ideological continuity.
India’s response, Operation Sindoor, signalled a doctrinal transformation. No denials. No ambiguity. A named, calibrated, precision........