New Delhi, India \u2013<\/strong>\u00a0Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi\u2019s cabinet late Wednesday described the car explosion which jolted New Delhi earlier in the week as a \u201cheinous terror incident, perpetrated by antinational forces\u201d.<\/p>\n The Indian government\u2019s words, two days after a slow-moving car blew up near the Red Fort, an iconic 17th-century monument in New Delhi, killing at least 13 people and wounding several, have since led to questions about how it might respond, raising concerns over the prospect of a new spike in regional tensions.<\/p>\n Earlier this year, in May, the Indian government had declared a new security doctrine: \u201cAny act of terror will be treated as an act of war.\u201d<\/p>\n That posture had come in the aftermath of an intense four-day air war between India and Pakistan, after India blamed Islamabad for an attack in Indian-administered Kashmir that killed 26 civilians.<\/p>\n Now, six months later, as India grapples with another attack \u2013 this time, in the heart of the national capital of the world\u2019s most populous country \u2013 the Modi government has so far avoided blaming Pakistan.<\/p>\n Instead, say political analysts, New Delhi\u2019s language suggests that it might be veering towards intensifying a crackdown on Kashmir, at a time when Islamophobia and anti-Kashmiri sentiments have skyrocketed across India in the aftermath of the car explosion.<\/p>\n Even before the blast in New Delhi, police teams from Indian-administered Kashmir had been carrying out raids across the national capital region, following a lead from Srinagar, which led to the seizure of a significant amount of explosives and arrests of nearly a dozen individuals.<\/p>\n Among the suspects are several Kashmiri doctors \u2013 including Umar Nabi, a junior doctor who is suspected of being the driver of the car that exploded \u2013 who were serving in hospitals in satellite towns outside New Delhi.<\/p>\n Since the explosion near the Red Fort, police in Indian-administered Kashmir have detained more than 650 people from across the Valley as they dig deeper into what sections of the Indian media are describing as a \u201cwhite-collar terror module\u201d that had gathered enough explosives for the biggest attack on India in decades, if members hadn\u2019t been arrested.<\/p>\n Police teams have raided several locations, including the residences of members of banned sociopolitical outfits.<\/p>\n Indian forces on Thursday also demolished the home of Nabi, the alleged car driver. In recent years, Indian authorities have often demolished homes of individuals accused of crimes without any judicial order empowering them to do so, even though the Supreme Court has ordered an end to the practice. Rights groups have described the act of demolishing the homes of suspects as a form of collective punishment.<\/p>\n Students of medicine and practising doctors in Kashmir are also increasingly facing scrutiny \u2013 more than 50 have been questioned for hours, and some have had their devices seized for investigation.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a sense of complete disbelief among all of us,\u201d said a junior doctor at a government-run hospital in Srinagar, the capital of the federal territory of Indian-administered Kashmir.<\/p>\n The doctor requested anonymity to speak, fearing repercussions from the police.<\/p>\n The 34-year-old has seen conflict in Kashmir up close, treating injured protesters firsthand for weeks on end, during previous clashes with security forces. \u201cBut I never thought that we would be viewed with suspicion like this,\u201d he said, adding that the explosion that killed 13 in New Delhi was \u201cunfortunate and should be condemned\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is unreal to us that a doctor can think of such an attack,\u201d the doctor said. \u201cBut how does that malign our entire fraternity? If a professional defects and joins militants, does it mean that all professionals are terrorists?\u201d<\/p>\n India and Pakistan have fought three wars over Kashmir since the nations were partitioned in 1947 as the British left the subcontinent. Today, India, Pakistan and China all control parts of Kashmir. India claims all of it, and Pakistan seeks control of all of Kashmir except the parts held by China, its ally.<\/p>\n After the April attack in the resort town of Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir, India had launched missiles deep inside Pakistan. Modi claimed that the attacks killed more than 100 \u201cterrorists\u201d. Pakistan insisted that civilians and soldiers, not armed fighters, were killed. Pakistan, which had rejected Indian accusations of a role in the April killings in Pahalgam, hit back.<\/p>\n Over four days, the nuclear-armed neighbours fired missiles and drones across their contested border, striking each other\u2019s military bases.<\/p>\n When the Modi government agreed to a ceasefire on May 10, it faced domestic criticism from the opposition \u2013 and some sections of its own supporters \u2013 for not continuing with attacks on Pakistan. The government then said Operation Sindoor is \u201conly on pause, not over\u201d.<\/p>\n Six months later, though, New Delhi has been significantly more cautious about who to blame for the Delhi blast.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a lot of due outrage this time, but there is no mention of Pakistan,\u201d said Anuradha Bhasin, a veteran editor in Kashmir and author of a book, A Dismantled State: The Untold Story of Kashmir After Article 370, about how the region changed under the Hindu majoritarian Modi government. The Kashmir administration has banned her book in the region.<\/p>\n \u201cThis time, it is not about a crackdown on Pakistan,\u201d she told Al Jazeera. \u201cThe public anger is being directed away from Pakistan, towards \u2018an enemy within\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n She said the Modi government appeared to be aware that finger-pointing at Pakistan \u201cwould create pressure from the public to take [military] action\u201d against the neighbour.<\/p>\n Instead, she said, \u201cpublic anger can be assuaged by creating any enemy.\u201d<\/p>\n Analysts point to the Modi government\u2019s use of the term \u201cantinational forces\u201d to describe the alleged perpetrators of the Delhi attack.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a phrase the Modi government has previously used to describe academics, journalists and students who have criticised it, as well as other protesters and dissidents.\u00a0Since Modi took office in 2014, India has continuously slid in multiple democracy indices for alleged persecution of minorities in the country and its crackdown on press freedom.<\/p>\n To Sumantra Bose, a political scientist whose work focuses on the intersection of nationalism and conflict in South Asia, the Indian cabinet resolution was significant in the way that it shied \u201caway from naming and blaming Pakistan, which was a rather reflexive reaction for decades\u201d.<\/p>\n After the fighting in May, the Indian government learned, the hard way, Bose said, that \u201cthere is no appetite and indeed no tolerance anywhere in the world for a military escalation in South Asia.\u201d<\/p>\n Bose was referring to the lukewarm global support that India received after it bombed Pakistan without providing any public evidence of Islamabad\u2019s links with the attackers in Pahalgam.<\/p>\n Instead, India was left disputing the repeated assertions of United States President Donald Trump that he had brokered the ceasefire between New Delhi and Islamabad, even as he hosted Pakistan\u2019s army chief, praised him, and strengthened ties with India\u2019s western neighbour. India has long held the position that all disputes with Pakistan must be resolved bilaterally, without intervention from any other country.<\/p>\n The contrast in New Delhi\u2019s response to this week\u2019s blast, so far, appears to have struck US State Secretary Marco Rubio, too.<\/p>\n Reacting to the Delhi blast, Rubio said \u201cit clearly was a terrorist attack,\u201d and \u201cthe Indians need to be commended. They\u2019ve been very measured, cautious, and very professional on how they\u2019re carrying out this investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n India\u2019s new security doctrine \u2013 that an act of terror is an act of war \u2013 \u201cwas a dangerous, slippery slope\u201d, said Bose, who has also authored books on the conflict in Kashmir. His last work, Kashmir at the Crossroads: Inside a 21st-Century Conflict, published in 2021, is also banned in Kashmir.<\/p>\n The doctrine, he said, was aimed at pandering to Modi\u2019s \u201cdomestic gallery\u201d \u2013 a way of showing muscular strength, even at the risk of \u201cserious military escalation\u201d between India and Pakistan.<\/p>\n Now, by using terms like \u201cwhite-collar terrorism\u201d, analysts said Indian officials risked blurring the line between Kashmiri Muslims and armed rebels fighting Indian rule.<\/p>\n \u201cThe term doesn\u2019t make sense to me, but it does put the needle of suspicion on young, educated Muslim professionals,\u201d said Bose.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fact has been for decades that militants come from all sorts of social backgrounds in Kashmir \u2013 from rural farming families, working-class backgrounds, to educated professionals,\u201d Bose argued. \u201cIf anything, it reflects the discontent that has been in the society across the groups.\u201d<\/p>\n Bhasin, the editor from Kashmir, said the Indian government\u2019s posture would lead to \u201cadverse economic impact for Kashmiri Muslims and further ghettoisation, where they find it harder to get jobs or a place to rent\u201d.<\/p>\n Kashmiris across India are already facing the brunt of hate and anger following the Delhi blast.<\/p>\n Since the bomb exploded on Monday in New Delhi, Indian social media platforms have been rife with rampant hate speech against Muslims.<\/p>\n Nasir Khuehami, the national convener of a Kashmiri student association, has spent four days fielding calls from Kashmiri Muslims.<\/p>\n \u201cAcross northern Indian states, Kashmiris are being asked to vacate their homes, there is active profiling going on, and everyone is so scared,\u201d Khuehami told Al Jazeera, speaking from his home in Kashmir.<\/p>\n This is only the latest instance of this pattern playing out: An attack in Kashmir, or by a Kashmiri armed rebel, has often led to harassment and beating of Kashmiri Muslims \u2013 students, professionals, traders, or even labourers \u2013 living in India.<\/p>\n Khuehami said \u201cto end this endless cycle of crises for Kashmiris\u201d \u2013 where they are detained at home and abused outside \u2013 \u201cthe government needs to take confidence-building measures.\u201d<\/p>\n Otherwise, Khuehami said, the Modi government was marginalising Kashmiris in India. By doing that, he said, India would be playing into the hands of the very country it accuses of wanting to grab Kashmir: Pakistan.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n New Delhi, India \u2013\u00a0Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi\u2019s cabinet late Wednesday described the car explosion which jolted New Delhi earlier in the week as a \u201cheinous terror incident, perpetrated by antinational forces\u201d. The Indian government\u2019s words, two days after a slow-moving car blew up near the Red Fort, an iconic 17th-century monument in New Delhi, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2111,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2110\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"red](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/AFP__20251110__83M46PN__v1__MidRes__IndiaExplosion-1763093813.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C514&quality=80\")
A crackdown in Kashmir<\/h2>\n
![\"red](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/AFP__20251111__83MU2LH__v1__MidRes__IndiaExplosionFire-1763093822.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C514&quality=80\")
\u2018Away from Pakistan, towards an enemy within\u2019<\/h2>\n
![\"red](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/2025-11-11T091503Z_33453535_RC27UHADC0V6_RTRMADP_3_INDIA-BLAST-1763093695.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513&quality=80\")
\u2018Pandering to domestic gallery\u2019<\/h2>\n
![\"India\"](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/AFP__20250515__46R29T3__v1__MidRes__IndiaPakistanKashmirUnrest-1763093997.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513&quality=80\")
\u2018Everyone is so scared\u2019<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"