In the immediate aftermath of the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai in 2008, the state government came under increased scrutiny for its inept handling of the crisis. Officials and security personnel rushed to ‘modernise’ the police, a situation which proved profitable to the Israeli homeland security industry. The following is an excerpt from the book After 26/11: India, Palestine/Israel, and the Fabrication of Homeland Security. In this extract, we see the varying dispositions of Indian government agents towards modernisation.
‘After 26/11: India, Palestine/Israel, and the Fabrication of Homeland Security,’ Rhys Machold, Navayana, 2024.
Building on existing initiatives in Maharashtra funded by the union government, police modernization accelerated rapidly in the immediate wake of 26/11. Less than a month after the attacks, a new budget totaling Rs 126 crore had been sanctioned by the Maharashtra legislative assembly. This budget authorized a range of new purchases including imported weaponry, a fleet of new armored vehicles and personnel carriers, speedboats, all-terrain amphibious vehicles, communication devices, night vision equipment, and new uniforms. As one former senior IPS officer who was involved in the early stages of planning explained to me: “Suddenly such a big incident happened, the biggest shock for government and society. So the government response at that time was kneejerk: do whatever you want, whatever you need. For a few months, the mindset was ‘Ask for anything and . . . take it.’” D. Sivanandan, who was appointed to replace [Hasan] Gafoor [as Mumbai Police Commissioner] in June 2009, similarly recalled that the Maharashtra government effectively “gave … carte blanche” to the Mumbai police “by saying whatever is right for the city to secure, do that.” When I asked him about the procurement decisions following the attacks, he recalled, “you just walked up to the home secretary, the home minister, the chief minister … convinced them with a presentation. … It was sanctioned in one minute!”
Indeed, from speaking with officials involved in and familiar with these early decisions, it became clear to me that the purchase of new police procurements was devised as a response to the backlash against the perceived softness and incompetence of the state response to 26/11. As Jayant Patil [state Home Minister] recounted from the Maharashtra government’s perspective, “we wanted to take quick decisions” on issues of procurement, particularly in light of “the sensitivity of all the issues of having good arms and ammunition.” A former senior Maharashtra Home Ministry official put things more bluntly. This official explained to me that Maharashtra politicians “didn’t … want their image to be tarnished; they wanted to come out well out of this. That’s why … they took all those very quick decisions about empowering the [police] force, strengthening the [police] force and things like that.”
As these officials began to develop their police modernization program, they were lobbied by a range of domestic and international commercial interests seeking to capitalize on 26/11’s political fallout. Guy Zuri of the IEICI [Israel Export and International Cooperation Institute] recounted that in the wake of 26/11 Israeli authorities accelerated their preexisting lobbying efforts in India and approached the Maharashtra government to solicit their solutions and arrange the official visit to Tel Aviv in July 2009. He explicitly noted that it was the Israelis who approached the Maharashtra government rather than the other way around. The Israelis were hardly alone. The corporate lobby group Bombay First published a white paper in February 2009, calling on local government to “[b]uild a contingent of armed policemen thoroughly trained in the use of the latest weapons of all relevant types” and purchase a stockpile of ammunition and fleet of “fast cars, speed boats and helicopters.” The group further arranged visits of foreign officials to Mumbai who had been involved in responding to the September 11 attacks in the United States and the July 7, 2005, attacks in the UK. Maharashtra officials recalled the sudden spike in lobbying by foreign state governments and homeland security corporations, pushing their various offerings. The above Home Ministry official recalled that after 26/11 “lots of teams had started arriving … from Israel from Germany and from Canada and from London, people coming and saying: ‘Do this, do that, buy this, buy that, take of this, take of that, we have this, we have that.’” [Vappala] Balachandran [retired IPS officer and high-ranking intelligence official who headed the High-Level Enquiry Commission (HLEC) on the security response to the 26/11 attacks] likewise recounted that these foreign actors attempted to lobby him and [Ram] Pradhan [retired union home secretary who co-headed the HLEC] claiming that “‘our goods are better than these goods’ and all that.”
Reflecting these accelerated domestic and international lobbying efforts, the specific focus on police modernization shifted somewhat in the immediate post-26/11 period. Whereas the preexisting police modernization programs had focused on acquiring basic weaponry and equipment, the post-26/11 Maharashtra budget authorized the purchase of much more expensive imported weapons and armored vehicles to assuage public concerns about state weakness. An Indian small arms dealer, Sanjeev, was brought in to advise the Maharashtra and Mumbai police after 26/11. When we spoke in his office just outside of New Delhi, he explained to me: “People wanted to hear ‘You’re safe,’” which required specific visual signifiers to demonstrate this. As he continued, “The requirement of that particular time was to tell the people, ‘We got Colt, we got Smith and Wesson, we got MP9 and blah, blah, blah. Now we are fully prepared to tackle any kind of a 26/11.’” As a result, the Mumbai police ordered new and expensive imported weapons including Colt M4 4.46mm carbines, MP5 and MP9 tactical machine pistols, 9mm Smith & Wesson pistols, Barrett M82/M107.5 anti-materiel sniper rifles, and grenade launchers. Another example was the fleet of Marksman bulletproof jeeps painted with desert camouflage specifically designed by the Indian automotive giant Mahindra for the Mumbai police after 26/11. The Maharashtra government also pledged to purchase helicopters to improve response times as well as thirty-six speedboats to improve coastal security. The Maharashtra government further introduced new intelligence-gathering and surveillance schemes, announcing its plan to cover Mumbai with six thousand new CCTV cameras managed by a central control room.
The post-26/11 police modernization drive also created new police units in Mumbai and Maharashtra, what Indian security expert Ajai Sahni termed “the ‘Rambo model’ of response” to live-fire attacks. For instance, the government created its own “crack” commando squad Force One tasked with responding to live terror incidents within the metropolitan area of Mumbai clothed in new uniforms and armed with the newly acquired weapons. The Maharashtra government also considerably expanded, strengthened, and restructured the Mumbai police’s already-existing quick response teams (QRTs) through new training regimens, uniforms, equipment, and weapons, including AK-47s and Glock pistols. These units were permanently stationed across all of Mumbai’s five regional police stations under the command of their local additional commissioner of police. The government also created the Maharashtra State Security Corporation (MSSC), a force of security personnel to protect private sites, including industrial facilities, shrines, and public buildings across Maharashtra as well as new coastal police stations. To supplement these locally based units, the union government also created a NSG hub located near Mumbai.
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In addition to buying new security equipment, rebuilding the credentials of the Mumbai police also involved engaging foreign trainers and emulating police and security models. As early as December 2008, Jayant Patil announced that local police officers would be dispatched to Chicago and other cities around the world to study their security systems. Local officials’ claims about their new forces’ “world-class” credentials were made through comparisons to famous commando and counter-terror units abroad. For instance, a Times of India article listed SWAT (U.S.), Yamam (Israel), and STAR Force (Australia) as inspirations for Force One. Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan later made such comparisons more explicit, stating that Force One commandos would be provided with all of the necessary infrastructure to put them “on par with international counter-terrorism units” and promised that local government and police officials would “study different kind of trainings imparted in foreign countries to their anti-terror forces and ensure that such training reaches our commandos.”
In the months and years after 26/11, some of these pledges would be realized. The Maharashtra government dispatched a number of foreign delegations and study tours abroad, the first of which was to Palestine/Israel in July 2009. The delegation was led by newly appointed commissioner D. Sivanandan and accompanied by Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Chandra Iyengar and high-ranking police officials, including Deputy Inspector General of Police S. Jagannathan (Force One), Deputy Commissioner of Police Nisar Tamboli, Superintendent of Police Rajesh Pradhan, and Inspector General of Police P. K. Jain.
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In justifying the visit to Palestine/Israel and the use of Israeli trainers, Maharashtra officials mobilized comparisons similar to those deployed by Israeli officials and experts in Israeli critiques of the handling of 26/11. These comparisons foregrounded India’s lack of preparedness on 26/11 but also situated Israel’s unapologetic “killer instinct” as a model for India. Sivanandan declared that, in sharp contrast to Israel, which responds unapologetically to terrorist attacks, India suffered from its lack of a similar “killer instinct.” “For thousands of years, we [Indians] have been passively witnessing terror attacks. We never want to fight with anybody. That’s what our main problem is and we lack the killer instinct.” As he continued: “We cannot go and wage a war against Pakistan, China or anybody else. But Israel never keeps quiet. Israelis go on their flights, bombard the fellows (enemies), come back and keep quiet. But when we [Indians] become aggressive, we face international pressure.” He concluded, “The time has come to protect ourselves and we need to take utmost safety precautions in the wake of recent audacious terror attacks.”
Sivanandan’s words referenced a recurring trope in Hindutva ideology, namely the image of the Hindu community as an ancient peaceful civilization being overrun and emasculated by invading (Muslim) marauders. For instance, in his 1966 book Bunch of Thoughts, M. S. Golwarkar called out the “Muslim desire, growing ever since they stepped on this land some twelve hundred years ago, to convert and enslave the entire country [of Hindustan],” citing bomb blasts in Delhi at the time as but the latest “proof ” of “a thousand years of their [Muslims’] naked aggression,” which in turn required new measures fight back to defend Hindustan against this foreign aggression. Mobilizing this trope, Sivanandan suggested that Israel and its so-called killer instinct was a key source of inspiration for India in its fight against (Muslim) terror.
Sivanandan was not alone in his praise for foreign experts and governments. Jayant Patil explained to me that the gravitation to foreign experts and trainers (including Israelis) was born out of an imperative to develop a “scientific approach” to counterterrorism, disaster management, and co-ordination within the Mumbai police. Another high-ranking officer in the Maharashtra police similarly emphasized: “There is no point in reinventing the wheel again when there is something better already available in the market. So if they’re having some capability [elsewhere] … why not know from them?” Another sitting ATS official similarly maintained that the impulse to source Israeli trainers for Force One was driven by the need to get the “best in the field.” Sivanandan was even more unequivocal, maintaining that “Israelis are considered to be the best in security matters. That’s it.” In other words, by citing specific purchases and sources of expertise as the “best in the field,” the modernization program worked as a kind of blackmail, that is, a policy measure to which one cannot be reasonably opposed.
Indian state officials’ valorizations of Israel’s security prowess were of long standing. Since the 1990s, Indian politicians and police have praised Israel as a model of efficiency and ruthlessness in striking Muslim terrorists in foreign territory and policing Muslims “at home.” On the heels of the 1993 Bombay blasts, which killed 257 people, an Indian Defence Review op-ed noted: “Since India has been coping with terrorist threats in the last decade, access to Israeli know-how on counterterrorism would be invaluable,” stressing that “Indian interest in absorbing expertise to fight terrorism from Israel is justifiably high.” Reflecting this growing Indian interest in Israeli policing expertise, BJP leaders in 1996 advocated for the introduction of identification cards in order to differentiate between non-Hindu and Hindu immigrants, maintaining that in a similar way to which Israel is the homeland for Jews worldwide, so too should India serve as the natural homeland for all Hindus. Not coincidentally, this analogy implied that non-Hindus were not entitled to full Indian citizenship. Bal Thackeray, the founder of Shiv Sena, who played a central role in fomenting Bombay’s communal violence in the 1990s, rhetorically advocated for the use of the Mossad to come and train the Sena’s own anti-terror force in order to address a wave of bombings and murders perpetrated by the Bombay underworld during the 1990s, though none of these plans ever came to fruition.
Read in the context of these long-standing Hindutva geographical imaginaries and accompanying strategies, at least part of the appeal of traveling to Palestine/Israel for Indian officials in 2009 was to fulfil the fantasy of becoming a “hard” militarist state and, in doing so, consolidating the idea of a common Muslim Other. Yet whereas the endorsements of the so-called Israeli security model by figures like Thackeray were largely rhetorical gestures before 26/11, in the immediate months thereafter local state officials could plausibly advocate for its adoption as a concrete policy measure. For instance, in justifying the visit to Palestine/Israel, Force One Additional Commissioner S. Jagannathan explained that members of the delegation would “study the systems put in place by Israel to counter terrorism and how they make their country secure” emphasizing that the way in which Israel trains its police and uses advanced technology to improve security preparedness would be top of mind. Another unnamed official noted that after the visit was completed, “the team will decide on what measures could be inculcated and chalk out an elaborate plan for the much-needed overhaul in the [Mumbai police] force.” In other words, “learning from Israel” was portrayed as a kind of catchall solution to technical deficiencies in the Mumbai police. “Post the November 26, 2008 attack,” a 2009 Mumbai Mirror article claimed that “Israel seems to have become the answer to most of Mumbai police’s problems.”
This is an edited excerpt where the academic notes and references have been removed. Excerpted with permission from Navayana.
Rhys Machold is Senior Lecturer in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow.