Crisis of Enforcement
My name? Mera naam Mohammad Deepak hai!” said a Hindu man, as he stood with an elderly Muslim shopkeeper who was being bullied by a mob claiming to be from the Bajrang Dal, a Hindutva organisation, in Kotdwar town of Uttarakhand. The incident involving Mohammad Deepak, which circulated widely on social media before making its way into mainstream news, was not merely another disturbing clip in India’s endless digital feed of violence and intimidation. In broad daylight, Deepak was confronted by the group claiming religious justification for their actions; he was surrounded, harassed, and subjected to coercive behaviour that stripped him of dignity and safety in a public space where any citizen should feel secure. The visuals were stark, the atmosphere menacing, and the message unmistakable: certain self-styled custodians of faith believe they can police everyday life through fear rather than law. Yet this episode, jarring as it was, is not an aberration. It sits within a larger pattern that has steadily entrenched itself into India’s public life, repeated often enough to dull shock and erode collective resolve. Time and again, extremist and radical elements—operating under the convenient cover of religious or cultural assertion—have disrupted everyday life, targeted innocent citizens, and shattered the fragile trust that allows a diverse society to function. Each episode follows a depressingly familiar script: provocation, intimidation or violence, widespread outrage, performative condemnation, and then a slow fade into silence. The perpetrators retreat into obscurity, investigations lose urgency, cases stretch endlessly, and the system moves on until the next eruption. What was once exceptional has now become routine, and it is this normalisation of disruption that should alarm the nation far more than any single incident.
The real danger lies not merely in the acts themselves, but in the ecosystem that allows them to recur with such predictability. Radical groups have learnt that outrage in India is intense but short-lived, and that institutional follow-through is often weak, selective, or delayed. They understand how to exploit social media amplification, political hesitation, and communal fault lines to remain constantly relevant. These actors are not defending faith, culture, or tradition; they are manufacturing confrontation as a tool of visibility and power. Yet public discourse repeatedly misdiagnoses the problem as spontaneous anger or community grievance, rather than organised provocation. This misreading enables indulgence. When violence and intimidation are framed as emotional excesses rather than deliberate strategies, accountability becomes negotiable. The result is a permissive environment in which extremism carries minimal long-term cost, while ordinary citizens pay the price in fear and insecurity.
India’s institutions are not powerless in the face of this challenge. The legal architecture to curb organised disruption exists. Policing mechanisms, intelligence networks, and judicial processes are all in place. What is missing is consistency and political will. Law enforcement often swings between overreaction and paralysis, while prosecutions are allowed to languish until deterrence evaporates. Temporary crackdowns followed by quiet retreat only reinforce the perception that the state lacks staying power. Worse, selective enforcement—where similar acts invite different responses depending on identity or political convenience—undermines the credibility of the law itself. A constitutional democracy cannot afford such ambiguity. When the state hesitates to act decisively against those who openly undermine public order, it does more than fail victims; it signals weakness to those testing its limits.
The consequences of this failure extend far beyond individual incidents. Repeated disruptions corrode the everyday confidence that sustains civic life. Citizens begin to self-censor their movement, speech, and participation in public spaces. Communities retreat inward, suspicion replaces trust, and the shared idea of citizenship weakens. Over time, this erosion becomes structural. Economic activity suffers, social mobility slows, and the emotional cost of living with constant uncertainty mounts. Perhaps most damaging is the silent message sent to the majority of law-abiding citizens: restraint is expected only of you. Those who shout the loudest, threaten the most, or disrupt the most effectively will be noticed, negotiated with, or quietly tolerated. This inversion of moral logic is corrosive, and it cannot coexist indefinitely with democratic stability.
What India requires now is not louder outrage, but firmer governance. Decisive, impartial, and sustained action against extremist elements is not authoritarianism; it is the bare minimum expected of a functioning state. Accountability must extend beyond arrests to swift trials, meaningful convictions, and the dismantling of networks that thrive on disorder. Political leadership must abandon strategic silence and speak with clarity that no group has the licence to terrorise society, regardless of the banner it claims to represent. Civil society, too, must shed selective indignation and defend civic peace without ideological filters. The choice before the country is stark. Either it confronts this cycle with seriousness and resolve, or it continues to drift into a future where disruption is permanent, trust is fractured, and social cohesion becomes collateral damage. India’s strength has always rested on its ability to manage differences without descending into chaos. Preserving that strength now demands courage, consistency, and the willingness to draw firm lines where none can be crossed.
