Home-grown terror a new reality: Chidambaram

New Delhi - 04 August 2011: Home-grown terror was a new challenge India was facing because the problem was ignored and allowed to grow when the nation was fighting cross-border terrorism, Home Minister P. Chidambaram said Thursday.

Replying to a parliamentary debate on the security situation in the wake of the Mumbai terror attack, Chidambaram said the country was slowly but successfully building capacity to fight terrorism whose origin lies in its immediate neighbourhood.

"We are dealing with a complex subject. As long as there was violence here and violence there, we could take it as a law and order problem. But we are dealing with a complex problem of terrorism which is not a law and order problem," Chidambaram told the Rajya Sabha.

He said that as long as the epicentre of terrorism was in Afghanistan and Pakistan region, "we will continue to be under the terror shadow".

"We can create history but cannot rewrite geography," he said.

He said initially terrorism was imported from across the border. "The new reality is that this is not the only source of terror anymore. The second fact we must realise is that many terror groups are home-grown terror. They may be inspired by groups outside but they are in India and they are Indian module."

He said when Indian modules of these groups were being formed, the nation "failed to recognise them".

"How SIMI (Students Islamic Movement of India) morphed into Indian Mujahideen... These groups don't practice any religion," he said.

He said that while the investigating agencies were probing jihadi cases, right-wing fascists were also on the rise in India.

"All over the world, right wing fascist groups are on the rise and India is no exception," he said.

Earlier, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Arun Jaitley criticised the government saying security was compromised and that resulted in the July 13 Mumbai blasts that killed 26 people.

Jaitley said it was unfortunate that Chidambaram had no answers on the security lapse, which unfortunately led to the recent Mumbai serial blasts.

source: IANS