Contrapuntal Geographies of Threat and Security: The United States, India, and Israel

Abstract

This paper is concerned with discourses of threat and security deployed by the United States and India after September 11. In the context of the United States these discourses have been used to justify war in Afghanistan and in Iraq and have revolved around the subject of the Muslim male as perpetually dangerous. Eager to support the United States in its war against terror, India echoed the construction of the Muslim male as dangerous, which served to fulfill India's own internal and regional supremacy agendas. Bolstered, therefore, by the emerging discourse of Muslim terrorists, in 2002 the Hindu Right was complicit in orchestrating genocide against Muslims in Gujarat where 2000 Muslims were killed and 150000 Muslims were rendered homeless. Examining these and other incidents, I examine the similarity in discourses of threat and security deployed by the United States and India. I argue that the similarity in discourses emerges because of a particular understanding of time and space. I make two interconnected arguments: first, time and the very understanding and construction of history are distorted, collapsed, and twisted such that revenge for past atrocities and the threat of future ones are used to justify preemptive military action. Second, there is a particular geography to this doctrine of threat and security that is being established by demarcating us against them. This new spatial arrangement is being formed contingent on a particular understanding of time and history as a linear singular narrative and on the creation of political alliances between India, the United States, and Israel.