Dynamics of Violent Extremism in

South Asia. Nexus between State

Fragility and Extremism Shafi Md
Mostofa
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Dynamics of Violent
Extremism in
South Asia
Nexus between State
Fragility and Extremism
Edited by
Shafi Md Mostofa
Dynamics of Violent Extremism in South Asia
 Shafi Md Mostofa
Editor

Dynamics of Violent
Extremism in South
Asia
Nexus between State Fragility and
Extremism
Editor
Shafi Md Mostofa
University of Dhaka
Dhaka, Dhaka, Bangladesh

ISBN 978-981-19-7404-5 ISBN 978-981-19-7405-2 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7405-2

The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service
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This book is dedicated to Dr. John Idriss Lahai who encouraged me editing
a volume like this.
 Foreword

Blessed innocents believe that ‘everybody wants peace’. Realists know

that this is far from being the truth. Arms manufacturers, warlords,
and even bored, unemployed young men do not necessarily desire peace
which can destroy their opportunities to profit or earn their livings
from disorder and the suffering of others. The crucial issue is the incen-
tive system that they are confronted with and much of that system is
determined by how states are governed both in terms of the goals of
those in power and how effective each government is in achieving its
goals. For many elites, their overarching goal is to attain control of the
machinery of government so that they can milk the country’s resources
to the maximum extent possible, preferably without killing the citizen
hens who lay the eggs.
An autocratic dictator can head a government that is effective in main-
taining the rule of law in his (rarely, her) family’s interests but a chaotic
failing state such as Sri Lanka may or may not provide rich pickings for
those who can fight their way to the top.
As this volume amply and expertly demonstrates the relationship
between failing states and terrorism is highly complex—not least because

vii
viii Foreword

terrorism can be both a cause and a consequence of state failure. In the

case of Afghanistan, the world is still learning for a second time what can
happen when the terrorists take over the reins of government and have
to deal with the newly resurgent terrorist groups who follow behind in
their train.
One of the core characteristics of state failure involves the simple
failure or the lack of will of the government to maintain the level of
law and order necessary for people at the grassroots to go about their
daily business without the fear and the reality of the constant risk of
being deprived of their lives and property by apparently random acts of
violence. Certainly, the lack of the rule of law and order can facilitate
the operations and growth of terrorist groups. However, there are limits
and the better organised terrorist groups often prefer to be based in states
with a degree of legal laxity which allows them to operate without any
fear of arrests that cannot be bought off, but where communications and
transport are still functional. If conditions are too disorganised, terrorists
also find it difficult to go about their business and achieve their goals,
but they may well choose to be based in a moderately failing county but
deliver their acts of terror in a nearby more stable state. There can often
be a distinction between countries where terrorists choose to hide and
countries where terrorists perform their terrorist acts.
Terrorists themselves can be divided into two categories: terrorists with
clear ideological and political goals and terrorists who are chiefly inter-
ested in taking advantage of chaos to seize power and wealth. Terrorists
who aim to promote their ideological views are more likely to be found
in well-governed and moderately well-governed states because ideologies
are unlikely to flourish amidst chaos. Democracies are more likely to be
the targets of terrorists rather than their hosts. Autocratic regimes may
well be both targets and hosts. Autocratic leaders are also often given
to declare their enemies to be terrorists, whether the label is justifiable or
not. This is because the label dishonours those named and justifies spying
on them and imprisoning them. Where the terrorist label is consid-
ered to be justified, this is frequently because the group has publicly
claimed responsibility for its violent acts, frequently defending them on
the grounds of the overriding importance of their goals.
 Foreword ix

Readers of this book will find it to be a challenging introduction to

a little-explored topic. They are unlikely to agree with every proposi-
tion and every factual account which is written here, but they will be
able to agree that the editor has done an excellent job in assembling an
expert team of chapter authors who have presented their cases with skill
and knowledge and in stimulating debate have well served the cause of
greater understanding of the nexus between state fragility and extremism
in South Asia.

Helen Ware
Foundation Professor of Peace
Studies
University of New England
Armidale, Australia
 About This Book

This book presents a critical overview of the nexus between violent

extremism and state fragility in South Asia. It also sheds light on the
dynamics of violent extremism in South Asia, a phenomenon that osten-
sibly poses critical and unique challenges to the peace, security, and
governance not only of the region but also of the world at large. The
book brings attention to South Asia due to its diverse religious back-
grounds, which at times incite communal violence and tensions with
some countries like Nepal and Sri Lanka facing post-civil war dynamics;
the Maldives and Bangladesh with political crises in their history; the
new rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan; the influence of extremist groups
and ethnic uprisings in Pakistan; border disputes between India and
Pakistan; conflicts in Kashmir; and communal conflicts in India between
Hindus and Muslims.
This book is distinctive in as much as it constitutes the first-ever
attempt to analyse South Asian countries through the lens of the
state fragility framework and to examine how issues of state fragility
contribute to violent extremism. Through case studies drawn from
Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, this

xi
xii About This Book

collection suggests that fragile states have not only created conditions for
extremist groups but that some states at times also adopt violent populist
policies to marginalize minorities, pushing those minorities to resort to
violent means.
 Contents

1 The Nexus Between State Fragility and Extremism

in South Asia 1
Shafi Md Mostofa
References 17
2 Differing Trajectories of Salafism in India
and Pakistan: State Fragility, Identity and Violence 23
Mohammed Sinan Siyech
Introduction 23
Salafism: An Introduction 26
Salafism in India and Pakistan 28
Reasons for Differences: Salafist Identity Formation 32
How State Fragility and Democratic Rights Can Play
a Role in Preventing/Fomenting Violence—Hints
for the Future 41
Conclusion 43
Note 44
References 44

xiii
xiv Contents

3 State Fragility and Violent Extremism in Bangladesh 51

Shafi Md Mostofa
Introduction 51
State Fragility and Bangladesh 52
Ethnic Extremism 55
Left-Wing Extremism 60
Muslim Extremism 63
State Fragility and Extremism in Bangladesh 68
Conclusion 70
Notes 71
References 72
4 State Fragility and Dynamism of Islamist Extremism
in Bangladesh: Recruitment Strategies, Women
and Prison Radicalization, and Future Trajectories 81
Syed Mahfujul Haque Marjan and Shafi Md Mostofa
Introduction 81
State Fragility and Islamist Extremism 83
The Arrival of IS and Al Qaeda in Bangladesh 84
Use of Lethal Weapons 85
Targeted Killing 87
Women Radicalization 91
Prison Radicalization 92
Future Trajectories 93
Conclusion 96
References 96
5 State Fragility and Hindu Extremism in India:
An Analysis of the Role of the Bharatiya Janata Party 103
Stuti Bhatnagar
Introduction 103
Part One—Hindutva in Indian Political Discourse 106
Part Two—Hindutva and the 2019 Elections 115
Conclusion 119
Notes 121
References 122
 Contents xv

6 Fragile State Policy and the Rise of Muslim Extremism

in Sri Lanka 127
A. R. M. Imtiyaz
Introduction 127
General Remarks on the Sri Lankan Muslims or Moor 130
Sinhala-Buddhist Violent Mobilization Against Muslims 133
State Fragility and the Emergence of Extremism Among
Sri Lankan Muslims 138
Decline of Muslims’ Trust in the Sri Lankan Government 139
Conclusion 141
Notes 143
References 144
7 Fragile Peace, Violent Extremism, and Feminist
Solutions in Nepal 147
Keshab Giri
Introduction 147
Feminist Understanding of Violence: ‘Matrices
of Domination’ and ‘Continua of Violence’ 150
State Fragility and the Maoist Insurgency in Nepal 151
Is Violent Extremism a Possibility in Nepal? 160
Conclusion 164
Notes 166
References 166
8 State Fragility, Violent Extremism, and Future
of Afghanistan 173
Intijamul Islam and Shafi Md Mostofa
Introduction 173
Defining State Fragility 176
State Fragility in Afghanistan 177
Taliban Take Over Afghanistan 180
Future of Afghanistan 183
Conclusion 186
References 187
xvi Contents

9 State Fragility and the Challenge of Violent Extremism

in Pakistan 191
Abdul Basit
Introduction 191
State Fragility and VE in Pakistan 192
Terrain of VE in Pakistan 193
Pakistan’s State Fragility and PCVE Measures 199
Hard Measures 199
Soft Measures 205
How State Fragility Has Impacted VE in Pakistan? 210
Conclusion 214
References 214

Index 227
 Notes on Contributors

Abdul Basit is a Research Fellow and head of South Asia desk at

the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research
(ICPVTR) of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS),
Singapore. He specializes in Af-Pak security issues with a primary focus
on terrorism and religious extremism. He is also the Associate Editor
of ICPVTR’s open-access quarterly journal Counter Terrorist Trends
and Analyses (CTTA). He regularly publishes commentaries and peer-
reviewed research articles on the mentioned topics.
Stuti Bhatnagar (Ph.D.) is an Academic with the University of New
South Wales, Sydney, and an adjunct fellow at the University of Adelaide.
She also serves as the Executive Officer—South Asian Studies Associa-
tion of Australia (SASAA) and as the Social Media Editor for South Asia:
Journal of South Asian Studies. With a Ph.D. in politics and international
relations from the University of Adelaide, her research has focussed on
foreign policy analysis in the context of India and the wider South Asian
region. She has several academic publications to her credit including
journal articles, book chapters, and opinion pieces. Her recent book

xvii
xviii Notes on Contributors

is titled India’s Pakistan Policy: How Think Tanks Are Shaping Foreign
Relations and was published by Routledge in 2020.
Keshab Giri (Ph.D.) is Lecturer in International Relations at the Univer-
sity of Sydney. Dr. Giri’s research have been published in journals like
International Studies Review, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, and
Global Studies Quarterly. His research interests include gender and war,
civil war, leftist insurgencies, critical security studies, rebel governance of
intimacy, geopolitics of South Asia, and digital sovereignty. He is also a
researcher at the Gender, Justice and Security Hub at LSE and a visiting
fellow at Nepal Institute for International Cooperation and Engagement
(NIICE), Nepal.
A. R. M. Imtiyaz (Ph.D.) is an adjunct Professor at the Department
of Liberal Arts, Delaware Valley University, USA. His research projects
examine ethnic conflict and post-war peace in South Asia and China,
and he has published widely in scholarly journals both in the US and
the UK. He taught ethnic conflict and nationalism at the Department of
Political Science, Temple University, USA, from 2009 to 2017.
Intijamul Islam is a resourceful organizational capacity development
professional with vivid expertise and hands-on work experience on global
andragogical practices, instructional design, and HR capacity develop-
ment. At present, he’s working in a business consulting firm named
Enroute International Limited specialized in B2B service. During his
service at Enroute, he has had extensive exposure to and experience
working with policy level Government and Semi-government stake-
holders and corporate business leaders. A post-grad from the Department
of World Religions and Culture, University of Dhaka, Intijamul’s diverse
areas of interest include language, literature, regional politics, sociology,
and religious studies.
Syed Mahfujul Haque Marjan is a Lecturer of Criminology at the
University of Dhaka and a doctoral student of Sociology (Criminal
Justice track) at Texas Woman’s University. He completed his M.A.
in Criminology and Criminal Justice from the University of Texas
at Arlington. His Master’s thesis examined the homicide trends in
 Notes on Contributors xix

the Global South. His research focussed on terrorism, homicides, and

policing. He holds an M.A. and B.A. in Mass Communication and
Journalism from the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Shafi Md Mostofa (Ph.D.) is a theologian and security studies scholar
with broad interests in political Islam, authoritarianism, modern South
Asian history and politics, and international relations and clash of civi-
lizations. He is an Associate Professor of World Religions and Culture
at Dhaka University’s Faculty of Arts and an Adjunct Lecturer of the
University of New England, Australia. He has published extensively with
Routledge, Springer, Cambridge University Press, Oxford University
Press, Wiley, and Blackwell; and the journals: Politics and Religion, Poli-
tics and Policy, Perspectives on Terrorism, and Asian and African Studies.
His recent sole-authored book published with Palgrave Macmillan on
“Islamist Militancy in Bangladesh: A Pyramid Root Cause Model ”.
Mohammed Sinan Siyech is a doctoral candidate at the University of
Edinburgh and a non-resident Associate Fellow at the Observer Research
Foundation (ORF), New Delhi. Previously, he was a Senior Analyst with
the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research
(ICPVTR), a constituent unit of the S. Rajaratnam School of Inter-
national Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU),
Singapore.
 List of Tables

Table 9.1 Major military operations in Pakistan (2003-present)

(Pak institute for peace studies, 8–13) 200
Table 9.2 Cases decided by military courts (2015–2018) 202
Table 9.3 De-radicalization schools in Pakistan 210

xxi
 1
The Nexus Between State Fragility
and Extremism in South Asia
Shafi Md Mostofa

Violent extremism poses serious security challenges to states as well as

societies in the contemporary world. Since 9/11, the topics of violent
extremism and terrorism have attracted attention from academics, jour-
nalists, and even policymakers. In the name of a global war on terror,
trillions of dollars have been pumped into this sector to combat chal-
lenges posed by extremist groups. Yet, extremism’s causes of origin and
its ever-evolving dynamics are often little understood and remain under-
researched. In the same way, the pathways to respond to, and manage
its growth and impact remains without a clear consensus. Therefore,
the widespread presence of extremist groups is reflected in the number
of people offended by the horror of terrorist attacks across the world
claiming around 60 thousand lives, either injured or killed in less than
20 years from 2001 to 2019 (Sulaiman, 2020).

S. Md Mostofa (B)
University of Dhaka, Dhaka, Dhaka, Bangladesh
e-mail: shafi@du.ac.bd

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023
S. Md Mostofa (ed.), Dynamics of Violent Extremism in South Asia,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7405-2_1
2 S. Md Mostofa

South Asia is one of the most violent regions in the world with so
many of the longest-running conflicts and a rapidly changing geopo-
litical landscape. The security situation in South Asia is expected to
further deteriorate because of a combination of multiple factors: the
fallout from Afghanistan, the deteriorating situation in Kashmir, the
military takeover and political crisis in Myanmar, the pandemic, and the
impending climate crisis (The Armed Conflict Survey, 2021). South Asia
is also susceptible to the upward global terrorism trend driven by both
left-wing and right-wing extremist groups. South Asia hosts 26 per cent
of the world’s youths, has been experiencing an economic slowdown,
and has been facing rising a tide of illiberalism and radicalism (Hasan
et al., 2019). Most of the South Asian countries fall into the category
of low- and middle-income countries (Jayaram, 2019), which includes
nearly 2 billion people (World Bank, 2018) and more than 33% of
the world’s poor (Schafer, 2019). South Asia’s economic deficiencies are
reflected in the Human Development Index (HDI) rankings in which
South Asian countries sit near the bottom. Despite economic challenges,
Hasan et al. (2019, p. 2) contend that ‘democracy in South Asia has
never been stronger’. However, India’s democracy which previously was
a beacon of light to the region is ‘under serious pressure too’ (Hasan
et al., 2019, p. 2). This leads Jayaram (2019, p. 4) to argue that ‘parts
of the region are characterized by a high level of political instability and
socio-economic backwardness’.
That said, this edited volume presents a critical overview of the nexus
between violent extremism and state fragility in South Asia. It also aims
to shed light on the dynamics of violent extremism in South Asia, a
phenomenon that ostensibly poses critical and unique challenges to the
peace, security, and governance not only of the region but also of the
world at large. This book is distinctive in as much as it constitutes the
first-ever attempt to analyse South Asian countries through the lens of
the state fragility framework and to examine how issues of state fragility
contribute to violent extremism drawing case studies from Afghanistan,
Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.
South Asia deserves proper international attention due to its diversity
of religious backgrounds, which at times has incited communal violence
and tensions; some countries like Nepal and Sri Lanka face post-civil war
 1 The Nexus Between State Fragility and Extremism … 3

dynamics; the Maldives and Bangladesh have through their history been
engulfed in political crises; Afghanistan saw the rise of the Taliban and its
re-emergence after Western intervention; extremist groups have fuelled
ethnic uprisings in Pakistan; India and Pakistan have been involved in
recurrent border disputes; Kashmir becomes the epicentre of conflict
within India itself; and there have been communal conflicts between
Hindus and Muslims. These conflicts led Jayaram (2019, p. 5) to state
that many South Asian countries have faced ‘severe disruptions over the
past few decades in the form of political transitions and violent conflict’.
Adding to this argument, Howard (2016) supports the same findings:

The states that comprise South Asia seem to fare no better. The current
political climate within Afghanistan, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sri
Lanka is well known; thus, these fragile states, which represent over half
of the eight states in the South Asia region, are embroiled in steady
conflict, armed challenges from non-state actors, and must contend with
both insurgent groups and terrorist threats from within and across state
borders. (Howard, 2016, p. 83)

As she was explaining South Asia’s fragility, Howard (2016) singled out
India for its confused national identity; economic disparities among
upper and lower classes; its state of continuous conflict with Pakistan
and China; and its vulnerability to challenges posed by Islamist forces
in the state of Jammu and Kashmir as well as separatist forces in the
North-eastern region, and the Maoist insurgency in the Eastern region.
Hasan et al. (2019) also agree with Howard (2016) that India has
been persistently struggling with Muslim radicalism, Hindu radicalism,
and Leftist Radicalism. Afghanistan has been facing economic traumas,
political crises, the lack of legitimacy of government, religious insur-
gency, rampant corruption, ethnic uprisings, and most notably foreign
intervention both by the Soviets and the USA. According to Howard
(2016, p. 86), ‘Afghanistan has unfortunately been the victim of the
world’s major powers’. Both in the Human Development Index and state
fragility index, Afghanistan has always been at the bottom of the ratings.
Given this situation and after the withdrawal of US forces, the Taliban
4 S. Md Mostofa

seized control of Afghanistan. We are yet to see how the newly rein-
stated Taliban government is going to deal with these fragilities, on which
the Islamic State Khorasan (ISK), a wing of Islamic State and Al Qaeda
might well capitalize.
Sri Lanka’s vulnerability lies in its recent history. Sri Lanka suffered
some of the deadliest terrorist attacks in modern history during the
height of the Tamil Tigers insurgency (Howard, 2016; Wickramasinghe,
2006). Currently, Sri Lanka ranks 55th on the State Fragility Index,
despite its success in combatting the Tamil insurgency in 2009. Still,
ethnic challenges between the Tamil Hindu minority and the Sinhala
Buddhist majority have not yet faded away. Moreover, challenges coming
from other minority groups like the National Thowheeth Jama’ath, a
Muslim group, have shattered pluralism in Sri Lanka. This has led
Ahmed et al. (2022) to argue that the Sinhala Buddhist majoritarian
supremacy has caused the rise of radical Buddhist nationalism under the
banner of the Bodu Bala Sena or Army of Buddhist Power.
Another South Asian country, Nepal witnessed nearly 10 years of civil
war which caused the death of over 13 thousand persons. Another 8
thousand people were injured, and 10 thousand were displaced from
their homes. Some consider Nepal to have been a ‘monolithic, feudal-
istic, autocratic, authoritarian, centralized and closed state for centuries’
(Kumar, 2004; Misra, 2004; Thapa, 2003; Upreti, 2004, 2006). Indi-
cators of state fragility like severe poverty, systematic and deliberate
exclusion, discriminations based on caste, gender, or ethnicity, and injus-
tices are held responsible for the armed conflict in Nepal (Karki &
Seddon, 2003; Raj, 2004; Rana & Sharma, 2004). Upreti (2006) blamed
the government for the rise of the Maoist insurgency facilitated by
the governing elites’ failure to fulfil people’s expectation. The ‘post-war’
peace has been problematic due to political machinations and insin-
cerity. Human rights violations committed by the security forces, the
failure to enforce the rule of law, the restriction of the freedom of expres-
sion and association, economic depression, poverty, corruption, group
grievances, and political crises have been integral to Nepal’s history, and
this is reflected in the state fragility index in which Nepal is listed in the
warning category.
 1 The Nexus Between State Fragility and Extremism … 5

Pakistan has long been identified as an epicentre of global terrorism

because of its known ties to Muslim terrorist groups (Ahmed et al.,
2022). Sulaiman (2020) has argued that its fragility lies in its foun-
dational infrastructure. ‘Pakistan inherited a weak economic base, little
infrastructure, and two conflicted borders on the East and West with
India and Afghanistan, respectively’. Additionally, it has faced challenges
from separatists in some provinces such as Sindh province. These chal-
lenges have forced Pakistan to sit among the top 30 fragile states in the
world. Bangladesh, which was part of Pakistan until 1971, gained inde-
pendence in 1971 and has emerged as a secular nation-state (Mostofa &
Subedi, 2020; Mostofa, 2021c). Since its birth, it has been fighting
hunger, natural disaster, political violence, and at times the rise of
extremism in the country. Bangladesh, the third largest Muslim country,
gets international attention for supplying Mujaheedins in Afghanistan
and foreign fighters in Iraq and Syria, carrying out the Holey Artisan
Café attack in 2016 which killed 22 foreigners, killing secular bloggers
and publishers, and finally for radicalizing secular educated urban youths
(Mostofa, 2019, 2020, 2021a, 2021b, 2021c; Mostofa & Doyle, 2019).
Very recently, communal tensions in Bangladesh once again highlighted
the country in the international media. Some argue that the oppor-
tunistic political culture is held responsible for the plight of persecuted
minorities (Mostofa, 2021d).
Even though Bhutan and the Maldives are South Asian countries,
in terms of state fragility index these countries have been consistently
making progress and their ranking is fairly stable close to 100, a figure
which characterizes stable states. This is the reason why it was decided
that they should not be included in the analyses provided in this book,
even though these countries show symptoms of the rise of authoritarian
style of government (Mostofa et al., 2023). However, the challenges of
violent extremism are particularly widespread and complex in South Asia
as issues of state fragility are often found inherent within state struc-
tures. Extremist groups are often known to form intricate networks and
complex associations across countries. They possess international link-
ages and can tap into a wide variety of resources to sustain their religious
and political activities. The fact that the impact of violent extremism in
6 S. Md Mostofa

South Asia reaches beyond the territorial borders of the region’s indi-
vidual countries has been well documented. Because of its complex
political, social, historical, and legal dynamics South Asia has consis-
tently attracted the attention of sociologists, political scientists, legal and
security experts, and concerned policymakers.
Some scholars have already examined the rise of extremism in South
Asia. Ollapally (2008) published with Cambridge University Press a book
entitled ‘The Politics of Extremism in South Asia’ which comprehensively
addressed the causes behind the growth of extremism in South Asia,
based on individual case studies of a number of South Asian countries.
Her book is notable for the way it went beyond the popular perception
which argued that ‘politics, inter-state and international relations often
play a more important role in the rise of extremism in South Asia than
religious identity, poverty, and state repression’ (p. 1). Going against her
argument, Hasan et al. (2019) argued in their edited book ‘Radicalization
in South Asia: Context, Trajectories and Implications’ that the diversity of
faiths, culture, and political ideologies, which the authors characterize as
the fault lines of South Asia, has helped trigger radicalism and terrorist
attacks in South Asia. The volume offers individual case studies from
five South Asian countries: Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, the Maldives,
and Sri Lanka. These chapters are mainly concerned with the changing
aspects of terrorism, the ways of violent extremism, and how political
violence can be countered in the region. D’Souza (2019) edited a similar
volume entitled ‘Countering Insurgencies and Violent Extremism in South
and Southeast Asia’. The book contained case studies that addressed the
patterns, drivers of various insurgent and terrorist groups, as well as their
and ideologies and the variety of state responses.
Two books published more recently address the same dynamics of
violent extremism in South Asia. Izarali and Ahlawat (2021) have a
volume on ‘Terrorism, Security and Development in South Asia: National,
Regional and Global Implications’, which provides analyses of the trajec-
tories of extremism and insurgency in the region. The book examines
how South Asian states are countering the challenges posed by terrorism
to ensure human security. It also considers the national, regional, and
global implications of terrorism. Ahmed et al. (2022) by drawing nine
 1 The Nexus Between State Fragility and Extremism … 7

case studies from almost all South Asian countries have produced a hand-
book on ‘Religion, Extremism and Violence in South Asia’. These case
studies mainly focus on motivations, recruitment patterns and tools, and
historical roots of terrorist organizations in South Asia. Like Hasan et al.
(2019), Ahmed et al. (2022) consider South Asia a fault line in terms of
religious diversity, which at times challenges the secular nature of south
Asia. Religiously inspired extremism poses threats to the South Asian
peace and security.
Against the backdrop of these scholarly works, the present book
exposes a lacuna in the existing literature: examinations of the ques-
tion of how state fragility provides enabling conditions for the growth
of extremism in South Asia. None of the books so far dedicated to the
study of political violence in South Asia has yet investigated the nexus
between state fragility and extremism. The reality of the dearth of litera-
ture led this edited volume to examine the characterization, trajectories,
and the internal dynamics of violent extremism in the postcolonial South
Asian fragile states, which are typically neglected in the literature. An
added benefit of this edited volume is that it takes the study of violent
religious extremism in a new direction. Thus, this edited volume focusses
on the state fragility and violent extremism nexus. A phenomenal growth
in violent extremism amidst violent conflicts around the world could be
explained by the existence of an enabling environment that facilitates
the extremists to exploit the environment in their own favour. The state’s
legitimacy crisis, its weaknesses, and its fragility have become a central
issue in today’s world to circumvent extremism. The situation gets worse
when states do not accept ‘fragility’ as a potent reality.
Now the question might arise to what degree South Asian states are
fragile or stable. Panda (2014) wrote a report in the Diplomat that Asia’s
most fragile states are in South Asia. Overall, all South Asian countries
do not fall under the sustainable or stable category in terms of the state
fragility index. Some of the countries even fall under the category of
a high alert situation in terms of the state fragility index. Most of the
countries’ rankings, apart from the Maldives and Bhutan, are below 60
among the 157 countries in the world. Even though India ranks 66th it
is still included in this volume because India has been put among the top
8 S. Md Mostofa

14 most rapidly worsening countries along with Chile, Libya, Mali, and
Colombia. India’s status has become subject to an ‘Elevated Warning’.
Globally two books so far have used the framework of state fragility,
which is the focus point of this book, to assess violent extremism. In
the Post-Conflict Reconstruction: From Extremism to Peaceful Co-Existence,
Sadia Sulaiman (2020) used the state fragility framework to understand
the rise of violent extremism in some fragile states with individual case
studies drawn from Africa and Asia. Howard (2016) also makes use of a
similar framework in Failed States and the Origins of Violence: A Compar-
ative Analysis of State Failure as a Root Cause of Terrorism and Political
Violence. This book, however, did not investigate in depth the rise of
terrorism in South Asia. Rather, it dedicates only one chapter to deal
with South Asia and Southeast Asia and mainly investigates Pakistan and
Afghanistan. The rise of violent extremism in South Asia has, to some
extent, been overlooked in these two books with their focus on Pakistan
and Afghanistan.
The term state fragility itself is contested and often misunderstood.
We must therefore start by defining it. This term evolved to describe
a donor-driven concept in a specific historic and intellectual context of
politics and international relations in the post-cold war era. The term
state fragility has emerged more recently as an inclusive concept used
by scholars to help describe the nature of failing states, of weak states, of
collapsed states, and similar concepts. Scholars agree that all states are, to
some extent, fragile (Call, 2010; Carment & Samy, 2012; 2020; Grav-
ingholt et al., 2012; Lahai & Koomson, 2020; Lemay-Hébert, 2018;
Sulaiman, 2020) and show signs of state weakness at least in one of the
three dimensions of authority, legitimacy, and capacity. Powell (2017,
p. 23) contends that ‘it is not an absolute condition to which all states
are susceptible at some stage of their history. Sulaiman (2020, p. 24)
adds that ‘fragility is a process of structural decay and decline within any
particular state’. While highlighting structural decay, Alexandra Lewis
(2013) and Bertocchi and Guerzoni have listed some structural issues
which reinforce state fragility. These issues include challenges over terri-
torial control or disputes, legitimacy crises, authority-based limitations,
a lack of service delivery including law enforcement, security, and basic
services, poor governance, acute poverty, and being prone to civilian
 1 The Nexus Between State Fragility and Extremism … 9

conflict (Lahai & Koomson, 2020). Tonwe and Eke (2013, p. 235) put
enormous emphasis on legitimacy crises and assert that legitimacy crises
and limiting fundamental human rights seem to be the supreme deter-
minant factors of state fragility. The absence of the rule of law is a crucial
aspect of state fragility, which is closely linked with the internal security
of the state (Lahai & Koomson, 2020). The Department for Interna-
tional Development (DFID) has also identified the following symptoms
for fragile states: ‘weak institutions are the central driver of fragility …
States whose political systems and institutions are in some forms of tran-
sition are more likely to show signs of fragility … Violent conflict is
the ultimate manifestation of state fragility’ (Claire & Moreno-Torres,
2005).
The above signs of state fragility enable international organizations to
define state fragility in the following ways:

...[as the inability] to meet population’s expectations or manage changes

in expectations and capacity through the political process. Fragility
thus arises from substantial disequilibrium in state-society relations. It
has multiple underlying causes, both chronic and acute, and it can
produce multiple consequences, most worryingly vulnerability to internal
conflict, inability to cope with humanitarian disaster and a high risk
of state collapse. (The Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development, 2008)

… share a common fragility, in two respects: State policies and institu-

tions are weak in these countries making them vulnerable in their capacity
to deliver services to their citizens, to control corruption, or to provide for
sufficient voice and accountability. They face risks of conflict and political
instability. (The World Bank, 2005)

... the absence or breakdown of a social contract between people and their
government. Fragile states suffer from deficits of institutional capacity and
political legitimacy that increase the risk of instability and violent conflict
and sap the state of its resilience to disruptive shocks. (The Fragility Study
Group of the United States Institute for Peace, 2016)
10 S. Md Mostofa

Considering the above definitions and the signs of state fragility,

Sulaiman (2020) proposes five core attributes, which make a state fragile.
These attributes include persistent security dilemma, a dysfunctional
economy, institutional weakness, chronic legitimacy crisis, an inability to
manage change, and space for external interference. She further contends
that

Fragility is a long process of the decline of a state, and it is present

deep down within a state’s socio-cultural, political, economic and security
apparatus since long, which comes on the surface as a result of conflict.
It is not something that emerges all of a sudden due to increased violence
in any country. Rather it is a long process which keeps going silently and
erupts like a volcano in case of a conflict breakout. (Sulaiman, 2020, p. 4)

Considering the above-mentioned indicators of state fragility, the Fund

for Peace produces a Fragile State Index annually, based on four types
of indicators: cohesion, economic, political, and social, and cross-cutting
indicators. The cohesion indicator includes the security apparatus, the
existence of functionalized elites, and group grievances. Economic indi-
cators are evaluated based on the economic decline, uneven economic
development, human flight, and brain drain. Political indicators involve
state legitimacy, public services, respect for human rights, and the rule
of law. Social and cross-cutting indicators include demographic pres-
sure, the existence of refugees and internally displaced persons, as well
as external interventions.
States’ vulnerabilities or states’ fragilities have consequently become
a matter of growing concern especially when it comes to combatting
extremism. Some estimates show the gravity of the problem of state
fragility. For example, fragile states host 2.3 billion people and will host
60% of the world’s poor by 2030. Thus, the issue of state fragility will
become a major challenge for international peace and security. This has
led the Fragility Study Group to state that ‘Fragile states lie at the root
of today’s global disorder, from chaos in the Arab world to the refugee
crisis and from pandemic diseases to economic malaise. Fragility has
contributed to the spike in violent conflict since 2010’ (Burns et al.,
2016).
 1 The Nexus Between State Fragility and Extremism … 11

Although it is evident that state fragility provides a breeding ground

for the growth of extremism, the pathways to becoming a terrorist do
not follow a linear process. What makes an individual terrorist is a long-
standing debate. Arguments flow from psychological, social, political,
and religious approaches that seek to identify the drivers motivating
some people to become terrorists. In the nineteenth century, Cesare
Lombroso puts emphasis on biological features which encourage some
individuals to turn to violence to achieve their goals. According to
him, criminals were simply abnormal (Lombroso, 2006). Arguing in
a similar vein of thought, in the twentieth century some researchers
asserted that violent behaviour is deeply engrained in basic human phys-
iology and consider terrorism to be an extension of violent behaviour
(Hubbard, 1983; Oots & Wiegele, 1985). Along the same line of patho-
logical arguments, some other scholars put the emphasis on personality
characteristics for violent behaviour such as an ‘authoritarian person-
ality’ (Adorno et al., 1950), ‘narcissism’ (Crayton, 1983; Post, 1998),
‘anomie’ (Awan, 2008), ‘insanity’ (Cooper, 1977; Pearce & Macmillan,
1977; Taylor & Ryan, 1998), lack of ‘cognitive capacity’ (Lezak, 1995),
‘aggressive temperament’ (Pettit, 1997), ‘novelty seeking’ (Hacker, 1983),
and ‘thrill and revenge seeking’ (Juergensmeyer, 2000). Other scholars
reject these psychological explanations on the grounds that they fail to
understand terrorism wholistically and consider terrorist in isolation,
separately from their social and cultural context (Brynjar & Skjølberg,
2004; Mostofa & Doyle, 2019).
Bordes (2007) and Romero (2007) have also criticized the emphasis
on specific psycho-pathological traits and contend that ‘terrorists are
like normal human beings, but they are exposed to an abnormal situa-
tion’ (Mostofa & Doyle, 2019). Some contemporary terrorism experts
(Bjørgo, 2004; Borum, 2011a, 2011b, 2017; Crenshaw, 1981, 1995,
2007, 2011; Davies, 1973; Jenkins, 1979; Johnson, 1978; Lichbach,
1990; Margolin, 1977; Morgan, 2001; Sageman, 2004; Veldhuis &
Staun, 2009; Victoroff, 2005) focus on socio-political and psychological
factors to explain the growth of violent radicalization. To some degree, a
consensus has emerged that the environment in which an individual has
been living has an impact on the radicalization process. Environmental
causes include political instability, poor governance, poverty, lack of
12 S. Md Mostofa

education, and repressions. Mostofa (2021c, 2021e) has clearly demon-

strated through his pyramid root cause model of radicalization that
local dysfunctional governments must be held responsible for creating
a convenient environment for terrorists to grow and find recruitment.
Here the nexus lies between state fragility and extremism. The Inter-
national Crisis Group shows that extremist groups exploit wars and
chaotic situations for their own causes (International Crisis Group,
2016). Wilkinson (1974) first pointed out several indicators of state
fragility as the reasons for the growth of terrorism. These indicators
included ‘ethnic, religious or ideological conflicts, poverty, the negative
aftermath of modernization, injustice, revolutionary sentiments among
society, weak governments or an internal power struggle’ (Wilkinson,
1974, p. 56). While analysing African state fragility issues he then
added that incompetence and venality can be identified as signs of state
fragility where terrorism flourishes. Similarly, in the African context,
Fanon (1963) and Ukiwo (2003) contended that corruption, brutality,
and mismanagement act as catalyst for the growth of terrorism. In a
similar fashion, Maiangwa (2012, p. 18) argues that ‘political tyranny,
loss of state legitimacy, bad governance, etc. predispose people to acts of
terrorism and also create the conducive ambience for terrorist activities’.
Considering the above facts of state fragility, Wehrli (2018) contends
that state fragility provides ‘opportunities for the extremist networks to
grow and sustain’. Arguing along the same line of thought, a plethora
of contemporary scholars contends that fragile states have the propensity
to become a safe den for extremists to expand their network and find
recruitment (Howard, 2016; Ibrahimi, 2018; Kasasbeh, 2015; Lahai &
Koomson, 2020; Maiangwa, 2012; Piazza, 2007; Tonwe & Eke, 2013).
The recent scholarly work drawing on case studies from both Africa and
Asia by Sulaiman (2020) suggests that, among other factors, state fragility
enhances extremism or even terrorism and argues that ‘the sharp growth
of religious extremist groups amidst ongoing violent conflicts in various
countries could be explained by the existence of an enabling environ-
ment, which facilitates the extremists to exploit it in their own favour’.
She comes up with five parameters of state fragility, which accelerate
violent extremism in fragile states. According to Sulaiman, extremist
groups fill the security void by taking the place of security forces, which
 1 The Nexus Between State Fragility and Extremism … 13

is caused by the lack of social cohesion. Socio-economic disparities, lack

of legitimacy, lack of the rule of law, and other political grievances help
extremist groups with their recruitment. The failure to address popular
expectations and the presence of external support for extremist groups
also act as catalysts for the growth of extremist groups.
In the context of the literature discussed above, this edited volume,
a first-ever attempt to analyse solely South Asian countries using the
framework of state fragility, examines how fragility issues contribute
to violent extremism. The findings of this volume suggest that fragile
states have not only created the conditions for the appearance and
growth of extremist groups but that some states at times also adopt
violent populist policies to marginalize minorities, pushing minorities to
resort to violent means. This volume also adds that Countering Violent
Extremism programmes do not work properly in fragile states and violent
extremist groups take diverse shapes in the fragile states having been
influenced by global political trends and currents.
The second chapter of this collection investigates a puzzling question:
why Salafis in Pakistan turn violent, whereas they remain wholly peaceful
in India. Contemporary research on Jihadist and other violent Muslim
organizations places a significant amount of blame on ideological drivers
within Islam. This chapter seeks to challenge that assertion by comparing
Islamic movements in India and Pakistan. It argues that state fragility
in Pakistan has played a role in shaping the relation between Salafism
and violence. Most importantly, national narratives, minority-majority
relations, and geopolitical realities have played a larger role in forming a
collective identity that encourages violence, rather than ideology alone.
The remaining chapters in this volume scrutinize individual country
case studies from South Asia. In Chapter 3, Shafi Md Mostofa explores
the rise of violent extremism in Bangladesh looking at the intersection
of different political conflicts and the role in these tensions played by
various agents and catalysts including non-state actors. Mostofa argues
that violent extremism, which is not a new phenomenon in Bangladesh,
takes three forms: left-wing extremism, ethnocentric extremism, and
Muslim extremism. Since the independence of Bangladesh in 1971,
extremist groups have used various forms of violence to express their
diversified agendas of scientific socialism, self-autonomy, and an Islamic
14 S. Md Mostofa

state. While the influence of left-wing extremists is on the decrease,

religious and ethnic-related acts of violence (measured in terms of the
numbers of people who are killed) are on the rise. This chapter focusses
on the three forms of violent extremism highlighted above. The goal
is to unearth the reasons for, and motivation behind, their historic
emergence in Bangladesh. This chapter argues that the inherent state
fragility of Bangladesh with regard to legitimacy crises, poverty, viola-
tions of human rights, easy access to weapons, and bad governance
help to foster extremism in the country. In Chapter 4, Syed Mahfujul
Haque Marjan and Shafi Md Mostofa argue that the state fragility of
Bangladesh has enabled the adoption by terrorist organizations of new
techniques for recruitment and worryingly allows them to use lethal
weapons for target killings. Terrorist organizations mainly recruit within
the urban youths of middle-and-upper class economic backgrounds.
They also argue that Al Qaeda might find traction in Bangladesh, and
other terrorist organizations might merge with Al Qaeda in the future.
In Chapter 5 responding to the escalation of Indian communal
violence against Muslim minorities, Stuti Bhatnagar focusses on state-
sponsored extremism against Muslim minority groups using the state
fragility framework. She argues that the Indian state under the BJP
government is actively supporting extremist groups and has provided
tacit as well as often direct validation for violence against minorities.
While religious violence in India is not a new phenomenon, targeted
violence against religious minorities, particularly Indian Muslims has
grown significantly. Government legislation in favour of cow protection
and a Hindu nationalist political agenda has led to the emergence of
new extremist organizations as well as the expansion of existing extremist
organizations, either directly or indirectly supported by the BJP and
its affiliated political and social groups. Particularly targeting Muslim
minorities, vigilante groups with the tacit support of the BJP government
have found a new voice and have carried out several acts of violence.
Further, the political marginalization of Muslims at the electoral level
has also become a contributory factor, visible in both the 2014 elec-
tion and the most recent Indian elections in 2019. In addition to this,
several of the BJP’s Hindu nationalist policies including the National
Register of Citizens and the reignited debates over Kashmir’s special
 1 The Nexus Between State Fragility and Extremism … 15

status in the Indian constitution and the construction of the controver-

sial Ram Mandir in Ayodhya have direct implications for Muslims in
India, adding to increasing group grievances. She analyses this growing
trend of extremism against Muslim minorities in India. She argues that
the use of nationalistic discourse by the BJP and its contribution to exac-
erbating fault lines on the basis of identity, nationality, and religion have
led to a rise in religious radicalization.
In Chapter 6, A. R. M. Imtiyaz examines the nexus between state
fragility and the rise of Muslim extremism in Sri Lanka. He maintains
that in deeply divided societies like Sri Lanka, an inability of the state
and institutions to gain the trust of minorities could lead to an essentially
fragile polity. This status of the state could trigger tensions and violence
if the marginalized continue to lose trust in the democratic institutions
and thus seek to settle their differences by bullets over ballots. He argues
that the role of state fragility as a condition of the emergence of extremist
forces is one of the major trends in Sri Lanka since its independence. The
chapter provides some useful notes on the state’s failure to be a neutral
agency in deeply divided Sri Lanka. Imtiyaz argues further that there is a
strong relationship between state fragility in post-war Sri Lanka and the
rise of extremist forces among Muslims in the same context.
Keshab Giri in Chapter 7 has adopted a feminist approach to uncover
how state fragility contributes to a fragile peace, thereby fostering violent
extremism in Nepal. He argues that the ‘post-war’ peace in Nepal remains
fragile as it is beset by many continuing challenges including poverty
and inequalities, an unequal distribution of power and resources, and
natural hazard-related disasters while the democratic restructuring of the
state remains an unfinished project. Similarly, the voices of the marginal-
ized population facing multiple oppressions are unheard and their needs
remain unaddressed. Moreover, emerging crises like climate change and
natural hazard-related disasters have added further vulnerabilities. Thus,
the chapter argues that the combination of all these factors can create
a perfect environment for the recurrence of violent extremism. Feminist
theorizations of oppression and violence in the concepts of ‘matrices of
domination’ and ‘continua of violence’ can help better understand and
analyse multiple and intersecting forms of oppression and violence in
Nepal.
16 S. Md Mostofa

Considering Afghanistan as one of the top-ranked fragile states across

the globe, Intijamul Islam and Shafi Md Mostofa in Chapter 8 show
that the state fragility has significantly contributed to the rise of ideo-
logical extremist groups in the country. For the last 20 years following
the overthrow of the Taliban government by the US forces in 2001,
the Taliban had been the leading ideological extremist group and the
flag bearer of the anti-establishmentarian narrative in Afghanistan. In
August 2021, the Taliban successfully replaced the US-backed govern-
ment in Afghanistan amid extreme public insecurity, fragile economic
conditions, and volatile observance of human rights. As the Taliban
moves to the centre of the state authority and forms the government,
this chapter examines who is going to replace the Taliban as an anti-
establishmentarian force in Afghanistan capitalizing on populist Islamist
narratives, which were once capitalized on by the Taliban itself. Thus,
the chapter argues that the Islamic State Khorasan (ISK) might find trac-
tion in Afghanistan thanks to its fragile military landscape and extremely
volatile socio-economic situation. On the other hand, Al Qaeda led by
Zawahiri has also been flourishing under the shade of Taliban as they
pledge their allegiance to the former.
Pakistan came under the international spotlight especially after the
US-led ‘War on Terror’ in 2001. Even though Pakistan has been
combating terrorism for a long time now, the country still faces chal-
lenges with adopting successful countering violent extremism (CVE)
programmes, mostly focussing on the reduction and elimination of
VE rather than achieving peace by addressing the root causes of the
problem. However, Pakistan’s attempt at adopting CVE programmes is
an under-researched topic. In the final chapter of this volume, Abdul
Basit contends that Violent Extremism (VE) in Pakistan is both the cause
and outcome of state fragility. He further argues that Pakistan’s PCVE
framework structured around preventive and corrective approaches also
needs to focus on addressing the long-term structural causes of VE in
the context of state fragility. Hence, beyond corrective and preventive
CVE approaches, Pakistan also needs to focus on the more structural
and fundamental sources of VE linked to its efforts to construct religious
nationalism while supressing more organic forms of ethnic and regional
sub-nationalism.
 1 The Nexus Between State Fragility and Extremism … 17

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 2
Differing Trajectories of Salafism in India
and Pakistan: State Fragility, Identity
and Violence
Mohammed Sinan Siyech

Introduction
The rise of Al Qaeda in the early 2000s and the Islamic State since 2014
has energized myriad debates on the root causes of terrorism and polit-
ical violence within various communities. Various authors have pointed
to ideology as a major driver of radicalization among Muslim communi-
ties (Ariaratnam, 2018; Lahoud, 2010; Mostofa, 2021a, 2021b, 2021c,
2021d). These authors iterate that some ideologies are more susceptible
to divisiveness and violence.
Among these, the Salafist ideology—which is an exclusivist Muslim
ideology is one that has taken the lion’s share of the blame for causing
terrorism across the world (Jacob Zenn, 2013; Rasheed, 2007; Right,
2012; Wictorowitz, 2017). I argue that this argument is tenacious and
risks the imposition of problematic policies that will lead to self-fulfilling

M. S. Siyech (B)
University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
e-mail: m.s.siyech@sms.ed.ac.uk

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 23

Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023
S. Md Mostofa (ed.), Dynamics of Violent Extremism in South Asia,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7405-2_2
24 M. S. Siyech

prophecies in the future. Indeed, while ideology plays a role in facilitating

violence, it is much smaller than what most news media channels argue.
Looking at the case studies of India and Pakistan can greatly inform
policymakers about the importance of international politics as well as
domestic policies in radicalising communities and ideologies. Both the
nations gained their independence from Britain in 1947 and split into
two different countries (Khan, 2008). Both the nations are home to
various Muslim institutions which have commanded a large number of
followers such as (1) The Deobandi Movement, (2) The Ahl e-Hadeeth
Movement, (3) The Barelvi Movement, (4) The Ahmadi Movement, the
(5) The Shia movement and (6) The Jamaat e-Islami (Ahmed, 2009;
Metcalf, 2014).
Combined, these movements can account for a large percentage of
the nearly 400 million Muslims in India and Pakistan. However, most
of these institutions have had different trajectories with a few of the
Pakistani groups within these movements witnessing a turn to violent
politics. Contrastingly nearly all the Muslim organizations in India have
remained peaceful despite various stimuli that would otherwise have
brought forward a lot more violent action. This difference was especially
pronounced since the 1980s where Islamic movements in Pakistan and
India have adopted radically different pathways.
Since it is beyond the scope of this chapter to look at all six different
movements due to the sheer numbers, this chapter comparatively looks at
the growth of a movement which has branches and a significant following
in both nations—the Ahl e-Hadeeth, a Salafist movement. Centrally, it
seeks to understand why factions within the Pakistani Salafist movement
turned violent at some point whereas the Indian Salafist movement has
largely eschewed violence. In doing so, it argues that ideology is not as
important a factor in radicalizing people as much as political events are.
To define the scope, this chapter also demonstrates that while not all
factions in the Pakistani Salafist movement have turned violent, many
also support violence overtly or covertly. The targets of violence in ques-
tion encapsulates all sorts of groups such as the Shias, the Ahmadis, the
Pakistani government and Indian armed forces based in Kashmir and
elsewhere in the nation. As the paper goes on to observe, Indian Salafists
organizations have not targeted any of these groups whereas, of all the
 2 Differing Trajectories of Salafism in India … 25

17 different Pakistani groups (Zahab, 2009), a number have attacked

the above-mentioned communities, whereas more than one-third have
even taken part in political processes in Pakistan (Zahab, 2009).
This chapter does not differentiate as to what type of violence is
committed by Salafist groups or what target groups are affected by the
violence. I also exclude the study of Indian Salafist groups in Kashmir
since the political reality which is my main influencing variable is very
different and violent in the region as opposed to the rest of India (also
referred to as Hinterland India). The last caveat would be that this
chapter specifically looks at the collective identity of Salafists across India
and the official institutional argument against violence in India. It does
recognize that individually, Salafist clerics in India are likely involved in
encouraging violence across the nation even if it is not institutionally
supported.
To harbour a fruitful discussion regarding these organizations, the
chapter uses both primary sources including texts as well as speeches and
videos by ideologues from both the nations. Secondly, I also conducted
numerous interviews with people from Salafist backgrounds or those
who have engaged with Salafists in India and Pakistan (the majority
being from India) in addition to my own experience with various Salafist
groups in India since 2010. Alongside this, I have also used secondary
texts such as books and journal articles to better explain the Salafist
movements and the differences between the political situations in the
two nations.

State Fragility and Violence

The theoretical framework in which this chapter is located is the connec-

tion between state fragility and violent extremism. State fragility is a
concept that measures the level of stability that a nation has politically,
based on a set of key indicators such as the loss of physical territory and
monopoly over the use of force, inability to deal with other states as well
as collect taxes, lack of credibility to control violent crime and many
other such factors (Fund for Peace, 2018).
26 M. S. Siyech

All of this is encapsulated in the State Fragility Index, an annual report

that classifies states based on 12 factors. According to this Index, India
is now ranked 68th under the category ‘Warning’, whereas Pakistan is
ranked 25th under the category ‘Alert’ (Messner De Latour et al., 2020).
This ranking helps provide some context as to why Salafists have engaged
more with violence in Pakistan as opposed to India.
Many reports have illustrated how such fragility has an impact on
violent extremism. The stabilization report for instance documents this
in a process with four fluid and overlapping stages being (1) The pres-
ence of vulnerabilities, (2) the creation of an ideological narrative, (3)
intergroup interactions and finally (4) becoming an extremist. As such,
the presence of push factors such as poverty, instability, corruption etc.
creates space for violent ideologies to gain dominance over communities
within such states (UK Stabilisation Unit, 2018).
The next few sections will identify the Salafist movement globally, in
India and in Pakistan before discussing the various narratives that led
to violence. As the concluding section will show, the reason for such
violence can also be located within the context of state fragility thereby,
helping predict if the tendency for Salafists to engage in violence can
change over time.

Salafism: An Introduction
Contemporary Salafism studies as a field globally has largely burgeoned
in the early 2000s, although some writing covering it did exist before
too. Many popular studies and influential media reports blamed violence
and terrorism on the exclusivist ideology propounded by Salafists (Alatas,
2014; Jacob Zenn, 2013; Schlomo Brom, 2016; Wright, 2012). In
academia, Salafism was largely analysed using the lens of security studies
given its relation to groups like Al Qaeda and later on, the Islamic State
(Egerton, 2011). For instance, Quintan Wictorowitz discussed the rela-
tion between Al Qaeda and Salafists by highlighting their perspectives on
various tactical issues related to violence (Wictorowitz, 2017).
Scholars like Haykel, however, argued that contrary to popular beliefs,
the linkages between Salafism and violence in many parts of the world are
 2 Differing Trajectories of Salafism in India … 27

weak. He pointed out the heterogeneity of the movement and provided

a framework that recognized the various jurisprudential, theological and
(relevant to this proposal) political differences within the movement
(Haykel, On the Nature of Salafi Thought and Action, 2009). Yet, there
remain many gaps in understanding Salafist movements especially in
regions like South Asia which has very large movements.
Historically, many authors have looked at the Salafist movement and
its forms in India and Pakistan as standalone movements. WW Hunter
(1876) in his book ‘The Indian Musalmans’ conducted the first study of
Salafists (whom he termed as Wahabis) and largely wrote from a Euro-
centric, Orientalist perspective. Barbara Metcalf is another scholar who
wrote about the movement as part of her works on revivalist movements
in India (Metcalf, 2014). Apart from her, AQ Naqvi also gave an insider
look at the movement, especially the militancy that its members took
part in the 1820s alongside its contributions to various Indian causes
(Naqvi, 2001).
In the south, Roland Miller looked at the Mujahid movement as part
of his two monumental works on the Mapilla Muslims of Kerala (Miller,
2016) (Miller, 1976). His works mostly covered the evolution of the
movement partly without detailing the movements’ identity formation
or general political engagement. Similarly, Ahmadkutty also covered the
same movement in India as part of his work on Kerala Muslims (Ahmad-
kutty, 1995). Apart from the sources mentioned above, there are very few
other English-language publications on the topic.
Many works have also covered the topic of Salafists in one form or
the other in Pakistan. For instance, Mariam Abou Zahab has covered
the various shifts in the Ahl e-Hadeeth movement (Zahab, 2009). Simi-
larly, Ayesha Jalal has also spoken on the movement in the nation in
her work on Jihad in South Asia. Bizaa Zeynab Ali was another author
that covered the movement in Pakistan including its political and mili-
tant manifestations across time (Ali, 2010). Christine Fair has covered
the Salafi Jihadist militant groups such as Lashkar e-Taiba in Pakistan
(Fair, 2015). However, to my knowledge, no work exists that compares
the groups in the two nations. Subsequently, this study intends to be the
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 No hint of this adventure reached Dr. Mitford, lest the shock should
make him worse, although, naturally enough, Miss Mitford would
gladly have told him, so shaken and unnerved was she. Weak and
ill, the brave and unselfish woman watched by her parent, tending
and nursing him, allowing no one to take the principal duties from
her; rarely sleeping, and then only when forced to do so from sheer
exhaustion, until at last, early on the morning of December 11, the
death of her father released her from the long vigil.
“All friends are kind and very soothing,” wrote the stricken woman
to Miss Barrett, “but not half so soothing as your sweet kindness, my
dearest. Oh! let me think of you as a most dear friend—almost a
daughter, for such you have been to me.... Everybody is so kind! The
principal farmers are striving who shall carry the coffin. Surely this is
not common—to an impoverished man—one long impoverished—
one whose successor is utterly powerless! This is disinterested, if
anything were so, and therefore very touching, very dear. Perhaps I
have shed more tears for the gratitude caused by this kindness and
other kindnesses than for the great, great grief! That seems to lock
up the fountain; this to unseal it. Bless you, my beloved, for all your
inimitable kindness! Oh! how he loved to bless you! He seldom
spoke the dear name without the benediction—‘Miss Barrett! dear
Miss Barrett! Heaven bless her!’ How often has he said that! I seem
to love the name the better for that recollection.... I am resigned—
indeed I am. I know that it is right, and that it is His will.”
The funeral was an imposing affair; “the chief gentry of the country
sent to request to follow his remains to the grave; the six principal
farmers of the parish begged to officiate as his bearers; they came in
new suits of mourning, and were so deeply affected that they could
hardly lift the coffin. Every house in our village street was shut up;
the highway was lined with farmers and tradesmen, in deep
mourning, on horseback and in phaetons, who followed the
procession; they again were followed by poor people on foot. The
church and churchyard were crowded, and the building resounded
with tears and sobs when the coffin was lowered into the vault. The
same scene recurred on the ensuing Sunday, when every creature in
the crowded congregation appeared in black to hear the sermon—
even the very poorest wearing some sign of the mourning that was
so truly felt.” This was, as may be easily inferred, Miss Mitford’s own
account of the proceedings, but, as Mr. H. F. Chorley pointed out in
his published volume of her letters, although one cannot doubt the
sincerity of the report, it was one “utterly baseless on anything like
fact, or the feelings of those who knew the whole story. Dr. Mitford
was tolerated because she was beloved. The respect paid to his
remains was not so much to them as to her.”
When all was over, there came the inevitable day of reckoning,
and Miss Mitford had to face an appalling list of debts accumulated
by her father’s extravagance, liabilities amounting to close upon
£1,000. The sum seems incredible in view of Miss Mitford’s earnings
and of the help which had been periodically obtained from William
Harness in addition to the State pension. How can such a condition
of affairs be accounted for? A clue is, we think, to be found in a letter
which Miss Mitford wrote to a friend some six months before her
father died. “At eighty, my father is privileged to dislike being put out
of his way in the smallest degree, as company always does, so that I
make it as unfrequent as possible, and the things that weigh upon
me are not an occasional bottle or two of port or claret or
champagne, but the keeping two horses instead of one, the turning
half a dozen people for months into the garden, which ought to be
cultivated by one person, and even the building—as I see he is now
meditating—a new carriage, when we have already two, but too
expensive. These are trials, when upon my sinking health and
overburdened strength lies the task of providing for them;—when, in
short, I have to provide for expenses over which I have no more
control than my own dog, Flush.... It is too late now for the slightest
hope of change; and his affection for me is so great, that to hint at
the subject would not only shock him, but perhaps endanger his
health.”
Thus, with a heritage of liabilities, Miss Mitford came back from her
father’s funeral to think out some scheme of personal effort which
would not only give her something upon which to exist but remove
the stigma attaching to her father’s name. When the true state of
affairs became public property her friends decided to raise a
subscription in the hope of clearing the whole amount. Nothing short
of complete satisfaction to all creditors would content Miss Mitford,
who determined that “everybody shall be paid, if I have to sell the
gown off my back, or pledge my little pension.”
The subscription project was taken up very heartily, appeals,
signed by many influential people, being printed in the Times and
Morning Chronicle, and by the following March nearly a thousand
pounds had been received, with a promise of further donations
amounting to some hundreds, the final idea of the promoters being
that not only should the debts be paid but that a goodly amount
should be handed over to Miss Mitford wherewith to make a fresh
start and to provide an annuity. Writing on the subject to Miss
Jephson, Miss Mitford intimated that the Queen was among the
subscribers, but desired that her name be not mentioned, “as she
gives from her private income, and fears being subjected to
solicitation (this adds to the compliment, as it proves it is not a matter
of form).” In addition to this there were contributions from many of
the nobility and notables in the literary and artistic world, thus
testifying to the great esteem in which Miss Mitford was held. It must
have been very gratifying to her to be thus remembered in this her
bitterest hour of need. Nor was this the only evidence of goodwill, for
many of the neighbouring gentry vied with each other in paying little
attentions to the lone woman, in offers of hospitality and in a hundred
small and unostentatious ways, which touched her deeply. “I never
before had an idea of my own popularity, and I have on two or three
occasions shed tears of pure thankfulness at reading the letters
which have been written to, or about, me.... I only pray God that I
may deserve half that has been said of me. So far as the truest and
humblest thankfulness may merit such kindness, I am, perhaps, not
wholly undeserving, for praise always makes me humble. I always
feel that I am over-valued; and such is, I suppose, its effect on every
mind not exceedingly vainglorious.”
Perhaps the most touching of the many kindnesses now showered
upon her was that of Mr. George Lovejoy, the famous bookseller of
Reading, who made her free of his large and very complete
circulating library and afforded her a most lavish supply of books.
The Library was founded in the year 1832 by Mr. Lovejoy and came
to be regarded as the finest of its kind in the Provinces. He was,
himself, a man of considerable learning and possessed amiable
characteristics which endeared him to all and sundry, especially to
the children, who were in the habit of appealing to him to solve any
problems which might be bothering their small heads, whilst he was
frequently besieged by them for pieces of string in the peg-top
season. And not only did the children consult him, for he gathered
about him quite a number of literary people to whom he was indeed
a counsellor and friend. His shop was the rendezvous for the County,
among the most frequent visitors being Charles Kingsley—Eversley
being but fourteen miles distant—and Miss Mitford, with any literary
friends who happened to be calling on her at the time. “In general we
can get any books we wish at the excellent Reading library
(Lovejoy’s); he, or I, have all you mention,” wrote Miss Mitford to a
friend who had suggested certain books for perusal.
 Mr. George Lovejoy, Bookseller, of Reading.

“I have been too much spoiled,” she wrote later; “at this moment I
have eight sets of books belonging to Mr. Lovejoy. I have every
periodical within a week, and generally cut open every interesting
new publication—getting them literally the day before publication.”
The Lovejoy Library was noted from its earliest days for the very fine
collection of Foreign works which it contained, and this alone would
have made it invaluable to Miss Mitford, whose love for French and
Italian literature was remarkable.
Then, too, Mr. Lovejoy undertook little commissions for his friend
when she required anything obtained specially in London, getting his
London agents to enclose the goods in his book parcel and, when
received, despatching it by special messenger to the cottage at
Three Mile Cross. Throughout the letters he is frequently referred to
as “Dear Mr. Lovejoy,” or “My dear friend, Mr. Lovejoy. Nobody
certainly ever had such a friend as he is to me, and all his servants
and people are as kind as he is himself.”
So, with kind friends about her, Miss Mitford strove to forget her
sorrow and to devote herself once more to literary work.
Unfortunately, however, the cottage was once again showing itself
the worse for wear, and it was a question as to whether it should not
be given up in favour of some other habitation near at hand. It was at
length decided, at the suggestion of Mr. Blandy, of Reading—who
was at that time managing Miss Mitford’s affairs under instructions
from William Harness—that, if the rent could be adjusted to suit Miss
Mitford’s purse, the cottage should be renovated and she stay on.
This was all agreed to, and while the painters and decorators were in
possession, Miss Mitford departed to Bath for a fortnight’s holiday.
Returning somewhat unexpectedly, she found the workmen
dawdling and the maid, who had been left in charge, absent at the
theatre, a state of things which stirred her to great activity and
indignation, “and the scolding which I found it my duty to administer,
quite took the edge off my sadness.”
 FOOTNOTES:
[29] Kerenhappuck, her companion.
 CHAPTER XXVII

LOVE FOR CHILDREN AND LAST DAYS AT

THREE MILE CROSS

Love of little children was one of the noticeable characteristics of Dr.

Mitford’s life, and it was one in which his daughter shared. That she
entered most fully into the games and pursuits of the village
youngsters is evidenced in Our Village, where we obtain delightful
little portraits of Joe Kirby, Jack Rapley, Jem and Lizzie, which
sufficiently indicate the author’s knowledge of the child-mind, to say
nothing of those breezy, hilarious descriptions of the slide and the
cricket-match.
Shortly after Dr. Mitford’s death there came into her life a little boy
named Henry Taylor—frequently alluded to as “K——’s little boy” in
her letters, and as “little Henry” in the Recollections, but not to be
confounded with the “little Henry” of Our Village, who was a lad
sometimes hired by the Doctor for the performance of odd jobs.
Henry Taylor was born in Reading—the child of K——, Miss
Mitford’s companion and hemmer of flounces—and at the mistress’s
own request the boy was brought to live at her cottage when he was
just upon two years old. He came as a new and welcome interest
into her life and, while she petted and spoiled him, gave him wise
and tender counsel. “A little boy, called Henry,” she wrote of him in
her Recollections, “the child of the house (son, by the way, to the
hemmer of flounces), has watched my ways, and ministered
unbidden to my wants and fancies. Long before he could open the
outer door, before, indeed, he was half the height of the wand in
question” [her favourite walking-stick], “there he would stand, the
stick in one hand, and if it were summer time, a flower in the other,
waiting for my going out, the pretty Saxon boy, with his upright figure,
his golden hair, his eyes like two stars, and his bright, intelligent
smile! We were so used to see him there, silent and graceful as a
Queen’s page, that when he returned to school after the holidays,
and somebody else presented the stick and the rose, I hardly cared
to take them. It seemed as if something was wrong, I missed him so!
Most punctual of petted children!”
Whilst the child was at boarding-school in Reading, a rather
serious outbreak of smallpox in the town, and particularly in a house
adjoining the School, necessitated his being sent home to the
cottage without delay, though not, unfortunately, in time to prevent
his being infected. He was extremely ill and his life, at times,
despaired of, the mother and Miss Mitford taking it by turns to watch
over and nurse him. In the Recollections there is a most touching
reference to this incident, which proves how strong was Miss
Mitford’s affection for the child, how much a mother’s heart was hers.
Quoting from Leigh Hunt’s poetry, she says:—“There is yet another
poem for which I must make room. Every mother knows these
pathetic stanzas. I shall never forget attempting to read them to my
faithful maid, whose fair-haired boy, her pet and mine, was then
recovering from a dangerous illness. I attempted to read these
verses, and did read as many as I could for the rising in the throat—
the hysterica passio of poor Lear—and as many as my auditor could
hear for her own sobs.” And then she quotes those beautiful verses:
—“To T. L. H., six years old, during a sickness.”

“Sleep breathes at last from out thee,

My little patient boy;
And balmy rest about thee—
Smooths off the day’s annoy.
I sit me down and think
Of all thy winning ways;
Yet almost wish with sudden shrink
That I had less to praise.
 To say he has departed,
His voice, his face is gone!
To feel impatient-hearted
Yet feel we must bear on!
Ah, I could not endure
To whisper of such woe,
Unless I felt this sleep ensure
That it will not be so.”

“Little Henry” is one of the few survivors of those who knew Miss
Mitford intimately, and he has many tender memories of the kindly
woman who, as time went on, made him her constant companion
when she walked in the lanes and meadows in and about the
neighbourhood. Woodcock Lane, of which we have already made
mention, was among her favourite haunts, and thither she would
take her way, with little Henry and the dogs, and while she sat with
her writing-pad on her knee, would watch the eager child gathering
his posies of wild flowers. “Do not gather them all, Henry,” was one
of her regular injunctions on these occasions, “because some one
who has not so many pretty flowers at home as we have may come
this way and would like to gather some”; and sometimes she would
add, “remember not to take all the flowers from one root, for the plant
loves its flowers, and delights to feed and nourish them”—a pretty
fancy which the child-mind could understand and appreciate. “Never
repeat anything you hear which may cause pain or unhappiness to
others” was a precept which often fell from her lips when speaking to
the child and it was a lesson which he says he has never forgotten
and has always striven to live up to in a long and somewhat arduous
life spent here and abroad. Miss Mitford had a great and deep-
seated objection to Mrs. Beecher Stowe. It arose principally from
disapproval of certain derogatory statements about Lord Byron and
his matrimonial relations which Mrs. Stowe had expressed to friends
of Miss Mitford’s and which, after Miss Mitford’s death, were
published in the work entitled Lady Byron Vindicated. The reason for
this attitude of mind on Miss Mitford’s part is not difficult to
understand when we remember that her great friend, William
Harness, was among the earliest and dearest of Lord Byron’s
friends. Thus, when Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published in this
country, Miss Mitford refused to give any credence to the revelations
it contained, and in this connection it is interesting to record that it
was among the few books which she counselled the boy not to read.

The “House of Seven Gables,” a view on the road to Swallowfield.

For the children in the village she had ever a kind word and smile,
inquiring why they did this or that when playing their games, and
nothing delighted her more than to come upon a game of cricket
being played by the youngsters, for then she would watch the game
through, applauding vigorously and calling out encouraging remarks
to the players, all of whom referred to her as the “kind lady.”
During the year 1844 Queen Victoria paid an unofficial visit to the
Duke of Wellington at Strathfieldsaye, and Miss Mitford conceived
the idea that it would please the Queen to be greeted on the
roadside by the village children. With the co-operation of the farmers,
who lent their wagons, some two hundred and ninety children were
carried to a point near Swallowfield—some few miles from Three
Mile Cross along the Basingstoke Road—each carrying a flag
provided at Miss Mitford’s expense and by the industry of her maid,
Jane, who was very skilful at such work. The wagons were decked
out with laurels and bunting and made a very brave show when the
Queen, escorted by the Duke, passed by them. “We all returned—
carriages, wagons, bodyguard and all—to my house, where the
gentlefolk had sandwiches and cake and wine, and where the
children had each a bun as large as a soup-plate, made doubly nice
as well as doubly large, a glass of wine, and a mug of ale”—rather
advanced drinks for children, but probably thin enough to do no
harm. “Never was such harmless jollity! Not an accident! not a
squabble! not a misword! It did one’s very heart good.... To be sure it
was a good deal of trouble, and Jane is done up. Indeed, the night
before last we none of us went to bed. But it was quite worth it.”
All this sounds very delightful and light-hearted and truly the years
seemed now to be passing very gently and kindly with the
warmhearted woman who had, hitherto, suffered so much.
There were, of course, the usual ailments due to advancing age,
which had to be endured, but, with short trips to town and a long
holiday at Taplow, these ailments had no serious, immediate effect
on Miss Mitford’s general health.
In 1846 the dear friend, Miss Barrett, was married to Robert
Browning, an incident which proved—so Miss Mitford recorded—that
“Love really is the wizard the poets have called him”. There is no
mention of a wedding-present being despatched from Three Mile
Cross—it will be remembered that the marriage was a somewhat
hurried and secret affair, due to Mr. Barrett’s opposition to the whole
idea—but we do know that when the happy couple left for Italy via
Paris they took with them Flush, the dog, which Miss Mitford had
sent as a gift to her friend some years before. Flush was a character,
and figures very much in the Barrett-Browning correspondence from
1842 to 1848; he died much loved and lamented, and now lies
buried in the Casa Guidi vaults.
All the world knows what a wonderful marriage that was—two
hearts beating as one—and how remarkable and romantic was the
courtship, the story of which, from Mrs. Browning’s own pen, is so
exquisitely told in Sonnets from the Portuguese—the “finest sonnets
written in any language since Shakespeare’s,” was Robert
Browning’s delighted comment—“the very notes and chronicle of her
betrothal,” as Mr. Edmund Gosse writes of them, when he relates
how prettily and playfully they were first shown to the husband for
whom they had been expressly written. But—and this is why we
make mention of them here—before ever they were shown to the
husband they had been despatched to Miss Mitford for her approval
and criticism, and she urged that they be published in one of the
Annuals of the day. To this suggestion Mrs. Browning would not
accede, but consented at last to allow them to be privately printed,
for which purpose they were again sent to Miss Mitford, who
arranged for their printing in Reading—probably through her friend,
Mr. Lovejoy—under the simple title of Sonnets: by E. B. B., and on
the title-page were the additional words:—“Reading: Not for
Publication: 1847.”
Miss Mitford often made complaint of the number of visitors who
thronged her cottage, but now that she had none but herself to
consider she seems to have found her chief delight in receiving and
entertaining, in quiet fashion, the many literary folk who made
pilgrimages to her, visits which were always followed by a
correspondence which must have fully occupied her time. This year,
1847, brought Ruskin to the cottage through the introduction of Mrs.
Cockburn (the Mary Duff of Lord Byron). “John Ruskin, the Oxford
Undergraduate, is a very elegant and distinguished-looking young
man, tall, fair, and slender—too slender, for there is a consumptive
look, and I fear a consumptive tendency.... He must be, I suppose,
twenty-six or twenty-seven, but he looks much younger, and has a
gentle playfulness—a sort of pretty waywardness, that is quite
charming. And now we write to each other, and I hope love each
other as you and I do”—Miss Mitford’s note on the visit, written to
another friend, Mr. Charles Boner, in America.
 Miss Milford’s Cottage at Swallowfield.
(From a contemporary engraving.)
Hearing that William Chambers, the Edinburgh publisher, was that
year in London, an invitation was sent to him to call at the cottage,
and while there he, his hostess and Mr. Lovejoy discussed a project
which had long been occupying the minds of Miss Mitford and her
bookseller-friend, on the subject of “Rural Libraries.”
Mr. Chambers refers to the visit in his Autobiography. “The
pleasantest thing about the visit was my walk with the aged lady
among the green lanes in the neighbourhood—she trotting along
with a tall cane, and speaking of rural scenes and circumstances.... I
see she refers to this visit, stating that she was at the time engaged
along with Mr. Lovejoy in a plan for establishing lending libraries for
the poor, in which, she says, I assisted her with information and
advice. What I really advised was that, following out a scheme
adopted in East Lothian, parishes should join in establishing
itinerating libraries, each composed of different books, so that, being
shifted from place to place, a degree of novelty might be maintained
for mutual advantage.”
 In any case, this Mitford-Lovejoy project was well considered and,
after many delays, the two friends issued a little four-page pamphlet
(now very rare) with the front page headed “Rural Libraries,” followed
by a circular letter in which was set forth the origin of the scheme—
due to a request from the young wife of a young clergyman in a
country parish who wanted to stimulate the parishioners to the
reading of sound literature—and an invitation to interested persons
to correspond with “M. R. M., care of Mr. Lovejoy, Reading.” The rest
of the pamphlet was occupied with a list of some two hundred titles
of books recommended, among them being Our Village, the
inclusion of which caused Miss Mitford to tell a friend that she
“noticed Mr. Lovejoy had smuggled it in.” Whether anything definite
resulted from the distribution of this pamphlet is not certain, but the
labour it entailed is a proof of the interest which both Miss Mitford
and her coadjutor had in matters affecting the education of the
people.
By the year 1850 the cottage again became so bad as to be
almost uninhabitable—“the walls seem to be mouldering from the
bottom, crumbling, as it were, like an old cheese; and whether
anything can be done to it is doubtful,” and, acting under Dr. May’s
advice, it was decided to leave the old place for good. The
neighbourhood was scoured in the endeavour to find something
suitable, and at last the very thing was found at Swallowfield, three
miles further along the Basingstoke Road. “It is about six miles from
Reading along this same road, leading up from which is a short
ascending lane, terminated by the small dwelling, with a court in
front, and a garden and paddock behind. Trees overarch it like the
frame of a picture, and the cottage itself, though not pretty, yet too
unpretending to be vulgar, and abundantly snug and comfortable,
leading by different paths to all my favourite walks, and still within
distance of my most valuable neighbours.”
The removal, “a terrible job,” involving, among other items, the
cartage and re-arranging of four tons of books, took place during the
third week of September, 1851, just in time to enable the household
to get nicely settled in before the winter.
 “And yet it was grief to go,” she wrote. “There I had toiled and
striven, and tasted as deeply of bitter anxiety, of fear, and of hope, as
often falls to the lot of woman. There, in the fulness of age, I had lost
those whose love had made my home sweet and precious. Alas!
there is no hearth so humble but it has known such tales of joy and
of sorrow! Friends, many and kind, had come to that bright garden,
and that garden room. The list would fill more pages than I have to
give. There Mr. Justice Talfourd had brought the delightful gaiety of
his brilliant youth, and poor Haydon had talked more vivid pictures
than he ever painted. The illustrious of the last century—Mrs. Opie,
Jane Porter, Mr. Cary—had mingled there with poets, still in their
earliest dawn. It was a heart-tug to leave that garden.... I walked
from the one cottage to the other on an autumn evening, when the
vagrant birds, whose habit of assembling here for their annual
departure gives, I suppose, its name of Swallowfield to the village,
were circling and twittering over my head; and repeated to myself the
pathetic lines of Hayley as he saw these same birds gathering upon
his roof during his last illness:—

‘Ye gentle birds, that perch aloof,

And smooth your pinions on my roof,
Preparing for departure hence
Ere winter’s angry threats commence;
Like you, my soul would smooth her plume
For longer flights beyond the tomb.
May God, by Whom is seen and heard
Departing man and wandering bird,
In mercy mark us for His own
And guide us to the land unknown!’

Thoughts soothing and tender came with those touching lines, and
gayer images followed. Here I am in this prettiest village, in the
cosiest and snuggest of all cabins; a trim cottage garden, divided by
a hawthorn hedge from a little field guarded by grand old trees; a
cheerful glimpse of the high road in front, just to hint that there is
such a thing as the peopled world; and on either side the deep,
silent, woody lanes that form the distinctive character of English
scenery.”
 CHAPTER XXVIII

SWALLOWFIELD AND THE END

It will be remembered that some time after the correspondence with

Sir William Elford had been well established, he suggested to Miss
Mitford that much of the literary criticism contained in the letters was
valuable and might be edited with a view to publication. To this Miss
Mitford would not consent at the time, for, although the idea
appealed to her, she feared that her rather outspoken comments on
contemporary authors might, if published during their lifetime, lead to
unpleasantness which it were wiser to avoid. Many years had now
elapsed since the suggestion was made, and many changes had, in
consequence, taken place. The death of a large number of the
authors mentioned had removed Miss Mitford’s principal objection.
She herself was now a comparatively old woman, with a maturer
judgment, whose criticism was therefore more likely to command
respect, and as the death of her father had increased her leisure for
the performance of literary work—and she was still unwilling to tackle
the long-projected novel—she arranged with Miss Elford (Sir William
being dead) to gather the letters together and forward them to Three
Mile Cross. The task thus undertaken was both congenial and easy,
and by the time of her removal to Swallowfield she had made such
progress that it was decided to publish without delay. Mr. Bentley,
who was approached on the subject, suggested that the work be
amplified and issued in three volumes under the title of Recollections
of Books. Acting on this advice, Miss Mitford completed the work,
after she had settled herself in her new home, and by 1852 the book
was published under the more imposing title of Recollections of a
Literary Life, and Selections from my Favourite Poets and Prose
Writers. It was dedicated to Henry F. Chorley, one of a number of
young men whose dramatic and literary talent had brought him under
the author’s notice some years before and which, as usual, resulted
in the establishment of a warm friendship between the two. The book
was much sought after and, on the whole, was well received,
although certain of the critics thought the title too ambiguous—a
criticism which Miss Mitford disarmed, somewhat, by admitting, in
the Preface, that it gave a very imperfect idea of the contents. News
of her removal took many old friends to Swallowfield, anxious to see
whether the change was for the better. Ruskin was delighted with it;
so too, in a modified sense, was young James Payn, “that splendidly
handsome lad of twenty-three—full of beauty, mental and physical,
and with a sensibility and grace of mind such as I have rarely
known.”

Miss Mitford’s Cottage at Swallowfield, in 1913.

Mr. Payn’s Literary Recollections, published in 1884, contain some

delightful pen-portraiture of his old friend, whom he calls “the dear
little old lady, looking like a venerable fairy, with bright sparkling
eyes, a clear, incisive voice, and a laugh that carried you away with
it.” Here, too, came Charles Boner from America, and Mr. Fields, the
publisher, the latter bringing with him Nathaniel Hawthorne—“whom
he found starving and has made almost affluent by his
encouragement and liberality”—with each of whom a constant
correspondence was afterwards maintained. Many of the letters to
Mr. Boner are to be found in his Memoirs, published in 1871, while
Mr. Fields gives a charming reminiscent sketch of Miss Mitford in his
Yesterdays with Authors, published in 1872. Like all the visitors to
Swallowfield, Mr. Fields took a great fancy to “little Henry,” and at
Miss Mitford’s own request he agreed that when the boy should be
fourteen years of age he should be sent to America to be
apprenticed to the publisher’s business of which Mr. Fields was the
head. The arrangement was one which gave the keenest delight to
Miss Mitford, who was most anxious that her little companion should
be properly and adequately provided for. Unfortunately (or
fortunately—for little Henry eventually became a Missionary), the
arrangement fell through, but Miss Mitford did her best to provide for
the boy’s welfare by making him her sole legatee.
Among the letters of 1851, written just prior to her removal, Miss
Mitford frequently mentioned Charles Kingsley, who had by this time
made himself felt as a strong man in the neighbouring village of
Eversley, in addition to the fame which his literary work had brought
him. “I hope to know him when I move,” wrote Miss Mitford, “for he
visits many of my friends.” In another letter she remarked:—“ Alton
Locke is well worth reading. There are in it worldwide truths nicely
put, but then it is painful and inconclusive. Did I tell (perhaps I did)
that the author begged Mr. Chapman to keep the secret?” [of the
authorship], “and Chapman was prepared to be as mysterious as
Churchill on the ‘Vestiges’ question, when he found Mr. Kingsley had
told everybody, and that all his fibs were falsehoods thrown away!”
It was not long, however, before Mr. Kingsley called at the cottage
and commenced a friendship which lasted until Miss Mitford’s death.
She found him “charming—that beau-ideal of a young poet, whom I
never thought to see—frank, ardent, spirited, soft, gentle, high-bred
above all.” It was a friendship which ripened rapidly, for Kingsley
loved to discuss deep social questions with this learned little woman
who, although at first she did not like his opinions, came to see that