Ghori Resurfaces: A Phantom Returns to the Stage
As 2025 unfolds, Farhatullah Ghori – Pakistan’s elusive terror strategist – has re-emerged in digital spaces spreading propaganda around Ghazwa-e-Hind, urging violence in India’s southern states. After the ban on the Popular Front of India, security agencies believe he moved to revive older networks like Al Ummah through online recruitment in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka (as reported by IANS, July 2025). According to intelligence assessments, his content encourages lone-wolf attacks on symbolic targets and public infrastructure. Videos circulating on social media threaten the Ram Temple and glorify recent acts of violence (India Today, January 2025).
This is not Ghori’s first appearance. In 2022 he released a video calling for jihad in Assam and Kashmir under the banner of Ghazwa-e-Hind (Geopolitical Monitor, June 2022). Linked for years to Lashkar-e-Taiba and HUJI, he is wanted for the 2002 Akshardham temple attack and the 2005 Hyderabad STF camp bombing. For nearly two decades he evaded a Red Corner Notice, reportedly sheltered by Pakistan’s ISI. His recent messages link the Nupur Sharma controversy, the CAA–NRC protests and verdicts in terror cases to what he calls a divine campaign for India’s conquest (Geopolitical Monitor, June 2022; Weekly Blitz, July 2022).
The Ideological Recasting of Ghazwa-e-Hind
References to Ghazwa-e-Hind appear in a few classical Hadith collections such as Musnad Ahmad and Sunan al-Nasa’i (Musnad Ahmad 23817; Sunan al-Nasa’i 3175). These narrations are regarded as ahad – single-chain reports of limited authenticity – and not mutawatir, which carry the highest credibility. Many Islamic scholars across centuries have questioned their origin or interpreted them as referring to early Arab raids into Sindh.
By strict definition, a ghazwa required the Prophet’s personal leadership, making the phrase “Ghazwa-e-Hind” logically incoherent in any modern context. Yet this very ambiguity makes it malleable – and therefore weaponisable – for those who use theology as a tool of domination.
From Zia to the Militant Madrasas
The revival of this idea began during General Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamisation in Pakistan. Deobandi madrasas proliferated under state patronage and foreign funding, embedding jihadist thought in religious curricula. A book endorsed by Zia, The Qur’anic Concept of War, argued that “instilling terror in the enemy’s heart” was a legitimate objective of Islamic strategy (Institute for Security Policy and Law). This doctrine shaped groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed and Hizbul Mujahideen that saw Kashmir as the first battle of a larger campaign stretching toward Jerusalem.
Security analysts long warned that these seminaries became factories of radicalisation and sectarian violence, indoctrinating young minds with visions of a global Islamic victory. When an ideological war is taught as religious duty, it no longer requires command or hierarchy – belief itself becomes the chain of command.
The TTP Turns Its Guns on Pakistan
The ideology Pakistan nurtured soon turned inward. The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) declared its own campaign as Ghazwa-e-Hind but interpreted “Hind” to include Pakistan itself. Its factions bombed Shia processions, police stations and army convoys. The 2014 Peshawar Army Public School massacre, in which over 130 children were killed, laid bare the self-destructive nature of this creed (BBC, December 2014). Pakistan sought to export jihad without suffering its return, yet its own proxies exposed that illusion.
From Kashmir to Jamia: India as the Chosen Theatre
Ghori’s sermons mirror those of Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, linking domestic controversies in India – from Nupur Sharma’s remarks to the CAA–NRC protests and campus clashes – as signs of Muslim persecution (Geopolitical Monitor, July 2022). Each incident is spun into proof of prophetic struggle, turning civil grievances into calls for holy war. Such propaganda does not depend on organisation or funding; it thrives on emotion and digital echo.
Posters, Protests and the Lone-Wolf Spark
The greatest danger today lies in the decentralisation of terror. A fallen poster in Bareilly or a provocative comment online can trigger mob violence. In Udaipur, two men filmed themselves beheading a tailor for supporting Nupur Sharma (NDTV, June 2022). These are not centrally commanded plots but isolated sparks ignited by shared ideology. Each believer becomes a self-activating soldier convinced of divine duty. For security agencies this is a nightmare – there is no headquarters to raid or chain of command to disrupt.
Deoband’s Fatwa and Its Legacy
The problem deepens when institutions with religious authority add to the ambiguity. In 2024 a fatwa issued by Darul Uloom Deoband circulated online appearing to endorse the Ghazwa-e-Hind narration and declare those who die in it as martyrs (India Today, February 2024). Police later called it an old reference, yet Deoband has never publicly retracted it. When an institution with such influence remains silent, its silence is heard as consent. Every hint of endorsement becomes oxygen for those who seek religious legitimacy for violence.
Riyadh’s Reforms and Regional Disillusionment
While Pakistan clings to medieval narratives, Saudi Arabia under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is moving the other way. Through his Hadith Documentation Project, only the Qur’an and widely authenticated Hadith are being treated as binding, sidelining weak narrations such as those about Ghazwa-e-Hind (Awaz The Voice, 2025). In NEOM – the kingdom’s high-tech city – scripture is being interpreted for a future-facing society. Surveys in West Asia indicate growing disillusionment with clerical control and greater support for reducing religious influence in governance (Arab Barometer, 2023; GAMAAN, 2022). In Iran too, after the Mahsa Amini protests, data shows declining identification with official religion and rising demand for secular rights. The contrast is stark: the custodian of Islam’s holiest sites is discarding what Islamabad still treats as a weapon of statecraft.
Yogi’s Bulwark: Countering the Madrasa Ecosystem
India cannot afford complacency. My film Crimson Crescent – The Last Quarter documents how Uttar Pradesh’s Anti-Terror Squad has built a bulwark against madrasa-linked radical networks, tracking illegal funding and monitoring infiltration routes (India Today, May 2025). This approach is being adapted in southern states where new cells have appeared around coastal corridors (IANS, July 2025). The lesson is clear: ideological prevention must accompany law enforcement.
The Crescent’s Arch: India’s Fight Against Ideological Drift
What India faces today is not an invasion by armies but the fragmentation of terror into individual impulses. As the scholar Marc Sageman described, this is “leaderless jihad” (Leaderless Jihad, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008). A knife-wielding youth in Udaipur, a truck driver in Nice, a lone gunman in Europe – all reflect the same pattern of self-radicalised violence. Each believer becomes an ideological weapon unbound by organisation yet bound by faith.
Ghazwa-e-Hind is not a plan but a myth that turns jihad into a campaign of targeted violence in which the life of the kafir is treated as expendable. To meet this threat India must look beyond security grids and dismantle the emotional and intellectual architecture that lends sanctity to killing. The battle is not merely for territory – it is for the soul of pluralism itself, as the mystic scholar Ram Swarup once reminded us.
