In recent years, the internet has become a double-edged sword: an engine for education, social connection and civic engagement, but also an efficient vector for radicalisation. India with its vast, youthful, and increasingly connected population is particularly vulnerable to online recruitment and indoctrination efforts. While radicalising content is not limited to any one ideology, the rise of networks that exploit religious identity to recruit and mobilise individuals requires a calibrated response that blends cybersecurity, community outreach, legal safeguards, and platform accountability.
Radical elements take advantage of several internet features. Social media platforms, encrypted messaging apps, image and video-sharing services, and closed-group forums allow these actors to spread propaganda, circulate selective interpretations of scripture, share
“testimonials” and grievances, and create echo chambers that normalise extremism. Algorithms that prioritise engagement can amplify polarising content; micro-targeting enables recruiters to identify and groom vulnerable individuals often young people facing social isolation,
economic stress, or identity crises. The COVID-era shift to more online life further accelerated these processes, making digital spaces the primary recruitment ground.
India’s large youth demographic, expanding smartphone penetration, and multilingual online ecosystems create fertile ground for both local and transnational narratives. Diaspora networks, cross-border content in multiple languages, and the proliferation of small, private chat groups make monitoring difficult. At the same time, social and economic grievances real or perceived can be exploited by actors promising belonging or purpose. This mixture of technological scale and social complexity means interventions must be precise, proportionate, and rights-respecting.
Cybersecurity is often seen narrowly as protecting data or preventing hacks. However, in the context of countering online radicalisation, cybersecurity must be reimagined as a broader set of capacities that reduce harm while preserving civil liberties through:
- Detection and threat monitoring: Security teams within government, civil society and online platforms should use a combination of automated detection and human review to identify radicalising content at scale. Machine tools can flag patterns (shared URLs, repeated narratives, network growth spikes) but must be tuned to avoid false positives and respect freedom of expression.
- Platform safety and content moderation: Tech platforms must enforce transparent community guidelines, provide clear appeal mechanisms, and invest in local-language moderation. Given India’s linguistic diversity, moderation that relies only on English is inadequate. Cybersecurity here includes operational policies, regional trust-and-safety teams, and rapid takedown procedures for clearly violent or terrorist content.
- Disrupting recruitment networks: Cybersecurity operations constrained by law and human rights norms can focus on disrupting coordinated networks rather than criminalising dissent. This can involve tracing bot farms, exposing inauthentic amplification networks, and using digital forensics to map recruiter hubs. Security agencies need collaboration with platforms while upholding oversight and legal safeguards.
- Securing communication channels and privacy-aware interventions: Many vulnerable users communicate over encrypted channels. Blanket surveillance is neither effective nor ethical. Cybersecurity policy should prioritise targeted investigations based on clear legal standards, paired with community-based interventions that offer alternative pathways for those identified as at-risk.
- Counter-messaging and strategic communications: Cybersecurity extends to the information environment. Authorities and civil society can deploy strategic counter-narratives, credible religious scholarship that rebuts extremist misinterpretations, and campaigns amplifying stories of resilience. These should be co-created with local influencers, educators and faith leaders to retain cultural legitimacy.
Technical measures cannot replace social ones as strengthening digital literacy in schools and communities, teaching critical media skills, and creating safe reporting channels will reduce individual susceptibility. Legal frameworks must criminalise terror recruitment while protecting legitimate speech; speedy but fair judicial processes are necessary to maintain public trust. Equally important is empowering community organisations, mosques, student groups, women’s collectives, to act as first responders offering mentorship and rehabilitation.
The threat of online radicalisation is not an inevitability; it is a preventable social and technical problem. In India, the solution must be holistic: cybersecurity provides the tools to detect, disrupt, and mitigate harm, but its success depends on collaboration with communities, transparent legal safeguards, and constructive alternatives that address the root causes of radicalisation. Tackling the online spread of extremist ideologies means defending both public safety and the democratic values, pluralism, due process, and free expression that those values themselves protect.
-Insha Warsi
Francophone and Journalism Studies,
Jamia Millia Islamia.
