Policies justified by fear of Muslims created shared grievance among unsympathetic Indians

Evidence

To critics, the police powers the government invoked in the name of putting down Wahhabi fanaticism put the rights of all Indians at risk. Thus, ironically, fear of Muslims as being particularly prone to sedition translated into policies that caused Indians who might otherwise have felt little sympathy with the Khan brothers to share a common sense of grievance. — Julia Stephens, The Phantom Wahhabi, 139

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Captures a paradox of securitized governance: the very Muslim-specific suspicion used to license exceptional powers ends up manufacturing the cross-community solidarity the state feared.
• XREF: Connects to scholarship on colonial ‘rule of exception’ (e.g. Nasser Hussain) and to modern surveillance-state critiques.