Obama administration praises Indian Muslims

The US has been successful in engaging with India on tracking money used by radical groups to penetrate into the country, the Obama Administration has said as it praised Indian Muslims for demonstrating a great deal of "resilience" against overtures by terrorist groups.

"In Indian, Muslim community has demonstrated a great deal of resilience against such overtures," Nisha Desai Biswal, Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, told members of Senate Foreign Relations Committee during a Congressional hearing early this week.

"We have seen in India that radical ideology has by and large not been successful in taking root," she said in response to a question when asked about penetration of Islamic extremism in India by Senator Chris Murphy.

Murphy also expressed concern over increasing Gulf investment in India.

"There's a lot of reporting about some major investments being made by the Saudis, by the Wahhabi Clerical Movement to set up a large network of schools and madrasas throughout India," he said.

"So, can you talk about that specific issue, and then more broadly about any developing trend lines on the penetration of some of these extremist groups to gain some foothold inside IndiaIJ" Murphy asked.

Biswal said the US is "clearly tracking" such investment and is "very concerned" about the reach of the global networks in India and around the world.

"That is a very focused part of our conversations and engagement on the counter terrorism front and on the intelligence front," she said.

"We have had very strong success in engaging with India on tracking financial flows that represent areas of concern, and the Indians themselves are doing a lot to track flows coming in not only from Gulf but from many other parts of the world that they think can cause concern," Biswal said.

"The challenge is always identifying what we believe is appropriate financial flows coming in from across and around the world versus areas of concern, and creating the distinctions and the systematic framework to constrain one and enable the other," she said.

Biswal said India and the United States are having "a very robust cooperation" on efforts by these global networks to tie into and reach into south Asia and India in particular.