Terrorism in the Indian context -- I

Fatalism

Responding to my anxiety over the well-being of my near and dear ones in Bangalore in the wake of the multiple blasts, my wise colleague assured me: “Don’t worry . . . nothing is going to happen to them, unless of course it is written in their destiny. If it is so, unfortunately, then no amount of taking precautions will stop it from happening”. I had to very strongly resist my urge to ask him why then he goes to a doctor when sick – isn’t it useless to gulp down those pills when everything is in the hands of destiny, after all?

It goes without saying that we need to shed this fatalistic attitude completely. Safety and security is our birthright, and also being vigilant citizens is among our most fundamental duties towards our country. I must admit that fatalism has its plus points too, in a morbid way. In terrorism-stricken situations, India behaves like a mammoth that refuses to respond to pin-pricks, which is surely not what the terrorists desire. They want India to suffer visibly, to moan, to try to get up and fight back, and in the process suffer even more. Not much pleasure stabbing a corpse! To make India stir, they need to hurt it in a grand scale… and this is what they are up to now.

Having said that, what a citizen has every right to demand is answers to why even a single life has been lost, why a single family has been destroyed. Is it not the responsibility of the state to provide safety and security to all its citizens, irrespective of religion or ethnicity?

The Policymakers

Our policymakers – the lawmakers and the bureaucrats -- they either cannot think of a comprehensive policy because they personally live a well-protected life (do they know how it feels to live everyday in terror, as scores of Indians have to do?) and therefore cannot comprehend the situation, or do not really want to act pro-actively (to turn the table on the terrorists, to hunt them in their own dens and not to wait till they hunt us), as this will affect their oh-so-important vote banks. Our PM famously spent sleepless nights worrying for doctor Haneef who was arrested in Australia (a country where you can expect a fair trial), but was he so forthcoming with his anguish at the plight of Indians working in Afghanistan or even in the Indian states of J&K (the Hindus) or the North-East (the Bengali and the non-locals)? At least I do not remember him (or for that matter anybody else) doing that. The so-called nationalist opposition party, the BJP, seems unable to rise above municipality-level politics – they have even invented a conspiracy in the recent attacks, hatched by their political opponents, to divert attention from the cash-for-vote scam in the Parliament!

Hopeless situation -- needless to say!

The Intellectuals

Come to the most deplorable part – the role played by our bleeding-heart intellectuals. It seems their hearts bleed truly only for the terrorists (never heard of organizations like SAHAMAT shedding tears for the victims of terrorism); it is the human rights of the perpetrators what they are only bothered about. Many so-called human rights groups are actually frontal organizations of the terrorists.. we hear of the MASS (Manab Adhikar Sangram Samiti) of Assam. I also cannot forget that a leftist Bengali intellectual once acted as an independent election observer on behalf of the Hurriyat Conference of J&K a few years ago, knowing fully well whose interests they represent. I can remember those times when huge rallies marched through Srinagar streets and letters dictating leave-the-valley-or-die were slid under the doors of the Kashmiri Hindus by the mob … did any human rights-wallah’s heart bleed then? Again, did it do so when Hindus were dragged from buses and gunned down in Punjab? Or when Assamese youth mobbed Guwahati’s city buses to hunt out the Bengali passengers and then play football with them (the method used to sort out was simple -- passengers were told to count from 1 to 10 in Assamese – the accent was always a clear giveaway to who were non-Assamese, particularly Bengalis).

(More on another day…)