India and Terrorism

As happened scores of time before once again the demon of terrorism has unleashed its heinous and merciless fangs on the innocent, helpless people of Mumbai. Terrorist strikes, bomb blast etc are nothing new to India, over last 15 years they have been a routine and every lull giving hope for peace has always been shattered with much greater impunity than the previous one. The latest carnage of 26/11 in Mumbai is unprecedented in every way, this was one of the most ferocious and devilish attempt by terrorist, who for the first time not only declared an open war against the state but also tried to make mockery of a state’s might. For them it seems that Indian state is completely impotent and as such nothing can stand against them. This was one the most frightening and chilling exhibition of ruthless and remorseless destruction of humanity, for more than two days it appeared that the ordeal would never come to an end.

It was no hit and run ghostly affair where a hidden bomb blows up some where in a crowded place generally swarmed by the middle and lower middle class families. For the first time elites of the society have been exposed to the brutalities of extremes, the places that were supposed to be secured and the aura that they will not have to bear the burnt of a commoner was totally shattered. Despite all their connections and prowess they were as helpless as an ordinary street guy. Perhaps this was the reason why this incident has aroused anxiety and curiosity around the world. Other wise in train blast and other carnages we have suffered similar losses but it never created that much international ripples.

This in many ways was a watershed event which may decide the future course of India. It has fully exposed our vulnerabilities; every citizen cutting across religion, economic and social strata has been shaken up. It is so frightening to visualize what could happen in future when just a dozen goons coming by boat can put 18 million people to ransom. It fully shattered the already hollow myth of Mumbai being dubbed as Shanghai. There was utter confusion, no leadership visible, no co-ordination among the forces seen. It was most appalling state of affair ever displayed, there was utter chaos and no one knew what to do. In past these shortcomings were often not known to people but now with 24x7 media presence every thing was stripped. The local police force, the intelligence system and disaster management all proved to be self disaster.

It also exposed the glee and greed of media to shore up their TRP at the expense of bodies and trauma, it kept entire nation glued to TV set by just showing elites places where only super rich and who is who matters and sensationalizing half baked stories about the perpetuator of crime. Even in tragedy of this magnitude they knew which side to butter, there was insignificant coverage of commoner dying at railway station and as such making the Indians to believe that in those 60 hours there was no other incidents worthy of reporting happened where people have suffered or any other thing worth noticing happened in a country like India

Though the magnitude of the event demanded extensive coverage but it was absolutely bizarre to keep showing day and night few goons hiding in the building and battling. This only added fear and sense of helplessness and insecurity, particularly for the feeble minds. It appeared as if media was hell bent in inciting the people to react and revolt, if it was against the political system it can be understood but who could guarantee that the same would not go against communities, it always acts as two edge sword. For an ordinary citizen how does it matter to see the uninterrupted live coverage for three days and making the rowdies more than equal to the elite forces? In the bargain the terrorist achieved more than what they might have ever thought, whole nation was paralyzed by a dozen goons.

The consequences of this event are far reaching, now serious questions are posed to intelligence agencies, the elected representatives, the media and every one who matters. It appears that this time the usual out side hand story will not work, masses are oozing with anger for them enough is enough and they need a creditable response. As usual media particularly Hindi channels tried to prove that they are far better equipped than RAW or FBI as every minute they came out with stories and blame game theories rather waiting to get to the bottom of actual conspiracies. Most of the channels kept beating the Jihadi’s and Pak role and tried to create impression that only the majority community has been targeted and as if the attack on India affects only to them. No one tried to high light that one third who died in the carnage are from the same community to whom they are pointing fingers. For the terrorist there is no religion no cast, their ultimate objective is to create fear and panic at all expense and prove that despite being insignificant in numbers they can pose serious challenge to the best of the states in the world.

For the politicians as usual it is gods send opportunity to settle scores with opponents, to them events like these are tools through which they can maneuver their political fortunes. Rather than looking to score points and narrow gains, time has come to critically analyze the entire issue of terrorism Indian perspective. There has been regular rhetoric particularly from BJP on India being soft state, inducting new laws like home land security act of USA, emphasizing that post 9/11 the stringent law in USA has not allowed any attack etc. but no one bothers to relate the event in Indian context. Can by just being hard state, by introducing draconian laws like TADA, POTA etc we can ensure the security and protect our citizens. We had these laws in place for years and saw such activities repeatedly happened. For the records over many thousands were arrested under TADA and the conviction rate was abysmal one to two percent, the law was mostly used to target people for political gain rather using it as a tool to save India.

Forget terrorist, despite having every possible law, can we say a normal citizen is safe, in India every day there are numerous murder, rape, kidnapping, looting and violence taking place in the name of region, religion, language and caste. Have we been able to tackle them, they are not sponsored through any out side rogue state, their roots and origin are our own. We being an absolutely fragmented society, with multiple fractures and fault lines in our social system have never worked as an Indian. Despite being claimants of spirituality, follower of peace and mercy if we see in last few decades there have been dozens of incidents where all these myth have been shredded to pieces.

For the millenniums for us our self interest has always been paramount, these was hardly a moment went we acted as a nation or as an Indian. Barely for few patchy periods, no one has really bothered for the country or community at large. At the moment when it seems India has progressed to the moon, one third of our people have no means to maintain their most basic need of food and shelter, how disgusting it is to see a women sitting on a road side pavement for the natures call in a country whose many people are in the list of top ten richest people in the world. Social disparity is so rampant that every nooks and corner of a city projects many India within India. Right from independence our own leaders, administrations or for that matter any one who has power is day and night exploiting the people, looting the exchequer, indulging in violence, dividing the society in the name of caste, region, language and religion, responsible for killing of thousands per year and getting away than why so much fuss on these sudden deaths.

India should not enter in the same folly as was done by USA as they had different agenda on terror rather than addressing and fighting the root cause. Their objective was purely expansion of their territorial presence and extending their might on possible energy routes. We all know by killing over a million of innocent Iraqis how many hundred new terrorist they have created for the world. Also, has any one forgotten entire Taliban was their creation and paid soldiers? If they have been honest in solving the long dispute of Palestine which is the original breeding ground of all terror, event of 9/11 would never have happened. The argument that post 9/11 there was no attack on them has very little to do with the law and increase in security apparatus, rather they are fortunate that they have no hostile borders, no regional, no separatist movements not having scores of ethnic community and above all not having people who live life of animals, confined to place equal to their grave with no guarantee about next meal. It is a known fact inmates in jail in USA have larger area to live compare to a person living in Indian city. Need is the mother of every deed, a hungry stomach can force a person to sell his body, forget the border.

We must know that we have thousands of kilometers of unguarded coast and land area and with poverty, illiteracy, inadequacies and social disparity running so high that a amount of few thousand rupees we can get people killed or buy over the law enforcer, than how can we prevent external infiltration?. Justice delayed is justice denied, we have hundreds of incidents where thousands of innocent people have been killed, tortured and time and again commission after commission it was proved that state being partisan, administration acting with clear bias, rather than punishing the guilty we saw them becoming more powerful and respectful. No one has ever been made accountable and given a punishment worth their crime. They always came back with Newton’s theory of reaction against action, by this logic every one is right, even a terrorist too as he too is reacting to some thing happened to him or his folk.

When we live in such an incoherent social system it automatically creates disenchantment and disillusions in people. At the moment we have a sharp communal divide that has marginalized over 200 million of minority communities. we have more than 100 million in North West acting as separatist and another 100 millions waging war on social engineering by propagating Mao’s philosophy. More than 50% of Indian district are affected by these plague in one way or other. Unless there is absolute solidarity between various sections of society how they can fight external menace.

These are frightening numbers, how a country can a country project a single dedicated face to fight such highly motivated destructive forces when more than the population of USA and Europe is made passive about the country. If one makes an honest attempt to find the genesis of external forces getting easy access in India it will be no rocket science to know that the shear corruption, disillusionment with state and vast majority of citizen having indifferent attitude has resulted in most of this mess. It is a joke and disgrace to keep hearing from media that a dozen people came through boat and hijacked a city which was suppose to have best policing and infrastructure among all Indian cities. For a country that goes to moon it takes more than 12 hours to send forces to the site, they had no plane and no plan in place for such disaster. Rather than searching their own house for them it was easier to declare other country’s hand within one hour of the attack and start revealing various important classifieds on the way and means through which terrorist carried out this carnage. This must have vastly helped the terror group to wipe out all the vital clues, how careless and headless we work. The various encounters and other stories in past have never resulted in any concrete policy or frame for tackling future events rather most of them proved to be just eye wash, hope this too does not met the similar fate.

This time the government must work with courage and conviction, if they have clear proof about Pak than hit them by all means, socially, economically even militarily. At the same time they must unearth the real perpetuators of all the recent bomb blast, now when there is lead on new group emerging from majority community, the hunt should lead to its rather conclusion as there are seeds of suspicion the way entire ATS team has been eliminated. Also, its time to go in for honest social engineering no nation can afford half of its population as being passive and disenchanted due to state policies, their atrocities and selective treatments.

It has proved time and again that the people are the best and most effective tool in passing the leads to agencies and calming the tempers in the event of heat, no equipment or technology can ever replace them. Efforts should be made to draw a line between terrorist and community; some stray bad elements are bad irrespective to which sect they belong; they must be identified and put to trial in full public glare. The entire community should not be marginalized or punished for the sake of few people wrong agenda. The state must induct people from minority communities in the key administration like local intelligence, law and order and empower them with a feeling the they too are part of the system rather than systematically cornering them as happened in states like Gujarat or Orissa. We must stop playing minority or majority appeasement policy, honest assessment must be made and genuine attempts should be done to ensure that justice is done and visible to every one.

The state should act firmly with every one irrespective of religion and political affiliation who is found indulging in creating wedge among people in the name of religion, region, caste, forward, backward etc. It must ensure that the gap between rich and poor is reduced. Every citizen must have the basic necessities of life and a share in India’s prosperity. India will continue to suffer as long as it applies different set of laws to powerful and weak, keep playing vote bank politics. May be the hard posture of the government will be able to reduce the external terror act but country will never be fully secured and safe unless all the citizen are treated equally and start taking pride in being Indian first.