ANJALI Thomas
BREAKING NEWS! Breaking News! It’s all that can be seen on television, heard on the radio, read in the papers… TERRORISM. Anywhere you go, you can’t escape it. You might be lucky enough not to have been in CP waiting for your bus when the bomb blast happened, or thanking your stars that you decided to order in instead of treating yourself at Cafe Leopold. Even if you avoid all that harm present in the physical realm, how will you protect yourself from the violent vibes that are prevalent everywhere? Do you decide to barricade yourself at home? Hoping to be protected from the evil outside… I’m sure the people living in Nariman Point thought the same.
If we were to take stock of all the attacks recently, we’ll just run out of fingers to count on. In recent years we have seen many kinds of violence which could be categorized under acts of terrorism, be it the activities of the Hindu hardliners, the ULFA, Sikh extremists or the more recent bomb blasts by jehadis. Terrorism literally has engulfed the nation in mass terror psychosis. One is constantly living in dread, if not for one’s safety, then for one’s loved ones.
You might ask the question, why? What could these ‘people’ possibly achieve by targeting innocent civilians? How can they claim to be glorious warriors when their behaviour is that of cowards, attacking those who are the most vulnerable and least prepared. I suppose if one were to be a devil’s advocate one can, in a twisted way, understand how certain people become terrorists. They feel they have been wronged (sometimes admittedly so) and they must right this wrong since no one else is willing to fight for them. However no amount of explanation can justify their actions.
Now that the stage has been set let’s actually get down to what we are talking about, what is terrorism? How does it affect us? I suppose in simple terms it would be any act of violence used to induce fear at a mass level. In November 2004, a United Nations Security Council report described terrorism as any act “intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants with the purpose of intimidating a population or compelling a government or an international organization to do or abstain from doing any act.” The goals directing terrorism are generally political, religious, or ideological.
Generally there is a strong ideological foundation or religious belief spurring terrorists on. These people identify strongly with their leaders and their cause. They have a strong sense of belonging to that community and they are not just willing to die, they want to die for the cause.
Terrorists have a sense of retributive justice. They may have turned to violence as a way of seeking revenge against those who have violated and humiliated them and their people. They are Machiavellian in their thinking; to them the revenge through any means is a way of getting justice for the wrongs committed against them. It can also be the result of misinterpreting religious texts to support their ideology, using whatever means necessary to have a pure Aryan Hindu nation, or removing all the unbelievers whose activities displease Allah.
One might ask what can we do to stop such acts from being committed again? The only way to make a difference is to raise our voices, demand better protection, raise awareness about terrorism and the effects of such attacks on the victims and survivors. Ultimately we have to realize that there is no path to peace… peace is the path.
