When I went to College street just after the Mumbai attack I found a large crowd, gathered inside college square protesting the attack. Their rhetoric was uncannily violent and the speaker, a member of Hindu Sanhati, a fireband Hindu nationalist group, presented priviledges given to the minorities (in this case muslims)as the cause of this attack. He felt these people should be made aware of their minority status and needs to be "controlled" (he even went to the extent of criticizing people's sympathy for Rizwanur as he thought it humiliating for a "Hindu" to be bothered about injustice done to a "muslim", which supposedly is not big issue as Mumbai attack!). He made absurd comments like if there is a movement against Singur and Nandigram incidents then why any such protest had not been put forth by the intellectuals of this state (though I guess he has compensated enough for that!). But then the protest was against certain policies of the government machinary. Here who will protest against whom? Who is responsible for the attack, do we know? As it is evident from initial investigation none of the terrorists are actually from India. They are even funded from and trained outside the country. So the claim of the Hindu Sanhati leader that our own "Muslims" are responsible for this attack is baseless. You are absolutely right that we cannot homogenize hindus or muslims. However the easiest way to vent out one's anger is to focus it or project it into one particular person or perhaps one particular community. Well on this earth most people wants to eliminate otherness and very few of us actually learn to live with it. But then it is also not very often that we run behind other people's lives with an AK-47. If we can't lesrn to be tolerant to differences, we at least are forced to bear up with it. So even if the constructed image of the respective religions incites people to attack each other then to nourish that false desire for revenge and to provide them with arms and ammunition there must be some external support. I feel it is important to think who sustains and nourishes terrorism today rather than asking why some people would be eager to give up their lives in order to kill others. The easy answer to the latter question must be the deprivation and negligence towards the have not's shown by the so-called democratic states round the World. I feel since historically certain religious communities (like the muslims) or races (like the blacks)have suffered torture and subjugation and have been impoverished and since almost none of the Government have taken any successful step to eliviate the conditions of the poor, most of the nations states have been partially communal, racist and jingoist. So it is natural for the people of the deprieved communities to indulge into violence and rupture. This perhaps is the cause of the violences that happen during communal riots. But that can't be the cause of terrorism indeed. Communal violence is temporary and unregulated whereas terrorism is sustained, planned and organized. It works like a corporate network where huge transaction of money is involved and great many people work in order to fullfill an aim unknown to any one of them (remember the film Aamir). Surely, a lot of people must have been bribed to successfully accomplish the Mumbai attack. It is absurd to think the Muslim's of the star hotels selflessly helping out the attackers out of some pan-islamic patriotism paving their way in. It is nontheless easy to get it done in this way for a country like India where poverty is rampant and corruption has reached the threshold mark. Then who is the culprit? Surely the one who gets benifitted. Then who gets benifitted? After the Vietnam war there has been no major battle all over the world except those related to terrorism but it should be kept in mind experiment with war weopons have never stopped. If someone asks if there will be a World War III then my answer would be - well it has already started - it has started in the form of terrorism and involves almost all the major nations of the World. If the culture of attack and counter-attack continues, the war will go on and will eventually benefit the weapon industry throughout the World. Today if Carbines are obsolete to counter terrorist attack then AK47 or even more advanced guns will be essential. If in the name of religion (that being the nexus of enmity) neighboring countries like India and Pakistan continues to fund terrorism eventually leading to another Indo-Pakistan war or if US is takes the charge of bombing Afghanistan to 'fight' terrorism then the weopon industry flourishes. So I smell something strongly fishy behind all this patriotic call to arms against terrorism, identifying it to be "Islamic". I am afraid in the process of questioning terrorism we might do something like to translate an oft-quoted Bangla phrase digging up the snake while looking for an Earthworm! So lets carefully handle it.
