Kill the business of terrorism

I have every reason to believe that if any government wants to truly get rid of terrorism, it can. The question is does it? Not apparently. If it did, it would have cut off the blood supply that feeds terrorist outfits. It would have destroyed their financial nervous system. That is the only real way to go about it.

But it hasn’t. Why? It’s not as if the intelligence and the government are not aware of this financial network that feeds and breeds the terrorist outfits. It would be naïve, almost stupid to assume that a whole lot of money would change hands and the intelligence wouldn’t come to know of it, if it wanted to, that is. If they don’t, maybe they should ask the Americans, who I’m sure have long charted out the flow of terrorist money within India and to and from India. So, what’s keeping the intelligence and more importantly the government from attacking the nerve centre of terrorism?

Self-preservation? Utter chaos, perhaps? Chaos that would result from acknowledging that many of the nerves carrying this money do wind up into political coffers? I say acknowledging because the knowledge is already there. It just needs to be acknowledged and acted upon. But that is exactly the difficult part, isn’t it?

Here’s Gieve Patel’s poem that most of us must have read way back in school. An apt reminder now:

On Killing A Tree

It takes much time to kill a tree,
Not a simple jab of the knife
Will do it. It has grown
Slowly consuming the earth,
Rising out if it, feeding
Upon its crust, absorbing
Years of sunlight, air, water,
And out of its leprous hide
Sprouting leaves.
So hack and chop
But this alone won't do it.
Not so much pain will do it.
The bleeding bark will heal
And from close to the ground
Will rise curled green twigs,
Miniature boughs
Which if unchecked will expand again
To former size.
No,
The root is to be pulled out –
Out of the anchoring earth;
It is to be roped, tied,
And pulled out-snapped out
Or pulled out entirely,
Out from the earth-cave,
And the strength of the tree exposed,
The source, white and wet,
The most sensitive, hidden
For years inside the earth.
Then the matter
Of scorching and choking
In sun and air,
Browning, hardening,
Twisting, withering,
And then it is done.

Too much to handle

It’s been a sad day in Mumbai. There’s been a steady inflow of bad news since morning about friends, acquaintances and colleagues who died yesterday in the blasts or succumbed to serious injuries by this evening. Some are still critical; they and their families are fighting it out in the hospitals. Others have been crippled for life. Their faces keep looming in our heads. I’m loathe to think that some terrorists must be gloating over their ‘achievement’ even as these honest to god working people have suffered irrecoverably.

We The other People

I don’t live in Jammu & Kashmir. Not in the North-east either. For me, bomb blasts and terror threats are not a way of life.

I live in Mumbai, where incidents like last evening’s serial train blasts are sporadic, sudden shocks that jolt our collective consciousness only once in a while. Besides, the city is the business nerve centre of India and its resilience is outstanding. It recovers fast and builds back faster – not just the physical damage but the hope and the confidence as well. No bunch of godforsaken terrorists can change that.

So, Mumbai locals, the world’s most effectively managed commuter rails, are already back on track and people have gone back to work.

But, what about the reality that some others face every single day of their lives? For those in the North and North-east, there is no respite – they’ve been haunted day in, day out for decades. Unlike us, they don’t get a chance to recover from incessant terrorism. They’ve been crippled economically and emotionally all along and there’s no end to it in sight. How long can the human spirit stand against such continuous onslaught? And why should it? What cause, what reasons justify such heinous acts? NONE.

My heart goes out to those who suffered grave losses. But sympathy is a useless thing. It achieves nothing.

People who are caught in such situations may not have the strength or the resources to fight back. So, who keeps their fights going for them? The media does and NGOs do. But both can do only so much. At the end of the day, social and political inertia can bring the best of efforts to naught. It’s not like there are no solutions other than out and out war or submission. Terrorism and defence experts have offered strategies in the past, some of which were known in the public domain. But there’s very little awareness among the junta as to what is done about them. Some we know were not implemented for reasons of political inconvenience. There’s no point in mentioning them here – a news archive and discussion forum search can yield them.

What is more useful in this space is whether we are demanding a platform for those strategies in a proactive, sustained way or whether we’re getting too caught up in our own lives instead. Understandably, not all aspects of these solutions or strategies can be brought out on a public platform because of their sensitive nature. But that’s not required either. All we need is a stubborn insistence on a reasonable amount of transparency and sustained concrete action. We pay taxes, we give votes. So we have a right to demand action that is in our best interests. To do that, we have a very citizen friendly media and other means of communication – we have all the resources to ask compelling questions and seek definite answers. The only requirement is to demand consistently and persistently. That’s possibly the only way we as individuals can come together to exert concerted pressure on the political machinery.

So, if you’ve cared to read so far, I’ll leave you with a thought and a question: As far as terrorists are concerned, their cause gets weaker and weaker with every blow they strike. Their lives become more and more wasted with every spirit they try to break. But, how about us? Hollow jingoism doesn’t work. In an effort to get on with normalcy, will we forget the endless trauma and the personal tragedies of victims elsewhere, whose homes and happiness have been destroyed by jokers who think they can terrorise us into giving away our land and our people – that too after killing and crippling these very people for decades? Does it take too much effort to persistently voice your demand and not get satisfied by sub standard responses?