[Reader-list] Thinking Through the Debris of Terror

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

Thinking Through the Debris of Terror
Shuddhabrata Sengupta

(apologies for cross posting on Kafila.org)

Last week's terror attacks on Mumbai, for which there can be no  
justification whatsoever, have targetted railway stations,  
restaurants, hospitals, places of worship, streets and hotels. These  
are the places in which people gather. where the anonymous flux of  
urban life finds refuge and sustenance on an everyday basis. By  
attacking such sites, the protagonists of the recent terror attack  
(like all their predecessors) echo the tropes of conventional warfare  
as it developed in the twentieth century. These tactics valued the  
objective of the escalation of terror and panic amongst civilians  
higher than they viewed the neutralization of strictly military or  
strategic targets. In a war without end, (which is one way of looking  
at the twentieth century and its legacy) panic is the key weapon and  
the most important objective. The terrorists who entered Bombay did  
not come to win, or even to leverage a coherent set of demands. Their  
only objective was panic. In that they succeeded, aided and abetted  
by those sections of the media who translated their actions through  
breathless, incessant and hysterical reportage.

The history of the indiscriminate bombing of cities and inhabited  
tracts as acts of war in modern times (from Guernica in Spain to  
Dresden and London in the Second World War, to the bombing of  
Cambodia in the 70s and the attacks on Baghdad in the Iraq War)  
underscores the fact that the ultimate objective of contemporary  
military actions is not the destruction of military or state assets  
but the utter demoralization of the civilian population by deploying  
disproportionate and massive force against the softest of possible  
targets - unarmed, un-involved ordinary people. The terrorists who  
caused mayhem in Bombay, and their mentors, wheresoever they may lie,  
are no less remarkable in their lethal cynicism than those who  
sanctioned the bombing of Baghdad in recent times. They were  
interested in hurting people more than they were in tilting at the  
windmills of power. If we accept the conjecture that the attacks were  
authored by Islamist organizations based in Pakistan (which by itself  
is not unlikely), then we also have to accept the irony that in their  
actions they have mirrored and echoed the tactics of the military  
leadership of the great powers they decry as their adversaries.  
Terrorists and war criminals are replicas of each other. The  
difference between them is only a matter of degree.The students have  
learnt well from their teachers.

No redemptive, just, honourable or worthwhile politically  
transformatory objectives can be met, or even invoked, by attacking a  
mass transit railway station, a restaurant, a hotel or a hospital.  
The holding of hostages in a centre of worship and comfort for  
travellers cannot and does not challenge any form of the state  
oppression anywhere. The terrorists (I unhesitatingly call them  
'terrorists', a word which I am normally reluctant to use, because  
their objective was nothing other than the terror itself) who  
undertook these operations did not deal a single blow to the edifice  
of oppression in this country, or in any other country. On the other  
hand, they strengthened it. By helping to unleash calls for war, by  
eliminating (unwittingly perhaps) those that have been investigating  
the links between fringe far right groups and home grown terror, by  
provoking once again the demand for stronger and more lethal  
legislation for preventive detention (in the form of a revived or  
resuscitated POTA), these terrorists have done statist and  
authoritarian politics in India its biggest favour. The sinister and  
lunatic fringe of far right politics of the Hindutva variety (which  
seems to have acted hand in glove with rogue elements within the  
security establishment) in particular, must be delighted to have been  
gifted this latest horror on a platter without having had to work  
hard for it.

While the agents of the attack in Bombay may have been genuinely  
motivated by their own twisted understanding of Islam, they have  
demonstrated that they have no hesitation in putting millions of  
Indian Muslims in harms way by exposing them to the risk of a long  
drawn out of spiral of retaliation. We need to underscore that they  
killed 40 innocent, unarmed Muslims (roughly 20 % of the current  
total casualty figures of 179) while they unleashed their brutal  
force on Bombay. The terrorists who authored their deaths cannot by  
any stretch of imagination be seen as partisans or friends of Islam.  
They are the enemy of us all, and especially of those amoungst us who  
happen to be Muslims, for they jeopardize the safety and security of  
all Muslims in India by unleashing yet another wave of suspicion and  
prejudice against ordinary Muslims. Any effort to rationalize their  
actions by reference to real or perceived injustices to Muslims in  
India, is patronizing at best, and insensitive at worst.

It is therefore neither surprising nor remarkable that several Muslim  
organizations and individuals in India have unanimously condemned the  
terror attacks and terrorism in general. The actions of the  
terrorists (their purported statements as aired on India TV  
notwithstanding) constitute an insult to anyone who is interested in  
seriously addressing the discrimination faced by minorities in India.

What is particularly reprehensible about the terrorist's actions is  
their choice to target and kill unarmed Jewish travellers, a rabbi  
and his wife. This choice was not accidental, these people were  
targetted because of their religious affiliation and their ethnic  
origins. The anti-semitic edge of contemporary Islamic Fundamentalism  
has nothing whatsoever to do with any opposition to the oppressive  
policies and practices of the state of Israel towards Palestinians.   
Targetting Jews (who may or may not be Israeli) or individuals who  
happen to be Israeli in a house of Jewish worship in Mumbai for the  
actions of the State of Israel is not unlike attacking Carribean  
Hindus and Hindu Indians at a Hindu temple in Trinidad for real or  
imagined misdemeanours of the Republic of India. It would be similar  
to attacking ordinary Indian, Pakistani or Somali Muslims and Iraqis  
in retribution for the offences committed by the erstwhile Ba'athist  
government of Iraq on Kurds. The Israeli government treats  
Palestinians in occupied Palestine a shade better than Saddam  
Hussain's Iraq treated Kurds. (Settlements in Gaza and the West Bank,  
though they have no doubt borne the brunt of Israeli state terror,  
have not to my knowledge been gassed by chemical weapons). Islamic  
fundamentalist anti-semitism is as much an abomination as Hindu,  
Christian or Jewish Fundamentalist  or Secular Islamophobia anywhere  
in the world.

One of the theories doing the rounds of the underbelly of blogs and  
mailing lists is that of 'Mossad-CIA' involvement in the attacks on  
Bombay. While I have no doubt at all about the fact that  
organizations such as the Mossad and the CIA are murderous and  
unscrouplous in terms of their day to day  operational existence and  
that they have an active and corrosive agenda in South Asia. I find  
the theory of their involvement in the Bombay terror attacks as far  
fetched as the assumption that the Indian Ocean Tsunami was a result  
of a Mossad-RAW conspiracy to test secret undersea weapons. Such  
theories, which are closely related to the '9/11 was a Mossad job'  
kind of wild conjecture, are a species of denial, and are often  
propogated by credulous commentators and politicans, particularly in  
the Muslim world (and their non-Muslim sympathisers), with a view to  
maintaining the myth of the eternally victimised and wronged Muslim.  
Such unsubstantiated conjectures and allegations do not help Muslims  
in any way. On the contrary their whimsical non-seriousness  
perpetuates the conditions that undermine responsible non-xenophobic  
Muslim points of view from being taken seriously.

Having said all this (which I believe is necessary to say), it is  
equally important to address several other serious issues that have  
raised their ugly heads in the aftermath of the attack on Bombay.

The aftermath of the terrible recent events in Bombay contains a  
great deal of debris. A spell of terror destroys so much, so quickly.  
A lot gets damaged by violence. Lives are shattered, walls and roofs  
collapse, entire neighbourhoods get devastated. Cities, sometimes the  
populations of countries, find what gets called their 'spirit' broken.

But one thing stays intact, and on occasion even finds new strength.  
This one thing is a sense of wounded innocence, and the search for  
easy fixes and answers. There can be nothing more dangerous at  
present than this deadly combination of injured innocence and glib  
macho loose talk.

I would like to spend some time looking at the sources and  
consequences of two specific kinds of loose talk which I will address  
in turn.

1. War Mongering: The Indian state is an injured and innocent party,  
and an attack like this gives India the right to conduct a military  
campaign, even war, against Pakistan to finish once and for all, the  
scourge of terrorism. As the botoxed visage of Simi Garewal screamed  
on 'We the People' broadcast on NDTV two evenigns ago 'Carpet Bomb  
those parts of Pakistan..."

2. Islamophobia : We can understand everything about the motives and  
drives of the terrorists by pointing to their 'Muslim' identity. A  
variant of this is - 'The Quran sanctions violence against  
unbelievers, and that is all that we need to know in order to  
understand the roots of the attacks in Bombay'. This kind of  
sentiment is burgeoning on the internet, where it feeds the  
testosterone overdrive of a certain kind of overzealous netizen who  
sees the tragedy that has befallen Bombay as an opportunity to put  
out a sick and prejudiced agenda.

It should not come as a surprise that often, the two come linked. The  
idiotic and jejune militarist fantasies of the hard Hindutva right  
are a public secret. However, there are also many card carrying  
secular nationalist 'war mongers' who see the times we are living  
through as an opportunity to exhibit how much more 'patriotic' they  
can be than their communal peers. Of course, these attitudes have  
their exact mirrors in Pakistan. And a peculiar mirroring is  
currently underway between Indian and Pakistani news channels, with  
news anchors such as the hysterical Arnab Goswami (Times Now TV) in  
India and his counterparts in Pakistan indulging in a perverse and  
dangerous game of jingoistic one-upmanship. Even retired senior  
officers of the armed forces who are sought out for comment and  
analysis in television studios and politicians of parties such as the  
BJP (neither of whom are necessarily known as models of moderation)  
are acting with greater restraint than sections of the electronic  
media. They (the BJP politicians) are at least at present not rushing  
to talk of war (how could they, they have an election to contest in a  
few months time, and an Indo-Pak military standoff that could work to  
the advantage of the incumbent UPA government could really upset  
their best calculatons). The retired soldiers by and large, speak  
wisely of avoiding military options as far as is possible. It is only  
the few news anchors who have let their place in the spotlights go to  
their heads, (and their adolescent online clones) who are  
consistently maintaining the shrilness of war-talk.

Those speaking of war or punitive military strikes base their  
arguments on the 'enough is enough' theory, that time has now come to  
deal Pakistan a hard blow as a punitive action against letting its  
territory being used against India. This line of reasoning assumes  
that India is cast as the eternal victim and can never be seen as the  
aggressor.

If this is so, then (following this line of thiking) there is no  
reason why India too should not have been carpet bombed for allowing  
the use of its territory and resources for acts of terror against its  
neighbours. The memory of news anchors may be as brief as the punchy  
headlines of breaking news, but even a cursory examination of recent  
history would show that the Indian state and elements within India  
have sinned as much as they have been sinned against.

In  May 1984, for instance, the LTTE (at that time housed, armed,  
funded and nourished by the Indian state led by Indira Gandhi)  
conducted a brutal slaughter of around one hundred and twenty unarmed  
and peaceful Buddhist pilgrims in and around one of Sri Lanka's  
holiest Buddhist shrines in Anuradhapura. The Anuradhapura Massacre  
caused great anguish and outrage in Sri Lanka at that time, and if we  
accept the principles that prompt our 'studio-warriors'  and 'online  
dharamyoddhas' to call for the carpet-bombings of parts of Pakistan  
then we have to admit that it was unfortunate that Sri Lanka did not  
carpet bomb Delhi and Chennai.

Perhaps as the comparatively militarily weaker neighbour of mighty  
India, it may have found itself reluctant to imagine, let alone carry  
out such a bizarre threat. Clearly, the nuclear fuelled fantasies of  
militarist Indians brook no such reasons for reticence. I wonder  
whether it is amnesia and the lack of a moral-ethical sense that  
underwrites Indian militarism or is it the intoxication of arrogant  
militarism that induces this dystopic inability to either remember  
ones own state's history of complicity in terror or to behave  
ethically and reasonably in times of crisis.

Further, should a professional investigation into the devastating  
attack on the Samjhauta Express train to Pakistan reveal that the  
perpetrators of the attack were Hindu radicals assisted by rogue  
elements within the military intelligence apparatus in India, would  
Pakistan then be justified in 'carpet bombing' Pune, indore, Jammu  
and other places linked to the cluster of organizations and  
individuals around outfits such as 'Abhinav Bharat'?

A military adventure into Pakistani held territory by Indian forces  
at this current juncture can be nothing short of a disaster, It risks  
taking South Asia and the world to the precipice of a nuclear  
conflict. It has been pointed out by some idiots on television that  
the United States is apparently safer today for having sent troops to  
fight into Afghanistan and Iraq. The truth is, the United States has  
made the world and Americans a great deal more unsafe , and a great  
deal more vulnerable to terrorism, by the conduct of its wars in Iraq  
and Afghanistan. The incidence of terrorism worldwide has increased  
due to its intervention, and even the attacks on Bombay can in a  
sense be seen as ricocheting off the mess in Iraq and Afghanistan.  
The deliberate targeting of British and American individuals by the  
terrorists in Bombay last week demonstrates how unsafe it is to be  
seen carrying an American passport today. If India is to be pulled  
headlong into conflict with Pakistan as a result of the fall out of  
the attacks on Bombay, the world will automatically and immediately  
become a far more unsafe place. There will be more, not less  
terrorism for us all to deal with.

The only way for us to defeat terrorism in South Asia is for ordinary  
Indians and Pakistanis to join hands across the Indo-Pak divide to  
say that they will no longer tolerate the nurturing of terror, hate  
and division in their societies through the covert and overt acts of  
rogue elements in both their governments (which have a vested  
interest in the continuity of conflict)  and powerful non-state  
actors in both societies. Neither POTA, nor military misadventures,  
nor harder borders can defeat terrorism. A suicide bomber can only be  
disarmed by the narrowing of the political and cultural space for  
hatred within society to levels of utter  insignificance.

For this to occur, we all need to shed the cocoons of the assumptions  
of our own innocence. The sooner we do so, the sooner we realize that  
culpability in terror in South Asia is not a one way street with all  
signs pointing only in the direction of Pakistan, the better it will  
be for peace in our time. The automatic assumption of our own  
innocence, especially at times when we perceive ourselves to the be  
victims, is something we cannot afford to do. Whatever little  
illusory comfort it may give us in the short run, it will rebound to  
haunt us with unforgiving intensity. I

f we are serious about putting an end to the seemingly endless spiral  
of retributive violence behind us we have to exercise the hard and  
necessary choice of leaving  the discourse of 'martyrs', 'victims',  
'villains'  and 'heroes' behind us. The media, and especially the  
electronic media have a special role to play in this regard. They  
have much introspection to do. It will not do to have jingoist  
anchors and commentators protect their diminishing intelligence and  
rising moral culpability in stoking the flames of war themselves with  
the fig leaf of 'national psyche' and 'popular sentiment'. It is they  
who fashion the chimera of 'popular sentiment' with their spin  
doctoring, and it is unacceptable to see people refuse to take  
responsibility for the very serious consequences of this dangerous spin.

Finally, I come to the question of whether there is anything  
specifically 'Islamic' about acts of terrorism such as we have  
witnessed in Bombay last week. Under normal circumstances, such  
ridiculous questions would not need any attention. Unfortunately,  
these are not normal circumstances, and it is at times such as these,  
that otherwise marginal irresponsibly articulated opinions get a  
disproportionate velocity due to the way in which they circulate,  
particularly on the internet and then leak out into the grit of  
innuendo, insinuation, half-informed speculation and rumour in daily  
conversation.

One particularly pernicious communication that has been doing the  
rounds of chain mails, and has already begun cropping up in blog  
posts and discussion lists is the familiar litany of - "There are  
suras (chapters) in the Quran that justify the slaughter of  
unbelievers and what the terrorists were doing was only fulfilling  
the commands of their faith". This kind of response asks us to assume  
two things,

One, that the source of the motivation for the terrorists actions was  
predominantly scriptural (this bases itself somewhat on the scripture  
laden rhetoric and vocabulary of the so-called 'Indian Mujahideen'  
terror emails that accompanied previous attacks this year)

Secondly, that if as a believing Muslim you do not follow quranic  
injunctions to unleash violence, you are at best an insincere or  
inconsistent Muslim, and the only true Muslim is the one who kills  
unbelievers to earn his place in heavan.

The first reduces the speechless complexity of a terrorists actions  
to a few pithy and selectively quoted phrases. The second is an  
insult to the lives, actions and convictions of the absolute majority  
of believing Muslims. Both betray a singular and profound ignorance  
of Islam, of the concept of jihad within Islam and an unwillingness  
to engage with Islamic belief and the history of Islamicate societies.

This(completely erroneously) view of all Muslims as mindless 'holy  
warriors' takes the injunctions to do with the term 'jihad' (which  
translates, not as 'holy war' as is commonly thought, but as  
'struggle') as referring solely to acts of violence. It needs to be  
stated here, once again, as has been stated many times before,in many  
different contexts, that 'jihad' within the theological context of  
Islam is of two kinds, and that only one of these refers to the  
conduct of armed struggle. The greater and more commendable jihad is  
that which involves a personal struggle with one's own baser and  
unethical propensities, which every believing Muslim is asked to  
conduct as a spiritual cleansing process. The 'lesser jihad' concerns  
specifically defensive military acts conducted against aggressors as  
a last resort, when all else fails.

The Quran is replete with statements such as 'to you your religion  
and to me mine', or 'there can be no compulsion in religion'. When  
the adherents of other religions are specifically mentioned by name  
(Jews, Christians and Sabeans) it is said -

"Believers, Jews, Christians and Sabeans (the followers of St. John  
the Baptist or Hazrat Yahya) - whoever believes in Allah and the Last  
Day and does what is right - shall be rewarded by their Lord, they  
have nothing to fear or to regret". (Sura Baqarah - The Cow - 2:62)

Jews are invoked as 'the children of Israel (Bani Israil) and in the  
Quran, Allah only asks of them that they remain true to their faith.  
There is not a trace of anti-semitism in the Quran. When certain Jews  
are spoken of negatively, the statements echo the admonitions of the  
Jewish scriptures by saying that 'those amongst the people of the  
book who were of little faith' were worthy of God's disfavour.  
Clearly, this indicates that 'those amongst the people of the book  
who were NOT of little faith' are to be favoured, and in fact Allah  
is heard saying in the Quran -

"O Children of Israel, remember the favours I have bestowed upon you,  
keep to your covenant, and I will keep to mine". (Sura Baqarah - The  
Cow - 2:40)

It is important to keep this in mind specifically with regard to the  
special targeting of unarmed Jews by the terrorists in Bombay. Their  
acts, in this specific instance stand in direct contradiction to the  
spirit of the Quran. While there are anti-semitic traces in the  
Ahadis (the reported traditions of the prophet that were accumulated  
and collated over the centuries), there is no unanimity or consensus  
amongst believing Muslims about the authenticity of different  
'isnads' (lines of transmission) attatched to different Ahadis.  
Therefore, in instances of ambiguity, as  with regard to the attitude  
to Jews and those of other faiths, it is only the unquestioned  
authority of the Quran that can be seen as acting as the final  
arbiter and guide. From this standpoint alone, the anti-semitic edge  
of the terrorists actions in Bombay last week can be justifiably  
condemned as anathema by all believing Muslims.

Generally speaking, the quote that is most commonly hurled by  
Islamophobes is -
"Kill them wherever you find them, drive them out of the places from  
which they drove you" (Sura Baqarah - The Cow - 2:190-191). This  
verse was given to the prophet Mohammad before the advent of a major  
battle when all attempts at arriving at peaceful negotiations had  
been exhausted, and when the Prophet and his fledgeling community in  
Medina were in danger of being exterminated by invasive aggression.  
The injunctions are specific, they apply only to retaliation against  
armed bodies of men who have acted as aggressors.

What is omitted when these verses are hurled, either by Islamophobes,  
or by Islamists, is that they follow immediately from the injunction  
that says -

  "fight for the sake of Allah those that fight against you, but do  
not attack them first. Allah does not love the aggressor" (Sura  
Baqarah - The Cow - 2:190-191).

It is also followed by the equally specific injunction "but if they  
mend their ways, know that Allah is forgiving and merciful.. but if  
they mend their ways, fight none other than the evil-doers." (Sura  
Baqarah - The Cow - 2:190-191).

So, we have repeated caveats, repeated qualifications - 'do not be  
the aggressor', 'fight only if they fight you', 'cease armed action  
if they see reason' that immediately surround the quote that is so  
often pulled out at times like this like a tired rabbit from a  
magicians hat. And yet, the sleight of hand continues.

By what stretch of imagination can a chef's assistant in a hotel, or  
a rabbi's wife, or passengers trying to get to second class railway  
carriages or children who live on the street, ordinary Muslims, or  
police officers trying to investigate the terrorist outrages  
purportedly undertaken by radicals who happen to be Hindus with a  
view to intimidating ordinary Muslims be seen as 'aggressors' against  
Islam? By which Quranic injunction can we justify acts of aggression  
against such individuals?

Once again, by their concrete actions, the terrorists have  
demonstrated not their fidelity, but their sharp deviance from the  
letter and spirit of the Quran. Those motivated and prejudiced  
slanderers who circulate the insinuations about the 'Islamic'  
provenance of the terrorists actions are actually just as much guilty  
of spreading a mistaken understanding of Islam as the terrorists  
themselves. In fact, objectively, once again, Isamophobes and  
Islamists, are not advesaries, but allies.

The lineage of the terrorists who attacked Bombay is better traced to  
those vicious acts of twentieth and twenty-first century terror which  
feature self styled protagonists of all the faiths and ideologies  
that mark our modern world. They are to be found as much amongst the  
New Age-Buddhist-Hindu hybrid of Aum Shirin Kyo, the Branch  
Davidians, the Balinese Hindu vigilantes who slaughtered 40,000  
unarmed Indonesian Communists and their suspected sympathisers in  
1965, the ultra-left and far-right radicals of West Germany, Japan  
and Italy in the seventies and the hardened callousness of  
Palestinian, Egyptian, Israeli, Peruvian, Basque and Irish terrorism  
as much as it is to be located in the enigmas known as the LTTE (all  
factions) , the  Lashkar-e- Taiba, Jaish-e- Mohammad, HUJI, Indian  
Mujahideen and Al-Qaida. Each of these organizations has contributed  
more than anything else to the hardening of structures of state  
power. As such, they, like the Indian Maoists and Salwa Judum , and  
the ingredients of the alphabet soup of insurgent and counter- 
insugent outfits operating through the length and breadth of India,  
Pakistan, Bangladesh and Burma are the objective agent-provcateurs of  
reactionary, authoritarian, statist politics. Terrorism, whatever  
else it may be, is in the end, the mightiest secret weapon in the  
arsenal of the state to beat and badger a terrified population into  
meek submission by creating a situation where the surrender and  
abdication of civil rights is seen as a normalized and natural  
response to a mounting crisis.

Even a brief history of  the limited genre of terrorist actions such  
as 'hotel bombings and attacks' reveals a rainbow hued ecumenical  
pantheon of contemporary terror. The attacks on the Taj and the  
Obeori Trident (which constituted the spectacular  telegenic apex of  
the Bombay attacks) need to be seen as successors to the Marriott  
Hotel bombing in Islamabad, Pakistan of only a few months ago, the  
bombings of the Radisson SAS, Grand Hyatt and Days Inn Hotels in  
Amman, Jordan in 2005, the bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton, UK  
by the Provisional IRA in 1984, the bombing of the Hilton Hotel in  
Sydney, Australia by suspected Ananda Marg radicals in 1978 and last,  
but certainly not the least, the King David Hotel Bombing in  
Jerusalem, (then Palestine) in 1946 carried out by Irgun, a terrorist  
organization wedded to the Zionist ideal of a Jewish state in Palestine.

If hotel massacres were something like cricket scores, then we could  
say that the Bombay attacks have finally surpassed the hitherto all  
time high 'score' of the King David Hotel Massacre of 1946. The  
Irgun, a terrorist outfit espousing an ostensibly 'Jewish' and  
supposedly 'Zionist' cause had held till date the record of maximum  
caualties for this outrage. 93 dead. The Bombay attacks, apparently  
authored by militant Islamists, have gone higher. Those who identify  
terrorism with Islam today would find themselves faced with the  
uncomfortable fact that as far as the lethality of attacks go, the  
bar was raised early, and high, by self-styled 'Jewish freedom  
fighters' who counted amongst their ranks the then future prime  
minister of the state of Israel, Menahem Begin. The Islamists have  
once again proved how imitative they are of the militant far-right  
edge of Zionism. Again, the students have learnt well from their  
historical teachers.

Begin (who is somewhat of an icon amongst many current islamophobic  
zealots of the 'war against terror' for the hard line that he took in  
Lebanon against the PLO ad its Lebanese allies and against violent as  
well as non violent forms of Palestinian resistance) is himself  
reported to have said while referring to the period in which the King  
David Hotel Massacre took place -  "We actually provided the example  
of what the urban guerrilla is, we created the method of the urban  
guerrilla." - see - 'By Blood and Fire: The Attack on Jerusalem's  
King David Hotel' by Thurston Clarke, Hutchinson, 1981

To extrapolate from the specatcular successes of self styled 'Jewish'  
terrorism in Palestine under the British Mandate in the 1930s and 40s  
to a generalized theory of 'Jewish' Terrorism would have been as  
prejudiced and short sighted then (and many efforts were made in this  
direction) as the current efforts to give current global terror a  
'Muslim' face are today. In fact the ancestors and first cousins of  
today's Islamophobic zealots are yesterday's and today's anti-semitic  
rabble rousers. Sometimes, at the outer edges and wild fringes of the  
global far right, they still do meet. The irony in the fact that  
here, they often find themselves in the convivial company of self  
styled 'Hindu', 'Christian', 'Neo-Nazi' and even 'Jewish' radicals is  
inescapable, whose agendas merge and diverge like the courses of  
unpredictable rivers.

The 'Jewish' bombers who took down the King David Hotel in 1946  
entered it carrying milk cans laden with explosives in the guise of  
'Muslim Arab' milkmen. Reports of the earlier round of Malegaon and  
Nanded blasts featured instances of  the possibility of 'Hindu'  
radicals donning fake beards and 'Muslim' guises to plant bombs.  
Reports of the recent Bombay attacks suggest that the 'Muslims' who  
entered the Taj and the Trident hotels wore red threads around their  
wrists and had smeared their foreheads with 'tilaks' in order to  
appear as 'Hindus'. What this 'tragedy of errors' suggests that as  
far as terrorists are concerned, identity is a masquerade. Jews and  
Hindus cross-dress as Muslims, Muslims appear in Hindu drag. In  
killing and dying, they cross the line and embrace the identity of  
the very other that they ostensibly hate. It is only we, the  
witnesses and the vicarious spectators of this masquerade, the rag- 
pickers in the debris of their actions, who obsess about the  
'reality' of their identities. By doing this we follow what is  
scripted for our bit parts in this charade to the hilt. When the  
curtain calls come, we, the chorus, the extras, are all lined up  
behind the principal actors, taking a bow. They were their costumes,  
we are naked in our incredulity.

The actions of a terrorist are neither Hindu, nor  Muslim, nor  
Jewish, nor Christian, nor a Sikh, nor Communist, nor Anarchist, The  
terrorist is simply the emissary  and executioner of of the  
mediocrity of organized violence, and an agent acting for a number of  
overlapping shadowy state and non-stage clients of different  
provenances, whose identities may be obscure even to him.

This profound ambiguity, if nothing else, should prompt us to be  
moderate and reasonable in our responses to the spectacle of terror.  
To buy into its proffered illusion of certainty is perhaps one of the  
greatest signs of submission that we can offer to those who have  
nothing other than terror to give us. Surely, we can be more  
intelligent, imaginative, self-aware, sceptical and compassionate.  
The two most important things we need to do is to stay calm, and keep  
our doubts alive.

END