Collateral Damage
When we say, "Nothing can justify terrorism," what most of us mean is
that nothing can justify the taking of human life. We say this because we
respect life, because we think it's precious.
So what are we to make of those who care nothing for life, not even their own?
The truth is that we have no idea what to make of them, because we can sense
that even before they've died, they've journeyed to another world where we
cannot reach them.
One TV channel (India TV) broadcast a phone conversation with one of the
attackers, who called himself "Imran Babar." I cannot vouch for the
veracity of the conversation, but the th
ings he talked about were the things
contained in the "terror emails" that were sent out before several
other bomb attacks in
India.
Things we don't want to talk about any more: the demolition of the Babri Masjid
in 1992, the genocidal slaughter of Muslims in
Gujarat
in 2002, the brutal repression in
Kashmir.
"You're surrounded," the anchor told him. "You are definitely
going to die. Why don't you surrender?"
"We die every day," he replied in a strange, mechanical way.
"It's better to live one day as a lion and then die this way." He
didn't seem to want to change the world. He just seemed to want to take it down
with him.
If the men were indeed members of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, why didn't it matter to
them that a large number of their victims were Muslim, or that their action was
likely to result in a severe backlash against the Muslim community in
India
whose rights they claim to be fighting for?
Terrorism is a heartless ideology, and like most ideologies that have their eye
on the Big Picture, individuals don't figure in their calculations except as
collateral damage.
It has always been a part of, and often even the
aim of, terrorist
strategy to exacerbate a bad situation in order to expose hidden fault lines.
The=2
0blood of "martyrs" irrigates terrorism. Hindu terrorists need
dead Hindus, Communist terrorists need dead proletarians, Islamist terrorists
need dead Muslims. The dead become the demonstration, the proof of victimhood,
which is central to the project.
A single act of terrorism is not in itself meant to achieve military victory;
at best it is meant to be a catalyst that triggers something
else,
something much larger than itself, a tectonic shift, a realignment. The act
itself is theater, spectacle, and symbolism, and today the stage on which it
pirouettes and performs its acts of bestiality is Live TV. Even as TV anchors
were being condemned by other TV anchors, the effectiveness of the terror
strikes was being magnified a thousand-fold by the TV broadcasts.
Through the endless hours of analysis and the endless op-ed essays, in
India
at least, there has been very little mention of the elephants in the room:
Kashmir,
Gujarat, and the demolition of the Babri Masjid.
Instead, we had retired diplomats and strategic experts debate the pros and
cons of a war against
Pakistan.
We had the rich threatening not to pay their taxes unless their security was
guaranteed. (Is it alright for the poor to remain unprotected?) We had people
suggest that the government step down and each state in
India
be handed over to a separate corporation.
We had the death of former Prime Minster V. P. Singh, the hero of Dalits and
lower castes, and the villain of upper caste Hindus pass without a mention.
We had Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City and co-writer of the
Bollywood film Mission Kashmir give us his version of George Bush's
famous "Why They Hate Us" speech. His analysis
of why religious bigots, both Hindu and Muslim, hate Mumbai: "Perhaps
because Mumbai stands for lucre, profane dreams and an indiscriminate
openness."
His prescription: "The best answer to the terrorists is to dream bigger,
make even more money, and visit Mumbai more than ever."
Didn't George Bush ask Americans to go out and shop after 9/11? Ah yes. 9/11,
the day we can't seem to get away from.
A Shadowy History of Suspicious Terror Attacks
Though one chapter of horror in Mumbai has ended, another might have just
begun. Day after day, a powerful, vociferous section of the Indian elite,
goaded by marauding TV anchors who make Fox News look almost radical and
left-wing, have taken to mindlessly attacking politicians, all politicians,
glorifying the police and the army, and virtually asking for a police state.
It isn't surprising that those w
ho have grown plump on the pickings of
democracy (such as it is) should now be calling for a police state. The era of
"pickings" is long gone. We're now in the era of Grabbing by Force,
and democracy has a terrible habit of getting in the way.
Dangerous, stupid oversimplifications like the Police are Good/Politicians are
Bad, Chief Executives are Good/Chief Ministers are Bad, Army is Good/Government
is Bad, India is Good/Pakistan is Bad are being bandied about by TV channels
that have already whipped their viewers into a state of almost uncontrollable
hysteria.
Tragically this regression into intellectual infancy comes at a time when people
in India were
beginning to see that, in the business of terrorism, victims and perpetrators
sometimes exchange roles.
It's an understanding that the people of Kashmir, given
their dreadful experiences of the last 20 years, have honed to an exquisite
art. On the mainland we're still learning. (If Kashmir
won't willingly integrate into India,
it's beginning to look as though India
will integrate/disintegrate into Kashmir.)
It was after the 2001 Parliament attack that the first serious questions began to
be raised. A campaign by a group of lawyers and activists exposed how20innocent
people had been framed by the police and the press, how evidence was
fabricated, how witnesses lied, how due process had been criminally violated at
every stage of the investigation.
Eventually, the courts acquitted two out of the four accused, including S. A. R.
Geelani, the man whom the police claimed was the mastermind of the
operation. A third, Showkat Guru, was acquitted of all the charges brought
against him, but was then convicted for a fresh, comparatively minor offense.
The Supreme Court upheld the
death sentence of another of the accused, Mohammad Afzal. In its judgment
the court acknowledged that there was no proof that Mohammed Afzal belonged to
any terrorist group, but went on to say, quite shockingly, "The collective
conscience of the society will only be satisfied if capital punishment is
awarded to the offender."
Even today we don't really know who the terrorists that attacked the Indian
Parliament were and who they worked for.
More recently, on September 19th of this year, we had the controversial
"encounter" at Batla House in Jamia
Nagar, Delhi, where the Special
Cell of the Delhi police gunned
down two Muslim students in their rented flat und
er seriously questionable
circumstances, claiming that they were responsible for serial bombings in Delhi,
Jaipur, and Ahmedabad in 2008. An assistant commissioner of police, Mohan Chand
Sharma, who played a key role in the Parliament attack investigation, lost his
life as well. He was one of India's
many "encounter specialists," known and rewarded for having summarily
executed several "terrorists."
There was an outcry against the Special Cell from a spectrum of people, ranging
from eyewitnesses in the local community to senior Congress Party leaders,
students, journalists, lawyers, academics, and activists, all of whom demanded
a judicial inquiry into the incident.
In response, the BJP and L. K. Advani lauded Mohan Chand Sharma as a
"Braveheart" and launched a concerted campaign in which they targeted
those who had dared to question the integrity of the police, saying to do so
was "suicidal" and calling them "anti-national." Of course,
there has been no enquiry.
Only days after the Batla House event, another story about
"terrorists" surfaced in the news. In a report submitted to a
Sessions Court, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) said that a team from
Delhi's Special Cell (the same team that led the Batla House encounter,
including Mohan Chand Sharma) had abducted two innocent men, Irshad Ali and
Moarif Qamar, in December 2005, planted=2
0two kilograms of RDX (explosives) and
two pistols on them, and then arrested them as "terrorists" who
belonged to Al Badr (which operates out of Kashmir).
Ali and Qamar, who have spent years in jail, are only two examples out of hundreds
of Muslims who have been similarly jailed, tortured, and even killed on false
charges.
This pattern changed in October 2008 when Maharashtra's Anti-Terrorism Squad
(ATS), which was investigating the September 2008 Malegaon blasts, arrested a
Hindu preacher Sadhvi Pragya, a self-styled God man, Swami Dayanand Pande, and
Lt. Col. Purohit, a serving officer of the Indian Army. All the arrested belong
to Hindu nationalist organizations, including a Hindu supremacist group called
Abhinav Bharat.
The Shiv Sena, the BJP, and the RSS condemned the Maharashtra ATS, and vilified
its chief, Hemant Karkare, claiming he was part of a political conspiracy and
declaring that "Hindus could not be terrorists." L. K. Advani changed
his mind about his policy on the police and made rabble rousing speeches to
huge gatherings in which he denounced the ATS for daring to cast aspersions on
holy men and women.
On November 25th, newspapers reported that the ATS was investigating the high
profile VHP chief Pravin Togadia's possible role in the blasts in Malegaon
(a predominantly Muslim town). The next day, in an extraordinary twist of fate,
Hemant Karkare wa
s killed in the Mumbai attacks. The chances are that the new
chief, whoever he is, will find it hard to withstand the political pressure
that is bound to be brought on him over the Malegaon
investigation.
While the Sangh Parivar does not seem to have come to a final decision over
whether or not it is anti-national and suicidal to question the police, Arnab
Goswami, anchorperson of Times Now television, has stepped up to the
plate. He has taken to naming, demonizing, and openly heckling people who have
dared to question the integrity of the police and armed forces.
My name and the name of the well-known lawyer Prashant Bhushan have come up
several times. At one point, while interviewing a former police officer, Arnab
Goswami turned to the camera: "Arundhati Roy and Prashant Bhushan,"
he said. "I hope you are watching this. We think you are disgusting."
For a TV anchor to do this in an atmosphere as charged and as frenzied as the
one that prevails today amounts to incitement, as well as threat, and would
probably in different circumstances have cost a journalist his or her job.
So, according to a man aspiring to be the next prime minister of India,
and another who is the public face of a mainstream TV channel, citizens have no
right to raise questions about the police.
Thi
s in a country with a shadowy history of suspicious terror attacks, murky
investigations, and fake "encounters." This in a country that boasts
of the highest number of custodial deaths in the world, and yet refuses to
ratify the international covenant on torture. A country where the ones who make
it to torture chambers are the lucky ones because at least they've escaped
being "encountered" by our Encounter Specialists. A country where the
line between the underworld and the Encounter Specialists virtually does not
exist.
The Monster in the Mirror
How should those of us whose hearts have been sickened by the knowledge of all
of this view the Mumbai attacks, and what are we to do about them?
There are those who point out that U.S.
strategy has been successful inasmuch as the United
States has not suffered a major attack on
its home ground since 9/11. However, some would say that what America
is suffering now is far worse.
If the idea behind the 9/11 terror attacks was to goad America
into showing its true colors, what greater success could the terrorists have
asked for? The U.S.
military is bogged down in two unwinnable wars, which have ma
de the United
States the most hated country in the world.
Those wars have contributed greatly to the unraveling of the American economy
and who knows, perhaps eventually the American empire.
(Could it be that battered, bombed Afghanistan,
the graveyard of the Soviet Union, will be the undoing
of this one too?)
Hundreds of thousands of people, including thousands of American soldiers, have
lost their lives in Iraq
and Afghanistan.
The frequency of terrorist strikes on U.S.
allies/agents (including India)
and U.S.
interests in the rest of the world has increased dramatically since 9/11.
George W. Bush, the man who led the U.S.
response to 9/11, is a despised figure not just internationally, but also by
his own people.
Who can possibly claim that the United States
is winning the War on Terror?
Homeland Security has cost the U.S.
government billions of dollars. Few countries, certainly n
ot India,
can afford that sort of price tag. But even if we could, the fact is that this
vast homeland of ours cannot be secured or policed in the way the United
States has been. It's not that kind of
homeland.
We have a hostile nuclear-weapons state that is slowly spinning out of control
as a neighbor; we have a military occupation in Kashmir and a shamefully
persecuted, impoverished minority of more than 150 million Muslims who are
being targeted as a community and pushed to the wall, whose young see no
justice on the horizon, and who, were they to totally lose hope and radicalize,
will end up as a threat not just to India, but to the whole world.
If 10 men can hold off the NSG commandos and the police for three days, and if
it takes half a million soldiers to hold down the Kashmir
valley, do the math. What kind of Homeland Security can secure India?
Nor for that matter will any other quick fix.
Anti-terrorism laws are not meant for terrorists; they're for people that
governments don't like. That's why they have a conviction rate of less than 2%.
They're just a means of putting inconvenient people away without bail for a
long time and eventually letting them go.
Terrorists like
those who attacked Mumbai are hardly likely to be deterred by
the prospect of being refused bail or being sentenced to death. It's what they want.
What we're experiencing now is blowback, the cumulative result of decades of
quick fixes and dirty deeds. The carpet's squelching under our feet.
The only way to contain -- it would be na誰ve to say end --
terrorism is to look at the monster in the mirror. We're standing at a fork in
the road. One sign says "Justice," the other "Civil War."
There's no third sign and there's no going back. Choose.
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