Column

Countering terrorist violence with a state-sponsored 'war on terror' will only get us more of the same war, not peace

Terrorism is a sensitive subject. But the discourse on terrorism - scholarly as well as political and journalistic - is also one that is riddled with empty rhetoric and feel-good phrases that in no way help you to understand the phenomenon.

To take an obvious example, every time there is a terror attack, you have politicians mouthing off about this 'cowardly act' or 'dastardly attack'.

Of course, terrorism, and the killing of civilians is unforgivable. But is a suicide bomber really a coward? We may consider a person who commits suicide as a 'coward', in the sense of not having the moral courage to endure the difficult circumstances of his life. But can a terrorist, who courts almost certain death through his act of defiance, be someone without the necessary physical courage to do so?

But the conventions of mainstream debate have set the terms of what is speakable and what is unspeakable. And one of the things that has become 'unspeakable' is the humanity of the terrorist. Yet, can a society hope to eliminate any unwanted phenomenon without first understanding it?

I have always believed that terrorism cannot be eliminated unless the causes of terrorism are eliminated. Terrorism is the symptom of a sick society; and like any competent doctor will tell you, the only way to get rid of a symptom is to treat the disease. Popping pain-killers will not cure you of the headache if it's caused by a tumour in the brain. Just agonising about how horrible the pain is will not make a whit of difference so far as the underlying tumour is concerned.

But my own experience, whenever I have spoken about the need to understand the causes of terrorism, hasn't been pleasant. Invariably, the response I get is, "You cannot justify terrorism". But is understanding, the same thing as justifying? Terrorist violence is inhuman. But it is inhuman in the sense that all violence - defined here, in narrow terms, as killing people - is inhuman.

When is killing not inhuman? In a war? Thanks to the two World Wars, we all know (though we keep forgetting) that a war is
the most dehumanising of all of man's inventions.

What about killing in the name of religion? That's inhuman too, or we should have to condone communal violence. In the name of justice? Many civilised societies consider it nothing but a form of legalised murder, which is why the global movement
against capital punishment.

Once you agree that killing another human being is inhuman, then a terrorist act is no less or no more condemnable than any other killing, even if it is by an agent of the state, such as a soldier or a policeman, except of course, in self-defense. It is a different matter that in this given historical moment, the nation-state happens to possess a 'legal' monopoly over murder. But that still doesn't justify the fact that the one perspective missing from most writings by terror 'experts' is the moral one.

The predominant register for any discussion of terror is legalised vengeance ("bring those bastards to book") which often involves some form of sanctioned violence (laws such as POTA, TADA) that sacrifices human rights at the altar of security. The general strategy is to counter terrorist violence with state violence. Hence the 'war on terror'.

As any military strategist will tell you, the first requisite for any war, is to deny your enemy's humanity. And what strikes me as tragic is that, despite being the land of Gandhi, we have gone along with this view. So-called security experts are even ready to grant that we have to "learn to live with terrorism" and that "terrorism is now a part of everyday reality". That being the case, it's bizarre that they still refuse to recognise that terrorists are human beings too, human beings whose humanity has been mutilated by violence.

Having said that, is 'war on terror' really the answer to terror? Instead of following the bloodied footsteps of President Bush, how about us going back to our own tradition of non-violence? Of Ashoka, of Buddha, of Gandhi - all of whose lives embodied the fundamental truth that violence begets violence and hatred, more hatred. But these days, we are only taught a blind hatred of comprehensively dehumanised entities we call terrorists. Any talk of non-violence, or 'understanding terrorism' is bound to invite sniggers, and the charge that the 'we' cannot be seen as 'weak' in dealing with terror. Weak? Was Gandhi weak? Was Ashoka? Was the Buddha weak?

This might come as a surprise to many people, but without exception, all terrorists, unlike the demon baby in Omen, are born to a human mother, not to some wild beast in the jungle. Nor do terrorists belong to a mutant sub-species of homo-sapiens. Whether we like it or not, the fact remains that nobody is born a terrorist. The question to ask is not only how, but why a human being takes to - or gets pushed into, depending on your perspective - terrorist violence.

Unlike Bollywood, and the embedded darlings of the security industry, I cannot claim to have a readymade answer to this question. But my hunch, looking at the history of terrorism, is that terrorism as we know it today has a lot do with the nature of the modern nation-state, which, let us not forget, is barely 250 years old.
sampath@dnaindia.net