Comment

The failed terror attacks in Glasgow forced me into some introspection. My first understanding of a terrorist attack was the murder of Mahatma Gandhi.

When I was growing up in the 1960s and ‘70s, there was no embarrassment about being an admirer of Gandhiji, as there appears to be now.

So it was a matter of great shock, as a young Indian, to be told that the Father of the Nation had been assassinated for reasons not comprehensible at the time.

We fought a war with Pakistan when I was nine which led to the formation of Bangladesh, and Partition was a concept that we all grew up with. Maybe the wounds were still too close, so we did not talk about it that much.

The 1980s were dominated by the Sikh demand for Khalistan in North India and the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) extremism in Assam. Sikhs were uniformly looked upon with suspicion and their appearance set them apart. Fear drove many Sikh parents to cut their children’s hair.

The assassination in 1984 of Indira Gandhi, then prime minister, by her Sikh bodyguards led to one of the lowest points in our nation’s short history — when Sikhs were butchered by Congress goons all over Delhi. The movement itself took another five years to die out or be crushed.

When some Sikh friends openly supported Khalistan and others felt that Gandhi’s assassination was justified after Operation Blue Star, it was confusing. Yet, there was no confusion about the riots: they were unconscionable, no matter what the perceived provocation.

In what now looks like a seamless cycle, the violence continues. This week, a PSU officer, Kailash Chandra Jha, died in ULFA custody. Another officer, P Ram, kidnapped in April, died in ULFA-security force crossfire last week.

The late 1980s left us wondering what we were doing in Sri Lanka, as a ‘peace-keeping’ force, in the fight between Lankans and Tamils. Then Rajiv Gandhi, a former prime minister, was assassinated by a Tamil militant.

We have called them all these things — extremists, militants, terrorists; they have called themselves freedom fighters. History is a very tough task master and will decide what punishment will be heaped on whom.

The European colonisers of the 15th and 16th centuries were lauded as great explorers and civilisers in their time. Today we see it all differently.

Academic studies have shown that unless there is political need and official help, there can be no riots. I have lived through two such, one with some threat to my own life — Mumbai in January 1993 and Gujarat in 2002.

In Gujarat, the danger came elliptically from government forces and Hindu civil society. It seems funny now, but some of us in the newspaper I worked in then got envelopes with threats and talcum powder in them — mimicking the anthrax scares in the US.

In Mumbai, the riots were shorter in duration and control was established after a week of hell. But the terrible effects of communalism versus secularism seem to be indelible, for now.

The Naxal movement has spread beyond Bengal, its guerilla tactics intact, wherever unfairness is felt. Right and wrong are not easy to determine here. Then, there’s Kashmir.

Violence appeared about 20 years ago, as the USSR started collapsing, the Afghan wars ended and mujahideen eager for blood arrived at our borders. Our western neighbour pitched in zealously.

Have I left anything out? Have there been other sustained acts of violence and terror that I have forgotten about? Have I become so immune to blood, to acts of unfairness, that I no longer remember?

Or have I become so susceptible to travelling influences in the atmosphere around me — oooh, we have to fear Muslims, oooh, the something-e-something is coming to get us — that I sneeze with every passing fad? Can I decide for myself what I object to and what I agree with?

This introspection has left me with only one answer. Our humanity provides us with enough ammunition to combat inhumanity, to understand the wrong from the right. Even in a world that cannot see the answers.

Email: b_ranjona@dnaindia.net