Creating a climate of fear

In the early 1980s, Delhi was in the grip of terror and excitement over ‘transistor bombs.’ These crude, home-made devices were little more than explosives fitted inside innocuous looking transistor radios which were then left behind in public places, buses, bus-shelters and so on.

The perpetrators were Sikh militants fighting for Khalistan. Though much of the terrorism was limited to Punjab, where villages were randomly targeted by
machine-gun wielding extremists, the transistor bombs brought this terror squarely into the capital.

Sikhs everywhere became the target of suspicion. Ask any Sikh about those days and he will tell you about the extra tough searches at airports and elsewhere. In Delhi, whenever a Sikh boarded a bus the other passengers looked at him fearfully. A few Khalistanis were at war with the state — an entire community till then held as an
exemplar of patriotism and bravery, suddenly became putative traitors.

In Punjab, where the terror was at its peak, Sikh youths were often picked up and some even disappeared. Families complained of police excesses. The police defended themselves by saying that it was a war. It was a tense time for a nation that had never seen terrorism on this scale before.

The parallels between that period and today are obvious, though there are important differences too of course. Sikh militancy was largely a localised affair, confined to one state and its environs, while terrorism today is gradually becoming an all-India phenomenon. Khalistan was a well spelled out objective; the most probable reason for ‘Islamist’ terrorism is frustration and anger. Yet, it is difficult not to see similarities in what is happening today with those times; the same fear psychosis that is building up because of random acts of terror, the same suspicion of an entire community, and its gradual alienation.

To be Muslim today is to invite implicit suspicion and hostility — which one of us has not become apprehensive on sighting a group of young Muslim boys wandering around in a public place? Which mind, even a liberal one, has not thought to itself — they seem to be getting out of hand, and there must be some truth to all those charges the police are making?

Which is why, there is somewhat easy acceptance of all the claims made by the cops in Delhi, Ahmedabad and elsewhere about having broken the terror modules, about sleeper cells and so-called masterminds. Who knows (or cares) how many
innocent people are being picked up? It is easy to spot the discrepancies in all these allegations and often one state police contradicts another, but our cynicism gets overridden by anxiety and fear.

Then the media and the pundits enter the picture. Our television channels and newspapers appear to have given up all pretence of even putting in the prescribed caveats in their coverage of terror arrests — there are no qualifiers like ‘allegedly’ or ‘this is what the police says.’ Our breathless anchors and anchorettes, drumming up the drama, will tell us that a brave martyr died in an encounter and that the police have solved the mystery of the Delhi blasts. The graphics will announce, in garish colours, “Homegrown terror”. Well, guess what? We’ve had homegrown terror before. And by the way, did you ever think of asking the police for evidence? Their record of investigations in terror cases is hardly exemplary.

The country seems to be suffering from generational loss of memory. Our knowledge of our recent history is woefully non-existent. The young remember nothing — they were not there — and the establishment, which knows what happened in Punjab, the brutal aftermath, the cleave down the middle in our society, will not tell you, because it does not serve its purpose. Building up fear is a tried and tested method of political manipulation and eventual success. It is then easy to get a petrified society to agree to tough laws and give up its civil liberties.

No one can argue against the need to fight terror and completely eliminate it. And yes, it is understandable that mistakes will be made and wrong decisions will be taken. In Punjab, the strong-arm methods of the police did produce results, but as every police officer including the notorious KPS Gill will tell you, this was accompanied by a major initiative to win over the community at large and explain to them that harbouring militants and or living in denial about them would not help. Most Sikhs were against Khalistan — it is safe to say that most Muslims are repelled by terrorism. But we seem to have put all of them in the same basket. And forget, for the time being, namby-pamby “pseudo-secularism”; what about the Constitution and the imperative of proving an allegation
beyond any reasonable doubt? Has our suddenly energetic police force forgotten about that?

It is a cliché to suggest that history repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce. We are seeing both as a tragic farce in the making right in front of our eyes. And we seem powerless to stop it.

Email: sidharth01@dnaindia.net