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Enough is Enough
Let’s
declare war on the terrorist inside us
Sach Kanwal Singh
MUMBAI: Terror
had been knocking at India's doors in the past, at times even
threatening to break down the doors, but this time it just barged
in: full frontal, deathly, megalomaniac scale and unsparing in its
inhuman
 formulation
of a recipe to cow down. Right from the first shots that shattered
the calm of the business capital Mumbai at
9:48 pm
Wednesday to the end of the entire dance of death, relayed day and
night for 60 hours on TV screens in this 24x7 news culture, humanity
died a death every minute but hope was reborn with every action of a
kindly soul.
Death dance
left nearly 200 dead, nearly 400 injured, a country's soul seared,
its security claims in tatters, its improving relationship with neighbouring Pakistan derailed, its intelligence capacity exposed
and its will to keep shouting that we shall not be cowed down
somewhat hurt.
It is human to
take time to recompose oneself, and
India needed
some time. But its politicians probably could not afford that. A
groundswell of pressure had built in among India's resurgent middle
class, the class that saw five star hotels as a nation's icons. Many
a sociologists noted the stress on the choice of buildings, the
descriptions of the five stars, the fact that these indeed were the
iconic buildings, the heritage of a country on the move, and much
less on human life.
The first media
story on what psychological damage such acts, their telecast and
such media representation may do to younger minds is still to be
attempted.
From
youngsters’ favourite haunt of Leopold Cafe where backpackers soak
in Mumbai and spirits to the VT railway station,
Cama Hospital,
Oberoi Hotel, Taj Palace next to Gateway of India, the terrorists
rained death. It was an art they seemed to be well trained in.
Within hours, the layers were discovered. Murder and mayhem at sea
had preceded, they had come in boats, seemed to be around 10 in
number, were equipped with satellite phones...mind boggling details
are coming out now.
The NSG
commondos, the helicopters sending down slithering men trained to
kill, the story was repeated all over the world’s media.
 Even before a
lot of deaths had occured, morale had hit rock bottom when the
terrorists were able to gun down some top crack shot officers like
Anti-Terror Squad chief Hemant Karkare, Additional Commissioner of
Police Ashok Kamte and "encounter specialist" Vijay Salaskar in a
most casual manner. They shot them dead minutes after the world had
seen Karkare putting on a bullet proof vest and joining the
operation on Wednesday night. He was the man who was relentlessly
pursuing the leads, and had brought out the nefarious designs of
some saffron radical Hindutva forces indulging in reprisal
terrorism. He was accused of virtually being anti-national by
BJP-RSS lobby.
By now everyone
living in civilised parts of the world covered by newspaper and TV
channel footprints is aware of even minute details, but the story
keeps unfolding: now it is clear that intelligence agencies at
various levels in India were fully aware of many advance warnings,
some of them very very specific, but there was little action that
they took. So much so that IB and RAW seemed to working at cross
purposes and even the SPG looking after the PM's security was not
briefed about impending warnings.
As the middle
class came to the forefront, hordes of educated men and women were
soon on the streets demanding that they don't want to see
politicians, that politics is the dirty game that was responsible,
and virtually arguing that solutions to such mammoth problems like
terrorism were possible out the field of politics.
Naivety and good
intentions make for a heady cocktail. TV channels brought out
India's
heavy artillery intellectuals: film stars, wanna be celebrities, one
movie wonders matched by two-movie wonders, Shobha De, Farookh
Sheikh and exploding-with-grey-matter and channel-customised-quotes
Mahesh Bhatt.
They wanted
politicians to get out, probably vanish, and of course they wanted
to put an end to the problem quickly, if possible before the end of
the news bulletin that day. "Enough Is Enough" went out the war cry,
"Go For Pakistan" was another, and smashing terror camps wherever
they are was a full throated bonafide suggestion on all TV channels.
Newspaper
editors got busy writing how deeply shattered and hurt they have
been about what had happened to a Japanese restaurant, how their
childhood memories are connected to a particular table and how their
lives will now be incomplete without Taj and Oberoi for some time.
One called Taj his second home, the other said life without Wasabi
may make him think again about whether it is worth living anymore.
Such
outpourings of emotions were bearable on screen only because in
between humanity peeped through. The deaths sobered anyone. The
scared souls of youngsters made all of us suddenly look human all
over again. The old father crying over the death of his family
brought tears in many drawing rooms. A husband looking for his
journalist wife and knowing deep in his heart that she is no more, a
nurse saving a little two year old when his Jewish parents had been
killed, Karkare's wife returning killer Narendra Modi's Rs 1 crore
check and young Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan's father asking the
Kerala CM to get out of his house were the stuff that rejuvenated
anyone with the spirit to live on, to fight back, to find a reason
to find meaning in life once again.
These are also
the times that must inspire us to look inwards for the larger
issues. All references, oblique, covert or overt, to Islamic
terrorism, the reprisal terrorism of the sadhvis and the saffron
brigade’s support for it, must guide our minds to focus on the
divisiveness in our society. Calls to shun politics and politicians
are fangerous calls. It is time to politicize our people, not leave
them at the mercy of simplistic and twisted logic of those who shout
slogans of Bharat Mata Ki Jai when lots rape Christian women, when
Modi’s men describe how they killed pregnant women with spears.
3
December 2008
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