Wake up: INDIANS

In my very first blog I would like to express my thoughts about the resilience of Indians towards terror attacks in a concise and compendium manner.

We are very much aware that our arch-foe Pakistan is the biggest exporter of terror in the world. It’s been over 60 years that we are facing such barbaric acts of terror and have always been taken for granted. India has lost more lives to terror in recent years than any other country except war-torn Iraq. And what has been our response to cease and circumscribe such acts? Precious little. Frankly speaking, we have had a weak kneed and bumbling response to terror attacks – both in preventing them and bringing the merchants of death to book. Successive governments have failed to deal firmly with the scourge of terrorism. Time and again our top law enforcement agencies have been reprimanded by the judiciary for hopelessly bungling or delaying investigations. Little wonder we are a soft target for terror. All of us keep giving our views and opinions on ways to tackle the obstacles of successive counter terrorism. But then what about its implementation?

Firstly, we need to be clear about one thing: an attack by terrorists on Indian citizens is an attack on India. Our response must be commensurate. Our anger shouldn’t be reserved only for those who commit such acts, but directed equally against those who plan and finance them. Peace cannot co-exist with terror. Nor for that matter, can peace co-exist with attacks on any community or class of people. It is sad, that the perpetrators of such violence have often been allowed to go scot-free even in the face of overwhelming evidence. So a suspicion arises of whether they enjoy political or other patronage which puts them out of reach of the truncated arm of our law.

Such acts of terror not only take away innocent lives, but also divide the society, create mistrust among people and leave scars that can take decades to heal. In other words, it is worse than war because terror acts are executed by stealth against civil society.

Is there any solution to such acts of treason? For far too long we have failed to focus on terror as an act of treason. Myself being a witness of the Mumbai train blasts, I even witnessed the post drill of such an attack. After every such terror attack compensations are announced and there is finger pointing across the border. That done, its back to business as usual. Often this has been touted as the country’s resilience, to take blows on the chin and move on. Terror has become a routine, benumbing sensitivities and dulling responses.

I feel the basic pre requisite to act firmly on this issue is stop discriminating as people from different states but think and deliver being proud Indians. We need to recognize how critical this issue is and let’s put aside our petty egos and differences and act as one in defending the nation from future terror attacks.

Will we do it? It’s a question for our conscience. And till we decide, we will have to learn to live with terror from outside and our complicity with it within.

Rohit P. Nair