Author: Rajesh Singh
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: January 14, 2015
URL: http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/edit/giving-respectability-to-terrorist-attacks.html

Brute justification or scholarly defence of terror violence is sickening. Unfortunately, it happens all the time in here. People who do so get away lightly, protected as their remarks are by the blanket of a secular narrative

 Many people would be scandalised by an attempt to place the erudite and oh-so-sophisticated Congress Member of Parliament Mani Shankar Aiyar and the rustic rabble-rousing former Bahujan Samaj Party leader Haji Yakub Qureshi in the same bracket. After all, Haji Qureshi and Mr Aiyar are as different as chalk and cheese.

 But they are not really very different when it comes to the justification of Islamist terror. Take their reactions to the killing of 10 journalists in Paris working for the satirical weekly, Charlie Hebdo. Mr Aiyar, equipped with the hallowed background of a diplomat, during which he rubbed shoulders with global leaders, and then rubbed further shoulders with India’s Who’s Who after becoming a Minister, offers a scholarly defence of the attack.

 The humbler BSP leader, for all his pilgrimage(s) to Mecca which should have stirred compassionate feelings in his heart, bluntly endorses the massacre. Both are, then, fitting apologists of Islamist terror — the term ‘Islamist’ is central, because terror by any other name would not elicit a similar condescension from the two.

 In an interview, this is what Mr Aiyar said (translated from Hindustani to English): “If you are more powerful, it does not mean you can do anything and the weak will not respond. So, when drone attacks happen and homes are destroyed and children are killed, then it is imminent that there will be a reaction.” In other words, the ‘weak’ have responded by shooting down journalists who were doing their job.

 But Mr Aiyar is not anything if not global. He takes the justification further: “Muslims have been killed without any distinction between the innocent and the guilty. This has been done by America in Iraq and Afghanistan. And now it seems that they will do it in Syria as well. So, a backlash to this is imminent.” He also stated rather blandly that “France needs to see how it (reaction to war on terror) can be prevented.”

 Mr Aiyar also discovered another angle: A battle between the Christians and the Muslims a la  modern-day Crusades. He remarks, “Till now, they were saying that they are Christians and it will be a world of Christians. Now since they have to accommodate others, they have to learn the lesson of unity and diversity.” What goes unaddressed is: If they (West European nations, presumably) don’t learn those lessons, they must be ready for more Charlie Hebdo-like attacks.

 And what does he have to say of the terrorist violence by Islamists on fellow Muslims (in Pakistan, for instance) and Muslim countries (such as Syria)? Which Christian nation were the assassins teaching a lesson to?

 In any case, it is dangerous and entirely incorrect to explain away terror attacks as a clash of religions. Perhaps Mr Aiyar is too much of an admirer of Samuel P Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations. One wonders what the Congress has got to say on Mr Aiyar’s position, given that it has proudly held that terrorism has no religion (except, of course, when it comes to ‘Hindutva terror’, which, Rahul Gandhi once told a visiting foreign dignitary, constituted the greatest threat to India’s internal security!).

 If attackers such as those involved in the Paris incident were out to avenge insults to their religion or their co-religionists (Mr Aiyar helpfully offers the random example of Muslim schoolgirls directed by French authorities to not wear thehijab in classes, as an affront to their Islamic beliefs), then surely they cannot be held as having done any wrong, or at the most having done wrong only under extreme provocation — almost like a hunger-stricken man stealing a tiny loaf of bread!

 The English translation of Mr Aiyar’s comments does not effectively bring out the mischief in his remarks. One must focus on the term ‘lazmi’, which he used more than once while speaking in Hindi (or Hindustani) to the television journalist, to drive home his understanding of the Charlie Hebdo tragedy and explain the attack.

 In translation, it can be loosely associated with the words ‘natural’ or ‘understandable’. Did Mr Aiyar mean that? Or was he hinting at the even more sinister meanings: ‘Obligatory’ or ‘mandatory’? If the latter is true, then he has held the killing of the Paris-based journalists by terrorists as obligatory or mandatory. Need more be said?

 The Haji, on the other hand, does not concern himself with semantic sophistry; he likes to speak his mind clearly and with hatred. It matters little to him that he stands as accused in a case filed against him under Section 505(1)(c) of the Indian Penal Code dealing with inciting, or likely to incite, a class or community, to commit offence against another community or class.

 He had got away for equally worse when, a few years ago, he had announced a reward of Rs51 crore to the person who would kill the Danish cartoonist accused of blaspheming Islam. This time, he was no less threatening: “Prophet Mohammad had conveyed a message of peace to the entire world. If anyone makes certain cartoons on him, the person will invite death, like the cartoonists and journalists did in Paris.”

 Pick on the word ‘invite’, and you will see how similar it sounds in spirit to Mr Aiyar’s use of the term, ‘lazmi’. At any count, the positions of the two leaders are strikingly similar. And so, why should anybody balk at saying that Haji Qureshi and Mr Aiyar are birds of the same feather?

 As an aside, the Paris incident has plunged our secularists into a state of some confusion. Appearing on television, religious leaders of both the Christian and the Muslim communities, after having completed the formality of ‘strongly condemning’the attack and ‘upholding the freedom of expression’, advised people to take care about not offending religious sensibilities, especially in a multi-cultural country such as India. One wonders why these clerics had lost their voice when the controversy over MF Husain’s painting of a Hindu goddess in the nude had broken out.

  These leaders had not spoken one word of condemnation against Husain. If the defence offered by the ‘Right-wing elements’ to hound Husain was wrong, the defence provided by so-called Centrists to recent terror attacks is equally flawed. In any case, no outraged Hindu has gone about shooting people dead or spreading terror across the world.