Author: TS Dhakshinamurthy
Publication: Niticentral.com
Date: January 19, 2015
URL: http://www.niticentral.com/2015/01/17/charlie-hebdo-attack-indian-mentality-towards-terrorism-297023.html

Nous tous continuerons toujours a etre Charlie

I must condemn a terrorism which strikes blindly in the streets and which one day might strike my mother or my family. I believe in justice but I will defend my mother before justice – Albert Camus (in the context of his refusal to endorse extremism of Algerian freedom fighters).

“Irreverential toons put mag in line of fire”, opined a newspaper reporting the Charlie Hebdo slaughter at Paris. Being of a peerage that prides itself of its courageous journalism and whose intrepidity in standing up to Indira Gandhi’s emergency is a notable point in the history of Indian journalism, this quasi justificatory caption offers us a significant insight into how the Indian mind has been conditioned. What the caption in effect implicitly asserts is ‘well you asked for it, you got it, now stop grumbling’. What it underlines in unambiguous terms is that we are subconsciously persuaded that the easily excitable and hotheaded have a carte blanche conceded to them for savagery and we need to steer clear of them regardless of the rule of law of the nation. From here the route to justification of terrorism on existence of genuine grievances is not far and it is this path that the likes of Quaireshi and Mani Shankar Aiyar have gleefully taken, to be in the exalted company of Islamic State, Al-Qaeda and Pakistani terror gangs.

Well, we thought we all agreed that in a civilized society, whatever be the provocation, acts of terror are abhorrent and should be extirpated expeditiously. Needless to add, this kind of rationalization is inherently quite dangerous and immensely inimical to any society as almost every heinous act can be justified on some ground or the other – the rapist was in the heat for months and the society was uncaring; the serial murderer had an unhappy childhood and came from a broken home; the torturer is but a manifestation of universal schadenfreude; the recidivist had known no mother’s love; the pickpocket and the chain snatchers experience a rush of adrenaline when they sight the objects and are too weak to resist the urge; the psychopath is seething with an unresolved anger. And so on and so forth. The line drawn has to be clear and indelible.

In the Indian context, handling of terror has at best been paradoxical. All Indians believe not without reason that the uncanny politician sworn to secularism understands the pulse of the people and makes his moves to corner the votes quite astutely. So, when a Government tarries hanging a convicted terrorist for fear of losing votes, when a State Government passes a resolution for release of a terrorist jailed in the neighbouring State, when the Chief Minister of a State requests the investigative agencies not to announce the arrest of a dreaded terrorist in his State until he has been taken out of its borders for he apprehends it would lead to erosion of his popularity among a community, when you demean the death of a valiant cop in the line of duty as in the Batla house because of the numerical strength (translatable into votes) of a community in the area, as in countless other incidents, you are sending out an unmistakable message that you believe the majority of that community is sympathetic to terrorism. Having thus stereotyped the community, when you say that the community has nothing to do with terrorism, you are contradicting yourself. Contradictory expectations can lead one haywire as RD Laing explains in his memorable exegetics of Dastovesky’s Crime and Punishment. When a bomb explodes be it in a Varanasi temple or a Mumbai suburban train, in a crowded Delhi market or in a commercial district, it is the Indian politician who has led the people to believe a community is in sympathy with the perpetrators of terror and who then goes on also to fault the people for it.

France and Paris in particular have inextricably been associated with human liberty, equality and fraternity for centuries. Freedom of expression in the French context, whether about religions or what is permissible to be written or exhibited, cannot be disassociated from its hoary history. ‘Ecrasez l’infame’ (crush the vile thing) thundered Voltaire against the omnipotent Catholic Church. The call could not have been starker. He was not burnt on the stake; he is still respected and Catholicism survives in France. The French concept of freedom of speech has since then only widened and now encompasses an array of unthinkable issues. Eminent writers and artists found the very air of Paris to be liberating – from Henry Miller to James Joyce, from Picasso to Salvador Dali, every genius vouched for its invigorating ethos. When England found Ulysses of Joyce too hot to publish, the chef-d’oeuvre was readily accepted and published in Paris without demur. Clearly, such refined notions of freedom remain anathema to certain class of people.

True, you found the cartoons blasphemous; true you were offended. But a civil society like France offers you remedial avenues. True, the French Judiciary had earlier heard similar cases and decreed that the impugned caricatures were within the limits of freedom of speech. Then you had only one option: Be a Roman in Rome, accept the verdict and handle your frustration in a non-violent way. Else, migrate to a clime where your ideals are cherished – to a congenial country where probably the hands of the thieves are chopped off, where the adulteresses are stoned to death. And where you can have four wives now, instead of aspiring for seventy vestal virgins in heaven!

The central issue of Jihadism is its intransigent insistence that the Government of any country where the Jihadist happens to live has to toe its ideas with respect of every aspect of governance including foreign policy. The Jihadi aspires to carve out a State within a State according to laws exclusively applicable to himself, thus declaring that the laws that are repugnant to his own do not bind him. Easily offended when intimidation fails, his wrath is expressed in spectacular ferocity.

Indian intellectuals have always walked an extra mile in defence of the Islamic zealots. If India was the first country to ban Satanic Verses, nowhere else were cerebral chords more vigorously exercised and sinews strained except in India to label Samuel Huntington’s theory of Clash of Civilisations as some outlandish conjuncture of an unhealthy mind. And it is obvious now that quite a large populace on this earth is at terrible unease with modernity, with deadly portents for the civilized world.

And how does one respond to tragedies wreaked by terrorism. The contrast between India and others could not be more striking. France reacted with remarkable alacrity; the President was present on the spot of massacre within minutes of the news breaking out because they see it not as a mere act of terrorism but as a challenge to the very sovereignty of the country. A former PM was in Mumbai on the anniversary of the suburban train bombings but refused to attend the observance lest his secular credentials are smeared. To arrest a dreaded Islamic terrorist holed up in Nepal, an ASP had to spend money out of his pocket, as P Ramesh poignantly pointed out in the Open magazine.

Subsequent to 9/11, America conducted a healing service in a Church attended by the incumbent and former Presidents and who’s who of the country, to which incidentally evangelist Billy Graham was invited. Imagine how our seculars would have been frothing in the mouth had a similar service been conducted in a temple for even one of the innumerable terrorist acts India had been subjected to. In both medieval and modern history, India has always borne the brunt of terrorism, bleeding still through thousand cuts. We also have the egregious distinction of having apologists aplenty for terrorism.