The meaningless ritual of Terrorism

We as South Asian people have a thing for rituals. Be it religion or society or governance, we have an uncanny ability to distill a legitimate process into a rite devoid of any semblance of meaning or purpose that we continue to faithfully follow eternally without ever questioning its efficacy. Bollywood churns out movies based on the same formula, government follows the same archaic rules written a century ago and housewives, across the country, wake up every day at four in the morning to water their Tulsi plants, the sole symbol of vegetation in their household. 

Now, it seems, terrorism has also become a meaningless ritual, a theatrical performance where everyone faithfully acts out his or her role, disregarding any possibility that the whole exercise may be pointless. 

In this theatre, we all know our roles. The terrorists need to kill random people in a random city. The government needs to be unapologetically apathetic. Media needs to be outraged and jingoistic. Politicians need to resign, safe in the knowledge that they would be absorbed back into the government soon enough. Civil society needs to celebrate the artificial notion of the “Mumbai spirit”. Hotels and multiplexes need to start half-heartedly body searching their patrons again. As for the people, unfortunately, their role is simply to die.

As for the usefulness of this theatre, if there is any, it was lost long ago in the ashes of few first bombs that killed innocents in India. What does anyone gain out of all this? 

Despite all the outrage and promises in the aftermath of Mumbai Terror Attacks of 2008, here we are without having moved an iota forward. In 2010, 4018 people died in terrorism or insurgency-related incidents, without anyone batting an eyelid. Yet, the only unusual increase in the Ministry of Home Affairs budget for this year was for salaries and housing. Some of the State Budgets of the year have ended up allocating a princely sum of zero rupees to police modernization and training!

Of the last seven attacks or attempts of attacks on major Indian cities, not a single one has seen any progress in its investigation. There have been no changes in basic strategy and tactics of police in ages. The much-hyped 2010 India-Pakistan cricket match in Mohali essentially the same security setup that we were using in the times of Rajiv Gandhi. The police and special intelligence agencies remain just as miserably ill-funded, ill-equipped and poorly-led as they were two years ago.

It is almost a given that we are not getting any safer anytime soon, promises and outrage of 26/11 notwithstanding.

Tragically, the 13 July attacks (as most of the other attacks) didn’t involve high-profile locations or people to qualify for even that outrage and promises. One can predict with almost mundane precision that the government, the media and us, will forget these attacks within a few weeks. After all, how many of us remember any of the 17 other non-Maoist attacks and attempts of attacks that happened in mainland India in 2011, made national news and were forgotten within a few days? I dare you to recall three.  

Which brings us to another party for which this whole exercise is meaningless to – the terrorists. If the government, the media and we as a society don’t deign these terrorist attacks good enough for even medium-term memory retention, what are the chances that we shall give in to terrorist demands under this kind of violent pressure? Historically, the Indian Government has sometimes acceded to demands of long-drawn heavy casualty insurgencies, but terrorist attacks have never moved it even an inch in any direction of a policy change. Sure, there do exist some Karachi Generals or Dubai-based mafia members who will draw some benefit from this tragedy, just like some politicians in India will use it to gain mileage. But the ideologically-driven extremist on the ground are unlikely to see any results soon. They, just as us, are caught in the endless cycle of this ritual.

The only way to break this cycle is through disillusionment of faith among the masses. And that is what Indian requires. It is the people, the victims of these terror attacks, who need to begin questioning the point of this ritual and act to change the ground realities. And this doesn’t mean merely displaying our anger on internet forums and television talk shows or even voting out an incompetent government after an attack. It means taking proactive steps to challenge our security establishment.

The public must be engaged in a meaningful way on every level of security. First step to that is demanding information making self aware. For too long, important information has been left in dusty dossiers in deep recess of ministries, deemed too confidential for common people to know. While western governments make reports critical to themselves public, Indian Ministry of Home Affairs has been consistently editing out even the most basic information of its operations. Many states have gone ahead to the extent of passing what are essentially gag laws, shutting down any freedom of expression for the local media.

Second step is to participate in policy discussions about security. While the vibrant India has begun to assertively voice its opinions on several issues ranging from economics to environment, internal security policies are still quietly being formulated in South Block with public discussions limiting themselves merely to Pakistan bashing. Why don’t we have public debates involving police modernization, NatGrid, intelligence community reforms etc?

Third and the final step is seeking answerability. Government must be held responsible for its actions, not just through electoral punishment but also through more creative ways of response. In the aftermath of 9/11, the families of these victims joined a coalition to sue to the US Government for failing to protect its citizens. In many countries, citizens often demand a greater involvement in local policing by organizing regular public forums with the police.

After all, the demise of the ritual of terrorism can only be possible through the destruction of another long-standing ritual in India – that of democracy. The people of India must realize that democracy is not just a meaningless cycle of elections that brings no change in our lives regardless of its results, but a social obligation that requires every citizen to be constantly engaged. 

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