Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Trying to terrorize India? Who's doing it?

So terrorists struck again. What's new? More people died. Yes, so? Political parties are screaming at each other, playing the blame game. What the heck's new with that either?

In the middle of this rather repetitive chaos, now we have the media really taking up the cause of us being TERRORIZED. Frankly, I am not terrorized by some lunatic group bombing our cities. I am yet to come across anyone in India so terrified of "terrorists" that they are willing to change one thing about the way they lead their lives.

If there is a bomb blast and people die, it irritates us, it angers us, and it hurts us to some extent, but it hardly terrorizes. Even the victims themselves, who talk to us often on TV, with bloody wounds and some even screaming in pain aren't terrorized. They want justice and they are sad, really sad and broken by what happened to them or their loved ones, but they're hardly terrorized.

In other words, terror simply doesn't work against us.

The great United States of America on the other hand, went limp after Sept 11th. It was as if the end of the earth had descended upon them. There was panic and uneasiness. A war was declared! People started examining who they were. The government started a new Department of Homeland Security, and gave sweeping powers to a lot of people who had never seen an "act of terror" before.

To this day, American people talk about a post 9/11 "world"! The poor ignorant arrogance of it all! The event occupied their consciousness in one shot (well, two, actually), and nothing has been "back to normal" since! It fundamentally changed the way they live. In my opinion, that's precisely how you let terrorists win! And Americans are such sore losers - this, we all know too well.

India will never allow any terrorist or his stupid organization such a victory. For a variety of reasons, this is just so, but mostly because we just cannot afford to. From the lunch box carrier in Mumbai to the cobbler in Chennai, we have not the luxury of changing the way we live just because there was a loud bang somewhere and people died. It just doesn't scare us, because we don't live in mortal fear of change like the Americans do. To the Americans, there is the great, big "American Dream" that they cannot afford to wake up from. To us there is only Incredible India! and she is always wide awake, staring us in the face.

Our media is suddenly agog with feverish energy about this new "wave of terror". Where is the terror? When we don't see terror, it's hard to see the wave. But more and more we see our TV channels aping the American media, trumpeting every single thing as something really "big". This is not the Indian way of doing things, but we can put up with it to some extent. The part that makes me real mad is when the 11th of July bombings in Mumbai were referred to as the Seven Eleven bombings, just so it rhymes with Nine Eleven. Now, if you have lived in the USA, there would be other connotations that jump to your mind, but even otherwise, putting the month before the day is what makes me real mad. To ape someone that much is akin to suddenly start using miles and pounds and fahrenheit! We don't have to turn into "brownies" just to please the American taste! Enough.

Quietly, this is all becoming a test of character for us. We will quietly approve and disapprove of things around us, and we will find out what we are made of, individually and collectively. We will evolve, not merely change. That is the Indian way. We will adapt, not just fight. This is what we are good at. We won't stop every bombing, and we won't kill every "terrorist", but we will emerge victorious by outlasting them, and there won't be anything to declare. When we have crawled out of thousands of years of history, we know this is all part of a cycle and nothing more.

But there is this itch now, in a globalized world, of having to DO something all the time, or suffer the insecurity of being seen as incapable. Bombing the wrong country is not something to choose because of this itch. The Americans did. And they are paying a high price for their stupidity. Nothing against poor Iraqi people, but I hope this quagmire lasts a couple of generations, so that Americans constantly feel like they are doing something, lest they start something freshly stupid.

Aha! But they have started on something freshly brilliant, and it is about seven years late. It's quite amazing how India offered all assistance to the USA immediately after Sept 11th, to join forces with us and to strike inside Afghanistan and Pakistan on the way. We had information and imagery to provide the Americans with rich, high value targets. But, America politely refused, joined hands with our neighbourhood thug in uniform, Mushy, and won our everlasting mistrust. GW and his bunch of republican idiots are worth less than a lump of manure when it comes to tackling a crisis of these proportions.

Now, it just so happens that Musharraf is not that bright of a guy and he often mistakes his cunning for his intelligence. Clearly he doesn't have enough of either resource and America's patience has worn thin. This is good, for now the American military has orders to attack ground targets inside Pakistan, Pakistan's military has orders to shoot at the American military, and the rag tag militants essentially hate the American military and mistrust the Pakistani military! Brilliant! How much more fun can this be strategically for India? Let's not miss the irony of the militants trained to attack targets inside India suddenly finding lots of targets in their own backyard!

Truly the two retards in this game - Mushy's Pakistan and Dubya's America, deserve each other. They are going to drag others in with them, but whoever goes down on that quadrant, it isn't India. We are busy needling Pakistan even more by becoming closer to Afghanistan. Hamid Karzai is cool and has a brain, too. We should definitely go through with the nuclear future for our power generation and leave Pakistan behind economically. All good and sweet and economical and rich revenge for screwing with us. If "terror" can be so rewarding, why would we want to wage a war against it?

On a serious note, these bombings and killings are something we should snuff out. But it won't happen through any trigger happy reactions. We have professionals working on it, and we will get there. We once had a food crisis in India. Then came Mr. C. Subramaniam and his "Green Revolution". Today we have a food surplus. We didn't copy anybody else's "war on hunger". But, we overcame a problem that threatened to wipe out most of India. We have overcome a lot in the last sixty years, and there's nothing to indicate we won't do that in the years to come. But, let's do this our way.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hey that is what i'd call a strong stand.Mired as we are in our mundane routines which are terribly important this threw light on happenings that are bound to affect the nation.
But terror is real and the information is hardcore.not following up on a single lead could tirn out to be expensive and make the policeman who recd it a pariah.better a laughing stock than that. Just the other day when the blasts occurred in Delhi security measures were tightened and the public were so cooperative and certainly they were not afraid.But then aping the west it runs in the blood and as the whole world becomes homogenized in t shirt and jeans i guess the indian qualities will take a while to glow.But then we are patient and gentle.None meeker than us except dodos,so we shall i expect inherit the earth after the US annhilates most countries(except india which is now an ally) and is disinherited cos of its arrogance!
While we wait patirntly that was good reading. vinu.