Stop communalising terror!

In this age of 24 hour television news channels, it is quite common to hear reporters quote unconfirmed reports and half-truths, especially when the situation is just developing. In the mad scramble to be the first one reporting the “story”, the causality figures are exaggerated, the cause of the incident speculated upon and the incident is thoroughly sensationalised. In most cases, this does not result in major problems, because soon the actual figures are out, and some responsible agency makes a statement, and life moves on. Nobody holds the channel to task for hiking the figures initially or for giving their ‘opinions’ as the news. It is at best seen as an irritant that one has to live with, because one also sympathises with the young reporters who are in the field, who are supposed to have all knowledge about the incident (sometimes even before it completely unfolds), and answer confidently when the news anchor sitting in the studio shoots off questions. (One hopes that the Indian news channels will work on this aspect, and minimise such incidents. It is a potentially dangerous trend). But the irritation turns into disgust when senior journalists write their dangerously biased opinions, and it is carried prominently in the middle pages of a Sunday newspaper.

A senior journalist has recently (What’s ailing RAW?, Times of India (ToI), Sep 9, 2007) tried to link the incidents of recent “terror attacks” in India to “states where the governments are hyper-sensitive about their avowed secular bias”. He asks if the terror groups have “taken advantage of the political constraints on effective policing?” As a contrast he points to Gujarat and asks “is their inability to strike, in Gujarat linked to the state’s no-nonsense policing?

Well, if non-nonsense policing means, refusing to file FIRs, multiple encounter killings, lapses in providing security cover to witnesses, taking no action when symbols and places of worship, and practitioners and leaders of different religions are targeted, then there are many reports to show for that kind of efficiency. Also, the attack on the Akshardham temple, killing 31 people and wounding more than 80, which happened in the “no-nonsense policing” state of Gujarat less than five years ago is still fresh in public memory.
In the article, the author blames “liberalism gone astray”. And what does that mean? He says that “it is all very well to drive home the truism that all Muslims are not terrorists”, and that the “slogan ‘terrorists have no religion’ is an adroit homily…”, which he says will cause complications when “transmitted down the line to mean that no Muslim is a terrorist”. These kind of statements not just communalise terror, they also, strengthen the already prejudiced views about Muslims. Kuldip Nayar, in a recent article in Afternoon, Mumbai says that “non-compliance of Krishna report spread the impression that when it comes to taking action against Muslims, the government is firm but lax in the case of Hindus”. He further states that, this reading is strengthened when one notices that action is still awaited on reports on riots at Jabalpur (1961), Ranchi (1967), Bhiwandi (1970), Jamshedpur (1979), Meerut (1982) and Bhagalpur (1989) where “Hindu extremists were found to be the instigators”, along with “politicians and police officials” . In some cases, “Muslim fundamentalists, too were involved”. Now, what message does this transmit down the line?
Communalising terror also means that only certain kind of terror and terror groups are considered, and one is blind to all the others. Does an incident need a bomb to be blasted to be counted as act of terror? Isn’t genocide an act of terror? Isn’t planned targeting of communities, with the connivance of the “no-nonsense police” an act of terror? Isn’t the fact that 3,660 families are still living in 69 temporary colonies (as admitted by the Gujarat government before the National Commission of Minorities) even five years after they were displaced as a result of the worst-ever communal riots in 2002, an act of great terror.
The author in the ToI article says that “the dimensions of jihadi terror are transnational”, and says that we need “quality intelligence from the neighbourhood to confront terrorism”. But, I would say, what we urgently need is to stop this practise of viewing violence and extremism with coloured lens and communalising issues. Let us remember that the roots of violence – be it terrorism, or domestic violence or communal violence is the same. By communalising these issues, we are falling into the same trap!