It is no secret that India is fighting terrorism or rather involved in the “war on terror”, as some would say. It is important that we get the key ingredients – understanding of the problem, a vision on how to solve it, the resolve and capacity to solve the problem – right. If the politicians who are destined to formulate the policy against terror think they have got it right, they are wrong. Either consciously or unconsciously they are losing this war.
Terrorists use violence to intimidate people into submission to achieve their goals. To fight these terrorists we need the resolve to resist them and not to give in – but our politicians have lost this very resolve as recent incidents would show. Take the Gujjar agitation demanding ST status, or the protests in the Kashmir valley against diversion of land to SASB or the counter protests in Jammu to restore the land to SASB (though their demands haven’t been accepted, they are at least talking!), our politicians have cowed down to violence in each of these occasions.
But shouldn’t the government look into the genuine concerns of the protesters? Shouldn’t people have the right to protest against what it perceives as oppression by the governments? – are two pertinent questions here. But doesn’t the government realize the genuine concerns of its people? Is it that, only in the face of violent protests leading to damage to life and property, the people at the helm can open their eyes to these concerns? Or are we sending a message that violence is an effective tool in order to meet your demands? Either ways, our politicians are inadvertently promoting terrorism by failing to recognize the concerns of people which could be solved at the rudimentary level by peaceful talks. What’s happening in J & K is a perfect example of this. The decision to revoke the land diversion without taking concerns of the people of Jammu, but rather trying to appease the more violent valley was a short sighted move which back fired with Jammu taking to violence too. Only now when faced with violence from both sides unable to cater to either side as both have become violent does the government see the necessity to take the concerns of all involved into account and find an amicable solution.
How do we fight terrorism if the people who are responsible are intimidated by violence? And not surprisingly the terrorists are fully aware of this, which was resonated in the mail send by the Jihadis before recent attacks in Ahmedabad:
O Muslims of Gujarat! If a petty population of Rajasthani Gujjars can use force for fulfilling their needs, then are we even more subjugated than these backwards?
If we are too give in to violence on one side, and then say our resolve to fight terror is not affected, we are just fooling ourselves.
Filed under: Indian Politics, Terrorism | Tagged: Ahmedabad, Gujjar, India, Jammu and Kashmir, Terrorism, War on Terror
