Last few years have seen many attacks of terror, more so after the ghastly tragedy of 9/11, 2001. Since then many formulations have also been popularised, one of these being all terrorists are Muslims. The impact of this formulation on the popular psyche has been immensely negative.
 After all what is terrorism, is it due to religion or a religious community? As such it is difficult to define terrorism, as some people whom we regard as terrorists, others may regard as freedom fighters, those fighting for a particular cause. LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam), a terrorist organisation is looked up as fighting for the cause of rights of Tamils by some. Roughly one can say terrorism is an act of violence which may be done by a state, a group or an individual for a political motive and due to this innocent people get killed. This act is a part of political statement or political purpose. Those acts where there are no deaths but people feel intimidated can also be called as terrorism.
Terrorism is different from communal violence. In communal violence a communal group spreads hatred against a community, and average layers of society are mobilised to attack the minority groups. The Gujarat carnage, Mumbai violence, the Orissa violence (2008) fall in this category. Terrorism is planned secretly and its execution comes as a surprise. Communal violence is built up and its perpetrators are easy to locate.
The November 26 attacks by terrorist groups in Mumbai have intimidated and terrorised the nation in general and city in particular. While such acts of terrorism are more spectacular and frightening, there are other phenomenon in the society which also create an atmosphere of terror in communities. This pertains to the acts of violence committed by political groups for their vested interests.
In such acts which serve the interests of the political groups, a hate atmosphere is created against the local minority on linguistic bias or national minority in the name of religion. This is orchestrated by the political groups by spreading the ideology of hate against the minorities. In Mumbai we saw that when a politician was sidetracked in the power struggle in Shiv Sena, he came back to use the linguistic identity to initiate violence and the consequent attacks on the poor taxi drivers and others, resulting in an overall atmosphere where the values of Indian constitution were bypassed for narrow sectarian goals.
Currently in Orissa, the make believe perception that Christian missionaries are converting by force and fraud is ruling the popular mind. However, we see there is not a single case in the police record where the complaint against missionaries for conversion has been registered. Christianity is a very old religion in India and today their population is mere 2.30 per cent. This population of Christians has been on decline from the 2.60 per cent in 1971 to 2.30 per cent today. The Wadhva Committee report which went into the killing of Pastor Graham Stains in 1999, showed that the Pastor was not involved in the acts of conversion and that the Christian population in his area of work was fairly stable. This perception about missionary work has been used to instigate violence against a tiny minority of the country.
This leads to the polarisation of communities and communal groups benefit during elections. The atmosphere of terror created is so intense that the victims are forced to leave their houses, and live in different areas. This transforms the terrorised atmosphere into structural mechanisms, like ghettoes. Those living in these ghettoes are the permanent victims of fear. The Kandhmal events have resulted in thousands of Christians leaving their homes, to live in forests and refugee camps. Those terrorised by the Mumbai violence of 1992-93 and Gujarat violence are similarly living another type of life, full of permanent terror in their minds.
As such terrorism is due to social, economic, political reasons and terrorists have come from all the religions. Let’s recall the killer of Mahatma Gandhi, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. Similarly, today’s biggest terrorist organisation is LTTE. The Irish Republican Army constituted mainly by Christians has been indulging in the acts of terror in Ireland for a long time.
Terrorists are not born. Some youth take to the path of terror due to gross injustice or to such a perception, done to them or their community. This is associated with a feeling that society-state will not give them justice. This was witnessed in Guwahati, in November 2007. A group of Adivasis had come to the city for demanding their rights over land and forest resources. They were not only beaten up but also one girl accompanying them was molested. A week later an Adivasi National Liberation Front was formed which planted bombs in Guwahati Rajdhani Express killing seven people. We remember that after the Mumbai violence a group of frustrated-dejected people took help of underworld to plant bombs in Mumbai trains.
There is another reason for terrorism, and that pertains to the political goals of dominant nations or dominant groups. In the decade of 1970s, when the Russian army occupied Afghanistan, the US in order to fight back the Russian army and to control the oil wells, set up Madrassas in Pakistan to indoctrinate the Muslim youth. The indoctrination module was made in Washington. According to this, the youth were made to believe that Russians/every non-Muslim is a kafir, killing kafirs is Jihad and sacrifice for Jihad will take you to Jannat (heaven) where 72 virgins will be welcoming you. After defeating the Russian armies the Al Qaeda turned against other South Asian countries and also against US itself. India is a victim of the offshoots of this particular Al Qaeda variety, as these offshoots firmly believe in what was taught to them in the Madrassas, specially set up to indoctrinate them, in the territory of Pakistan by the US.
The other major cause of terrorism is ethno-national, like Sri Lanka-Jaffna where LTTE came up, in Kashmir, where the issue of autonomy of Kashmir turned to become ethno national, the North East where the integration of NE into Indian stream gave the hiccups of terrorism. Similarly, Irish Republican Army also came up due to ethnic injustices.
Lately, we saw the involvement of some Hindutva elements in the acts of terror related to the blasts in front of the mosques, Malegaon, Ajmer dargah etc. This again is due to the indoctrination of the mind by the political process, by ideologies which are totally anti democratic and look at politics in the colours of religion. Here the indoctrination has been done that a particular community is under threat due to another community. One knows that the threat is not due to religious community, but since this politics is based on communal principles they attribute all reasons to religion and so the misconceptions are deliberately produced resulting in violence.
The need is that we look beyond the symptom of terrorism at the deeper disease which is infesting the social fabric. Just tightening the security won’t do as the terrorists are willing to lose their lives for ‘their cause’. We have also seen that some global powers may be assisting and promoting them. So we need to revive the role of United Nations at global level and see that the places where terror camps are set up are shut down by the international agency. Locally, we must ensure that the culprits are punished without any discrimination and our politics is based on ethical and moral values. All those projecting that they are working for religion, religion based nationalism have to be discarded. Our principle must be that religion is a private matter and it should not be mixed with politics. The basis of our political logic has to be the values of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. At global level a democratic arrangement between different nations and undermining the hegemony of dominating nation states has to be aimed at.

The writer is a recipient of Indira Gandhi National Integration Award, 2006.

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