E D I T O R I A L

Peace in Peril

INDIA is becoming a dangerous place to live. Violence is striking deep and hard in various forms. On July 11 terrorists struck within half an hour over crowded Mumbai’s suburban trains at seven railways stations killing over 200 innocent persons, mostly women and children. Earlier in the morning in Sri Nagar bomb blasts caused by Kashmiri separatists claimed a dozen odd innocent lives. This was just one day in the life of over 1.2 billion Indians.

Elsewhere Naxalites had been striking at will in several states with impunity. Civil life was also disturbed when in Chandigarh just meters sway from the sprawling Raj Bhawans of Haryana and Punjab, one person was gunned down. It is besides the point that he was a known and much wanted gangster.

There is manifestation of violence all around. Young lovers are killed by the caste lords and women routinely kill their female babies in their wombs. Bride burning is too common an ugly feature of urban and as well as rural life in the prosperous parts of India. Indians, it seems, are becoming more intolerant and even their street behaviour presents an ugly spectacle of this violence. One consequence is heavy increase in the budgets to maintain law and order. There is a manifold increase in spending over the last three decades on military, Para military outfits and the police. We have more people in uniforms on the streets and more people in jails. Yet, violence increasingly strikes in its various manifestations all around.

There is bound to be debate on the recent blasts as there is bound to be concern. Sadly much of the debate in drawn on hard communal lines and is partisan. The people in Mumbai have repeatedly rebuffed communal divisions and as whole lot of Hindus and Muslims came forward not only to condemn the dastardly act, but to offer all help including blood donations, they successfully foiled efforts at fuelling communal passions and violence.

The government reaction was usual: India would not tolerate any kind of terrorism and there shall be no compromise either. Peace process and normalisation efforts with Pakistan would not stop. No one knows what that means. Pakistan itself is mired in violence. The Musharraf regime despite tall and phony claims has no control over large areas of Balochistan and Wazirstan, besides cities like Karachi and Lahore. This time officials did not blame the ISI, Pakistani version of India’s RAW, the dreaded outfit for spying, plotting and counter insurgency. Yet, they were quick to name Lashkar-e-Toiba and Islamist students. Time shall surely reveal the identity of these hideous killers.   Yet as some right wing Hindu leaders tried there was no point in blaming the moderate Muslims for violence as heretical Islamic radicals who indulged in heinous crime may be via some mafia and gangsters know what they are doing. They take pride in their deviance for variety of reasons; real or perceived feeling of injustice or hurt and their role as crusaders of the faith. Religious bigotry born out of irrational thinning is at the root of so much violence that religion has lost any relevance if it all it had.

Some argue since India has deviated from its well established status of a non- aligned country and surely cosier with America and Israel and their Zionists,   it has equally lost much with the Muslim world. India for long has been silent on the atrocities perpetrated on Palestinians by  American supported Israel and had offered no help to find any peaceful  solution, its stand on Iran’s nuclear issue and voting with the America besides the pogrom in Gujarat where large number of Muslims were killed by  Hindu zealots. All this, it is pointed has alienated not only Muslims across the world, but its own Muslims. It is also stated with reasonableness that Muslims comparatively are not only more poor, illiterate and backward, but also at times ignored by the government except as vote banks. There is some truth in these arguments, yet how would one justify such heinous crime as bombing of trains or killing of innocent civilians, at times Muslims. Terrorists like the perpetrators of war against Afghanistan and Iraq have no religion, nor morality or peace and security of the people in their minds.

To some extent the bad blood between dominant rulers of India and Pakistan is responsible for the current bloodshed as are those who demolished Babari Masjid and later caused violence in Gujarat and Maharashtra. America that funded and encouraged al Qaeda and other extremist organisations and has been fouling attempts to sort out the tangled web of Kashmir has still not learnt any lessons despite September 11 attacks in New York and Washington. Its policies and practices have made the world much more unsafe.

Yet there are enough reasons to ask Pakistan to dismantle its terrorist training camps and bring at least some semblance of democracy in its Kashmir and elsewhere too. India had no choice but to react to the remarks made by Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri that drew a link between the Mumbai attacks and non-resolution of disputes between India and Pakistan.  India called on Pakistan to take "urgent steps" to dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism, act resolutely against terrorist groups and uphold its commitment to end extremism as enshrined in the January 6, 2004 joint press statement. Kasuri was quoted as saying in an interview to Reuters in Washington: "I think the Mumbai incident — however tragic it may be, and it is undoubtedly very tragic — underlines the need for the two countries to work together to control this environment, but they can only do so if they resolve their disputes."  This was later denied in Islamabad. Yet it reveals a mindset that violence of this nature in India, particularly in Kashmir can only help Pakistan find its own kind of solution to Kashmir. India called this as appalling. "We find it appalling that Foreign Minister Kasuri should seek to link this blatant and inhuman act of terror to the so-called lack of resolution of disputes between India and Pakistan”, officials in New Delhi stated. One way the blasts in India’s financial capital have caused a setback to the efforts for peace. It would take big endeavor to rebuild the confidence measures between the two nuclear powers.

Countries as well as well people should know violence only perpetrates more violence. Those who justify the daily run of violence in Iraq and Afghanistan in the name of exporting democracy and exploiting oil reserves should know that violence solves nothing. Listen to what the Colombian poet Allan Luna says about the wars and terrorism. When people enjoyed talking about how the bombs were fired and have no idea about the consequences. As war is conducted in armed man’s head, like the movies of Vietnam, Luna wrote:   “I am not an ordinary criminal. / I fly. / My prey is there below. / I don't see their eyes or hear their cries. / I fly. / I know they are watching me. / I don't know their names, or who they are. / I don't need to know. / It is enough to know where they are, / To let fall upon them / an agonising rain. My mission is death and afterwards a beer. / I don't know war. / They haven't yet shot me down.”  Perpetrators of this violence are all same.

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