India earned its reputation as a soft state that can be intimidated into meeting terrorists' demands. Our foreign minister in the year 1999 in the month of December personally escorted three terrorists freed by India in order to secure the release of passengers of a hijacked Indian Airlines flight to Tliban controlled Afghanistan. This act led to the 9/11 attack in New York as one of these very terrorists was later implicated in the 9/11 attacks. Tough rhetoric and reactive government policies and Draconian acts like the POTA will not serve the cause for curbing such terrorism. . We have to break out of this trap that we have imposed on ourselves.
Terrorism is not about Muslims only and their quest for Jihad. Not all Muslims are terrorists and not all terrorists are Muslims. India's 140 million Muslims are a salutary negation of the facile thesis about Islam's incompatibility with democracy. The terrorists that we encounter today are not men who commit evil acts out of revenge. For these men indoctrinated by outfits like the Al Qaeda and the Dawood gangs, terrorism is a full fledged profession. Only few Muslims believe that these phonies are fighting for any cause but their own. Hindus have stopped fulminating against terror despite the heavy toll it takes each time. For these terrorists who are invisible, they have no Agenda. They do it in the name of Jihad or some linguistic or religious cause, which a common man does not identify himself with.
Democratic politics, political freedoms, civil liberties and religious tolerance must be protected at all costs. The corruption and politicisation of the police forces must be minimised. We need a dedicated and an unbiased police force. Criminalisation of politics must stop. Instead, we have number of parliamentarians with pending criminal cases. Some jailed parliamentarians also cast their vote on important National issues which is alarming! Terrorism prospers and thrives in such conditions. In a way, Poverty is an incubator of terrorism and a root cause of corruption. It breeds the Naxalites and the local terrorist groups. The government needs to be tough in implementing reforms to maintain rapid economic growth and uplift the status of its downtrodden people.
