And, if you leave out some of these mad men, we do have a reasonably stable democracy that is now being repeatedly invaded by barbaric medieval folk whose every act is redolent of Stone Age cruelties. Snuffing out innocent lives is their idea of life. This “idea” is not about living, it is about dying! You have to confront this at close range to feel the hurt and angst that we in Mumbai do.
The only kind of reflection that makes any sense after all this is the one that
promises to throw up credible solutions. What civil society needs is to find actionable inputs – and to ask those who are responsible for our safety, why on earth have they failed to create terror-proof mechanisms? Why are cops still armed with World War I rifles and defective gear, while the terrorists have no trouble barging into high-security areas armed with sophisticated automatic rifles, grenades and RDX? How come there was no attack in America after 9/11 and why is it that China never sees such acts of terror?
The civilised among us live in inclusive societies built around all kinds of freedoms. Without these rights – including the one that helps us create – life for us is meaningless. Yet as we are today, we feel thankful if we manage to survive till the next day. And make a note of this: we are weighed under this collective sense of hopelessness despite being in the majority. Yes, this is not resilience; this is, if anything, the powerlessness of the majority.
A major problem concerns the scores of competing identities in India. We continue to be divided along caste and religious lines. There are so many languages and castes and sub-castes, and in recent months we have seen all sorts of regional identities receiving disproportionate space in the media. Yet for the superficial and gullible folk, all this passes for democracy! And this fragility of ours is known to the entire world – especially those who have more homogenous populations and scientifically thought-up systems to counter the omnipresent threat from global terrorism. Why can we not close our ranks and strengthen our porous borders and so-called soft terrorist targets? What’s so soft about these that, even though we claim to be the world’s largest democracy, we are unable to put foolproof security systems in place? And ah, well, the Taj Mahal and Oberoi-Trident hotels were certainly not soft targets! Is it not a shame that our security forces could manage to catch just one terrorist alive – who too, by the way, could have died had he been more grievously injured than he was? What have our security agencies done – apart from passing the buck? Surely we deserve to be told why they failed to get wind of the meticulously planned attacks?....Continue
The only kind of reflection that makes any sense after all this is the one that
promises to throw up credible solutions. What civil society needs is to find actionable inputs – and to ask those who are responsible for our safety, why on earth have they failed to create terror-proof mechanisms? Why are cops still armed with World War I rifles and defective gear, while the terrorists have no trouble barging into high-security areas armed with sophisticated automatic rifles, grenades and RDX? How come there was no attack in America after 9/11 and why is it that China never sees such acts of terror?The civilised among us live in inclusive societies built around all kinds of freedoms. Without these rights – including the one that helps us create – life for us is meaningless. Yet as we are today, we feel thankful if we manage to survive till the next day. And make a note of this: we are weighed under this collective sense of hopelessness despite being in the majority. Yes, this is not resilience; this is, if anything, the powerlessness of the majority.
A major problem concerns the scores of competing identities in India. We continue to be divided along caste and religious lines. There are so many languages and castes and sub-castes, and in recent months we have seen all sorts of regional identities receiving disproportionate space in the media. Yet for the superficial and gullible folk, all this passes for democracy! And this fragility of ours is known to the entire world – especially those who have more homogenous populations and scientifically thought-up systems to counter the omnipresent threat from global terrorism. Why can we not close our ranks and strengthen our porous borders and so-called soft terrorist targets? What’s so soft about these that, even though we claim to be the world’s largest democracy, we are unable to put foolproof security systems in place? And ah, well, the Taj Mahal and Oberoi-Trident hotels were certainly not soft targets! Is it not a shame that our security forces could manage to catch just one terrorist alive – who too, by the way, could have died had he been more grievously injured than he was? What have our security agencies done – apart from passing the buck? Surely we deserve to be told why they failed to get wind of the meticulously planned attacks?....Continue
