Last week my college whatsapp group became active again (after 2 slow weeks). This time discussion was on terrorism and whether it is fair to associate an identity (religion/nationality/gender) with terrorism.
Context
Discussion started with a forwarded message. It has list of all terrorist organization. All names had a common element. They sounded related to a specific religion.
I objected to the message. I find it surprising that how a lot of people associate terrorism with one religion. I find it idiotic & ignorant.
I want to make them think and dig deeper in the problem. So often engage in such debates.
Terrorism is an uncomfortable to define problem
In this particular debate, I asked my friends to “define” terrorism before associating it with any identity (one particular religion in this case). But to my surprise they refused to define! I guess it was too uncomfortable for them.
They gave me examples or riots but when I asked for definition again, they refused to provide one.
Some of them also mocked my question
I tried pressing for definition
In my opinion, definition is important to make sure two parties are talking about same problem. So I pressed for it. I gave an example. I told them that without identifying the root cause, we may end up working on symptom.
But no logic worked!
I tried to define it for my friends
As my friends keep dodging the question, I gave them mine & their definition of a terrorist in my words.
Mine — “anybody who pushes his/her agenda by fear of punishment”
Their — “Anybody who target others (of particular identity) and cause “great” damage to their “property” or “well being” . scale of damage is important” .
What happened next?
A hush !
To my disappointment, I got no response on this. They went silent. Otherwise passionate debater went quiet about entire debate. ITs 3 days now, but no answers.
I have some thoughts on why they went quiet, but thats for some other post. For this post I want to pass my point across. I hope they get my point (they can still choose to be ignorant though).
Popular meaning of terrorism
I think following is what popular meaning of terrorism is
“Anybody who target others (of particular identity) and cause “great” damage to their “property” or “well being” . scale of damage is important” .
My friends certainly subscribe to this definition. They give me examples of a list available on wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_India
Which will easily make you believe that most of terrorist follow a particular faith, which is wrong. This is what most of media also propagate. most of the forwarded messages
Let’s take another example — “Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao” .
This initiative is a an attempt to solve a problem India is facing for years. — female foeticide. Female foeticide is the process of finding out the sex of the foetus and undergoing abortion if it is a girl.
In simple words
- Society pressurizes family to produce boys , which ends up in making them check gender before birth . If it is a boy, all good, else they “get rid” of female child.
- Many a times it happens just after birth as well.
What it has to do with the terrorism
Family is terrorized of consequences of having a girl child.
What it has to do with Popular Terrorism
A lot. Its a bigger problem. If we compare numbers, we will see that female foeticide causes far more “killing”.
- In 2020 4.6 crore females are missing in India
- Last five year On average 5–6 lakh girl are victim of this every year. (that number is only for pre natal.
- Simple mathematic says its a 2000 killing per days.
- India’s sex ratio is bad, very bad. 919 females per thousand males in 2011 .
- Some Indian states are far worse.Haryana has 834 girls per 1000 boys, Rajasthan 888, Punjab 846.
What these numbers tell us?
These are official numbers, so real number may be even bigger. But even with official numbers, few things are clear -
- First thing — 2000 killing per day is big, very big. It overtakes other terrorism my friends were discussing. It also overtakes covid.
- Media dont talks about it, people are comfortable around it. Although its illegal, but you can still get it done with easily.
- As majority religion practicing it is Hinduism, if we follow the same logic which my friends are following for other terrorism events— Hindus are terrorist as well.
- Going by numbers — Hindus seems to be bigger and smarter.
I will stop expanding on it. Number speaks volume.
My meaning of terrorism
I do not associate terrorism with any identity. My definition is simple
“anybody who pushes his/her agenda by fear of punishment”
Its what you think is what matter more than your actions. People are as civil as their society allows them to be.
As we can see although it is killing more people everyday, female foeticide is not considered terrorism in India. Also there is no covid like urgency to deal with it.Clearly action doestn matter.We need to go to root cause.
Root cause is not identity but emotion of violence. If our thought process support violence (of any scale), we are terrorist. Scale doesn't matter. Scale is provided by society, and asI explained it can be manipulated.
We need to stop Violence. And how to do that. In my opinion first step is
“Stop doing anything which separate you from rest of Humanity”
Jiddu has defined it so well
“When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.”
I hope it make sense. It has became a rather long post. So I will stop writing now. I will share it with my friends as well.
Looking forward to your feedback!
