Terror in technicolour

 

 

Brutal bestiality and bloodthirsty bullies have a hauntingly unique way of working in tandem to leave their bewildering footprints on shifting sands of time. Those trampled, tortured, traumatised and terrorised by the architects of hatred can only marvel at the devilishly delusional excuses trotted out by the perpetrators. They can marvel, yes; the victims can curse their fate; they can seethe with impotent rage alternating with numbing fatalism and they can even become footnotes in wars of ideology where ideologues become sanctimonious spokespersons for murderous mobs. But they cannot hope for redemption. At least not in their generation. Let’s face it: modern history has mostly been about the murder of hope; the miracle being that hope refuses to fade away even when there is no hope.

Really, it has always been a no-holds barred battle between terror and hope; between submission and redemption. For those who have used and continue to use terror as a bludgeoning instrument of arrogance and identity, hope is an oasis that must always remain a mirage for the ‘other’. For those who have nothing but hope, terror is a long night of darkness that just might yield to a ray of sunshine for their children, if not for them. The two are the yin and yang of modern times; the thesis of hope and the anti-thesis of terror that is yet to merge into a synthesis.

It happened in Auschwitz and Dachau when the terms ‘holocaust’ and ‘genocide’ forever marked a brazen entry into the historical halls of shame. Six million Jews were annihilated by this rampaging wave of fascist hatred. It happened in Minsk, St Petersburg and in gulags of Siberia. That was when Stalin married Marxism to the Spanish Inquisition and forever etched his name in the halls of shame as the atheist Torquemada that devoured close to 20 million souls. And then there was the Great Helmsman Mao Zedong whose delusional ‘Great Leap Forward’ probably resulted in about 30 million needless deaths. In contemporary times, the modern yin and yang of terror – George Bush and Osama Bin Laden – have unleashed an inglorious orgy of violence that has given an entirely new and sinister connotation to the ‘Clash of Civilisations’.

Indians must consider themselves lucky. Compared to these towering stalwarts, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and similar Indian politicians must surely appear as puny purveyors of putative pogroms. And the likes of Masood Azhar and Bilal must be credulous caricatures of evil. Compared to the Gulag, Nandigram would surely be a paradise of tranquillity when future historians expose the true face of crypto-fascism masquerading as Marxism. And compared to 9/11, the simultaneous bomb blasts in Varanasi, Lucknow and Faizabad must surely go down as footnotes when future historians embark upon the impossible project of dissecting the war between religions. For future historians, Naroda Patiya, Nandigram and Faizabad may not be the stuff that earns a Ph.D. For apologists who seek to wish away evil as an aberration, the perpetrators and marauders of Nandigram and Naroda Patiya are but ‘unfortunate’ aberrations when compared to the towering titans of terror. It is easy to sanitise evil when scale and magnitude become more important than intent. Yet, for the victims who suffered indignity, death and despair in Naroda Patiya, Nandigram and Faizabad, terror is a live demon that has devoured their lives and blown away hope. But look at these morbid instances even deeper, and ironically, you’ll immediately see that even ‘death’ has its own legacy of differences. While Modi’s role in Gujarat was clearly one of covert omission in controlling the violence in the state during those times, the West Bengal government’s role has been one of overt and arrogant commission of and subscription to the bloody violence and massacre. In Modi’s Gujarat of today, controlling extremist activities is a prime state subject. In Buddha’s Bengal of today, implementing extremist activities is a prime state subject. While Modi has succeeded in improving Gujarat’s economic status thunderingly, look at how the Bengal government has succeeded in destroying the same. How much dissimilar could two states, and two governments, have been?

Evil, terror and hatred over ‘identity’ have simmered throughout human history. But modern, functional democracies were supposed to conquer these demons. A pluralist and tolerant society was supposed to replace the bullet with the ballot and savagery with debate. Then why are modern democracies across the world becoming laboratories of hatred and terror?

The reason is simple and twofold. The first is the conspiracy of silence practised by the so called silent majority. India would have been proud of its civilisation’s heritage if millions more Hindus had expressed outrage over what happened to Muslims after Godhra. Muslims too would find redemption if millions more of them protest against pseudo religious fascists who portray Islam as a ‘with us or without us’ way of life. Sadly for India, that is not happening often enough. The second, and perhaps more deep rooted reason why hatred and terror are becoming hydra headed monsters is the tendency of groups to be ‘selective’ when it comes to condemning terror. The BJP demanding asylum for a Taslima Nasreen hounded by fundamentalist Muslims would have more credibility if they also demanded asylum for Mulsims stranded in Naroda Patiya. The CPI(M)’s condemnation of Narendra Modi would have more credibility if they also condemned the Nandigram massacre. And Imam Bukhari would have more credibility if he excoriated Bilal of HUJI for his murderous rampage. Sadly for India, that seems too distant a possibility. And so the cycle of hatred and terror looks fated to revolve in a karmic spin.

To borrow from a poet, If Naroda Patiya comes, can Nand-igram be far behind?