SurferSpeak | India's secular slumber

One attack on US soil and it goes "pre-emptive" while India hibernates in deep sleep, says our surfer.

As I write this, the Israeli military is relentlessly bombarding the airport of Beirut. The reason for the rain of hell fire is the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers by the Lebanese terror outfit, Hezbollah.

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So, is Israel overreacting? Apparently yes.

But given the history of Islamic violence that Israel had to contend with particularly in the context of its vulnerable geography too, surrounded as it is by hostile Islamic nations, its actions reveal a stern wisdom borne out of experience: the only language Islamic terror understands is counter terror, preferably pre-emptive!

Nip it in the bud, before they turn you into a corpse, which is not a possibility but an eventuality. Little surprise, therefore, that the jehadis deem Israel a tough nut to crack.

I present this prelude out of both frustration and inspiration; frustration because of the way Indians have been rendered sitting ducks by a combination of factors, mostly self-inflicted, to the bombs of Islamic terrorists: inspiration, because if India has the will, Israel has already shown the way.

But alas, Bharat somehow still seems to love its blissful confinement to the negotiating table. The 'will' to take on the terrorists is nowhere in sight and hence it is frustration that finally overwhelms inspiration, unless you are an incurable dreamer or a fan of Vijayakanth, who has killed more terrorists on screen than have our forces.

Every country in the world, even with just one incident of Islamic terror, has pulled up its socks, geared up, made its intentions clear without mincing words and followed up with concrete action, both defensive and affirmative. The US has ensured that 9/11 is not just the first, but the last strike on its soil. Britain pressed the panic button after the London bombings last July and has remorselessly secured itself to the point of criminal paranoia.

The rest of Europe, after the cartoon crisis, has shed its multicultural melting pot idealisms to clam up with a strict no-nonsense attitude towards fundamentalist Islamic clerics.

But India, which has been at the receiving end of jihadi violence for long is in deep slumber ... secular slumber.

On the other hand, the 'free and secular' western world, wears its religion and culture like a talisman, to ward off the Jihadi threat even while flexing its muscles and delivering punches, when necessary and even when not so.

But India, predominantly Hindu and targetted by the terrorists precisely for that... though we may imagine otherwise, rather unwisely... remains suspended in secular seclusion! Any association of terror with the religion of a minority is taboo even when it is glaringly apparent and any invocation of our own culture or religion is dubbed communal even when it could actually strengthen us, as a rallying point.

It does not seem to occur to us that for us to be secular, we have to be alive first! So as bombs go off in crowded places with chilling regularity, a Pavlovian spirit of slavishness, slip-shod logic and self-defeating tolerance takes grip of everyone.

From the public to prime-time pundits to pen-pushers of the print to politicos, all
are coy, confused and confounded about how to react.

The stoic leaders exhort the nation to be calm, as if it were raring to bark and bite like Bush, the media waxes eloquent on the country's resilience in the face of terror, forgetting that bombs or no bombs, those alive have to go to work for their daily bread, the world sheds tears and then advises restraint, a virtue they themselves haveshelved in similar situations, while the killers for their part start preparing for their next brutal assault, cocksure that they can pick and choose their targets so sedated by secularism.

Add to that the imposed guilt of Babri Masjid and Gujarat being drilled into the Indian psyche day in and day out by rational intellectuals amidst the masses and the media, much to the Jihadis joy. Should we not be paying an eternal price for those sins? Were not the Jihadis just lambs before that, tolerant to boot and lovers of 'kafirs'?

What delusions!

Really, in a country inhabited and led by mere men of straw, no provocation can truly become the last straw.

The ongoing mock show of anger against Pakistan can no longer hide our own failings. The excuses of Pakistan exporting terror to India are passe. The Jihadis here have achieved self-sufficiency on that count long back. The internalising of Islamic terror, with inaccessible pockets and even corridors inside India is a harsh reality. Here RDX is a cottage industry with a high degree of indigenisation and vast employment ops for inflammable youth, Indians for sure but Muslims first, waiting to be ignited.

In short, barring announcing themselves through neon signs, the Islamic terror network is as conspicuous as an over-bearing mother-in-law! Yet, the long arm of our law remains folded, in secular deference to minority sentiments. Even when it is apparent that the so called moderates in them have no voice.

Forget, crossing the LoC and pounding PoK or even Pakistan our authorities are politically inhibited from raiding the numerous mohallas of terror right under their own noses!

On the contrary, the rulers bend over backwards with bouquets of reservations and what not in a wishful fit of appeasement, reminiscent of a sheep's optimism when faced by wolves.

Now does a nation, so committed to hara kiri, need enemies?

TR Jawahar is our surfer and can be contacted at the writer attrjawahar@vsnl.net.

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