My column in today’s DNA
26/11. A day three years ago, when the average Mumbaikar’s sense of relative security was ripped out.
It isn’t that Mumbai was a haven of security and peace. Quite the contrary. The last two decades had been quite traumatic for the city of dreams. First came the gang wars, followed by the riots and then by bomb blasts s in the first few years of the 1990s. This had an impact on the fabric of the city, and its psyche went through trauma that was best associated with other places Then came the sporadic bomb blasts – targeting trains, buses, inflicting death, damage and fear on a population that was on the move, trying to create a better life for itself and its families. Yet the city plodded on. Then came the floods – a random cloudburst that shook the city up. You still see the aftermath of that incident. A heavy downpour and half of Mumbai seems to be indoors. And, then came 26/11. Possibly, the most traumatic of the lot. Not because it happened in the elite areas of Mumbai. Not even because of the toll, but because the enemy – and let’s not mince words about who they were – were able to sneak into our city with the utmost ease, and unleash carnage, while all that we could do was wait and watch. That they were able to do this in multiple locations including trains stations, hospitals and hotels with ease makes one feel even less secure. The kind of impotence and paralysis associated with the four days of bloodbath was without parallel. An elite, highly indoctrinated, professionally trained, well-armed killer squad landed in your city, your country, and killed, and killed and killed – and there was no way to stop them.
Three years down the line, what is 26/11 signify. Like much else in this country – a ritual. A ritual where we take out old candles and light them, a ritual in which we send a file to Pakistan to ask for justice, a ritual in which television anchors, newspaper editors and intelligentsia pontificate on what was, what should be and what isn’t. 26/11 has become a ritual. A ritual like all others. Garlands, flowers, candles, meaningless words – but have we really learnt ?
The primary goal of the state is to keep its citizens secure. And, to ensure this security forces have to be well staffed, well trained, well armed, well coordinated. Mumbai, three years after 26/11, faces a 40 per cent shortage of police personnel. There simply aren’t enough police to take care of law and order, let alone a terror attack. The remaining anti-terror infrastructure promised in the aftermath of the 26/11 attacks is still in the distant horizon. There is no political party asking why jobs are not being filled – by locals or otherwise. There is no rath yatra highlighting the miserable state of security across the nation, and there is no activism on keeping citizens secure. While it may be impossible to prevent terror attacks 100% of the time, it shouldn’t be this easy for the enemy to get through the gates.
The response of the Americans and the Europeans to terror attacks on their territory was all party consensus on the way forward. Can you see our politicians, our civil society, our citizens coming together on anything? If the Congress proposes something, the BJP has to oppose and vice versa. Everything is a party political issue. Everything is geared towards capturing the headlines. And, political capital is sought to be built on every little aspect of Governance – be it FDI or security. National Interest takes a back seat in this political edition of Tom and Jerry. What politicians seem to forget is that while Tom and Jerry is fun to watch, does one really want them in charge of the Nation?
And Finally, Everyone knows where the terrorists came from. Everyone knows who funded them, trained them and deployed them. They also know that these weren’t non-state actors but a State itself. So why does India persist in this delusion of ‘we need to be friends’ with Pakistan. They aren’t our friends. They never have been. There doesn’t have to be a logical, understandable reason for their visceral hatred towards India. What there has to be is an appreciation on the Indian side, that some people just want to see your country burn. And those people are not hidden away in caves in the Hindukush mountains, but are within the Government of Pakistan.
“What there has to be is an appreciation on the Indian side, that some people just want to see your country burn.”
Which country? Whose country? Where is that fierce national consciousness and feeling of “one nation” amongst Indians that would have compelled an equally spineless government to do the needful?
One example: I was in deep south of Alabama, USA on 9/11/2001, more than 1000 miles away from ground zero in NYC. When it comes to politics, religion, racial attitudes, society, AL and NY are so far apart they feel like separate countries. Few in NYC have ever been to or care about AL. One is a solid democrat state famous for its rudeness, the other is hardcore white republican and they let everybody know that. Yet on that day, a whole lot of these same folks in Alabama were bawling their eyes out at the sight of innocent *Americans* being slaughtered by Al-Qaeda monsters. Not Yankees, not democrats, not “non-church goers”, but Americans. There’s a whole of Americans who are yet to get over attack of Pearl Harbor in distant Hawaii. That’s half a globe and 70 years away. Any inch of a nation’s soil is equally important to its citizens, regardless of where it is located. You touch one, you touch all of us.
The world also observes that the rest of India cares two hoots if innocent Indian Pandits and some Muslims are being killed en masse by cowardly Pak terrorists in Kashmir, funds-rich Baptist and Maoist fueled attacks in the opportunity-deprived north east, the bomb attacks in Bangalore and Coimbatore, or the missionary church mischief in Kanyakumari. I wont be surprised if we wake up in a few years to find that Lakshadweep and Andamans have become foreign bases, and most of Kashmir soil has “eroded”.
Why does a ‘Kolaveri’ or cricket so tightly bind Indians for a brief while? In the latter case, everybody is either busy bleeding Indian blue or decked out in gorgeous tricolor face paint, which renders other differences insignificant. There’s uncertainty in the air and (in most cases,) the outcome is unknown and it helps to have a familiar talisman by your side. Details are not important in the immediate context. Uncertainty is a great leveler.
In the former case, the anonymity of online avatars allows people to let loose and confess their subconscious liking for what is essentially a magnificently silly and cool Indian tune done by unassuming Indians. It’s not the fictional Dravidian music that the fictional Aryans would have ignored if the same was released via some audio CD release function in Chennai. We have way more Indian-ness inside than we would like to let on in public. The 5000-year old strands of Hindu cultural DNA is a great leveler too. The Aryan-Dravidian myth took all of 3 days to crumble, even if briefly.
The only viable unity in India is rooted in India, Bharat, Hindustan. Let’s hold on to that. We never know when we are going to need it (we do). Note that this is not the same as that sand-papered uniformity desired by seculars, marxist or monotheistic demagogues that haunt your TV screens and ‘national’ newspapers. They seek to achieve this by pretext (what a funny word) by eradicating this very national consciousness; getting you to rip that cultural DNA out of you so as to leave you in rootless self-loathing – in other words, you are to voluntarily become their clones. Don’t let them. Let’s remain inclusive. There’s more than one way of doing things, and each of them is ultimately Indian. Now this doesn’t mean we “swap spitballs in the shower” (as the Clint Eastwood character in ‘Heartbreak Ridge’ would say) in some Ram Rajya. But we have to and must exercise the occasional right to get mad, nay, go into a Kolaveri as far as demanding punishment and justice, any time an internal or external force dares to desecrate any part of India, or kill Indians, be that soil in Kashmir or the Andamans, or some lonely Indian embassy in Afghanistan.
1. 26/11 happened in Mumbai, but it says less about the universally acknowledged ability of Indians to function in the midst of chaos, and more about the suicidal lack of national consciousness in the rest of India.
2. 26/11 was engineered and designed by Pakistanis. It’s a product of the monotheistic society they chose to build in their corner of the subcontinental woods. I hope they fix their issues and live in peace.
3. I, myopic, rootless non-Indian Indian am partly responsible for what happened in India after 26/11.
p.s: Yes, there’s a lot of rhetoric used above. But sometimes, it makes a lot more sense that thousands of sterilized and forceps-picked words of deep-thinking analysis that adorn the English newspapers and TV channels before being consigned to trash bins, virtual or real.