WHAT MAKES A TERRORIST
What makes a terrorist? Is it a consequence of some kind of a despair rising out of the
system? Is it a ramification of the pitilessness, deafness on part of the higher section of
society that aggravates the sense of incompatibility with the social structure? These are
some of the pertinent questions ?
Let us take the help of an example. It relates to a protagonist, a US based brilliant
professor B. Singh. His odyssey down the memory lane, tracing the past after a chance
meeting with his college days friend-in-aide, Maxwell Ahmad, Ruminating the tormented
memories of the past, Bill vividly remembers how he was impressed by the young and
idealistic Joe Castro’s dissatisfaction with the social system and its inequities that
overlooked the suffering of the poor. This close dyad had led them to join communist
naxalite terrorists movement, a students uprising that had rocked Bengal, a communist
state of India, in the early 1970’s.
B. Singh felt himself dragged hypnotically into Naxalism by the altruist aspiration of
making a classless social order that values people, the rich and the poor at par. No one
would be without food, clothes and home. Convinced by the views of old fanatic type
leaders but announcing communism their religion. Most members were from sound
families but emphatically touched by the endless suffering of the deprived – and the
other members of the group that there was need to restructure the entire social order
that exploited the poor ruthlessly, by demolishing the present and constructing a new
structure so that the share taken by the property – owning class can be justified, Bill
agrees to tread the path of violence to achieve the end.
To shake the foundation of bureaucracy and polity, Bill executes ruthless plan of killing
politicians and other officers of higher ranks in the government. The group suffers heavy
backlash from the government. He wakes up from the reverie of violence only when he
finds himself aiming at his very own father, a very honest and compassionate man. It is
only then he realizes the futility of the modes of an attempt to restore a classless
society. He find himself engulfed in a deluge and very upsetting and viable questions
that demand quick response : Would they ever achieve their end by killing innocent ,
honest and hard working people among the elite? Would their attempts to rebuild the
society by cleansing the system of the people like politicians, landlords, industrialists,
police, contractors, etc. , who run the system, ever put an end to the suffering of the
poor and the needy? These crucial questions that gnaw, nag and assail Bill made him
re examine and reason about the right way of treating the problem, upholding the value
of respect of life and tolerance, simultaneously remaining committed to the ideas of the
democracy. He quits the group, the group breaks and a lull descends over the whole
issue.
Raman had woven a veiled commentary on the present seething turmoil. That the
discontentment, due to exploitation, poverty and inability to give oneself a decent and
dignified life, raging the hearts and minds of the young generation needs instant
attention, lest it should increase the suffering of humanity, if they happen to choose the
path of violence like Bill Singh to meet their objectives, is vehemently stressed.
The thinking is that though the dream of B. Singh is righteous, the method and mode
that legitimized violence to achieve it is wrong and also that it important for the
politicians and other government officials sitting on high chairs to know that the
callousness on their part to eliminate the suffering of the poor may have disastrous
consequences.
-DR. NAVRAJ SINGH SANDHU, www.navraj@gmail.com