MUMBAI BLEEDS : AN OPEN LETTER TO UNCLE SAM

Uncle Sam dear,
When the seize of Mumbai is said to be over, the seizure of a wish for securing selective amnesia supremely reins high in us – not because our collective national conscience has lost its balance; neither our anger has caused cultural atrophy leading us to lose our senses to acquire the disease of decay of memories; nor have we become shameless creatures to keep quiet after ‘living’ those carnage and killings by those senseless animals. No. Comparing animals to these blood hounds would be highly injustice to the animal genre and the law of comparative study. Leaches, perhaps could be plausible comparison to these terror strikers; nay, even leaches would rankle us for insulting them for dirty comparison with terrorists – after all, leaches also do service to humanity in the filed of medicine for sucking bad blood from wounds of patients.

When we gather ourselves like phoenix from the ashes of the dying ambers of our brethren in Bombay (Bombay sounds well too, instead !), we are exorcised and haunted by the ‘original sin’ behind the emergence of cult of violence and atrocities against humanity, a sin, which, we as a nation state definitely did not commit. India, never in the history of its existence, aspired for the forbidden fruit of territorial expansion and imperialism. In the four thousand years of its human history, India had only bled in the hands of vultures of intruders from many parts of the world. But, a ceaseless civilization built on tolerance, kindness and the philosophy of concern for all living beings, made the spirit of India to train itself to imbibe plurality of cultures, multitudes of languages and in the rearing and retention of religions.

Just now, after making much noise, preceded by the parading of armchair terror experts, our media people are planning to get back to their studio cocoons. In between their war on terror, they repeated visuals of the other side of the post-terror ‘sanitized opulence’. Collective anger sprang high, whose splintering arsenal had the sting of leaving a permanent scar mostly on the breed called politicians and lesser wounds on bureaucrats. Terror-struck, even our attempts to drive home a point compel us draw terms like arsenal and blood. English speaking seemingly urban upper class people turned to be more in numbers in the venues in such visual media-sponsored debate as the vox populi representing the country. Anger of the people made heads rolling. High command of ruling party was compelled to draw into secret alleys of party offices to plan for axing individuals as scape-goats. “High command” are epithets antithetical to democratic ideas. One is at loss to comprehend as to how terms like “high command” crept into the vocabulary of Congress, despite the words carrying meaning of military or authoritarian authority ! Be that as it may, in the thick and spell of these horrifying acts, no introspection was immediately possible for the Indian mind to engage in inquiry into the original ‘sin’.

Three information in the Mumbai terror attack demand serious introspection. In the first place, 49 of the nearly two hundred people who lost their lives in the terror strike, are Muslims. Secondly, when the Mumbai police wanted to hand over the bodies of the nine terrorists to the Muslim clerics for burial, they refused to do receive the body on the ground that the terrorists had committed the gravest of crimes against humanity and Islam. Thirdly, in a flight 9W – 114 of Jet Airways ( between Aurangabad to Mumbai on 3oth Nov.2008, post terror attack, a passenger on board the plane asked a lady crew member of what her name was, despite her wearing her name plate on the chest. She was further asked by the passenger to tell her religion. On her having told that she is a Muslim, the passenger is said to have literally started abusing with his lung power thus: “Why, you Muslim people do all these harm to India ?” The lady, without losing balance, told the passenger that she is an Indian and that the Muslim religion has nothing to with the terrorist attacks. But the passenger is said to be bent on continuing the verbal assault and the lady was all in tears. She was whisked away by a colleague after she underwent all these trauma.

Uncle Sam, what do all these bring home to your mind. Kashmir imbroglio, Palestine-Israel conflict, Iraq Shia-Sunni scuffles and others are all local struggles confined to the respective territories. If the long arm of terror reaches nook and corner of the world, what does that mean ? America, Algiers, Afghanistan, Bangkok, Britain, Indonesia, Mumbai, Islamabad and even Singapore were battle ground for bleeding blood and the list seems to be not abating. Like capital centric global business, terrorism is also being exported. In other words, global terrorism has come into being and the latest incident in Mumbai is yet another edition. Post 9/11, they could not do anything with America, Briton, Europe and Australia and therefore they have shifted their operation to soft states reeling under their own problems.
Terrorism knows know religion; it has grown to breach national boundaries. It has two-fold ambitions. The globalized capital-centric-consuming to carbon manufacturing-human content less-industrial culture is an anathema and therefore its first target is democratic structures practicing globalization. The second is to register terror’s signature for creating a world of fundamental ideas without giving scope and space for free interplay of cultures and plurality of religions.

It all started with throwing shit on the back yard of Russia (read Afghanistan) by your country in the name of neutralizing the influence of Russia. Now the toilet is over-flowing to India. You have produced Mujahedeen and left them in lurch. Captured Russian tanks and Kalashnikovs are getting corroded. These need oiling and blood for their survival. In the name of democracy and professing to destroy WMD, you have falsely cheated the world and continue to detonate Iraq. Again, in the name of giving a check to Iran, you produced the Frankenstein in Saddam Hussain. When the job was over, you threw him into the right place - dust-bin. While on the one hand, America never failed to boast that whatever it does (in the world) it is to protect freedom and democracies. But your country’s hypocrisy finds no bounds when it is bent upon promoting dynastic rulers in the West Asia and Pol-pot like dictators world over. Seymore Hersh, the investigative journalist of New York Times marshals his findings that a West Asian dynasty backed government finances fundamentalist groups with millions of dollars as “protection money” for avoiding over throw of their government for being corrupt, alienated from the clerics and monks and for displaying lavish life-styles with petro-dollars. Your country’s strategic interests for oil have made truths myopic. What is the fate of Resolution 1373 and 1566 of the UNO which clearly ban the financing of terrorist acts by sovereign member states and consider such financing, as crime. Your country, for obvious reasons of guaranteed oil, continues to close its eyes to these crimes.

Terrorists have one agenda. They graze on intolerant societies and terrorize and kill their own brethren. Their intention is to create Islam phobia so that the world hates them. Ultimately hated communities get radicalized and they would be compelled to fall in the band-wagon of terrorists – an ideal way of clamping and expanding the philosophy of terrorism.

Uncle Sam, will you stand up and say “enough is enough" for YOUR country’s continued hypocrisy and help bring a world order from the pestering menace of terrorism.