Ahmedabad Blasts: Numbed Apathy and The Conspiracy Of Our Resilience

I lost my Chacha (father’s younger brother) in the Ahmedabad blasts yesterday. He was heading back home after work and was seated in the front seat of the bus whose mangled wreckage most of us have seen on TV. The bomb was in the 2nd seat. His right leg and foot had been blown off, and he died undergoing treatment at the VS Hospital, alone; before any of the family could reach him. He was only 49.

Since it seems important to mention, our family is Hindu and so was he … but that cannot be why he died, for all the blasts were in ‘mixed locality’ areas, or at hospitals (for God’s sake!) where chances of hitting a Muslim are equally as ‘good’ (or ‘bad’) as hitting a Hindu.

The email from the ‘Indian Mujahideen’ claimed the bombing was to avenge the post-Godhra riots of 2002, but that cannot be why he died either, for like most of the common citizenry of Ahmedabad, he waited out those dark days cowering in his house, never venturing out of his house in a mixed locality to avoid being targeted by either side.

Come to think of it, neither Rohan, Yash or Shraddha; each of them either severely injured or listed as ‘missing’ after the blasts, could have participated in those riots, for Rohan (now 11) was 5 than, Yash (8) was 2 & Shraddha (6) probably couldn’t even crawl than … and it is beyond doubt that the unborn baby in Dr. Mrs. Patel’s womb who died with her and her husband Dr. Patel in the blast outside the Civil Hospital certainly did not partake in the riots! (the very thought of the kind of evil intellect who would plant a bomb outside a hospital trauma center & wait for the injured reach there before detonating it makes me nauseous!) … Wonder who were the Mujahideen avenging the riots on?

And for Ahmedabad, at least they had an excuse, but what were they avenging at Ajmer Sharif last year? & at the Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad? Or for that matter at Jaipur or Delhi or Mumbai or Malegaon or Lucknow or Faizabad or Gorakhpur or the Samjautha Express? Or for that matter, at Karachi, Peshawar, Islamabad and Quetta? The mail from the Mujahideen started ‘In the name of Allah’ Oh, Really?? Surely, they jest! These could not have been true Muslims, or at least; they have definitely not read the Holy Quran; which states that “He who takes even one innocent life, kills all of humanity”

With thoughts like these we will consider ourselves superior to them … we will pretend that terror can do us no harm; that good will triumph always! But the reality is different, the terrorists win, every time. Let me tell you how …

Today, there will be a thousand similar discussions in forums like this one, on blogs, on TV. There will be a million apologists, good men & women of reason who will rationalize or justify, discuss & debate, debunk or defend one view or another. Today, we will again live in denial of this ever-growing cancer within us, again pretend that these acts are being carried out without any local connivance at all, again blame the ‘Foreign Hand’, the Intelligence Failures …. I know this is what we will do because I was one of those million apologists till they killed my uncle yesterday – Before, Terrorism was one of those sad things that happened to ‘other people’ - now, at least for me, its not a show any longer … for me, Terrorism has come Home, literally!

So today again, we will beat our chests but do little else, nor will we be able to force our governments to do anything. Again, like after Ajmer, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Delhi, Mumbai, Malegaon, Lucknow, Faizabad, Gorakhpur, the Samjautha Express, Or after Karachi, Peshawar, Islamabad and Quetta, as our Netas and Hukmaran trade blame and insults while innocent, common people die, the Terrorists will Win! Wringing their hands in glee at our helplessness, at our Self-deception cloaked in the suit of ‘Moral Superiority’; watching delightedly the Political Tamasha of this Civil & National Security Issue – Today, again they will laugh under the shield of their invincibility, at the inaction of the state and the impotent paralysis of its polity … nameless, faceless and unchecked, they will march on to another target to avenge some other real or imagined grievance and mete out more dozes of random death!

And Tomorrow? Ah, well, tomorrow will be just another day, we shall go about our daily chores as if nothing has ever happened anywhere. We shall celebrate our indulgent Resilience, and congratulate ourselves for having ‘defeated’ the evil designs of the terrorists again, for having denied them their aim of making us fearful & giving up our free way of life. While the terrorists plan their next attack unpunished & unhindered, there will be media stories on how the ‘Gujarati Grit’ in Ahmedabad has returned the city to ‘normal’ and how Bangalore has ‘Bounced Back!’

The Day After Tomorrow, they will bomb another city, & then the above cycle will repeat itself.

The Truth is, the Terrorists have already Won! They have won because somewhere, terrorism has gained an unconscious acceptability in our hearts & minds as individuals, and in our fabric as societies. We have developed a numbed apathy to it, so much so that we’ve stopped reacting to Terrorism, it has become one of those parts of our lives where we just have to ‘grin & bear it’, much like lightening strikes, or cloud-bursts, or floods, or plane-crashes!

Instead of seeing Terrorism as a despicable act in itself, we measure it by it’s damage – The Bangalore blasts were not much of a story for the media to chew on, for although 8 bombs went off, ‘only’ 1 person died - Literally, not much meat! We do not have any concerted Governmental Policy or Civil Action against Terrorism – we hold no Candle Light Vigils to protest killing of hundreds of innocent like we do to protest the murder of a model, we declare no rewards for wanted terrorists and have no censure for the collaborators.

This War against Terrorism, is now within us – it is internal within us as nations, it is within us as societies & as individuals – It is what the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) called the ‘Jihad Al-Akbar’; the Greater Struggle against our own demons, the biggest of whom today seem to be our apathy to terror & our acceptability of it, along with our blind resilience to brush it under the carpet and forget about it till the next one - The Tide Against Terrorism will start to turn when each of no longer accepts terrorism as normal.

I have begun that transition today. Come, join me in my journey!