Don’t mistake all terrorism for the same. Some are hard and others are soft. Though both versions kill people using guns and bomb blasts they are not alike.
Anybody can wonder as how to distinguish between these two versions. Although you can’t frame exact definitions, experience and familiarity will help. Cops can smell the difference from kilometres away. If it’s the hard variety, their strolls will become sprints, their canes will turn into carbines and ‘beat them up’ will become ‘shoot them down’. And cops won’t catch them alive at any cost. If it’s the other one they will cool down, their angry stares will melt to wry smiles and arrests will be on petty charges. There won’t be any Kalashnikovs, RDX ieds or encounters.
Even the names of the suspects are enough to guess which type they are. The agreed upon principle is to blame the hard type for all bomb blasts untill and unless proved otherwise. There’s one good thing about the hard ones. They will call up the cops or local media soon after the act and own up responsibility. That is not the way with the soft guys. They wouldn’t open their mouths…even if they do it will be to issue a disclaimer. They are ignorant of high-tech methods like e-mails and SMSs. They have only heard of prehistoric communication techniques like press meets and media releases.
Though both of them hate the guts of each other, the truth is that they depend on each other for existence. If one isn’t there, the other can’t exist. Each side gathers crowds by pointing at the other one. The modus operandi of either side is similar. But ther’s one major difference. Soft terrorism is totally nationalistic and full of Indianness. The other one smacks of Pak-Arab origins. When the terror suspects arrested from Jamia Millia were brought befor the media, all had covered their faces using a special type of cloth. Any fool can recognize it as the cloth for Keffiyeh, the head dress the Arabs wear. You might suspect that these hard terrorists, being real terrorists, had gone out and bought these clothes when they knew about their imminent arrest.
Many including the soft terrorists want hard rules like POTA to be given rebirth to deal with the hard terrorists. This sort of rules has one quality. They wouldn’t come near any of these soft terrorists. Torching a train in Godhra to kill 60 innocent people is definitely hard terrorism. Several were caught hold of and jailed under POTA provisions. Around three thousand were stabbed, torched and blasted to death in retaliation of Godhra. No arrest, no POTA because it just was just soft terrorism.
Police seldom find any terrorists – hard or otherwise- after a terror strike. But they are seldom disappointed or unhappy. They follow the age old saying- If you cannot catch the one you seek, seek the one you can catch. That will certainly satisfy the rulres, the media and even the opposition. They will jail a few and will shoot down a few in encounters. Hard terrorists will always be there to put up an encounter and die of shots from policemen and most of the time they will not be able to injure even one policeman. A lot of them will perish in jail. A round of police action of this type will help give birth to ten terrorists in every village they intervened. There was a time when police did everything possible to make people communists in Kerala and that was portrayed in the famous play, titled ‘ You Made me a Communist’. Now we can play another drama and its title could be ‘You made me a Terrorist’
It was on finding that every one of its members is hard terrorist that government sometime back banned an organization named SIMI. What a stylish simple name for hard core terrorist organization ! Any one will mistake it for the name of a bollywood actress. It was a nationwide organization, but the number of police cases against them were much less than the number of cases registered in Kerala against CPM and RSS cadres for stabbing and killing each other. But SIMI terrorists were intelligent enough to mouth slogans that were fit enough to provoke the whole majority community. And they were banned. Are there snakes which will become more poisonous after they are beaten to death? SIMI became much more venomous after they were banned. SIMI and central government police machinery juxtaposed would look like a cat and a leopard looking at each other. But the cat is going on challenging the leopard.
If they were not banned, fed up they would have left for any one of the gulf states looking for some lucrative job. The tribunal that looked into the ban on the organization found there was not much of reason to ban it and it was after this verdict that the number of bomb blasts went up. Very curious. May be only the intelligence agencies know the secrets.
Soft terrorists are treading the same path as that of the hard terrorist. It is said that a lot of violence was carried out by a soft terrorist organization named after the soft and never violent god HANUMAN. What an innocent demi god!.
Their style of action gives us a doubt. Are the hard terrorists giving training to the soft terrorists also? Their actions look so similar. It is not improbable, once terrorism become a noble profession. You can train your rival team also if you are paid sufficiently.
Soft terrorists are a bit angry with the media. Media seldom give them full credits for what they do. Eight column headings are given to the hard terrorists when they blast a bomb and kill a couple of people here or there. Television people throng the area with all their arms and ammunition and policemen are often pushed out of the crime scene. Imagine that the same thing is done by the soft terrorists. One or two media men with left or far left leanings will come, will take a look and leave. Finished. Is this the type of impartiality you practice?
Even with all this, the soft ones have grown nowhere near the hard ones. We must have patience. Let a couple of years pass and both the snakes will equal the other in the capacity to inflict venom filled bites all over the body of this great nation. Then we peace-loving people can find nice asylums in far off forests and deep seas.
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I have serious difference of opinion with the honourable Vice Chancellor of Jamia Millia University. Students should have the freedom to jump into crimes of their choice. Why should he insist that he will give them legal aid and university funds if they are arrested in terrorism related cases only ? Each have their particular sort of likes dislikes and aptitudes and will land in cases suited to their talents.
Honourable Vice Chancellor has declared his intention to help students arrested in terror related cases. But why this partisan attitude? What if some one gets involved in a petty car robbery or a case of sexual assault which definitely are much more close to their age and emotions?Will they not be given any help. Really terrible!
Students arrested in terror related cases are the ones who really need no help from university’s funds. If they are innocent the whole university community will come to help them and if they are real terrorists help will flow from across the border.
And then why is our Vice Chancellor bothered ?
