May be TERRORISTS are not that Wrong!!!! Alternative Viewpoint

In a democracy, the popular method to ventilate and express your demands as well as your grievances has to be within the constitutional boundaries and thus has to be peaceful. The basic assumption behind this line of argument is that in democracy the constitution as well as the government is formed by the people themselves thus should be obeyed, even while disobeying them. Therefore, all the activities that are extra-constitutional and illegal (not according the prevailing law) are considered wrong and inappropriate.

However, it is nowhere applied that these laws and constitution are correct or representative of the desire of the masses (for example in the British India, the laws and constitution were present but they represented the colonial interests rather than the Indian interests). Similarly, even the laws representing the wishes of majority can also not be blindly justified as they may represent the tyranny of the majority and can be used to repress or even exterminate the minority (remember the regime of Hitler over Nazi Germany where the Jews were lawfully and systematically butchered).

On the other side what options does any group of people when the enemy they are fighting is a systematic, organized, well-resourceful and determined state power (for example, the zanzaweeds of Darfur, Sudan) except raising arms and matching power with power. In earlier times of monarchy that would have meant revolution/rebellion against the monarch but in the democratic times terrorism is generally used as a strategy.

In democracy, government is responsible towards masses and thus by killing civilians and destroying their property, so called terrorists attempt to create popular pressure on the government to listen to their demands and later to accept them.

Even in India, revolutionary terrorism was an integral part of Indian national movement which had moved the masses and pressurized the government. The revolutionaries had assassinated various government officials, killed various white-civilians, organized robberies and destroyed public as well as private property. As back then both the weapons as well as planning mechanism were not so advanced thus the scope of operations was relatively small. Apart from that, we were passing through a nation building process as thus the revolutionaries were not that much enthusiastically supported. On the other hand, the so called “Islamic terrorism” has better weapons and communication, resources, sympathy among the fraternity (though this sympathy may be unreasonable or is due to illiteracy and/or poverty or feeling of alienation but sympathy it is) thus their scope or grotesqueness of their acts is much more. However, the question remains what our own revolutionaries would have done or how would have they been portrayed by the British media, if they would executed their missions in contemporary settings?

Nowhere am I trying to justify the terrorist acts though I am trying to provide an alternative viewpoint. As on the basis of its etymology, one can say that “terrorism” means a systematic advancement of intense fear (i.e. terror). However, fear is not something which can be used in the same way as a hammer or a knife. Fear, roughly speaking, is an affective response to a pending state of affairs which one wants not to occur. In order to get this response, one has to apply fear-provoking means. Since one of the main (if not the sole) means for provoking fear is violence (or threat to use violence),

Terrorism in a narrow sense is: the systematic use of fear-provoking violence, perpetrated either by a recognized state or by private individuals, in order to achieve political goals. Now in light of this understanding of terrorism, all the state activities that systematically use violence for obtaining political goals such as maintaining or extending authorities or quashing the dissenting forces/voices can also be called terrorism. My question is that, what options minorities have in case of such state sponsored terrorism except meeting force by force and as they are less organized and resourceful thus this force gets directed either towards soft targets such as civilians or high valued targets such as poiticians or taj hotel etc that yields them highest psychological and strategic returns then the resources required.
An act is a terrorist act if and only if

1. It is committed by an individual or group of individuals privately, i.e. without a legitimate authority of a recognized state;
2. It is directed indiscriminately against non-combatants;
3. The goal of it is to achieve something politically relevant by means of fear-provoking violence

Thus all the “collateral damage” done by the armed forces to the innocent civilians residing in the conflict-affected area, on the name of law enforcement can also be safely concluded as “acts of terrorism” and if they are justified than so as the terrorists (provided their cause is just like the cause of revolutionary terrorists) but as there is no neutral, open, honest and fundamental discussion is taken on terrorism and the terrorist demands, this issue will remain unresolved.

Apart from that, if the J&K people are willing and are ready the die for their “Azad Kashmir” then what moral right do we remaining Indian have over them to keep them within Indian fold? The laim excuses of better future are not sufficient as since ages the freedom fighters have maintained that “Azad desh ki Ghaas ki roti is better than Paradhinta ki chupdi roti”. However, if Indian authorities believe that there are only handful of people who have their selfish motive in partition of J&K then why not they conduct a referendum (as promised by honorable pt Nehru in UN)?

In the end “one’s terrorist is another’s martyr” and the differentiating factor between both is not the damage caused or the moral stand but rather the victory. Victors are always martyrs and defeated people are always terrorists (even Gandhi was labeled as terrorist by Britain during the Indian national movement).

So what we need is open and honest discussion and equal treatment to all viewpoints rather than merely suppressing the voices that are inimical to “so called Indian interests”. After all India belongs to all and not to few.