Terrorising India – 25 blast in 2 days.

“After a weekend of serial blasts in Ahmedabad and Bangalore, cities across the country are edgy – schools are shut in Surat, cinema halls barred from screening late night films in Bhopal and Indore and Kerala are reviewing the security situation.” Read more

Every terror attack is followed by some public outrage, which slowly fade away as other more interesting news stories fill our mindspace. There is a general tendency among us to develop amnesia for such events soon after the initial reaction, we all do a bit of spot checking
1. Which city has been bombed?
2. Have any loved ones been affected ?

Our reactions are defined based on the answer to the above. This is perhaps expected among people who are exposed to such events, sadly, on a fairly regular basis. Psychologists can probably explain this better and I will not make any claims to understand this, but all I wonder is whether we have become immune to such events resulting in greater public apathy towards such acts of crime.
Having grown up in Assam at the peak of ‘agitation’ in the late 70’s and early 80’s there are some experiences that clearly stay in my mind. One morning, the newspaper headline screamed ‘1 dead in firing attacks’ and we all reacted with a sense of shock and disgust. Protest march filled the streets. The dead, Khargeshwar Talukdar , was declared a ‘shahid’(martyr) and his photo nudged into the space next to Mahatma Gandhi’s in the walls of those who are inclined to such public displays. Slowly the count increased and there was a general sense foreboding every time the newspapers were delivered in the morning. Slowly as such killings took place on a fairly regular basis, we got into the mode of doing the same spotchecks described above (1&2).
In the days of yore; before sms-es, mobile phones or internet - newspaper reports, radio or telephone became the means to keep up-to-date with what was happening when the whole of Assam was reeling with unrest. Schools closed ( I remember that we were promoted to the higher class without having to take exams one year, yippee), curfews, bandhs, satyagraha, protest march, teargas, lathi charge- all these slowly became part of the daily parlance and unless something happened in the near vicinity, we carried on with maintaining some semblance of daily routine.
Then one fine day, Nellie happened. That woke us from the state of immunity that the familiarity of events had condemned public conscious to, and a collective sense of horror took place. The horrifying picture of the dead children was plastered in world media. Suddenly the attention was focussed on Assam, a land hitherto more famous for an innocent cuppa tea. Before Nellie, nobody noticed the little storm that was brewing in the teacup and precipitated to such horrifying events. Post Nellie, the toll of dead creeped from units to tens, and tens to hundreds. What was unimaginable at one time, became acceptable as the passage of time and repetitiveness of events numbed our senses and the figures were reduced to mere statistics. Spotchecks 1 and 2 were the only thing that we did when faced with yet another bombing, yet another firing.
And that is what we are doing even today. Spotchecks. If the blasts have not affected any of our near or dear ones, then we move on with life as usual. Maybe the fact that this time 2 cities were targeted in a space of 2 days, the public amnesia has not taken place, but how long is it before we discuss ‘if India should play only Twenty20 and no more test cricket’ or ‘How Unforgetable has Amitabh Bachchan’s latest tour been’ or ‘has Rakhi Sawant provided any fun to Nana Patekar in the snake-ily titled Horn Ok Pleassss ‘(the numerologist who titled this is either poor at maths or was bitten by a snake ).
Why do we, the Indian public, not have any sustained public pressure on the politicians or powers-that-be to act against such acts of terror as urgently as possible ? We have seen the power of public uprising in the Jessica Lal Murder or the Nitin Katara Murder cases. We have seen the sense of public outcry in the Rizwan and the Arushi case. Why do we not express a similar outcry against terror attacks?
The political reaction will also adopt the standard lines – Government blame opposition and vice versa. Very soon they will all get back to gleefully sharing the loot over the N Deal trust vote, worried more about the bank deposits in the horse trading and negotiating over the issue of cabinet portfolios. Issues like reservations garner greater mileage for the elections and therefore they are more likely to be kept burning in the political cauldron for longer. But the fight against terror, collectively as a nation, sadly does not find any takers. Is it the lack of a political will or a simple act of omission and commission, a political hogwash?
Time will tell, but we probably have a good idea of which way the political will swings and why. And maybe that also leads us, the Indian public, to do the spotchecks and stop at that….Sad.