In this new series, Mainak writes open letters to people in the news, commenting on the state of affairs in the world today. Today’s column is an open letter to Shiv Sena supreme, Bal Thackeray.
Dear Sir,I realise that writing anything remotely critical to you is fraught with risk, given your followers’ tendency to let their fists do the talking in any debate. However, I couldn’t help but reply to your recent statement that Hindus should also form suicide squads to combat the threat they face from Islamic terror groups.
At the outset, I should clarify a couple of things. I am as disgusted as you are by the almost daily terror attacks we have almost begun to take for granted. Also, like many friends, at times, I too have sometimes vented my frustration by suggesting we bomb the terrorist training camps across the border. So there is no question that the status quo can be maintained. We cannot let ourselves remain a soft target for terrorists and our police and intelligence agencies must shift from being purely reactive to more proactively targeting terror cells.
On a longer term basis, we do need to find a sustainable solution, one which will inevitably involve signaling to our neighbours in the West that maintaining a low intensity conflict with us through terror strikes is a strategy that will be too expensive for them to continue- in diplomatic, economic, and military terms.
However, your proposal is an extreme one, to say the least, and coming from someone of your influence, will register with millions of people. I guess you must have already seen and read about all the flak your article has attracted, including a couple of calls for you to be arrested. So I won’t repeat the criticism. Instead, I’ll build on your idea and see where it leads us.
As you seek to create these ‘Hindu fidayeen’, the first question will be one of recruitment. Ordinary civilians do not overnight become suicide bombers. Even trained soldiers are drilled to preserve their lives and sacrifice it as a last resort. Most studies of the suicide bomber phenomenon say that these individuals are motivated not just by anger, but by a sense of helplessness- a sense that the only way they can fight back against a superior enemy is to sacrifice themselves. So you could start by recruiting young men and women who have lost family members to terror attacks and communal riots.
The next factor would be indoctrination - becoming a suicide bomber requires a mindset that comes with steady training - so you could open special training camps for these candidates. Camps where they learn not just about how to use arms and explosives but also build up their mental readiness to end their lives on command.
Suicide bombers also tend to be successful when there’s a ready pool of new recruits which you will need, since attrition, by definition, tends to be high. In places like Palestine, what’s been apparent is that new recruits are most forthcoming when becoming a suicide bomber is seen as a noble and rewarding task. So suicide bombers are lionised and celebrated as heroes and their surviving family members are lavishly rewarded. In your case, perhaps you could feature them in your party’s newsletter, and give out cash awards and government jobs to their next of kin.
Once they’re ready, comes the question of their use. Suicide bombers are by definition not defensive weapons, so you could use them to attack Muslim settlements. It certainly would be a more ‘cost effective’ way of creating communal carnage. While you’re at it, and have built up the infrastructure, you could even consider ‘exporting’ this pool of talent, sending them on missions to neighbouring countries, hitting at them when our government is unwilling to use conventional military force.
Before we go any further, lets just stop and re-read the last few paragraphs. All of these are but a natural extension of your idea. But if we did all this, would there be any difference between us and the terrorists we are fighting; would there be any difference between our country and our dysfunctional neighbour to the West; and would there be any difference between those who lead and organise this and the likes of Osama bin Laden?
I’m sure that’s not what you had in mind. Or did you?
Warm regards,
Mainak
