By the time I held the ‘drill purpose’ SLR in my hands, all things military had stopped causing any excitement
What was the feeling when I held a gun for the first time? It feels strange to think about it now. I was seventeen.

The ‘Drill Purpose’ 7.62mm Self Loading Rifle in my hands at the parade ground of the National Defence Academy (NDA) of India, as a cadet, was heavy. I don’t remember any other feeling. No sudden rush of adrenalin or even slight excitement to make that an edgy event in my memory.

It was quite dull. And now I know it was designed to be that way.

The process of turning an adrenalin-high and gullible teenager—greenhorn in military parlance—into a professional who treats and controls the weapon like an extension of his body was systematic and rigorous.

It started with a ‘zero cut’ welcome by the barber. It was a symbolic makeover. Now when I looked in the mirror I did not meet my old self—the casual, directionless and jaunty teenager—but a new me with a purpose. And discipline.

Thereafter, a tough routine with every minute of the day scheduled in a structured manner made the orientation into military life quite mechanical. It was the environment, the routine, the events and your body overwhelming your mind completely and taking control of things.

After three months, by the time I held the ‘drill purpose’ SLR in my hands, all things military had probably stopped causing any excitement. The only purpose of the heavy assemblage of wood and steel was to sweat us out in the parade ground. There was no romance in the embrace. At times, it even hurt.

One and half years later I actually fired a functional weapon, an INSAS rifle, at the firing range. The sound and slight recoil felt strange initially.

However we were so focused on the drills of holding, aiming and trigger operation that we hardly realized what we had was a dangerous thing.

After the shot we ran the 100 yards to the target area excitedly to see what story the ‘target paper’ had to tell.

Not so different teenagers, with similar tools, elsewhere have a different story. They are killing. And getting killed, happily. Terrorizing the world.

Peaceful times
There is a major terror attack somewhere in the world, almost every week.

But Fareed Zakaria says we live in the most peaceful time in history. Here is a part of his Harvard commencement speech in 2012, which I quote in length: “The world we live in is, first of all, at peace—profoundly at peace. The richest countries of the world are not in geopolitical competition with one another, fighting wars, proxy wars, or even engaging in arms races or “cold wars.”

“This is a historical rarity. You would have to go back hundreds of years to find a similar period of great power peace. I know that you watch a bomb going off in Afghanistan or hear of a terror plot in this country and think we live in dangerous times. But here is the data. The number of people who have died as a result of war, civil war, and, yes, terrorism, is down 50 percent this decade from the 1990s. It is down 75 percent from the preceding five decades, the decades of the Cold War, and it is, of course, down 99 percent from the decade before that, which is World War II. We are living in the most peaceful times in human history.”

If we look at the data, yes. We are indeed living in the most peaceful time in human history in terms of the number of deaths. But the death count is not all that counts.

As Scott Atran writes in Genesis of Suicide Terrorism, “Although a suicide attack aims to physically destroy an initial target, its primary use is typically as a weapon of psychological warfare intended to affect a larger public audience. The primary target is not those actually killed or injured in the attack, but those made to witness it.” And today, all of us are indeed ‘made to witness’ every act of terror up-close.

Anywhere it happens it happens right in front of us. All of us are the first victims. We are most affected by terror in history, in the most peaceful times in history.

For heaven or homeland?
 “All that matters is that six gunmen walked into a restaurant, yelled a god’s name, and opened fire right in my city’s backyard. It matters little that the 20 hostages were mostly foreigners, not Bangladeshis,” S N Rasul wrote in the Dhaka Tribune, after the terrorist attack in the Dhaka restaurant on July 1st, “What matters is that the country you once thought was bad, but not terrorist haven bad, has become just that.”

The boys in focus here were from the affluent class of Bangladesh. Why were they ready to kill people like themselves? And most importantly, why were they ready to die?

One explanation is to put the blame entirely on the religion. Today when we hear of a terror attack—anywhere—our first reaction is, “Its Muslims again.” And most times, that is indeed the case.

The naysayers have been denying the blame outright with the argument that Islam is a religion of Peace. Islam indeed means peace and the greeting Assalamu allaikkum means ‘may peace be upon you’. But if we take a look at the following Surahs from the Quran, the picture is quite different. “Let those fight in the cause of Allah Who sell the life of this world for the hereafter. To him who fighteth in the cause of Allah,—whether he is slain or gets victory—Soon shall we give him a reward of great (value)” (4:74).

“The only reward of those who make war upon Allah and His messenger and strive after corruption in the land will be that they will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternate sides cut off, or will be expelled out of the land. Such will be their degradation in the world, and in the Hereafter,” (5:33).

The instructions with graphic description of harsh violence in the Quran are indeed disturbing. However, there are two important points to be noted here to complete the picture.

First, all religions have fought hard to survive. And it has made their character complex. There were periods of peace as well as violence. Promise of a heavenly reward to those dying for the righteous cause shows itself in almost every religion. For example, the 37th Shlok from second chapter of Gita reads that in a righteous battle, “either being slain you will attain the heavenly worlds or by gaining victory you will enjoy the earth; therefore O Arjun, confident of success rise up and fight.”

And then there is the fact that Islamic terrorists are not the only ones widely using suicide attackers. In fact, the Tamil Tigers, a Marxist group consisting mostly of Hindus and Christians of Sri Lanka have used most number of suicide terrorists. They invented the famous suicide vest for their suicide assassination of Rajiv Ghandi in May 1991. The Palestinians got the idea of the suicide vest from the Tamil Tigers.

American author Robert Page, back in 2004, gave another explanation: “The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland.”

Even this perspective does not help to understand it completely. It does not explain why the LTTE relied so heavily on suicide attack to resist the Sinhalese during the 1990s, but not against the Indian forces from 1987-89. Neither does it explain why the Bangladeshis, now?

Mind: The weapon, the target
Although I do not remember my exact feelings holding a gun for the first time, I vividly remember when I was gifted a toy pistol by my father at the age of ten. At that time it looked so real to me that I used to carry it to school and show it to my friends, secretly. I lied to some of them that it is a real pistol my father kept at home. I was suddenly a hero.

It’s complex yet clear. Violence attracts young minds. To the righteous rebel, the terrorist organizations do not offer only a gun but an ideology with a strong moral component, profound meaning, and an optimistic vision of the future. And also self-recognition as champions of their community. It makes individual life and hence death look insignificant.

In a nutshell, it’s not rigid theology we should be worried about. It is bad politics.

Back in Bangladesh, Ikhtisad Ahmed, a columnist for the Dhaka Tribune wrote after the attacks, “As a divided and despairing nation heals, it cannot afford to forget again, if the plague of fundamentalism is to be permanently cured. The alternative is complete submission to and compliance with Islamism, regardless of who is in power.”

(Part II of this article will focus on fundamentalism in South Asia)

 
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