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13 July 2005
India should not become like Israel, beyond repair and utterly
vulnerable
by
Jyotirmaya Sharma
THE
blasts in Bangalore and Ahmedabad once again would generate a largely
futile debate about the internal security scenario in India. Political
parties will fling charges of incompetence and ineffectiveness at each
other. Calls to revive draconian laws such as POTA will grow louder.
Very few voices will dare suggest that beyond questions of
administration and policing lie larger issues of politics. And beyond
the arena of politics are issues of whether we are any longer capable of
living together in peace as civilised people. The BJP has always
advocated special laws in order to tackle terrorist acts, a demand that
loses its legitimacy at the very threshold of its ideological stand on
minorities, and more so its recent record in a state like Gujarat.
Administrative and police reforms make sense only when they go hand in
hand with political and electoral reforms. Generating hysteria about the
state of India's internal security often is a way for arguing that we
become a surveillance state, more or less on the lines of Israel, a
country that the Sangh Parivar greatly admires. Neurosis of the kind
that Israel harbours leads to mindlessness of a high order, as was
evident last May during my trip to that country.
Israel
The
El Al security staff at Mumbai airport were not only suspicious of my
beard and less than comforting looks, but also were greatly concerned
about the fact that I was going to make a " presentation" at the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem without a computer or any slides or charts or
graphs to show. I did not even have a pen drive in my possession to
prove that I was indeed going to give a lecture at a university in
Israel, for which I had a bonafide invitation. Worse still, the stamp of
my visa, which read, " Invited by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem"
was not good enough for the national carrier of that state. The security
officer, then, proceeded to ask me why I taught political philosophy,
and I was asked to give a small " presentation" on what I understood by
political philosophy. Further, having noticed a copy each of my recent
books in my hand luggage, the security officer proceeded to ask me what
these books contained. I tried to give a gist of what they said. On
hearing me, she asked, " Are you a Hindu?" I said I was a Hindu. " Why
do you, then, write against Hinduism?" When I refused to answer such
inane questions, she demanded that I present before her a gist of the
paper I was going to present at the conference in Jerusalem. Had I
agreed to do so, it would have made some sense to her because I write
about contemporary India. But what if I was a scholar of Panini's
grammar or of the philosophy of Bhartrihari? This wasn't enough. She
demanded to know why I had recently switched from being a journalist and
gone back to being an academic. None of this has a bearing on whether I
was a potential terrorist or whether my tract on Hindutva was good
enough, in itself, to blow an aircraft in mid- air. But the hysteria
about security, which feeds on stereotypes, is also about proforma
driven mindlessness. As I tried to contend with the security officer,
who happened to be Indian, I wondered whether she might also be a
sympathiser of the Shiv Sena or the BJP. Working for the Israeli
national carrier and her own political affiliations, perhaps, had come
to a happy and diabolical synthesis.
Price
In
Israel itself, the suffocating preoccupation with security is alarming
for someone who still manages to live in relative freedom, where one
does not have to go through innumerable checks of identity and person to
enter a university or a restaurant. The surveillance and security
mechanism in that country is today independent of the democratic process
and feeds on systematic brutalisation of everyone alike who refuses to
participate in the Zionist nationalist vision. One has to go not too far
from Jerusalem to see what the Israeli state has done in the name of
security and demography to the many villages scattered in South Hebron.
In this instance, the Israeli state has actually legitimised the Jewish
settlers in Palestinian territories to oppress and dehumanise an entire
population, the more malignant version of our own Salwa Judum. Of
course, none of this helps in the long run. There is nothing one can do
to prevent a suicide bomber from carrying out an attack and every bit of
the oppressive security mechanism comes tumbling down with every such
instance of gratuitous violence. The residual effect of this endless
preoccupation with guns, closecircuit cameras, X- ray machines and
identity cards is the creation of a Humpty Dumpty state and society,
utterly vulnerable and beyond repair. Once such a state is created, the
silent and disapproving majority goes into sullen silence and seldom
questions the ways in which a democratic state argues in the name of
saving human lives and protecting its citizens. This silence is the
victory of the state as well as the terrorist. Caught between the two
are ordinary human lives, insecure and vulnerable, and ready at all
times to surrender liberties in the name of preserving the fundamental
unit of existence, life itself.
Fear
On
the flight back from Israel, the scene at the airport was no different.
But the security officer, a lady, was less aggressive and less self-
righteous. She too asked me questions about the conference paper I had
given in Jerusalem as well as the lectures I had delivered elsewhere.
The joy of returning home made me summarise for her a talk I had given
at the Haifa University. I told her that there was a man called Gandhi
in India. He was of the opinion that fear leads to force. But the
initial application of force, if it is not legitimate and ethical, leads
to greater fear. Greater fear, in turn, leads to reliance on greater
force. It is a spiral that has no end and leads to destruction,
brutalisation and annihilation. The security officer was a bright young
girl. She smiled and let me go. The message had hit the target. Of
course, I did not have the heart to tell her that I was carrying with me
vivid memories of witnessing a brutal police reaction in South Hebron to
a joint Israeli- Palestinian peace demonstration, and also had in my
much searched and X- rayed bag, a documentary about the moral bankruptcy
of the Israeli state, that was far more explosive than anything they
could have found in the bag of a potential terrorist. What I could not
tell her was that I live in mortal fear of my own country turning out
this way.
The
author is professor of politics at University of Hyderabad
--
"The
mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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