Home-grown terrorists
Home-grown terrorists
The arrest of nine members of the Students Islamic Movement of India in connection with the Ahmedabad serial blasts shows that home-grown terror has now acquired alarming proportions, overtaking cross-border terrorism.
In India today, it’s not true that only the deprived and the underprivileged participate in senseless acts of violence. Most terrorists today have a different profile: they are educated and well-employed (one of the suspects in the present case was a computer sales executive).
In his book, My Life is a Weapon: A Modern History of Suicide Bombing, journalist Christoph Reuter shows that it’s societal and political reasons, and not economic ones, that propel terror. So it is in India. Most Indian terrorists belong to minority communities where the sense of deprivation, real or imagined, is acute. It is important to root this out and it’s here that politicians have failed India. Addressing the issue is a serious challenge.
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