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Ramesh Menon in New Delhi
Union Divestment Minister Arun Shourie on Wednesday warned that the fight against terrorism should also take into account chemical and biological warfare.
Any attack against terrorism, he said, would have to be multi-faceted, hitting out at those who harbour, train and finance terrorists.
He was talking at the concluding session of an international seminar on The Global Threat of Terror --Ideological, Material and Political Linkages organised by the Institute of Conflict Management.
Shourie pointed out that the attacks on the United States would live on in terrorist mythology for over a hundred years as an example of "success". Such "successes" might breed thousands of new terrorists.
He said war was a bloody business and there was no humane way to conduct it. "No war could be won by minimum force."
The minister pointed out that intelligence agencies like the Inter-Services Intelligence, which was spawning terrorism in India, would further co-ordinate terrorist groups.
India must learn that compromises or slackness won't help, he said. He used the example of the Assam government, which was giving compensation to the United Liberation Front of Assam cadres who had surrendered.
The contours of terrorism would now change rapidly, with terrorised groups co-ordinating with each other, he said.
In the changed circumstances, there was a cost to pay, but that was a cost everyone would now have to pay to stay alive, he added.
Shourie said that terrorists would use the instruments of democracy to destroy countries like India.
The difficulty in fighting it, he pointed out, was compounded by the fact that human rights activists were not seeing the issue in its totality and were being caught in webs of political correctness and intellectually fashionable statements.
Just a few years ago, Naxalite ideology was the topic of intellectual chatterati in India, he added.
Even though the Bombay blasts took place eight years ago, none of the accused had been brought to book, Shourie said.
Drawing attention to the state's failure to contain terrorism, and to the low conviction rates of terrorists and criminals in the country, Shourie said that the "the worst factor was the weak and flabby condition of the state itself".
Citing the example of the Bombay blasts case, he said the pathetic condition of the institutions of governance were responsible.
"The flabby condition of the Indian state was a principle opportunity for terrorists. They often used defunct politicians like Jaffer Sharif to oppose laws like the Terrorists and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act and float the myth that it was being used only against Muslims," Shourie said.
It was not poverty or unemployment that leads to terrorism. Terrorists see any opportunity and grab it," he said.
Commenting on the new Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance, the minister said that the data on the abuse of the earlier TADA against the minority community was completely false. The same logic was being used in the debate on POTO.
Shourie stated that if the potential for abuse could be an argument against a law, then one would have to do away with the CrPc and IPC also.
He said that the international community, especially the West, had adopted hypocritical and double standards over the issue of terrorism.
Though 53,000 people had been killed in terrorist conflicts in the country over just the last decade, delegation after delegation of foreign dignitaries visiting India had asked for evidence, he said .
"There are states which will see terrorism as a cheap way of disrupting other states. India with a hostile neighbour must be alert. We have to wake up to the danger of terrorism because we are truly at the edge of an abyss we do not know," Shourie said.
While fighting terrorism, the minister said, we must not forget those who fought for us. The former director general of Punjab police, K P S Gill, and other policemen who fought terrorism in Punjab were today facing 1500 writs from those who wanted to rekindle terrorism again.
It was a crying shame for a government to have a situation where it did not defend those who fought to clean its state from the danger of terrorism, he said.
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