The Roots of Terrorism
Friday October 29 2004 08:09 IST
By Karmayogi
Terrorism is the topic
of the hour. It is a heinous crime to kill innocent people for an ideology one
has in his own mind.
He who indulges in it often risks his life, feeling he is a noble martyr. On
any showing, it is indefensible. Sri Aurobindo says that behind any powerful
statement or act lies a truth that escapes our attention.
Is there a truth behind the series of terrorist attacks on most innocent
people? Or is it a retrogressive movement? Lord Mountbatten was killed by a
bomb on his yacht planted by the Irish Republican Army.
They owned it was their doing. In India, Mahatma Gandhiji and Indira Gandhi
fell at the hands of assassins. Rajiv too was such a victim.
Terrorism can be explained as one stage of human development. It can be
described as a direct result of dire poverty. The march of civilisation
sometimes overtakes the speed with which MAN catches up with it.
Another way of looking at it is this gap generates violence. Let me look at it
from the dimension of self-perfection. Man started on earth with a physical
life. He built his house with his own hands and therefore cherished it with a
fine sentiment of attachment. He was attached to his wife, children and
parents.
The attachment ennobled him. He was proud. With the passage of time, his
emotions developed and presently he lives by his mind. The mental progress will
be impeded if he does not wean himself away from his vital physical
attachments. The course of life breaks those attachments and helps him progress
in the mental plane.
Mind is a plane of knowledge. Progress here demands purity and TRUTH. Man has a
way of moving to the impurity in insincerity and falsehood. Especially in the
affairs of a nation, the diplomats cannot always be frank and true. Diplomacy
often becomes a successful weapon in international affairs.
Insincerity becomes a way of life in diplomacy. Unless one realises his own
insincerity and by his own idealism comes forward to change the way of life,
there is no alternative. The terrorist crudely exposes the mental insincerity
of international politics.
In my view, this is what terrorism does. Though unpardonable, in a higher
sense, the movement of terrorism TELLS the world that for the urge of social
evolution to fully express itself, it has to shed its own accretion of mental
insincerity in the garb of diplomacy.
Should the MIND come forward to be more and more sincere in its utterances and
convictions, the external movements of barbaric acts of terrorism will shrink
and finally disappear.