Culture is not inborn in man. It is something he acquires being a member of a society. Culture is complex, as nowadays, it includes knowledge, morals, beliefs, law, customs, level of literacy and the influence of media, and almost everything that encompasses the identity of a society.

The Indian culture is superb. It has a high moral content. It respects other religions and is basically non violent. It has produced men with great integrity and tolerance. The advancement, India has made in various fields, is a by-product of our cultural heritage.

But the passive and piecemeal approach of Indians towards their enemies specially those who create internal disruption, is our shortcoming and is proving disastrous. We are faced with an enemy that is trying to destabilize our economy and a concerted effort is required to eradicate the terrorist strikes at our borders and inside the country as well. The well orchestrated bomb explosions in two of our major cities namely Bangalore and Ahmedabad and the discovery of 21 unexploded bombs in Surat, the diamond capital of our country in the last week of July, 2008, shows that India has to implement stringent measures against the terrorists or be branded as a soft state.

The Indian goodness is exploited by unscrupulous elements backed by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence. Counter-terrorism, is little understood in India. It is not taken seriously. And the height of these terrorist strikes is that they are carried out by Indian Jehadis (fighters), who are backed by the ISI. Indian politicians only understand the power of the vote banks. Hence we will have to make anti-terrorism laws an important subject on the agendas of the next election manifestos.

After 9/11, the United States introduced the Homeland Security Department to coordinate the work of various governmental agencies involved in national security. So also we have the CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation), IB (Intelligence Bureau), police and other intelligence agencies that have to be brought under a central command and empowered to act summarily by arresting the culprits. The Indian Government is getting prepared to even amend the Constitution to enforce stringent measures and severely punish the terrorists as otherwise it sets a bad precedent.

In India we have SIMI (Students Islamic Movement of India), which is allegedly involved in terrorist activities on Indian soil. There are constant reports in the press that there are sleeper cells, in most cities of India, that have allegiance to SIMI and ISI and the latter activates these sleeper cells as and when they want to create confusion and instability in India. The Indian authorities knew about SIMI, but they were never in the limelight until in recent years their terrorist affiliations were unearthed. But we are slow to investigate and take action. In other times and under other circumstances, when we have finally zeroed on the culprits and sentenced them, other terrorists resort to other acts of terrorism to circumvent the impending punishment. The hijack of the Indian Airlines jet at Kandahar and the subsequent release of high profile terrorists in exchange of freedom to passengers illustrates the point.

India must nurture a radical approach towards terrorism. The democratic approach of delaying justice by fulfilling all legal obligations has not paid so far. We follow a process called the criminal jurisprudence, which takes care that human rights are not violated. But this process is slow. The need of the hour is POTA (Prevention of Terrorism Act). We had enforced it during the time of Emergency enacted by Indira Gandhi. POTA was very effective to control criminal activity then. This time we can go one step further and amend the Constitution to strengthen the hands of security agencies because hundreds of innocent lives are lost and an atmosphere of insecurity is created that is bad both for inflow of foreign capital and also for tourism.

The irony of the terrorist activities is that the ISI from Pakistan and the other terrorist outfit from Bangladesh Harkat ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI) have trained and sent these hardcore criminals to India and they call themselves the Indian Mujahideen to show the world that Indians are not happy with the state of affairs. This activity must be nipped in the bud before it gains further credence. Inspite of India arresting the so-called ring-leaders of SIMI, the terrorist activities are seen in many cities of India, and this has prompted the U.K., Australia and the United States to send travel advisories to their citizens visiting India.

But there is nothing to fear. Indians are vigilant and all the citizens are told to keep their eyes open and ears tuned. Once the Indian Government introduces POTA it will be very difficult for the terrorist organizations to act. Even people staying on leave and license are checked in various cities as these terrorists normally hire places to assemble the bombs. 

Indian culture has a distinct flavour due to the various civilizations that have lived and ruled here. The Mughals and the British who stayed here for long time have influenced our culture. Religions like Buddhism and Jainism have also affected Indian culture. And both these religions preach peace in a very strong sense such that we cannot even kill an ant or that matter any animal. Jains follow it to the core. But we cannot categorically say that Indian culture is a tool of soft power as we have a powerful media and learned intelligence agencies that guard our interests. But these agencies will have to be empowered to take direct action against suspected terrorists by making amendments to our Constitution.

There are times when we have shown the world that we are a soft power. Our scientists developed nuclear weapon technology and carried out 2 explosions (Pokhran I) in 1974 and (Pokhran II) in 1998. But our Government declared that we will never attack with nuclear weapons till someone uses the same on us and in the process we lost a great psychological advantage in terms of national security. N. Vittal, former CVC, (Chief Vigilance Commissioner) writing on The Mumbai Mirror says: “In many of our policies, thanks to our style on thinking, I am afraid we are trying to get a good conduct certificate from the world, even at the cost of harming ourselves”. 

Necessity is the mother of all inventions. We respect the rights of others and so there is a big influx of Bangladeshis, Tamils from Sri Lanka and Muslims from Pakistan. So if there are black sheep among these people who come to India from across the border, it is high time we check their antecedents. We have reliably learnt that some of these migrants are sponsored and trained by terrorist outfits in Pakistan and Bangladesh and these terrorists get help from sleeper cells in the country. 

These sleeper cells provide them with the necessary help within the country. Like the United States of America (before WTC fiasco) we have not screened these miscreants. We all know America paid the price as these outsiders lived among them and used American planes to blow up the World Trade Center. We too are paying the price of not being vigilant. We are trying better ways of bringing the terrorists to justice as war begets war. 

Our culture dictates our conscience to be fair to the criminals and respect their human rights, specially when these criminals belong to the minorities. For example most of the Bollywood stars are Muslims. We have given a long rope to the terrorists who are on our black list. But soon the noose will tighten around them as India is fast running out of all passive and peaceful alternatives. The terrorists are faceless enemies. We are going to preempt their plans by strict policing because the very existence of the present leadership is at stake as the public opinion is for radical and harsh measures against these faceless enemies that create confusion and death to peaceful citizens. Any amount of rhetoric will not work. We are going to act and sieve the chaff from the corn.