Where the mind is without fear and the head held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever-widening thought and action;
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake
by Rabindranath Tagore
Life will be a peaceful journey if we are able to face difficulties without fear, swallow the bitterness of tragedy, enjoy the happiness, and love that life showers on us. Such lovely life is being crushed to death by the ruthless terrorism in a fraction of second right in front of our eyes. In the journey of life death is appearing everywhere in today’s world.
Parliament, temples, malls, shops, local trains, on streets, in star hotels, in air, on land or in water – everywhere terrorists are hunting down innocent people.
Recent attacks in Mumbai with are a direct war waged by terrorists on India. Every time something like this happens I see a regular drama and it always has the below statements:
“We will destroy the very roots of terrorism and make our country a safe place again”
“I appreciate the people for the courage they have shown in this hour of crisis”
“We will not bow down before terrorism”
I think by now you would have guessed the people who make these statements. These are our Netas. When terrorist beasts are killing people mercilessly, what is the assurance being given these leaders,:
“Incidents like these are happening all over the world and it is difficult to predict these incidents”
“In a big city like Mumbai it is not possible to keep an eye on every person who comes in”
This is nothing but escapism and gross irresponsibility of the leaders. They don’t even feel ashamed for making such statements. First time when terrorists killed people, I hated terrorists.
But then they repeatedly killed people, I started hating our politicians and law makers more than I hated terrorists for giving them a license to kill.
10 to 12 terrorists who have entered Mumbai via sea were able to hold the entire nation as hostage for 3 days. This clearly shows how incompetent our leaders, our policies, and our intelligence are.
As if a sudden realization has dawned, Shivraj Patil resigned form his post.
But it took a nation to loose 200 lives of civilians, 24 police officers, and soldiers to remind the Home minister of his “Moral Responsibility”. After the UPA government came to power the number of attacks by terrorists have increased manifold and nothing was done politically to tackle this issue. With all their concern for the terrorism they got POTA abolished.
These leaders who can’t even step out without a dozen commandos around them say “people here are very courageous”. They don’t have to certify our courage. People of this nation are always more courageous than the leaders. Though we know that our lives are not safe every time we step out, we still walk on the street without any fear.
Leaders make statements like “we will not be cowed down by terrorism’. But it’s we the people who show this in action. Within 3 days of the terror attack, ‘Leopold café’ is opened and people thronged it. This is testimony to the courage of an Indian.
Mumbai resembled a war zone for 3 days. Once it’s over people are back on the street not because of the assurances given by our politicians but because of the courage and patriotism shown by the Armed forces.
Those brave commandoes who have sacrificed themselves to save us gave us the courage to come out and salute them. Those of us who witnessed their dedication and sacrifice in flushing out the terrorists from Taj, Nariman house and Oberoi can’t forget them in our life time.
Even today we don’t have proper mechanism in place to tackle something like this. We don’t have the weapons or technology or strategy. How can you explain bullets piercing the bullet proof jackets of our cops? Our government is not able to stop the inflow of RDX into the country from Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Our intelligence officers became spectators when the terrorists were equipping themselves with latest weapons.
After the parliament attack in 2001, though the government declared Terrorism as a national issue, nothing was done to beef up internal security. Though, Prime Minister spoke about setting up of a ‘Federal Investigation Agency’ nothing has materialized. Look at America, immediately after 9/11 attacks, they have put in place ‘Department of Homeland Security’.
At last Prime Minister woke up and setup a task force to come out with a strategy to counter terrorism in 100 days. Actually, this should have happened long back. None of the states in India has plan in place for terrorist attacks. There is no proper co-ordination between our Police and intelligence. Attack on Mumbai is an attack on the whole nation.
Hope at least now our leaders will open their eyes and really take an action to fight terrorism.
Image Credit- Sameer Gupta
Popularity: 25%
Reese Witherspoon comes to present the Best Director Award. And guess who won the award ? It is Danny Boyle from Slumdog Millionaire. What a guy! In his speech he showed humility and apologized for not having given credit to his choreographer but gave his tribute to Mumbai and truly deservedly so.
