I was not so sure about what to do next if at all anything was necessary to be done. So, I just backed out of the conference called my wife and told her that I was fine and sat down for a few minutes trying to get more information about the blasts. Called up a friend who told me that there was one at Sarjapur Road. I was staying 100m from there at my friend’s place. My friends still stay there – I mean it is their permanent house as they say in this part of the World. Let’s assume these terrorists had planned these blasts a day before, I would be one person gone for sure as I was walking around that place the previous day.

Anyway, once I made my important calls, I called for my taxi and headed for the airport. I had a flight to catch at 1925 hours. And here I was at 1600 hours in my taxi driving towards the airport. It was a strange feeling. Though I had reassured myself that my friends and family were all safe, I was still fleeing. A couple of idiots planned a series of bomb blasts and killed a person and injured around 20 and affected the daily life of cowards like me. I felt really wretched during my drive back to the airport from the hotel. Here I was in a city a few minutes ago and was happy and suddenly I am leaving it and going away as if I had nothing to do with it. That felt strange.

Not only am I doing nothing about the current pathetic security situation in our country, neither do I have any idea of what is to be done to make the whole situation better. And that’s what really frustrates me. Even if I set out to do something, it is immediately brought to my notice that ‘one man can do nothing’. Yeah, that’s right, so why doesn’t anyone connect with me and we could do something about it. Now the logic is that: Terrorism is not something you can stop by a group of people wanting to do something.

The problem is that the enemy is not clearly defined. Some of my friends with whom I discussed this felt that we must address poverty and other issues before dealing with terrorism. I was in disagreement with that thought process. You can’t wait to uproot poverty before tackling terrorism. Terrorists will uproot humanity by then and thinking on those lines it won’t be long before they come to a stage when they kill each other and end the human race once and for all. Going by one estimate the World has another 500 years maximum to see human beings alive. The rate at which we are going, even 200 seems a realistic estimate! And I don’t think we would have uprooted poverty by then atleast as much as I would love to see a poverty-free world. So, let’s deal with terrorism at a level that we can actually deal with during our lifetime!

First of all, the idea that terrorism is a result of poverty is not entirely ridiculous but borders on that somewhere. Poverty is used as a hook to get people ‘execute’ the bomb blasts. ‘Execute’ as in place bombs, arrange for vehicles and accommodation, etc. The poor guy does not provide all this, he arranges for all this by coordinating with concerned parties as he is a localite and is trusted. So, these guys are just pawns in a bigger game. The game has been strategized by someone who is not poor for sure, who is not uneducated for sure and who is not technically dumb for sure. So, the real enemy is this. The brain behind the whole event. This brain is rich, educated and tech-savy. And the brain is globally present with its tentacles spread into every single locality of every city.

So, our first step should be to make sure that we get across to tracking these brains. It is very clear that the majority of them belong to a certain creed. These brains need to be tracked and their funding arms need to be cut off. Finding this is probably the toughest part. But I really hope someone is doing this. I have watched a BBC program where they once showed how the Interpol was tracking suspects of something that was about to happen. And when it happened on July 7th they could not avoid it but within days they got across to the guys who actually did it, the brains behind it and the financial channels too. I guess as Indians, we need to help our police in tracking suspicious candidates.

If we are only bothered about me, myself and my family, like I did by running to the airport in the shortest possible route and time, then I think I need to change. And I saw a lot of people do the same along with me and would assume that we would call it very ‘natural’ to do that. Okay, but then from wherever we stay we need to resolve to do something about the degrading state of security of human lives in our country. We need to fight the bad intelligence with good intelligence. Finally it all comes down to bad versus the good. Unfortunately, when the good ones sleeep, only bad seems to prevail. If these blasts don’t wake us up, I shudder to think about the next alarm!

70 per cent of Palestinians believe suicide bombing is justified but support for terrorism is falling in the wider Muslim world, according to a comprehensive US survey

What kind of a country would believe that? Anyway, the respite is supposed to be that support for terrorism is in fact falling.

In Lebanon, those believing that suicide bombing is justified often or sometimes has slumped from 74 per cent five years ago to 34 per cent now. In Pakistan, where Islamist violence has surged, the figure is just nine per cent.

The support for Osama Bin Laden has also supposedly fallen! Why am I not astonished?!

In parallel, the Pew group reported, “large drops in support for Osama bin Laden,” the al-Qaeda founder blamed for the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

It cited Jordan, where the percentage of Muslims who have “confidence in bin Laden as a world leader” has slumped 36 percentage points since 2003.

And read this:

Across the Muslim world, majorities fret that the US could become a military threat to their country, including 93 per cent of Bangladeshis and 73 per cent of Pakistanis.

Do I need to say anything at all about where all this is going to end?

More than the feeling of my philosophy being questioned I am wondering if I was totally wrong in the first place itself. As in was I wrong to include Islam in my list of ‘all’ religions to be tolerated? Were my friends who strongly opposed every bit of the religion right?

I always thought that religions were invented to help us live our life better. To me Hinduism is not a religion it’s a way of life. Please note that Hinduism taught me to say ‘a way of life’ not ‘the way of life’. Hinduism taught me that there are other religions that exist and they ought to be respected. Hinduism said there are many gods in this world and each human being is free to pick the God of his choice. The only thing Hinduism doesn’t talk about is atheism. Anyway, that’s a different topic for another day. The underlying thread tying up these thoughts is a thought that “A religion is a way to reach God”.

Reaching God was always meant to be a peaceful process – a process of doing good, being good without hurting others, speaking the truth and being conscentious throughout one’s life. There might be various operational ways of doing this and I thought each religion prophesed its way. While I have no knowledge of the ‘Quran’ or any such holy book of the other religions which guides people through their operational life, it beats me as to how someone can interpret the holy book to mean exactly the opposite. I am sure you understand that I don’t need an indepth knowledge of the ‘Quran’ to make this statement.

Hinduism teaches humanity as a religion. Of course, several people have interpreted the ‘Choose your God’ option differently and created castes and sub-castes, but then none of these interpretations (read as castes, sub-castes, etc.) broke the basic tenet of ‘reaching God through doing good, being good without hurting others, speaking the truth and being conscentious throughout one’s life’. But the interpretation of Islam as religion of hate, to kill innocent people and reach God (Jehad) is not only the exact opposite of what the religion is meant to advocate (according to my understanding that is) but also an indication of the existence of ambiguity in the ‘Quran’.

A holy book like ‘Quran’ should be clear in the fundamental message atleast. It can’t go wrong in that. If it does (go wrong), then what is the whole point of having it? If a few (rapidly growing in number from few to many) groups people are able to interpret it in a way to incite violence and kill people, then it means that the religion is being used against humanity. And it defeats the whole purpose of having created the religion in the first place.

My friends who used to criticize the religion before are now scared. Their theory was that the modus operandi of these extremist groups would be:

Their theory was being shot down at the first assumption itself and that was the reason for their fear. All these are carefully and logically made assumptions as you can see. During the failed Glasgow airport attack in London, the entire mission is believed to be masterminded and executed by doctors. Can you believe that? Doctors! And apparently Osama had a lyrical poem to convey the potential damage to a cleric in one of the British churches, “Those who will cure you will kill you”.

Doctors are supposed to save lives and ensure a longer life to those still living. This profession has a certain standard of ethics that is generally looked upto by society. If well-to-do people from this profession of care and love can be incited to hate and kill, then it is scary. Really scary. And also, questions the basic tenet of religions – love for all.

The world is no longer a safe place to live in. The failed Glasgow airport attack has been an eye-opener for people like me who had blind faith in all religions. I am afraid to say the faith is no longer blind. Faith has been scared away and questioned like never before.