COMMENTARY
Constraints of Reason in the
Era of Radicalisation
Gurpreet Mahajan
Even as we search for reasons,
it is necessary to pause and
think seriously about what can
be done differently to address
increased terrorism in this
era of radicalisation.
Gurpreet Mahajan (gurpreet@mail.jnu.ac.in)
is with the Jawaharlal Nehru University,
New Delhi.
18
W
e are standing on the edge of
a precipice and are being dra-
gged into a new kind of reli-
gious war. We do not realise it; and eve-
ry time the world leaders say that we
should stand together and not let terror-
ism and religious intolerance win, we
rest reassured. Yet, the grim reality is
that this “feel good” narrative is perched
on quicksand and is being steadily
pushed under. The social and political
analysis that followed news of serial
bomb blasts in Sri Lanka on Easter Sun-
day has made this amply clear. If we do
MAY 18, 2019
not want the first half of the 21st century
to be remembered as the age of new
religious wars, then we should seriously
introspect and ask what we, as indivi-
duals and concerned citizens, should
do differently.
On 21 April, Easter Sunday, as prayers
were being offered, bombs “tore apart”
three churches and some luxury hotels
in Sri Lanka.1 The headlines of the Daily
Telegraph read: “Shadow of Death over
Easter” and of the New York Times: “Blasts
Targeting Christians Kill Hundreds in Sri
Lanka” (Smith et al 2019; Bastian et al
2019). The latter struck a poignant note as
it opened with the words:
The clock hands on the steeple of St Antho-
ny’s shrine were stuck at 8:45 am, the exact
moment when the first suicide bomber’s ex-
plosion ripped through the wooden pews as
Easter Sunday worshippers were praying.
(Bastians et al 2019)
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As news about the number of casualties
came, especially the number of children
who lost their lives in this attack, it was
labelled as the worst terrorist attack
since 9/11 outside the “zone of conflict.”
Two Narratives
In the discussions and analysis that foll-
owed, two narratives surfaced promi-
nently: the first came from security
agencies and experts, most of whom
focused on the details of the attack, trying
to understand the “who” and the “how”
of it. Who were the suicide bombers?
How did they go undetected? Who was
really behind the attacks? How could
such a well-planned and precisely timed
series of attacks be planned by a small
and relatively unknown group? Was there
an external hand, perhaps of the Islamic
State? Or was this following the pattern
that had previously been used by Al-
Qaeda-related groups?
The nature of the security discourse
was, to an extent, familiar. They were try-
ing to identify the perpetrators, fix respon-
sibility and understand the contemporary
manifestations of terrorism. Their analy-
sis confirmed the view that socio-econom-
ic factors could not adequately explain re-
cent assertions of radicalisation, or more
precisely, who gets radicalised. Terrorism,
we learnt, was reaching out to many more
individuals located in different sites; it was
now exceedingly difficult to anticipate
who might be attracted to extremist vio-
lence of this kind.
Along with the security discourse, came
the second narrative of social and political
analysis focusing more on the question of
why. Why Sri Lanka? Why was this the
chosen site? And why target the Chris-
tians? These questions did not arise out
of idle curiosity or scientific tempera-
ment; consciously or otherwise, they
stemmed from the belief that the seem-
ingly “senseless” act (of terrorism) has a
purpose; it is not whimsical or random.
Experts on Sri Lanka pointed that even
though this island country has had a his-
tory of ethnic conflict, that was almost a
decade ago and it involved the Sinhalese
and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
Others spoke of conflicts and riots that
had occurred a year ago but they involved
Buddhist and Muslims, not Christians.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW MAY 18, 2019
In search of a rational explanation and
purpose, some tagged these attacks as
“retaliatory:” in a way this was tit-for-tat.
On 15 March (a little over a month before)
two mosques in Christchurch, New Zea-
land, had been targeted during Friday
prayers; the gunman killed more than
50 persons and had the police not been
able to intervene, the toll would have
been much higher. In other words, the
terrorist attacks targeting the Christian
community were taken to be a response
to the “senseless” and “tragic” killing
of Muslims in their place of worship.
Although this was quickly refuted by the
New Zealand Prime Minister, who claimed
that the Sri Lankan bombings must have
been planned well before the 15 March
killings, analysts were looking for a reason
and in the popular imagination retaliation
(for a wrongdoing) made sense. Just what
kind of reason can justify another wrong
in the name of correcting a wrong, is dif-
ficult to fathom. But in settling for retali-
ation/response to a previous attack, the
battle against terrorism and religious in-
tolerance was all too readily lost.
Thus far, in the post-9/11 world, ter-
rorist attacks were seen as the actions of
a few individuals—an aberration that
should not be equated with any religion
or religious community. But, after the
Sri Lankan bombings the narrative has
shifted subtly: the attack was seen as
targeting members of one community by
members of another religious community.
The fact that people of different nation-
alities and religions also lost their lives;
that believers and tourists both became
targets was consigned to a footnote.
In South Asia, targeting places of wor-
ship and/or striking on major religious
festivals and celebrations is seen as a
form of religious conflict which polarises
society. Now this is the modality that
terrorist attacks seem to be adopting
and, not surprisingly, they can easily be
rendered as a form of religious conflict.
Although battlelines are still not sharply
drawn on the world canvas, in the popu-
lar imagination the cracks are beginning
to appear. People are already drawing
comparisons, asking: Did Donald Trump
(or any other political leader) condemn
the attacks in Christchurch as strongly as
Easter Sunday bombings? Did he merely
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COMMENTARY
send condolence messages and express
sympathy with the victims of the Christ-
church attacks? Was the perpetrator, or
the community to which he belongs,
placed under the scanner? Questions
of this nature are shaping the popular
imagination and they are being raised
not merely from the New Right or the
Religious Right.
The secularists too are asking these
questions, albeit with a different intent:
they want identical treatment. So long
as the perpetrator of violence could be
identified as an “oppressed other,” they
could mark the difference in terms of
socio-economic factors rather than reli-
gious identity. But, when the nature of
terrorism changes and the latter set of
factors do not appear to be significant,
then there is no way of taking the spot-
light away from identity-based thinking.
The crisis of secularism today is that it does
not know how to deal with the new form
of radicalisation and terror attacks. It had
adjusted to make space for some degree
of religious diversity, but radicalisation
poses a whole lot of fresh challenges.
The point that must be underlined is:
as structural oppression loses its explan-
atory potential, the door is left wide open
for right-wing assertions. The latter latches
on to securitisation discourses and app-
ropriates the language of nationalism to
carry forward its agenda of homogeni-
sation. They push for curbing religion-
related practices (of the minorities)
which appear starkly different, and at
times, disturbing to others; and sadly
many secularists remain ambivalent.
Overcoming Frail Secularism
After the Easter Sunday attack, Sri Lanka
declared a state of Emergency and gave
its security personnel fairly unrestricted
power to go after the perpetrators. But
along with this it also banned the wearing
of a full veil/covering of the face. Previ-
ously, we have seen bans on the full veil in
France and more recently in Québec, so
Sri Lanka is not the only country to impose
these restrictions (which obviously af-
fect only one religious community). The
incongruity is that those who engage in acts
of terror are not known to use disguises;
nor is there any study which indicates that
wearing of the veil is the most reliable sign
19
COMMENTARY
of endorsing violent extremism. Yet, faced
with security concerns/terror attacks
even countries that have lived with diver-
sity take actions of this kind; secularism
appears somewhat forlorn and agendas
get set by a more energetic Right.
If secularism becomes frail, then what
can be done? How can we recover the lost
ground under the extraordinary situa-
tions created by terrorism today? It seems
to me that there are only two alternatives:
the first is that we come together—secu-
larists or believers, along with followers
of different religions—and condemn all
such crimes unequivocally and treat them
as attack on all religions and all human-
ity. This is not easy: the stumbling block
is cynicism. Whenever such a call is given,
we focus on the person who suggests this;
we attribute intent and check the past
record of the utterer. In the process,
collective action is indefinitely shelved off.
The second option is to follow Mahat-
ma Gandhi and firmly refuse to seek
20
justifications for violence. After the
Chauri Chaura episode (in which a mob
burnt down a police station and some
constables were brutally killed) Gandhi
called off all civil disobedience activi-
ties. This was just one incident, yet, Gan-
dhi took this decision. He wrote about
god warning him, repeatedly giving him
a signal that he had ignored (Gandhi
1999: 177), but behind this mystical lan-
guage he was arguing that it is always
possible to find a justification for our
actions, including violent actions. He
accepted that the people who were
involved in this violent act had been
provoked by the constables and that the
police had initiated the trouble. However,
wrong as that was, he believed that the
actions of the group were also unpar-
donable. When we seek justifications
for violent crimes then no one is safe.
Both sides get caught up in an escalating
cycle of violence and wrongdoings, which
deprives us of our humanity.
MAY 18, 2019
Despite living in a postmodern world
our thinking is still structured by the weak-
est element of enlightenment rationality,
where reason is associated with offering an
account in which our actions can be ex-
plained in terms of some purpose. It is time
to move beyond that and ask what really is
the purpose, and what purpose fulfils the
requirements of a reasoned existence.
note
1 As reported by the CBS news, 22 April 2019,
11.28 am.
References
Bastians, D, J Gettleman and K Schultz (2019):
“Blasts Targeting Christians Kill Hundreds in
Sri Lanka,” New York Times, 21 April, https://
www.nytimes.com/2019/04/21/world/asia/
sri-lanka-bombings.html.
Gandhi, M K (1999): Collected Works of Mahatma
Gandhi, Volume 26, New Delhi: Publications Di-
vision, Government of India, https://www.gan-
dhiashramsevagram.org/gandhi-literature/ma-
hatma-gandhi-collected-works-volume-26.pdf.
Smith, N, S Fernando and Q Irshad (2019): “Shadow
of Death Cast over Easter,” Daily Telegraph,
22 April, https://www.pressreader.com/uk/
the-daily-telegraph/20190422/textview.
vol lIV no 20 EPW Economic & Political Weekly