As per reports
in an Indian newspaper quoting Israeli sources, post terror attacks in Paris, President
Francois Hollande of France had asked Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin
Netanyahu to stay away from participating in the Paris march against terrorism
but Israeli PM eventually joined the march along with 40 other world leaders
including President of Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas, who however raised
no such reservation. According to the new paper the request was made- not
because Israelis are not against the terror but apparently because Israel is
seen as the bad guy in the Palestine conflict. Presumably, the Muslims and
other politically correct liberals in France would take it as an affront. The
incident displays French ‘political correctness’ expressed in full . Eventually
as it appears good sense prevailed.
All liberal
democracies practise ‘political correctness’ of different shades. Political
Correctness is essentially treating people and communities equally and not
hurting sentiments of a community by any action. But most people would not go
into complexities of an issue and pass judgement on something or someone as either
only ‘black’ or ‘white’, Israel is bad because of its harsh treatment to
Muslims and the underdog Hamas is good-
not withstanding their alleged terrorist methods. While politicians may be
accused for practising political correctness for electoral reasons, people in
liberal democracies do so plainly by their ‘black and white’ sense of good and
bad.
Some liberal
democracies such as France have however carried their ‘Political Correctness’
into a fine art as already shown. Recent terror attacks in Paris therefore raise
some questions about the French political correctness that has allowed known
terrorists to remain free to plan and carry out the attacks. What is surprising
is that these terror perpetrators and their motives were already known to the
authorities in France. They also figured in US terror database with a clear
travel ban to USA. Yet France authorities took it easy. One of terrorists had
already served a sentence and it was also known that he spent some time in
Syria- quite obviously not for holidaying on the sea beach.
Till the time
when such attacks were taking place only in poorer countries, particularly
India (with state sponsored terrorists next door ready to strike)- the
reactions were ambivalent and indirectly
fingers were many times pointed to victim countries with a presumption rightly
or wrongly, of their politically incorrect approach and unresponsive and dysfunctional and repressive
state machinery suppressing legitimate grievances of people. The story of
India’s side was generally ignored outside the country until 9/11 had happened.
Naturally, countries that are lately becoming terror victims are confused-
where and how they went wrong.
The Paris
terrorists reportedly belonged to the sizeable section of people who have come
from former French colonies and became citizens and their descendants.
Therefore, these are clearly cases of home grown teror by people who obviously
have had relatively a better life in France than they would in their country of
origin. But that is only half the story. In France they are relatively, a
disadvantaged and deprived section living in poor neighbourhood localities like
north east suburbs of Paris (banlieue défavorisée) with overcrowding, huge unemployment
and other attendant problems. These people do have a lot of grievances. For
example, a large number of them do not qualify for jobs due to poor education
and skills. Many of them take to petty crimes which are dealt as routine law
and order issues. They had also held
violent agitations in the past.
Immigrants anywhere
may feel somewhat marginalised but large scale unemployment particularly among
their second generation (who have not seen the difference in their parents’
countries of origin), blows up their feeling of victimhood. It is the frustrations
with their lot in their very own country that pull them towards anything
available be it crime or terrorism. For many it is the easiest thing to
identify themselves with their ethnic or religious roots to become foot
soldiers of criminal or terrorist enterprises. Terror outfits borne out of
extremist religious ideas have a bigger appeal to them without any pressure of
guilt or qualms because they are told they would be fighting on God’s side.
The answer to
the issues of their unemployment and crime should be appropriate government
programmes for guiding and providing more opportunities for education and skill
building so that they get jobs. But the answer is certainly not looking the
other way when they are being inspired by extremist religious ideas because there
is every chance of it growing into violence and terror attempts. The
authorities in France perhaps in their concern for not deviating from political
correctness of tolerance and not restricting individual of right to express and
follow their faith, spared even those spreading
terror message/ propaganda and in the process perhaps have actually allowed or
at least made it easy for the terrorist acts by some fringe elements to happen.
It would of
course be easy to blame democratic and liberal laws in rich countries with too
much of political correctness is built in. Some would say the Chinese and
Russians have better handled such situations because they are not encumbered by
any notion of political correctness. China
and Russia already restrict many freedoms and therefore any chance that
terrorists could take does not exist. Yet they too had suffered terrorist
attacks.
However, the
best example of a country successfully containing terror attacks in recent
times has been the second largest democracy- USA. Being itself a country of
immigrants, the country has been providing equal opportunities to all its
residents, immigrants or otherwise. They have not scaled down their professed
friendship with Israel but continued to provide equal opportunities to Palestinian
immigrants to achieve success in their adopted country.
While the 9/11
attack- the only big terrorist attack in USA was a rude shock to Americans as
they never expected it, there has been no significant case of home grown terror
at any time. Post the 9/11 attack, USA
have not significantly curtailed the freedom of their citizens except may be snooping
on suspect private telecommunications. But
what they have done after the attack has been largely to strengthen their
security apparatus, intelligence gathering, creating databases and sharing them
with other potential target countries (as is now revealed in the case of the
terrorists of Paris attacks). They took some wrong steps while initially trying
to get their act together such as, excesses at Guantanamo Bay prison, CIA’s
interrogation methods in third countries, use of torture like water boarding
etc. But these appear to have stopped subsequently and yet they have been able
to foil several potential terror attacks, nab or eliminate terrorists in time
or stop them from reaching American shores.
Has then US
discarded their political correctness? At New York some years back, I was
pleasantly surprised when informed that ‘Deepavali’ is one of the festivals
celebrated at the White House. It continues to be celebrated and also ‘Eid’ was
added to list festivals for celebration at the President’s residence. Clearly political correctness (as seen at the
highest seat of power) is retained and practiced. But it is just not permitted
to override objectivity.
The fact that France left the terrorists loose
in the country to plan and execute attacks despite receiving clear intelligence
from USA perhaps imply- they were more concerned about their political
correctness. Lessons from France’s unfortunate experience are not only for
France to draw but for other countries including India as well.
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