These are precarious times. Blasts and deaths, human life in all its fragility. The perishable elements of which we are made, in violent interaction with explosive chemicals designed to destroy. Mass hysteria channeled through glittering images and psychotic theme-tunes. The death of (self) reflection. The militaristic vocabulary of a nation forever desiring war (but always only to maintain the peace.) Silently, every freedom eroding, the Surveillance State, modeled on the totalitarian logic of citizen-informants (and dare we say journalists,) claiming its throne as democracy yields slowly to something else altogether.

At last tonight we can make the greatest declaration we might ever make: India is free from terror. There will never be a heinous vile terrorist attack on our national body every again… with the exception of those attacks that are guided by the state’s nurturing hand. After sixty long years we have, in two days, mastered the art of defusing bombs. Twenty-one of them as a matter of fact. Inconspicuously hidden in branches of tall trees and elsewhere, but clearly not inconspicuously enough! Now they appear thick and fast: networks, threats, emails, outfits, borders, devices, plots, rumours. One recalls Francois Furet’s dissection of the ‘revolutionary plot’ (albeit in a different context.)

Must we become Israel? Are there no alternatives left in this world? America perhaps; except no one really needs to sell that p.o.v. Knee-jerk reactions to the loss of human life, calls for laws and CCTVs and better policing and harsher punishments, and greater militarization, and heightened vigilance. In short, a gradual drift into something other than democracy. Autocracy, or Utopia cleansed of terrorists, is nonetheless a utopia mired in violence. Just that this violence seldom goes by the name of terror. Instead, less colourful and more academic terms are deployed: ethnic cleansing, genocide, repression. The sheer horrific awe of Terror is missing. Partly because terror as we understand it today is a monopoly of one religion, one cause, one (ir)rationality.

Condemning is too easy. Of course the loss of human lives, in whatever situation, deserves to be condemned. Without doubt these attacks are cruel and heartless and eventually wreck more havoc even on those whose side they claim to be on. Yet, these attacks are responses: political responses. And we must not (as we only too often tend to) condemn without understanding. The swift march towards an all-encompassing Surveillance State, defended by CCTVs, lethal laws and armed militias, is a march of the defeated. Speeches about ‘proxy war,’ and announcements of hefty rewards for informants, are games people play. This is how, even as enlightened television channels ask if the Chief Minister has done an about-face from 2002, the Chief Minister in question plays his ‘subjects’ against one another. Development is evoked as a benign tumor disguised as a heart in perfect working condition. And the terrorists are positioned as anti-development. The subliminal message: seek out those who wish to stop our progress and you will be rewarded. This is no about-face, its simply a face more mature than the one we have seen before.

The only escape from these cycles of violence is to accept there is no escape. The best we can do is move on, again and again. Without desire for revenge, without calls for greater state-intervention. Acts of violence of this genre occur at molecular levels, under the radar (quite literally) of any mechanism of observation. That is why it is such a surprise to find that 21 bombs have suddenly been recovered without a single one going off over a period of two days. How did a state that has in 60 years never managed to foil the Big Attacks, suddenly become so competent in this case?

But let’s leave one uncomfortable question and close with another: will dictatorship save us? And, more importantly, who is ‘us’?

1978, Francois Furet’s blistering critique of revolutionary violence and ideology during the French Revolution. Let’s return to a passage briefly, and substitute one word (Revolution) for another (State):

“Above all, it [plot] was marvelously suited to the workings of revolutionary consciousness, for it produced the characteristic perversion of the causal schema by which every historical fact can be reduced to a specific intention and to a subjective act of will; thus the crime was sure to be heinous, since it was unavowable, and crushing the plot became a laudable and purifying act. Moreover, there was no need to name the perpetrators of the crime and to present precise facts about their plans, since it was impossible to determine the agents of the plot, who were hidden, and its aims, which were abstract. In short, the plot came to be seen as the only adversary of sufficient stature to warrant concern, since it was patterned on the Revolution itself. Like the Revolution it was abstract, omnipresent and pregnant with new developments; but it was secret whereas the Revolution was public, perverse whereas the Revolution was beneficial, nefarious whereas the Revolution brought happiness to society. It was its negative, its reverse, its anti-principle.”

It seems to me that it is precisely when our lives appear to be most fragile that we must protect their freedoms with a vengeance. Instead of summoning Great Powers to our rescue we must give power back to the everyday, we must protect those who become victims: the victims of the blasts themselves as well as those who are picked up without evidence. If we value the democracy we so fondly sing praises of, perhaps we ought to offer a more passionate defense of its principles.