Short Paragraph on Terrorism – Terrorism has become a global phenomenon and though it was relatively late in the day that the world realised the gravity of it, but, thankfully, it has.
It was the bombing of the World Trade Center (WTC) on September 11, 2001 that finally got the world to do a serious rethinking about the issue. India has been plagued by the problem for decades now, and faced an attack on Parliament on December 13, 2001. Terrorism is, by and large, a political problem and arises out of intense dissatisfaction with the state of things. A handful of people take up violent means in furtherance of what they believe to be a social or religious cause. Governmental insensitivity or the vested political interests – sometimes both – add fuel to fire, and the unrest caused by a few violent people turns into some kind of a violent movement and gradually gets organised. Terrorism is thus born, to put it simply. It might be to assert linguistic or cultural identity or to carry out a holy war on the world to save the world from those whom they consider infidels. There is no uniform definition of terrorism. In India, Parliament first enacted TADA and then POTA to counter the problem, but the remedy proved more dangerous and harmful than the disease itself. It turned into a political tool in the hands of unscrupulous politicians. In face of rampant abuse both TADA and POTA had to go.