Between despair and hope: interrogating ‘terrorism’

"The practice of violence, like all action, changes the world, but the most probable change is a more violent world." – Hannah Arendt

The words 'terror' (meaning intense fear and dread), and 'terrorism' (the systematic employment of violence and intimidation to coerce a government or community into acceding to specific political demands) are steeped in controversy. From the time of the French Revolution, 'terrorism' has been used to describe a range of violent political activism, including certain forms of Russian populism; Italian, Serbian and Irish nationalism; anarchism; and the actions of the Ku Klux Klan. Nowadays, 'terror' is what the 'civilised world', led by the United States, is combating. It is identified with Islamist fundamentalism, the Taliban, suicide bombers, Palestinian resistance and Maoist revolutionaries. Even though terrorism is quite clearly a form of political violence, mainstream journalism today does not associate it with aerial bombardment (although Hitler's use of the Luftwaffe against the Spanish town of Guernica in 1936 was considered an act of terror), armed actions by the American and Israeli defence and special forces against their real or perceived enemies, kidnapping, collective punishments and encounter killings by the apparatus of various Southasian states.

In India, 'terrorism' is also not generally used to describe the activities of the Bajrang Dal, VHP, RSS, the Ranvir Sena or the Shiv Sena, even though some of their activities would qualify them as terrorists within the dictionary meaning of the word. Yes, the usage of 'terror' is heavily politicised.