My Thoughts

Posted by Ravi

On the onset, let me make it clear that I admire and respect anybody’s strive to come up with a solution. Any success to the system like this means my child will live in better and safer world, and for that reason alone, I can commit time, energy, and money for a cause like this. I also admit that being skeptical is very easy; on the other hand, we always need the optimistic leaders who have got passion and enough support to achieve highly difficult tasks like this.



Having said that, I must say, very sincerely, that I am not convinced on the feasibility of the idea and that the passionate people should spend time in following it. Not that it really matters if one person is not convinced; but following are my reasons, if you care:



1. You would agree that the intelligent system like the one you envision can better be achieved by the organizations like intelligent agencies, police, government. Because, obviously enough, they have right infrastructure, right network, right authorities. You may argue that these organizations are biased. Yeah, they may be; but that’s our fate. If you want to do something, change them to become unbiased, change them to become effective, change them be become better. Hence I like the other option you mentioned in your first mail of joining the politics.



2. I sincerely believe and you would agree that trying to stop the terrorists’ activities without trying to understand the reason behind those is like attacking the symptom and not the root cause. I believe the terrorism is a symptom of some root cause that probably we don’t understand well. For example, a certain community, as per their scripture, believe that they should expand their species all over the world by conquering the land. Now, clearly this belief is not in harmony with nature. This is one out of probably hundred causes that we don’t know of. As another example: there was a program on TV called “India Times Enclave”. Musharraf was answering the questions related the Kashmir . The questions were being asked by Indian high profile businessmen, journalists, actors, politicians, sportsmen. What I observed in Musharraf’s answers that he and his people truly believe that a certain part of Kashmir belongs to them. I am not pro-Mussharraf or anti-Indian, but the point is that they believe that the Kashmir is theirs as mush as we believe that Kashmir is ours. If we both hold our premises and try to solve the problem, I don’t see how the problem can be solved and how terrorism can be prevented. One easy way to solve the Kashmir issue is to do an all-out war. Gone the days of Roman emperors, in the modern times of ours, nobody wins in a war, everybody looses. A better way to solve the Kashmir issue is to increase the financial, educational, cultural ties. Make those mostly uneducated fanatics understand that there is more value in such ties than fighting over the land. This will take time; but I believe it will work, and I think that’s the stand India is taking, and I think the situation is improving every passing year.



The above point # 2 kind of got a bit deviated (though very important and true), and I understand that terrorism is a problem we would want to try to counter as soon as possible otherwise we risk the lives of our nears and dears. So from that point of view, and because you believe the idea will work, you can count me in. I will be “disagree but committed”. Or better even, come up with other more convincing ideas. By the way, the best thing about your original idea is that it appears relatively easy to realize. Some other obvious ideas come to my mind, but those all are difficult to achieve and are very demanding and long term in nature, and I know I can’t work on those ideas, I am sorry! That’s another reason, I would follow your idea. The ideas I am talking about are (and these are very obvious, by the way):


1. Join politics, influence the systems like police, government to do right things. (This is very long term, needs passion, skills, and a lot. This will yield best results).

2. Create a network, spot some Muslims that we think have modern and right conscience and who share our thoughts. Use them to influence other uneducated and fanatic Pakistanis to understand that terrorism is wrong.

3. Hope (or try) that “Chatrapati” (he could be among us) emerges back and leads us to fight the terrorism using “ganimi kava”. (This is exciting, 3-4 years back I would have thought of following such leader, not any more. I have family - worried of them, and don’t think have enough guts).