“Teeja tera rang tha main to...”
— Chak De! India
How does terrorism start? Does
it start with a bomb? Or a gun? Or words scribbled in rage?
Terrorism starts in a courtroom
where justice doesn’t show up.
Terrorism starts in a prison
cell where an innocent man waits for a trial that never comes.
Terrorism starts in a country
where the law, once a shield, is used as a weapon.
This isn’t hyperbole. This is
happening. Right here, right now – under the banner of a law called the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
A law designed, we were told, to go after drug traffickers, mobsters, terror
financiers. And yet, here it is – chasing journalists, raiding opposition
leaders, freezing businesses, and most importantly, imprisoning people without
bail or trial.
The law was meant to stop
terror. But ask anyone who’s lived through it – they’ll tell you: this law is
becoming the terror.
Tools of violence
Let’s talk about Section 45 of
the PMLA – the infamous twin
conditions for bail. The first condition? The court must be satisfied
that the accused is not guilty.
The second? That the accused won’t
commit any crime if released. Now, unless you’ve been living in a Kafka
novel, you’ll realize what this means: you're presumed guilty. You have to
prove your innocence. Before trial. Before charges. Before a single shred of
evidence has been examined.
The Supreme Court struck it down.
Called it unconstitutional. So the government brought it back – through a Money
Bill, because why let debate get in the way of extortion?
And what about the ECIR – the
Enforcement Case Information Report? The PMLA’s version of an FIR? You
don’t get a copy. The courts don’t insist. You're supposed to defend
yourself against a case you’re not even allowed to know of. That’s not a flaw
in the system. That IS the system.
Process as Punishment
Make no mistake – this is not
justice. This is procedure as
punishment. This is arrest
first, investigate later. This is detain,
destroy, delay – and hope that no one notices.
·
Medical examination after arrest? A rubber
stamp.
·
Time-bound trials? A broken promise.
·
Bail? Not a right, but a luxury.
·
Constitutional rights? Only if the state feels
generous.
And when judges raise their
eyebrows – when they pull up the ED for overreach – nothing changes. The
Supreme Court passes landmark judgments like Satender Kumar Antil
on bail. The ED ignores it. High Courts ask questions. The ED doesn’t show up. Or
worse – they double down on the accused. Because power unchecked doesn’t
retreat. It expands.
How the Republic Fails
You want to know how does
terrorism start? It starts when democratic
institutions stop working. It starts when justice is replaced with
convenience, and accountability with PR. When you punish whistleblowers,
silence journalists, and call every critic a criminal.
Terrorism starts not with
radical ideas, but with radical despair.
It begins with a businessman watching his life's work collapse because someone
on the other side of the country misfiled a document in 2010. It begins with a
family whose home is seized because a relative once did business with the wrong
person. It begins when an honest man is told to prove he is innocent – while
the law ties a blindfold around his eyes and throws the key away.
Terrorism starts when citizens
stop believing the state is on their side. When they start seeing themselves
not as constituents, but as targets. When the courtroom becomes a joke, the
constitution becomes an ornament, and the law becomes a thing to be feared, not
respected.
And the tragedy – the real
tragedy – is that we’ve been here before.
We saw it with TADA.
With POTA.
With sedition laws that lingered like ghosts from the colonial past. And every
time, we told ourselves: “Never again.”
But this time, we didn’t just
allow it. We normalized it. We dressed it up in legalese, wrapped it in
national security, and told ourselves this was the price of order.
But lets ask this: what is
order if it's built on fear? What is security if it means sacrificing your neighbours’
rights? What is law if it no longer serves the innocent? We are not protecting
the republic. We are breaking it – from within. We are not deterring terrorism.
We are giving it a user manual.
Lessons from the Neighbour
Winston Churchill and his fellow imperial cynics gloated that an independent India would be lost in political squabbles, its power seized by rascals, rogues and freebooters. Any democracy following a first-past-the-post system of elections inevitably leads to a bi-party system. In a healthy democracy, the two parties live by the same ideals, have the same goals, and disagree on how to best reach them.
India and Pakistan started
out as democracies. But in Pakistan, every government – civilian or military –
viewed state institutions as spoils to be wielded against rivals. State power
was used to stay in power and silence the press. Courts, laws, and intelligence
agencies were employed to enforce laws that defeated the concepts of democracy.
Civil liberties and fair trial guarantees crumbled. Ultimately, Every swing of
power in Rawalpindi was justified as remedying the last government’s crimes,
but instead it poisoned democratic norms.
India faced a similar challenge
in the 1970s during the emergency. Indira
Gandhi’s government did suspend elections, imprison thousands, muzzle the press
and even amend the Constitution to neuter the courts. It was the resilience of
the Indian institutional system that it allowed democracy to persist. India’s
democratic norms had deepened through the consolidation
of civilian rule over the military and decades of vibrant multiparty
competition.
India faces the same challenge
once more. However, this time we do not have the support of our institutions. Over
time, faith in Indian institutions has been on a decline. The election commission
faces regular allegations of corruption in the very electoral process that
forms the basis of our democracy. The Supreme Court has made a number of
observations on the erosion
of public faith in the judiciary. The Freedom
of the Press index has been on a steady decline in recent years. The
concepts of democracy and constitutionalism are under threat and we don't know
if we shall survive this time.
The Final Warning
Because here’s the thing:
terrorism doesn’t begin with a gunshot. It begins when a law stops being just.
When a government stops listening. When a people stop trusting.
And when that happens – when
that trust erodes, when that fear calcifies, when that injustice becomes policy
– someone, somewhere, will look at that law, at that jail cell, at that
confiscated property, and say: “If the system doesn’t work for us, maybe
we stop working for the system.”
That, right there – is the
ignition point.
Tell them that we’ve tried this before – and we know how it ends. Because when the law becomes terror, terrorism becomes law.