While in Saudi Arabia, Prime Minister Narendra Modi asserted that there was a need to delink religion from terrorism and added that there should be no distinction between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ terrorism. This approach to the world’s most pressing problem hits out at the cliché, ‘one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’. Any group that uses terror to achieve its ends ought to be declared as a terrorist organization, but a more accurate definition is provided in United Nations resolution 51/210, which states that,
“Criminal acts intended or calculated to provoke a state of terror in the general public, a group of persons or particular persons for political purposes are in any circumstance unjustifiable, whatever the considerations of a political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or any other nature that may be invoked to justify them.” This definition is fairly broad to cover terrorist groups that are identifiable by name as well as groups of people who commit criminal acts in the name of religion and in order to enforce their own beliefs. It would include violence by right-wing elements who have used terror to enforce the cow slaughter ban and generally instill fear in minority communities. The assertion made by Modi in Saudi
Arabia also needs to be taken seriously by Baba Ramdev as
well, who recently threatened to behead lakhs of people if they
refuse to chant ‘Bharat mata ki jai’. Terrorism is two-edged
sword and, as Modi implied, both edges need to be blunted.
