On Monday 22 Dec 2008 10:26:38 am Deepa Mohan wrote: > .terrorism is not just bombs and direct > murder...trade and cultural terrorism works
Deepa, that is fudging the meaning of terrorism and I disagree with that type of fudging. The word can be (and is) fudged in two ways. One is to apply the word terrorism to a broad swathe of actions so that the attacks on Mumbai somehow become comparable to an act of business monopoly or business intmidation. While many might be tempted to agree that Microsoft should be called a terrorist organization for monopolist practices, I believe that is trivializing the gravity of terrorism. I would describe this fudging as an act of "adjectival terrorism". It clubs a wide variety of acts under the word terrorism by creating new forms of terrorism like "financial terrorism" and "cultural terrorism" that stand shoulder to shoulder to be equated and counted along with your common or garden "murderous terrorism" of guns and bombs. A moral equivalence is created between all of these - after all they are "terrorism" of one sort or other, cooked up by clever adjectives. If US displays cultural terrorism, it is OK (perhaps even "natural") for the culturally terrorised to respond with guns and bombs terrorism. One entity must stop cultural terrorism if the other is to stop terrorism of the guns and bombs type. Arundhati Roy's critics often accuse her of implying just this and being a "serial explainist" by creating inane equivalence of this type. The other is to narrow the meaning of terrorism down to such a fine point that the word is used only when convenient. MJ Akbar has written a fine article in today's Deccan Herald about this - but the site is offline (perhaps because of cut undersea cables) But I have scanned the article and uploaded it here http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a11/cybersurg/terror-mja.jpg shiv
