Global order needed to tackle mankind’s woes

April 4, 2024

NEW DELHI – Questions of terrorism, militancy, insurgency and other forms of organized violence that wreak destruction, death and suffering must be understood within the paradigm of “good” and “evil”. The acts of violence carried out by lone individuals or small, non-state groups of people, bring great tragedy into other people’s lives. At the same time, it must be acknowledged that greater damage is done when terrorism is state-sponsored. Terrorism of any kind destroys efforts to establish peace among nations.

Terrorism is rooted in every human being’s need to belong to a group of peers. In these times it has become ideologically acceptable to indiscriminately murder innocents to achieve a terrorist’s goal. Every year hundreds of people are killed through diabolical attacks resulting in untold pain and destruction. The terrorists, like the egotist, somehow cannot consider the feelings or the life of others as important. They require instant, exact and complete obedience to their orders and tenets. Part of the background to current waves of terrorism is the lack of a proper balance between the liberty of the individual and the needs of society.

The right of an individual to act as he or she wishes can never be absolute. Such craving for extreme freedom leads to sedition and overstepping the bounds of propriety and debases the individual to depravity and wickedness, no better than a brute. Even when the cause which the terrorist group espouses is driven by a sense of injustice, there is no real justification for acts of violence. The latest terrorist attack in a concert hall in Moscow on 22 March once more demonstrates how negligence on the part of state security has resulted in the death of nearly 200