Time to time, they carry out terrorist acts to remind people of the fear they want them to live in. Consequently, there are roughly 100 terrorist cells that are operating in India. They have to an extent successfully created an atmosphere of tension amongst the citizens. Terrorism impacts the country gravely and has dangerous repercussions.
Impact of Terrorism in India
As discussed earlier, terrorism has a major impact on any country. When we look at a developing country like India, it is all the more harmful. Firstly, it creates a state of panic amongst the citizens. The bomb blasts or firing impacts the mental health of people. This causes the untimely death of various citizens or leaves them handicapped. The anxiety and fear one has to live in restrict their way of living to a great extent.
Moreover, terrorism has a major impact on the tourism industry. As tourists avoid visiting places that are vulnerable to terrorist attacks, the tourism industry faces a blow. India is a country that earns a lot of its revenue from tourism. When these attacks happen, they cause fear amongst the tourists as well. The ones planning to visit cancel their trips. Similarly, the ones staying presently shorten their trip and leave.
Agencies such as the FBI, the US DOD and the US DOS realize the need to define terrorism. While each definition is a bit different, they do have constant themes. These themes include involving premeditation terrorist acts which are motivated by some political or social agenda, terrorists generally target non-combatants or civilians and are generally sub-national or clandestine groups. The configuration of terrorist groups is generally dependent on one’s environment, relationship with the state, motivation and/or goals.
History of Terrorism
The history of modern terrorism began with the French revolution and has evolved ever since. The most common causes or roots of terrorism include civilizations or culture clashes, globalization, religion, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. More personal or individual-based reasons for terrorism are frustration, deprivation, negative identity, narcissistic rage, and/or moral disengagement.
Five Types of Terrorism
You will need to be familiar with the five types of terrorism.
State-Sponsored terrorism, which consists of terrorist acts on a state or government by a state or government.
Dissent terrorism, which are terrorist groups which have rebelled against their government.
Terrorists and the Left and Right, which are groups rooted in political ideology.
Religious terrorism, which are terrorist groups which are extremely religiously motivated and
Criminal Terrorism, which are terrorists acts used to aid in crime and criminal profit.
Furthermore, terrorist attacks create a sense of doubt in the foreign investors of India. After all, who would want to invest in a country prone to terrorism? They avoid the risk and instead opt for safer alternatives. This causes a huge blow to the business of India depending on the economic situations.
Terrorism, the calculated use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective. Terrorism has been practiced by political organizations with both rightist and leftist objectives, by nationalistic and religious groups, by revolutionaries, and even by state institutions such as armies, intelligence services, and police.
Terrorism is not legally defined in all jurisdictions; the statutes that do exist, however, generally share some common elements. Terrorism involves the use or threat of violence and seeks to create fear, not just within the direct victims but among a wide audience. The degree to which it relies on fear distinguishes terrorism from both conventional and guerrilla warfare. Although conventional military forces invariably engage in psychological warfare against the enemy, their principal means of victory is strength of arms. Similarly, guerrilla forces, which often rely on acts of terror and other forms of propaganda, aim at military victory and occasionally succeed (e.g., the Viet Cong in Vietnam and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia). Terrorism proper is thus the calculated use of violence to generate fear, and thereby to achieve political goals, when direct military victory is not possible. This has led some social scientists to refer to guerrilla warfare as the “weapon of the weak” and terrorism as the “weapon of the weakest.”
In order to attract and maintain the publicity necessary to generate widespread fear, terrorists must engage in increasingly dramatic, violent, and high-profile attacks. These have included hijackings, hostage takings, kidnappings, mass shootings, car bombings, and, frequently, suicide bombings. Although apparently random, the victims and locations of terrorist attacks often are carefully selected for their shock value. Schools, shopping centres, bus and train stations, and restaurants and nightclubs have been targeted both because they attract large crowds and because they are places with which members of the civilian population are familiar and in which they feel at ease. The goal of terrorism generally is to destroy the public’s sense of security in the places most familiar to them. Major targets sometimes also include buildings or other locations that are important economic or political symbols, such as embassies or military installations. The hope of the terrorist is that the sense of terror these acts engender will induce the population to pressure political leaders toward a specific political end.
Since the 20th century, ideology and political opportunism have led a number of countries to engage in international terrorism, often under the guise of supporting movements of national liberation. (Hence, it became a common saying that “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”) The distinction between terrorism and other forms of political violence became blurred—particularly as many guerrilla groups often employed terrorist tactics—and issues of jurisdiction and legality were similarly obscured.
These problems have led some social scientists to adopt a definition of terrorism based not on criminality but on the fact that the victims of terrorist violence are most often innocent civilians. Even this definition is flexible, however, and on occasion it has been expanded to include various other factors, such as that terrorist acts are clandestine or surreptitious and that terrorist acts are intended to create an overwhelming sense of fear.
In the late 20th century, the term ecoterrorism was used to describe acts of environmental destruction committed in order to further a political goal or as an act of war, such as the burning of Kuwaiti oil wells by the Iraqi army during the Persian Gulf War. The term also was applied to certain environmentally benign though criminal acts, such as the spiking of lumber trees, intended to disrupt or prevent activities allegedly harmful to the environment.
You must be logged in to post a comment.