Times of terror often become times of intolerance. A diversified society suddenly behaves in terms of homogenous scripts. Security becomes the key word around which a temporary social contract is built. A society in its attempt to hold together forsakes the very thing that makes its secure, its sense of difference and its tolerance for disorder. Disorder offers a sense of debate, the possibility of negotiation; it eliminates a sense of a final doctrine and a final solution. Fear unravels the threads of diversity by reordering a society around order, uniformity and homogeneity. Fear and the sense of helplessness against terror allow it to tolerate forms of intrusion, modes of violence that a society would not normally countenance. The greater good of the whole makes it ready to sacrifice a part. National security allows one to sin and violate in a way a democracy would see as impermissible. Yet oddly and ironically, national security has become one of the guiding tenets of our democracy.

Emile Durkheim, the great French sociologist, improvised two concepts to understand the transition to modernity and industrialism. He postulated a distinction between mechanical and organic societies. A mechanical society is based on likeliness, an organic society, on difference. Organic societies are based on the division of labour, on specialization, on differentiation. Mechanical societies respond homogenously to violence by asking for revenge, valuing a head for a head, an eye for an eye. Organic societies thriving on difference move from physicality to a rule of law which is actually a celebration of difference.

... contd.