The political discourse around the recent blasts in Jaipur has fallen into a predictable pattern. Not surprising, for most such discourses are state-propelled, if not state-sponsored. The opposition (and government-in-waiting) BJP has been quick to demand the anti-terrorist law repealed by the UPA government, blaming the absence of such laws for the rise in terrorism during the UPA’s tenure. The prime minister stressed the need for a federal agency to deal with terrorism and federal crimes, an assertion repeated after each “terrorist” attack since the UPA came to power.

Both these “anti-terrorism” assertions of the Indian state, represented by the two political formations that are likely to alternate in power in near future, deserve to be analysed. States and international state systems, as well as non-state actors, are implicated in the savagery of blowing innocents to pieces to achieve political ends. The matter of concern is that people who are helplessly caught in the collateral damage zone are orchestrated to play the state-composed tune.

Interestingly, the organised use of political terror coincides with the emergence of the most notable slogan of democracy since the French Revolution — liberté, égalité, fraternité . Obviously, the use of terror as a tool by state or non-state actors receives political-moral justification from similar sources. Even religious validation of terror has lately been used as a political instrument of mobilisation (by non-state actors) and condemnation (state systems). Further, both in national and international contexts, states and regimes have created terrorist monsters they then lost control over.

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