Hate Begets More Hate - Amir Kasab Hanging

November 26 of 2008 marked an unprecedented day that India could never have braced itself. A day when terrorism reared its ugly head in this peace loving nation; The day when Pakistani terrorists, infiltrated our border and wrecked havoc in 8 different places in Mumbai city. 

This city had already known the effects of terrorist attacks, however such attacks were only results of religious conflicts within the state. Hindus killed the Muslims and vice versa...all happening internally. To that very day, Mumbai was known as the city that can control its own population without an external resource ever needed. 

Perhaps it was the internal population check rendered ineffective or perhaps the heads of various political parties and religious factions could not keep their lashing tongue in check that they had to say something revolutionarily stupid, we may never know, but November 28 of 2008 marked the day when the well trained Lashkar-e-Taiba Islamist men infiltrated our land borders via the Arabian Sea.

After four years and many failed Clemency Petitions, Kasab was hanged on this "peace loving" soil at 7:30am IST on the 21st of November 2012.

Truth be said, like all Pathans, Ajmal was definitely good looking and as per his statements, if he did pursue a career in the cine-industry, I am sure that he could have made it really big. If the Indian cine-industry could make the khans and the kanths really big, then why not a Kasab?

Sadly, Kasab was first met by poverty, illiteracy and soon by the all-alluring promise of the leaders of Lashkar-e-Taiba Islamist group which amounted to PKR. 15,000.00. For a person whose father makes a living selling dahi puris, this particular amount sure did look like it would make a lot of ends meet for many more months to come; but the clause clearly stated that he cannot be captured.

This poor, little, handsome man, perhaps had a last minute change of mind that he actually was captured on the day of shooting, apprehended, spilled most of his guts in the “confession”, was tried and later hanged. Invariably, after four years, this handsome man did die. It makes one wonder if the promised amount was paid by LeT though the non-capture, non-disclosure clause was broken!

That aside, it makes one wonder…we call ourselves a peace loving country that was founded by a peace loving man (Mohandass K. Gandhi). Then how is it that our very own political and religious heads make such judgemental and hate-filled statements in-turn earning the hatred of others.

If having a lashing and tempestuous tongue was not enough, we went ahead and hanged that handsome Kasab for threatening the security of this country. If this country’s security can be that easily threatened then the fundamental questions that need answering are,

How good is our government and the military forces that it can’t even keep a tag on its boundaries?

Cant this government control the tongues or statements made by those who are not in power?

How good are our leaders, that they place us on the sacrificial altar as collateral damage?

Well, we the proud Indians have gone ahead and hanged Kasab (for those who didn’t know this, Ajmal Kasab did not even know the true meaning of Jihad....all that he knew was what he was taught in training - that it was mainly for the sake of immortality - for the sake of publicity).

We, a proud nation have gone ahead and dipped our hands in the blood of a man who was ignorant to what the truth was. We have killed someone who wasn’t to be blamed for his ignorance.

This act of hanging Ajmal Kasab did not end terrorism (‘cuz I still read reports of L-e-T, Tal and A-Q almost every other day) nor did it put the fear of death in the hearts of suicide bombers (does that sound ironic only to me?).

We have gone ahead and sealed our fate – not as country that would come out of its “third world” title. But as a country that would ever live in darkness and perish in ignorance. We hung a man who was ignorant, we celebrated that capital punishment and worst of all we have provoked other Islamist factions to wage their “Jihad” without understanding how holy and beautiful that word is.

Until Next Time