I would say terror is faceless, emotionless, spineless, gutless, spiritless, soulless ruthless, remorseless, characterless, compassionless, pitiless, merciless, heartless, cowardly and coldblooded. It respects no religion, it doesn’t see age, it doesn’t care for emotions, it doesn’t care for the losses in terms of men or material, it does not have a limited dimension, and it is like a whirlwind or a twister which takes everything away in its path, irrespective of cast or creed. It is deadly, it is dangerous, it is lethal, fatal and poisonous, and its consequences are disastrous.

Now there is a difference between the face of terror and face of a terrorist. Therefore, for it to be faceless it has to work in the world taking advantage of the World Wide Web, under a pseudo name, from an unsuspecting location, probably untraceable, unnoticeable, kind of invisible, and unpredictable or a very common public platform used by all and sundry. The reason is simple, to buy time and to be traced after the longest time.

Why does such a face of terror emerge? Is it because of lack of education, unemployment, or the government not meeting the aspirations? It is clear from the recent times that now we have an educated face of terror. They could be doctors’ lawyers, scientists, teachers and people who belong to every walk of life. They could be rickshaw-walas, cobblers, or car mechanics. They are dormant agents, who have already been brain washed. They act in such a cowardly and dastardly manner that the common man has nowhere to run. Because they are innocuous, they merge with the population so fast that tracing them becomes an arduous task.

Who will confess that they have seen such a face of terror? Parents and relatives won’t, their friends won’t. In fact they won’t even know that this person has such tendencies. They may see or observe him/her doing something unusual, but never care to ask or report as their parental instincts are very strong to suspect anything wrong. No one can suspect his son/ward/friend to hide behind such a face. Even if they do, they will not report as it will unnecessarily bring a flurry of agencies breathing down their neck and interrupting their normal way of life, which is not acceptable and tolerable these days.

The greatest difficulty in recognising this face of terror is the task assigned to each faceless person. The task is limited, known to him/her and the handler. There are many links is this long chain, all are communicated on a need to know basis, and are never supposed to ask by whom, why, who or when will the next step be done. In case the plan gets compromised the link gets broken however, the chain continues with an alternate link. They may use dead letter boxes, or the latest gadgetry to communicate, but the link is never disclosed as to who the previous one was and who is going to be the next one. What a beautiful system! Agencies can try their best, to link the pieces but time runs out and the suspect has melted away.

The 9/11 pilots were not ordinary people. They were well read and educated; you and I know what it takes to become a pilot. The Taliban in Afghanistan may look uncouth and dirty kind of people, but they have both brains and brawn. They still target the Americans and hit them where it hurts. They, after so many years in that country have failed to both tame and eliminate this menace. Why US is such a strong nation today is that after more than 300 years of struggle they realised that infighting will only lead to disaster. They have evolved as a society, they think and work as one system, they work for one goal and that is the states are united. We have differently thinking states, we can’t think as we are one big nation, we are small feudal districts and in fact rajwaras of the ancient kinds called states and union territories. We rather than looking ahead are going backwards with the M cubes and others. Now you will ask what this has got with the face of terror and you all are right.

The modern face of terror emerges from the above facts. It takes advantage from the above weakness, it flourishes due to the encouragement it gets from a divided society, and it does “make up” due to non-focused policies. It survives due to mal administration. It exploits the loopholes of our system. It changes faces and disguises due to ease of circumventing the system of governance. They use the flaws of the organisation to their advantage and thus create mayhem and melt away within the folds of the concrete jungles.

One way to bring all this to an end is to have a uniform civil code, applicable to each one in the society. No reservations, no special classes. Lot of water has flown under the bridge after independence and calling an IAS officer as a “Dalit ki beti” who chairs the Loksabha, is preposterous and atrocious. Creamy or non-creamy let us compete as citizens of one country. Let the madarsas have their religious teachings, do not stop children going there, but the education system needs to be uniform throughout the country. No state boards and CBSE or American or British school of education. Let this country decide and have a uniform system for every child. The local language can be additional. If a parent or a child likes to choose to teach and preach religion, they should be free, but the content of what is taught needs to be monitored. The hate against any particular thing needs to be stopped. The society has to adapt to the modernisation and the technological advancement. We need to progress effectively without getting embroiled on issues of cartoons in text books being discussed in the parliament.

To tell you frankly friends, the face of terror can never be recognised. The modern methods of cosmetic surgeries will keep changing and so will the face. The makeup will always be improving so will the appearance of this face. But the positive side of all this is that the symptoms of this face can be recognised, it can be controlled and it can be eliminated before it spreads like wild fire, by being a law abiding citizen, a conscious citizen, a patriotic citizen, a tolerant citizen, a cooperative citizen, an alert citizen, above all a broad minded and forward looking citizen. Can we be good citizens to eliminate this face of the faceless terror? There is no doubt in my mind that the answer is a big YES, but are we willing to become one? I wonder?