Don’t divide terror into categories: India

India has underlined the need to distinguish between political ideologies that are part of a pluralistic democratic polity and the radical ideologies that subscribe to terrorism, emphasisng that any attempt to paint both of them with the same brush is “inaccurate” and “counterproductive”.

Speaking at the Ambassadorlevel Annual Briefing to Member States organised by the United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism (UNOCT), India’s Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador T S Tirumurti said India has always maintained that nations should not go back to pre-9/11 era when terrorists were being divided into ‘your terrorist’ and ‘my terrorist’.

He said the categorising them weakens the collective resolve to combat terrorism. “We see a renewal of this attempt by trying to divide terror again into categories and label them. For example, under the label of xenophobia, racism, and other forms of intolerance or in the name of religion or belief, efforts have been made to bring into this discussion categories such as right-wing extremism, far right and far left extremism, violent nationalism, racially ethnically motivated violent nationalism,” he said.

Tirumurti said there is a need to understand that in democracies right-wing and left-wing are part of the polity and come to power through elections reflecting the majority will of the people. “Democracy by definition contains a broad spectrum of ideologies and beliefs. We need to distinguish between the political ideologies which are part of a pluralistic democratic polity, as against radical ideologies which subscribe to terrorism. Our fight is against such radical ideologies and not against democracy. To paint them with the same brush is inaccurate and counterproductive,” he said.

Amid efforts to prepare report of the Secretary-General mandated by the General Assembly to assess the threat posed by the terrorist acts on the basis of xenophobia, racism, and other forms of Intolerance, or in the name of religion or belief, Tirumurti underlined that “we should not be selective in our approach but in fact seek to implement a zerotolerance against terror.” Tirumurti said the overall threat of terrorism has only increased. (PTI)