MODERATES MUST UNITE

Describing terrorism as a "whimsical randomness of evil" and an act not linked to faith, megastar Amitabh Bachchan on Sunday urged "moderates" to fight the scourge together.

He said terrorism was neither an ideology, nor an instrument of justice. "It is an act of scaring peaceful people, an act of evoking the fear of sudden, untimely death. It is an act of negotiating at the point of a gun. Terrorism is not an act of faith. Terrorism can never replace another ideology," he said at an event organised at the Gateway of India to mark nine years of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.

The 75-year-old said the attack was a wake-up call. The "Pink" actor said terrorism cannot decide for the peaceful humanity what is right or wrong. "Whatever political rhetoric may say, terrorism is neither a form of justice nor an instrument of justice. It is the whimsical randomness of evil.

So how does an unarmed peaceful humanity fight the fear of terrorism? How does anyone who believe in the life of merit and hard work, begin to believe in the authority of guns and bombs?

"Will the armed mercenaries decide the future of our children? Will the threat of violence decide what is right and wrong? Will terror decide what is true or false, right and wrong? No. Terror does no such thing," he said.

Bachchan said when a nation turns "hostile", that's where terrorism thrives. "When people are divided by distrust, when friends and neighbours stop trusting each other, when a nation turns into a hostile island of random fear, then our world is broken into fragments. Broken by narrow domestic walls. It's precisely what terror aims to achieve," he said.

To combat this, Bachchan said, the "moderates who suffer the most" must unite. "To say moderates are not relevant in the war against terrorism is Esther myopic... Moderates are considered passive, yet the prime victims of terror are moderates. More than 70 per cent of our nation is moderate. As moderates, we must recognise that to vilify a foe is no victory at all.

"To understand the foe is the first act of strength in resistance. To understand the foe, we must first understand ourselves. To understand ourselves we must ask not what we are against rather we must ask what we are for. This we can do together," he added.