What
motivates a terrorist and what can get a terrorist to give
up terrorism? This question is posed in the Indian film The
Terrorist, directed by Santosh Sivan, which reached
Los Angeles in February 2000, although the Indian release
date was 1998. The identities of the enemy and the terrorist
group are not specified in the film, but we soon surmise (with
dialog in the Tamil language) that the terrorists are Tamil
separatists in Sri Lanka, and the enemy is the Sri Lankan
government. The heroine of the film is nineteen-year-old Malli
(played by Ayesha Dharkar), whose brother was presumably killed
unjustly by the Sri Lankan army. Uneducated, Malli is easily
recruited by the terrorists, who provide room and board, brainwash
her with stories about the glory of martyrs to the cause,
train her to fight with modern weapons, and give her assignments
to kill the enemy on various occasions. When the film begins,
a traitor to the cause is being tortured, and masked Malli
pulls the trigger to execute him. Next, she is assigned to
assassinate an important political leader. When Malli reaches
her destination, she is trained to follow a script in which
she will put a garland on the leader, bow down for a blessing,
and then push a button that will set off explosives on a hidden
belt. Malli, of course, will also die in the explosion, and
her assassination and martyrdom are expected to advance the
cause for which she has dedicated her life. Pretending to
be an agricultural student, Malli is housed with a family
that is unaware of her mission. Yet her experience with the
family opens her eyes to other scenarios for her life. Vesu,
the elderly head of the family, philosophizes that people
fall into two categories -- optimistic seeds that grow and
flourish, and pessimistic seeds eaten by birds. Since Malli
is pregnant (from her dead boyfriend), townspeople encourage
her to enjoy motherhood. Vesu's mother, in a coma for seven
years, fascinates Malli, since she sees the comatose state
as a paradigm for her own life. But as Malli is about to enact
the scripted assassination, the mother comes partly out of
the coma to grasp her hand tightly, as if to say that she
should not act foolishly. Then, when the time comes to push
the button, Malli demurs. For the first time in her life,
she decides to make her own decision and opts for a much happier
life than following orders and ending up on a funeral pyre
at an early age. According to the director, curiosity about
the "suicide bomber" who assassinated former Indian Prime
Minister Rajiv Gandhi inspired the story, which could apply
to almost any terrorist conspiracy. Sadly, the film reveals
that poor girls in India and Sri Lanka are in effect sold
by their families to terrorist training camps because they
cannot afford to pay for their education or even their marriage.
Not revealed in the film is the reality that when the girl
dies, her family will doubtless receive monetary compensation
from the terrorists, so she is actually helping her family
by offering the ultimate sacrifice. For the revealing portrayal
of the causes and possible cures for terrorism, The
Terrorist has been nominated for an award as the best
film of 2000 on peace. MH
I
want to comment on this film
