Reminded of Jallianwala Bagh: Arun Gandhi remembers 9/11

My wife and I had just returned from Chicago on the night of the 10th. We were then living in Memphis, TN. I was still having breakfast and my wife had gone to take a shower. Being a news junkie the first thing I do every morning on getting up is put on the TV news broadcast. Suddenly, on TV they showed the first plane crashing into Tower One. I was speechless and, like the commentator, thought this was an awful accident. Then, the second plane crashed into Tower II and by then the media had realised that this was no accident but planes hijacked by terrorists and purposefully rammed into the WTC Towers. Like all Americans for several days we were stunned and remained glued to the TV to learn more and more about what was happening. There was no doubt this was violence escalated to the nth degree. After the initial shock wore off I was concerned about the reaction to this attack.  I was reminded of the Jallianwala Bagh incident in the Punjab in 1919. Although people may say the two were very different but I think in many ways both incidents evoked the same sense of outrage and anger in both countries. [caption id=“attachment_81974” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Arun Gandhi.”]  [/caption] In 1919, the British were outnumbered 4,000 to 1 and if the Indians were instigated as the Americans were the British would have faced a massacre.  Thousands would have died on both sides and nothing would have been gained. I wrote about this and offered it to the print media in the US, including the New York Times, but the article was rejected. President Bush stoked the anger of the country and declared a war on terror that we have not been able to stop for ten years and no one knows how much longer we will have to fight, and for what? To avenge the deaths of some 3,500 who died in the Twin Towers we have sacrificed more than 6,000 of our own young men and women, not to speak of the hundreds of thousands who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan.   _ Arun Gandhi has written several books and now writes a regular blog for Washington Post. A grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, he co-founded the MK Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, at the University of Rochester._