How to fight terror

Ever since the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, I have been wondering if there is a solution to terrorism – religious or otherwise. Taking lives seems such a wasteful effort to any sane logical mind. I could not justify the reasons for killing innocent people. Yes being in the armed forces, I am in a profession where I could be asked to kill; but then I convince myself that when I do so it is while both sides are playing by some rules (however obscene they may be). But then when one of the sides is of no match to the other, does he play by the same rules? No, I don’t think so. That set me thinking; if the terrorists are not playing by the same rules then why are they targeting India? What has India done to come under fire? It is America and the western countries who are ‘waging a war against terror’ in Afghanistan and Iraq. So logic dictates that they should be targeted by these terrorist organisations. The reason why it is India is because we are in the neighbourhood, we are smaller and closer than the western countries and it is easier to show results here. After all whether it is our weak willed, thick skinned politicians or their venom spouting jihadi leaders, they have to show some sort of tangible result to their supporters / sympathisers. So the issue of Kashmir was raked up and action taken against India. A symbolic gesture like burning of an effigy; hit India and it is like hitting the western nations.
But how do you convince people that India is the enemy? While we say that the ability to think is what separates us from animals it is also our weak link. The mind can be manipulated and people can be brainwashed. A little misinformation, twist the information to suit your requirements and the same ideals which we use to maintain balance and sanity in the society, nationalism, religion, family etc, can be used to provide the spark to light the pyre of the mind.
So what is the solution? Do we fight with fire? Wage war against a nation? It may seem an effective solution initially; but it will only end up helping the enemy as it will validate all the claims of a big bully dominating a smaller country; or one religion fighting another. And as it can be seen in Afghanistan and Iraq, it will only worsen the situation. We will be stuck in the mire with no chance of getting out without loss of face. So what do we do? Indoctrinate our people (without discrimination of caste, creed, religion or ethnicity) that terrorism / extremism is not the solution to our problems. Choke the support to the terror groups within India, cut out the base for the terror organisations within our country. Basically brainwash our people that non violence is the path we should chose.
At this point I would like to divert a little from the topic. When my son was around two years old, like all kids his age, he was a bully, trying to dominate other kids. He would end up hitting other kids. With my beliefs and practice of non violence, how could my own son take to hitting other kids? So I took to explaining it to him that hitting other kids was wrong and he should not be doing it. And over a period of a couple of weeks I convinced him (or should I say brainwashed him) into believing that hitting other kids was wrong. A year later we moved to a different place with a different set of kids. Now at the new place he got beaten up often by other kids. At this point of time I was at a dilemma, all this while I used to tell him that hitting others was wrong and now he was getting beaten up and he was not responding because I had convinced him that it was wrong. End result was that he would end up crying every time. When I think about it I find so much of a similarity between this and what is happening to our country. All this while we have been brought up thinking that our path is one of non violence and if we brainwash all the people into believing that non violence is the path, then we will end up crying whenever someone hits us. Isn’t that what we have been doing after the ’93 blasts, the parliament attack and the present Mumbai terror attacks?
The solution lies in taking a middle path, convince everyone that we are all part of a whole, India. Stop splitting the country on the lines of religion, caste and ethnicity. Persuade people into believing that extremism leads nowhere, stifle the support to these terror organisations and at the same time take pro active steps diplomatically and militarily to hit these terror organisations.