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In August, the Al-Qaeda warned that they are going to target India. The suicide bomber at the Glasgow airport who happened to be an Indian aeronautical engineer led many to declare that South Asian techies are more easily prone to terrorism. This is exactly what American "Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski, currently serving life imprisonment in a Colorado prison, would be delighted in reading. This guy truly believed engineers are a dangerous lot. He might even delude himself that he was justified in mailing the bombs.

Engineer: A Dirty Word
The "Unabomber" was a mathematics professor and mailed bombs to engineering professors, scientists and students in American Universities in the 80s and 90s before his brother found out about his activities and tipped off the FBI. Why was Ted Kaczynski targeting engineers? Kaczynskis reply, according to the Crime library of Court TV, USA was that he wanted to make people aware of the dangers of technology. That he thought everything from the sewing machine to the typewriter was bad even though he used it to type messages, which would be mailed along with the bombs, did not matter.

Call it coincidence or craziness but the media began to use phrases like engineer an attack since then. It almost seems that the media weirdly justified Ted Kaczynskis wish.

I am from Tamil Nadu and I had a British Sikh girl as a roommate while doing my masters degree in the USA. Some of the American students would jokingly refer to us as the Indian terrorists, which I found extremely offensive. When I asked them why they said this, the reply was, "A Sikh killed Indira Gandhi and a Tamil killed Rajiv Gandhi." I had to explain the difference between a Sri-Lankan Tamil and an Indian Tamil. Furthermore, I had to explain that not all Sri-Lankan Tamils were LTTE terrorists. I had to do the same for Sikhs and explain to them that not all Sikhs are terrorists. Most soon stopped calling us terrorists. It was interesting that this never happened to a student who majored in business, humanities or cinema at our University. However, this tendency to brand an entire community on the basis of religion, region, language, profession or color is the danger one must watch out for. Americans became trapped in this mentality in the aftermath of 9/11.

After Kaczynskis arrest, Israeli counter terrorism squads began to nickname one Palestinian as "Engineer". His name became irrelevant but it referred to a Palestinian electronics engineer who joined Hamas, which is now in power in the occupied territories. Nowadays, the media in order to describe a terrorist commonly uses terms like "engineer" and "terrorist". You will not see terms like "politician terrorist" or "doctor terrorist" or an "executive terrorist" but engineer terrorist is common. I did an Internet search using the word combination engineer and terrorist and the result was 1.8 mn Web pages that used the term. Osama Bin Laden is considered to be a brilliant engineer. David Copeland, the London nail bomber was undergoing an engineering apprenticeship. The Glasgow bomber turned out to be an aeronautical engineer.

Does this make engineers more prone to terrorism? Even though the answer is no, reading articles in the print media, listening to programs on TV or browsing the Internetall made possible by engineerswould make you think so.

An Engineer: the Victim?
Immediately after the twin blasts in Hyderabad, in which many engineering students died, suddenly the media changed its tune. Now the engineer is being portrayed as the victim. Many in the Indian media, especially the 24-hour television news channels were carrying stories with headlines that said "Target South India". Currently, we have stories about how the Al-Qaeda will target South India here afterward. Maybe the media woke up to the fact that the engineering industries in the four southern states of India are the engines that drive the economic growth of India. Media and political analysts came out with statements about how the engineering and tech sectors need to be protected from terrorist attacks as they are soft targets. Alerts were sounded in all metros and hi-tech parks and BPO industries were given additional protection and security. What the media ended up doing was create panic and fear among many engineers as it portrayed them as the next Al-Qaeda target. While there is truth to a small part of the statements made by political analysts and security experts, it is absurd and irresponsible of the media to create panic.

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