Terrorist-Terrorist

An Indian playground game that emerged in the aftermath of the Mumbai terror attacks.

In the weeks after the 26/11 attacks, Outlook India reported that 6-year-olds in Mumbai were playing a game called “terrorist-terrorist”:

Lining up their friends against a wall, they go boom-boom with their toy guns, calling out the names of those who must “fall and die.”

India Today reported a surge in the sale of toy guns and war games, and, Rediff.com noted the less obvious signs of trauma, including: “clinging behaviour, separation anxiety, regression, school phobia, omen formation (example: ‘I was wearing pink the day it happened, I won’t wear pink’), restlessness, reckless behaviour among teenagers, lack of concentration.”

The Times of India quoted a number of parents who were disturbed to find their young children using Hindi phrases such as Atankvadi gande hote hain(“terrorists are bad people”):

There is nothing innocent about words like terrorists, bombs and guns finding their way into the vocabulary of our four and five-year-olds. It is the clearest sign yet of how the terror around us is changing our children’s vocabulary.