The sense of outrage over a Hindu terror plot in an American television series had never been so intense. Netizens slammed the Indian actress Priyanka Chopra who is one of the few to achieve a breakthrough in Hollywood. The American channel ABC sort of apologised to save Priyanka saying she had nothing to do with the script or the plot shown in the third season of Quantico. Netizens were still annoyed with what they saw as reluctance on the part of the Indian actress to dissociate herself from the portrayal of an Indian plot to nuke Manhattan and blame it on Pakistan ahead of a scheduled peace talks between the two nuclear-armed, frosty neighbours. They seem to forget she is only a professional actress engaged in acting in a fictional serial revolving around life in the FBI and in the episode she actually uncovers the plot.

The larger issue is terrorism has no religion. People of different major religions have been known to indulge in acts of terror for various reasons, including the worshipping of their own gods. It is just that makers of Western films and serials have tended to typecast Muslims as terrorists, particularly after 9/11 shattered the peace in the new millennium as a Saudi renegade plotted a hit on Manhattan’s twin towers of the World Trade Centre. Truth to tell, religious differences have been one of the major causes of terror in the modern era after religious faith was the progenitor of the Crusades in Europe in the Middle Ages. The point is terror must be denounced as well as hate for being the destroyer of peace and harmony in a world of seven billion people, most of whom simply seek a happy and contented life.