As Mumbaikars try their best to move ahead, and put this cowardly act of terrorism behind them, the question that is in every Indian’s mind is “What’s next ?“. The question is not whether another attack will take place but how soon it will take place.
To understand the gravity of the situation, first lets have a look at the major terrorist attacks since 2001[ Source : Wikipedia ].
2001 , October 1 : Terrorist target the Jammu and Kashmir state assembly. 35 people lost their live.
2001, December 13 : Terrorist attack on Indian Parliament. No casualty due to alert security forces.
2002, May 13 : 12 people are killed in the Jaunpur train crash in India, caused when Islamic extremists cut the rails.
2002, September 25 : Terrorist attack the Akshardham temple in Ahmedabad. 30 people died in the incident.
2002, December 21 : 20 people are killed in Kurnool when Islamic Extremists derailed a train.
2003, August 25 : 50 people are killed due to 2 bomb blasts in Mumbai.
2005, June 5 : Terrorists belonging to Lashkar-e-Toiba attacked the Ayodhya Ram Janmbhomi complex in India. No casualties. All the terrorists were gunned down.
2005, October 29 : Multiple bomb blasts hit markets in Delhi, India, killing at least 61 people.
2005, December 28 : Terrorists open fire at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India, killing a retired professor of mathematics.
2006, Match 7 : Bombings in the city of Varanasi leave at least 15 people dead.
2006, July 11 : Explosions in local trains in Mumbai.
This list doesn’t include the terrorist attacks in Jammu and Kashmir. There are terrorist attacks there almost every alternate week. On the morning of 7/11 itself 8 tourists were killed in 5 grenade attacks.
The length of this list proves the sheer magnitude of threat India is currently facing from terrorists. Lashkar-e-Toiba’s clout is increasing alarmingly. According to preliminary investigation reports this attack may have been carried out by Lashkar-e-Toiba with the help of SIMI ( Students Islamic Movement of India ). Lashkar is now teaming with local and smaller terrorist organizations in several parts of India to carry out their action. This is a very worrying trend, as it increases their effectiveness by manifolds. However, the involvement of Pakistan in this is almost certain.
Yet, the most shocking thing is the reaction of the Government of India. In fact they have hardly reacted. All they do is to release a statement denouncing the act of terror and stating that we will stand united against Terrorists. Then as the days pass everyone forgets about it, till another attack takes place.
The only way of dealing with this crisis is by hitting back. By striking at the source of the problem. Doesn’t matter how much we strengthen our intelligence service, these kind of attacks will continue happening. The terrorists are bound to succeed at least one out of every 10 times. India is a vast and densely populated country with a lot of soft spots which can be easily targeted. To make matters worse it is surrounded by countries like Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh where ISI as well as Terrorist groups have considerable influence. The security agencies has managed to thwart several attacks in the past. In May, this year 43kg of RDX along with large number of Grenades and AK-47 was seized in Maharashtra. However, it will fail , and when it fails the concequences will be disastrous.
It is no secret that terrorist groups like Lashkar-e-Toiba, Harakat ul-Mujahidin, Hizbul Mujahideen, Jaish-e-Mohammed, are based in Pakistan and is supported in various ways by the Government of Pakistan. In spite of several requests from India the Government of Pakistan has refused to take any solid action against these groups. India has been assaulted repeatedly, and every time it chose to ignore it and extend a hand of friendship to Pakistan only to be rewarded by another vicious attack. In this perspective let me quote what Pakistan’s foreign minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri’ said after the blasts :
“Anything can go wrong anywhere in India or Pakistan. There are bomb blasts in India, there are bomb blasts in Pakistan. If you have these disputes, it enables negative forces in both countries to blame the other country and exploit the sentiment…I think we should try and take advantage of this improved atmosphere and resolve outstanding disputes, particularly the core issue of Jammu and Kashmir.”
Its worth nothing how he brought in the dispute over Kashmir while giving his reaction.
On July 12, the terrorist organization, Hezbollah launched an attack on Israel. Israel wasted absolutely no time in taking action on them, and opened fire on Lebanon, where Hezbollah is based. When the World Trade Center was attacked 2,749 people died. America fought back by waging a war against terrorism. India has lost thousands of more people due to persistent terrorism. And we will continue to loose thousands of more citizens, till our Government stands up and takes aggressive action.
WAKE UP INDIA. WAKE UP.
The Question is Is the country ready to take on Pakistan?
Will the war worth it?
Will terrorism stop after the war?
Will the cost of war (Considering both have Nuclear Devices) be less that cost that we are bearing right now?
Its really unfortunate to see our India in this state. But what do we do for our country? Just sit on our sofa with bean bags and probably popcorn packs, wearing dropped jaws and watching TV news channels reporting the bomb blasts? How many of us have really taken a step forward to help them?
How many times have we donated blood? How many times have we gone out and really helped those affected.
Why should our Indian Army, Our defence forces face the need to come up with advertisements just like other non-selling products like Nirma detergent and Gutkha ads? People are opting for easier lives…
With this approach we really cant change India and only chat about the tragedies happened and probably of those to come…
I have been saying for years now that the only way to put an end to this menace is to take out the nation-state of Pakistan. Drastic as it may sound, there is no other way. Earlier, the West thought it was purely an India – Pakistan issue and conveniently looked the other way. 9/11 changed all dramatically and made the rest of the world realize that Pakistan was the real cradle of international terrorism.
Afghanistan, Taliban, Al Qaida, Lashkar-e-toiba, ‘freedom struggle’ in Kashmir etc are all visible faces of the extremely dangerous and destructive state policy of Pakistan, nurtured and pursued overtly for decades. And it is not a simple India-Pakistan matter as has been carefully projected by Pakistan to curry favor with the West till a critical mass is achieved .The proliferation of nuclear weapon technology by the highest ranking members of the Pakistani establishment had nothing to do with India at all. The blossoming of Al Qaida and the Taliban with complete knowledge, support and encouragement of Pakistan govt and military was not India-centric either.
These were concerted efforts by Pakistan towards the objective of bringing to an end the domination of the Islamic world by the Christian West. This may sound illogical.. But dig into history and look. Pakistan is an artificial entity created on the basic premise that Muslims cannot co-exist with people of other religious beliefs, no matter how closely related they may be ethnically, except when Islam is dominant. This idea was tenuously floated in the 40s as a bargaining political tool, but, thanks in no small measure to the British, it gave birth to a new country which interpreted it as the ‘divine’ right of Islam to rule, yet again, after being in an eclipse for a couple of centuries. Having tasted blood in breaking up India and carving out an Islamic state, the ambition of Pakistan was initially to ‘reclaim’ Delhi in the name of Islam. Remember Gen Ayub Khan’s boast of having his evening tea in Delhi, in 1965? The Pakistani political, military and religious leadership fanned this idea in an increasingly fundamentalist and intolerant manner, particularly after Muslim East Pakistan broke away in 1971 dealing a severe blow to the very basis of existence of Pakistan. In the process, the idea has progressed, as it logically had to, to the belief that if Islam cannot accept a dominant ‘Hindu’ India, how can it straddle the irreconcilable contradiction of accepting the overwhelming dominance of Christian West over the entire Islamic world. Two generations of Pakistanis and a large number of Muslims in India have grown up on this poison pill of hatred and intolerance, spawning a full fledged industry of terror and violence, which has provided a fertile ground for extremists of other nationalities too. Skeptics who conveniently overlook the extremely dark face of this pernicious ideology would do well to read ‘Who Killed Daniel Pearl’ by Bernard-Henri Levy. Why not just read the posters openly displayed in the office of the Students Islamic Movement of India(SIMI), ‘Waiting for Ghaznavi’, ‘No Democracy, No Secularism, Only Islam’. What else is Pakistan about? What else is international Islamic fundamentalism and terror about? This is the real terrorism which everyone in India is ignoring in their misplaced zeal to sound ‘secular’ and bipartisan. That is exactly what such outfits need to flourish and mount an increasingly formidable challenge to the perceived domination by Hindus in India and Christians in the West. And yet, Indian media and politicians choose to completely ignore this foundational challenge to the nation which brazenly seeks to convert the ‘Indian’ part of India into Pakistan too. They want to remain in their cozy make-believe world of engaging with and publicizing ‘secular’ Muslims. The media’s naiveté in believing that the real Muslims living in large numbers in the ghettos will bare their real beliefs in front of the camera is, indeed, disturbing, to say the least. Indian politicians have consistently displayed a remarkable lack of integrity to be on the right side of electoral mathematics. One wonders about the compulsions of the media.
In the wake of 9/11, Musharraf had no choice but to align with the US against the Al Qaida and Taliban his country helped flourish and unleash the most horrific face of Islamic fundamentalism and terror. As he himself admitted, it was a question of ensuring the very survival of Pakistan. Notwithstanding this purely tactical and opportunistic alliance with the US, the hard fact remains that the ideology put in place remains intact and will remain so as long as Pakistan continues to exist as a nation. No govt in power there can effectively check this if it has to survive. Even if we were to lull ourselves and believe that the hawkish commando ,’Kargil’ President of Pakistan has genuinely become a dove after 9/11, there is little he can do to stem the flow of the poison that has corrupted the very soul of his country and has been exported like blood cancer to large parts of the globe. At various levels in Pakistan, the poison is still being assiduously cultivated and harvested, because it has become the sole justification for Pakistan to remain an independent country and not re-merge with India or split further on the more logical basis of ethnicity. It has also become the opium fuelling the ambition of ensuring the rule of Islam in this world and pleasure of young virgins in the next. .
I may be wrong, but at a macro time and space level, I see events involving the Islamic world in the last two centuries or so, as the painful pangs of a dying philosophy.The pangs are getting more frequent, more painful….and deep down there is a frustrated sense of helplessness and fear finding expression in the vortex of ever increasing violence and self-destruction. The effective religious leaders of Islam cannot teach their followers to live peacefully with others in a plural world. With that insurmountable difficulty, there is no hope. It is the End. They know it too, but want to believe that the End is of others.
The rest of the world has a responsibility to ensure that the fallout is minimized and not prolonged unnecessarily.
Vinod, I agree whole heartedly to what you have written.
The other day, I was watching a program addressing a similar question on another channel, when I heard the celebrated anchor ask the dumbest question ever asked by an anchor : ‘Do terrorists have a religion?’ Such a question not only trivializes a very serious issue but also betrays the fact that despite many years occupying prime media space, some journalists remain little public school boys/girls taking part in an inter-school debate. Their focus is always on scoring points and emerging the winner through the sheer force of their debating skills and the carefully chosen coterie of panelists who enable them to remain in a comfort zone and hide their often superficial understanding of the many issues taken up in their programs. That is fine in school. But when one dominates national media and influences the opinion of a small but powerful section of society which enjoys a disproportionately large voice in policy making at the national level, casual arrogance must give way to a realization of one’s societal and national responsibility.
Coming to the very upsetting question, it is obvious that anchor in question, and perhaps others too, have never even bothered to find out where the term ‘Jihad’ comes from.And they have all pretensions of being experts It needs to be mentioned that the first jihad was fought by the Prophet against those who refused to accept his prophethood, i.e. Islam. His jihad (battle) at Medina against the Meccans and Jews resulted in his victory. And do you know what he did after the battle was won? He beheaded all the 800 captured soldiers of the defeated Jew Army and took all their women and children as slaves, proclaiming both acts to be the Will of God. In today’s context, mass massacre of defeated, unarmed soldiers will be classified a war crime. And what about the sexual and other exploitation of innocent women and children? Perhaps that was the requirement of those extraordinary and difficult times when Islam was struggling to take root. Cut to the present day and it needs no genius to understand that killing of the ‘enemies’ of Islam by jihadi terrorists, be they fighting soldiers or passive supporters (ordinary citizens, women, children?), gets its justification from the Prophet himself, however much it may arguably be distorted.. There are no ‘innocent’ citizens in the jihadis lexicon. Even if there are a few, well, that is collateral damage, as the Americans love to say. Add to this the Prophet’s promise of young virgins in the next life for those who die fighting for Islam and you have a perfect recipe for extremely merciless, ruthless and dangerous jihadi terrorism. And Pakistan, which has somehow conceptualized itself as a creation of jihad, a jihad incomplete, is providing the perfect Islamic pan to cook this diabolic dish in.
Informed Indian politicians understand this quite well but choose look away because they have been completely corrupted by their lust for power. They cannot antagonize Muslims voters ( a clear unspoken belief that a vast majority of Indian Muslims support the jihadis in some manner at least), even if , in the process the nation is lost in the long run. Then there is another class of politicians who believe that their sole hope of survival is in blindly supporting Nehruvian idealism to be on the right side of The Family which simply cannot get itself to accept that changed circumstances demand a radically different approach. Family ‘honour’ takes precedence over national interest. On way or another, all these people may prove to be as dangerous and as anti-national as the jihadis,
To compound the problem, they have the powerful backing of large breed of rootless Indian journalists (including their in-house experts) who dominate the national media. They are comfortably cocooned in their ‘secular’ world and come into their element only when they ridicule and question Hindu religion ( without having the foggiest idea of its intellectual, philosophical, rational and spiritual dimensions) and brand as communal and jingoistic anyone who tries to awaken his countrymen to the real danger posed by jihadi terrorists. Imagine playing down and perversely justifying jihadi terrorism by comparing it with Hindu communalists, naxalites and militants of the Northeast, but that is what is being done ad nauseum by politicians and the media. Net result : 20 years down the line, this country has not been able to formulate a coherent and effective strategy to counter the most serious challenge to our secular state, our very nation.
Thank God Bush did not have Indian media and Indian politicians to contend with post 9/11… he might have still been paralysed by a relentless, ingenious and essentially dishonest campaign of comparison of Al Qaida with Ku Klux Klan, radical Christians and other racist elements, with shrill calls to check them too with an even eye before acting against Afghanistan, while Al Qaida terrorists would have grown stronger, inflicted far more damage and perhaps duplicated what jihadi terrorists have achieved in India. Fortunately, Americans never lose sight of their supreme national interest. ‘Rootless Indians’, on the other hand, never fail to impress with their thorough knowledge, admiration, assimilation, even awe of everything else American, particularly bohemian. Pity they are not white….may be that is why they cannot understand India’s national interest, fathom national pride, and above all, experience real self esteem as an Indian..
Hi
Thanks for that tought provoking article
Your post made me think of the law and order situation in India
What is the use in beating around the hindu muslim / India Pakistant etc etc issue ? Haven’t we split enough ink over the last 20 or so years since Ram Janmabhoomi or should I say over the last 60 years since partition ?
AT LEAST NOW !, don’t we need action ? don’t we try and remove the ROOT CAUSE ??
Isn’t all this mayhem and bomb blast a law and order issue ?
aren’t there millions of Muslims and millions of non Muslims living in Canada, France .. Germany , Australia … around the world. These places do NOT degenerate into the sort of Mumbai blast or mayhem we seen in our country ??
why ?
To me this looks like a pure law and order problem and out inability to control the thugs – especially in India
Thuggery has become the order of the day – be it in politics, be it in encroachment, be it in education….., even parts of the media and cine are being taken over by Thugs
Thuggery has to be tamed. Law and order restored. Time isn’t far away when people will want a DICTATOR to come and rule us with an iron hand
Democracy is for those who can respect it and use it well. It’s like a delicate rose plant. You tend it and protect it, it will give you beauty and fragrance. However looking at some of the jokers in our country’s politics and govt. machinery (including the corrupt police), I guess we are NOT eligible for a democracy….
If one KPS gill can tame the punjab terrorists, we just need a few more such stern officers
more at
Terrorists as vote banks
Regards
vinayak
You are perfectly correct in your views…
It is said, Indians are blind to the “bitter truth” in Kashmir.
It has been alleged by some students of an Indian University
(described as “a group of ‘adventure junkies,’
who traveled across Kashmir and interacted with students and people that almost all Indians are casually ignorant about the Kashmir conflict and about the realities of issuess of violations of the Human Rights in Kashmir.
This has been picked up and utilised by propagandists who claims
Indian media is biased and has been persistently “feeding lies” to the Indian public.Read more kashmir myths – abuses ONLY by indian forces
PLAYING CLEVER, terror outfits in Jammu and Kashmir are using women to remove the ‘hurdles’ in their way. According to highly placed sources, terrorist organisations in J&K have been asked by their mentors across the border to take the help of the women over ground workers in hitting at security officials, actively involved in anti-terrorist operations. Read more Terrorists use women against Indian army in Kashmir
Pakistan is sending in terrorists through Nepal and Bangladesh
even China is not back it is also trying to occupy Indian Regions grrrrrr
but yes we should also see that people are pro-active after such attacks
there were thousands willing to donate blood and help others during Jaipur Blasts 🙂
terrorists couldnt break up our unity and thats the best thing 🙂
I ABSOLUTELY SUPPORT YOU.I CANT UNDERSTAND HOW MANMOHAN SUPPORTS THE CONGRESS WHICH TRAMPELED THE GOLDEN TEMPLE THE HOLIEST OF SIKH SHRINES.HINDUSSIKHS AND JAINS SHD ALL RISE AGAINST THE BEEF EATERS.
There really needs to be higher devotion of resources to border protection first. It’s amazing how exposed some of the coastlines are to foreign elements.