11-29-2008, 11:42 PM
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#2
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Senior Member
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Okolona, Ky.
Posts: 6,142
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Issues at the heart of Mumbai siege...
Growing rift threatens to tear India apart
November 30, 2008 - Hindu-Muslim tensions will rise further
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This message, steeped in irony, read like a roll call of the issues and violence that have divided Hindu and Muslim India over the past year. Almost a call to arms, it contained the great, twofold rage that has grown in Hindu India: the feeling that Islamic terrorism seeks to destroy the vigorous “new India” and the suspicion that the state is either unable or unwilling to defend itself — for cynical reasons, such as shoring up the Muslim vote for the government. The attacks on Mumbai — a city that, in its prosperity, its hybridity and openness to the world, stands as a symbol of the new and energised India — confirmed to many what they had long feared.
Within hours of the attacks, groups gathered in the streets of Mumbai, chanting “Bharat Mata ki Jai” (Victory to Mother India) and singing “Vande Mataram” (Bow to you Mother), a patriotic song that Muslims had objected to as the choice for the national anthem because it implied obeisance to gods other than Allah. Many British commentators have asked in surprise why India is being targeted. There is no confusion among Indians themselves. When the terrorists say on their websites that they seek to break up India and reclaim it for Islam, they speak a language many Hindu Indians understand. And India has proved to be the softest of soft targets.
More than 4,000 Indians have died in terrorist attacks — the country is the second biggest victim of terror after Iraq and virtually every one of its big cities has faced a terrorist attack. Yet the government has no centralised terrorist database, its intelligence is abysmal and there is little evidence that the state knows who it is fighting. In dragging its feet, the Indian state does nobody a greater disservice than Indian Muslims. When there are no real suspects, arrests or trials, everyone becomes a suspect. Already an underclass, with low literacy rates, low incomes and poor representation in government jobs, Indian Muslims are increasingly alienated. There is also great pressure on them.
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See also:
India, Pakistan simmer over Mumbai attacks
Sun Nov 30, 2008 - Indian accusations of a Pakistani link to the attacks on Mumbai that killed nearly 200 people threaten to damage attempts to improve ties between the rivals.
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Indian officials have said most, perhaps all, of the 10 attackers who held Mumbai hostage with frenzied attacks using assault rifles and grenades came from Pakistan, a Muslim nation carved out of Hindu-majority India in 1947. An official in Islamabad said the next one to two days would be crucial for relations between the nuclear-armed neighbours. Pakistan has condemned the assaults and denied any involvement by state agencies.
After a final battle between militants and security forces inside the Taj Mahal, Mumbai's best-known hotel, a crowd of protesters outside pumped their fists and shouted "Our soldiers came and Pakistan ran away".
A senior Pakistani security official said Islamabad would divert troops to its border with India and away from fighting militants on the Afghan frontier if the tension spilled over. "If something happens on that front, the war on terror won't be our priority," the official told reporters at a briefing. "We'll take out everything from the western border. We won't leave anything there."
More India, Pakistan simmer over Mumbai attacks | Top News | Reuters
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Mumbai gunmen besiege hotels, kill 119 in 2 days
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