Mumbai has been rocked by terrorist attacks again on November 26, 2008 and this has received international attention. CNN reports:
” In a brazen series of coordinated attacks, gunmen struck 10 sites Wednesday night across India’s financial hub, killing scores of people and taking hostages in two luxury hotels frequented by Westerners, officials said.
Mumbai police spokesman Satish Katsa put the death toll at 87 and another 185 wounded, with nine of the attackers killed.
More than six hours after the attacks, fighting was still reported in the Taj Mahal Hotel, the Hotel Oberoi and Colaba Market, site of a number of restaurants, he said.
Bhushan Gagrani, a spokesman for Maharashtra, said no one had claimed responsibility for the attacks.
But several Indian news outlets reported receiving e-mails from a group calling itself the Deccan Mujahedeen that took responsibility for the attacks. CNN was not able to verify the reports.”
So India continues to bleed! The situation has crossed all the limits and national patience but for the lack of apathy and unwillingness on part of our political class to see the reality. Where is our Home Minister of the nation! Does he still have the audacity to say -as he said last time- that as long as Sonia Gandhi is happy with her , his job is safe! The whole political establishment becomes busy in analyzing the events as per their political beliefs and political lines! The common public has no choice but to watch the whole situation in a helpless manner.
Will we as a nation ever try to takes this terrorism seriously? Have we become so indifferent to the lives being lost or are we just mute spectators who can just hope for politicians to wake up to the expectation!
The Prime Minister Shri Manmohan Singh suggested the attacks were launched by people from outside the country. Okey, may be. May be it is our ‘bete noir’ Pakistan again. But how long shall we continue to vomit these rhetorics! Who is allowing them to get into our boundaries! Why are we allowing buses, trains across the border if our PM has a suggestion that “that were launched by people from outside the country!” Is there no accountability in what our political leadership says?
It is very clear that India has continued to act as a soft state and has not developed a comprehensive system to combat terrorism. One 9/11 in USA meant that they took their lesson as a nation and have not let it happen to them again. India on the contrary has not shown any such resolve to tackle the issue. instead what we see is that whenever such an incidence happens, the political class and the media gets into flurries of debates as to what is the nature of this terrorism: some will say that it is Islamic terrorism, others will vehemently oppose it. is there any doubt left that it is not Jihadi terrorism carried out by terrorists who vouch for an ideology that is Islam! It is a matter of anguish that a secular India continues to set different parameters for its citizens based upon the elements of religion and caste. So impregnated our vision becomes with these underlying currents that sometime the whole nation loses the prospective when analyzing issues like terrorism.