The Indian Need for Soul Searching
Gordon Brown's opinion piece in the Times of India lavishes praise on India's handling of the Mumbai attacks and calls on the need for Pakistan to act. I take issue with a statement made in the beginning of his piece where he states that:
Britain is no stranger to terrorism. We have lived with it for many decades. But the attacks in November in Mumbai were as unprecedented as they were appalling. They struck at the business capital of the world's largest democracy, attempting to undermine India's huge achievement in delivering sustained economic growth and greater prosperity over the last 15 years.
Firstly, it is necessary to give Prime Minister Brown the benefit of the doubt, as he is not in a position to make statements that criticize the Indian government during this moment of grief for the Indian nation. In any case, this piece is emblematic of the vast media coverage this attack has been given in the western media. The notion that this attack was unprecedented is misguided at best. Somini Sengupta of the New York Times has covered South Asia extensively and said during an interview with NPR that India had been the victim of the most terrorist attacks last year after only Iraq. Just that statistic alone lays precedence for such an attack.
The point being made here is that while this matter is under investigation by the police in India, and by the media in general, very few people are looking inside India for answers. The terrorists have been facilitated, according to the Indian government and numerous western experts, by Pakistan's intelligence agency (the ISI). Hypothetically, if every attacker was in fact a Pakistani national, then it begs the question: why were their accomplices inside India willing to commit atrocities against their own state?
The answers to these questions can be found in the simmering religious, ethnic and class tensions within India that boil over every few years. In fact, the only reason given by the so-called Deccan Mujahideen after taking responsibility for the actions was that it was in retaliation for the massacres of thousands of Muslims inside India over the past decade. This is important because groups like the LeT can be dealt with inside Pakistan and their training camps can be shut down, but the grievances of the persecuted and the radicalizing of Indian youths within India can only be addressed by India.
The majority of the attacks that have taken place within India over the past year have been committed by the Indian Mujahideen and other such home-grown terror outfits. There is a glaring need to investigate the sources of this radicalization of Muslims within India and an even greater need to address the religious and ethnic tensions which are the catalysts behind radicalization. The religious tensions in India are some of the most under-reported conflicts in the world.
The training facilities in Pakistan can be shut-down, but unless the grievances of India's 150 million-plus Muslims' grievances are addressed, then there will always be those impressionable, unemployed and desperate youth looking for meaning through extremism. If they can't exploit Pakistan's lawless regions they will find the training elsewhere as long as the source of their tensions within India remain.
