The reaction of the mainstream media in India to the mayhem in Bombay was Pavlovian: if there were explosions and innocent victims, then it must be Islamist 'terrorism' at the behest of Pakistan. One after the other, every anchorperson of the 24/7 television news channels chanted, This is our 9/11! Celebrity talk-show host and former actress Simi Garewal was the shrillest of all. The lady-in-white urged her government to learn from the US and "carpet bomb" specific targets in Pakistan. She was not alone in such pronouncements, and was actually echoing sentiments of a significant segment of affluent Indians.
The response of the intelligentsia was no less predictable. It offered clichéd explanations about the perils of a soft state, the consequences of intelligence failure and the general incompetence of the government in handling crises. In an illustrative statement of deliberate obfuscation couched in political correctness, Mujibur Rehman, a political scientist at the Centre for Dalit and Minorities Studies at the Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi, told Time magazine, "Deep down, there is this pervasive feeling of massive government failure". Talking heads and op-ed writers too had little else to offer as to why a few jeans-clad youngsters had decided to mow down innocent civilians and then face certain death.
Some conscientious commentators pretended to take refuge in vocal reflections tinged with self-reproach. Pankaj Mishra linked the deeds of the Bombay gunmen to the half-century-old conflict in Kashmir, ruing suggestively in the New York Times, "Fresh blood from an old wound". Attempts were even made to link the carnage with the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Overall, the discontent of India's nearly 150 million Muslims was the preferred explanation of many public intellectuals.
Separately, it is difficult to find much fault with any single of these responses. Instantaneous reaction on the part of the media was partly based on past experience. It is impossible to rule out direct or indirect involvement of at least a section of the Pakistani security apparatus in fomenting communal clashes in India. The birth of Bangladesh in 1971 signified the end of the original idea of Pakistan, the homeland of 'Indian' Muslims; and unless democracy takes root in Pakistani society, its security agencies will never feel confident enough to work with India as equals in an evolving community of Southasians.