'Terrorism' is not a term to be used lightly. The horrific blasts in Bombay on 11 July, which left almost 200 train commuters dead and several hundred more injured, constituted clear acts of terrorism. Bombay 2006, however, was not an isolated incident. In the past year itself, innocents in India have suffered due to the politics of violence in the bazaars of Delhi, the temples of Benaras and the fields of Doda.
In the wake of such dastardly attacks, there is a constant danger that the state and society might draw the wrong lessons. The US-led 'war on terror' is an example of the flawed approach that has polarised societies and created new recruitment grounds for terror outfits. Southasian states have fared no better. The political class exerts immense pressure on security agencies to bust terror modules and instantly nab those involved in such attacks. They are egged on by a media that publishes endless commentaries on the 'soft' nature of the state that cannot prevent the killing of innocents. A defensive police establishment then arrests people on a mass scale, in violation of every tenet of law, breeding further discontent.
Six million passengers travel on the Bombay commuter trains every day, and checking every one is impossible. However, the intelligence network should have had its ear to the ground when the terrorist outfits were planning the operation and amassing explosives, a process that must have taken several months involving multiple actors. The Indian government is suggesting that the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba was involved in the attacks, assisted by the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). While the Lashkar claims to fight for the cause of azadi in Kashmir, SIMI is a banned radical outfit that aims to establish an Islamic state.
Re-examining motives