Time To Stand By Bloodied India

All acts of terrorism shock, as is their intention, but there was something about the attacks on Mumbai that was particularly chilling. To suicide bombers, or to those who flew planes into crowded buildings in New York and Washington on 9/11, their victims were anonymous and faceless, though that did not make their crimes any less heinous.

The Mumbai gunmen looked their victims in the eye before killing them with automatic weapons. They mowed down the innocent and the defenceless with a callousness that was inhuman. They sought out westerners but also killed many more ordinary Indians, such as those rushing to catch a commuter train home at Mumbai’s main railway station.

It is hard to think of a cause, either inside or outside India, that could justify such cold-blooded brutality, or to put yourself inside the twisted minds of those who could imagine that such extreme cowardice was in any way heroic. One victim, who miraculously survived, was first shot and then had his throat cut. Most were just unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place, including Mumbai’s iconic Taj Mahal and Oberoi hotels, when the killers struck.

The brutality of the Mumbai attacks, which claimed the lives of almost 200 people, will change behaviour, as terrorist outrages do. In most parts of the world the lobbies of even the most exclusive hotels are open to casual visitors. At the very least, hotel chains will this weekend be urgently reviewing their security measures. To the extent that the terrorists will have achieved any kind of victory it will be to have made life awkward for all of us.

That, however, should be the limit of it. India is the world’s biggest democracy and a rapidly emerging force in the global economy. These attacks should not derail that process. Terror attacks and religious violence in India have been depressingly familiar in the six decades since independence.

Two years ago, 209 people were killed in the Mumbai train bombings. The kind of violence that saw the assassination of Indira Gandhi in the 1980s also led, indirectly, to the economic and political reforms from which India is now benefiting. After the assassination of her son Rajiv in 1991, the political impetus for change became overwhelming.

The danger is not that Indians give up the fight but that foreigners do. International businessmen and women who were caught up in the Mumbai horrors are traumatised. But India has to engage with the world and the world has to engage with India. Its future is as a thriving part of the global economy. Were we to turn our backs the terrorists would achieve a victory they plainly do not deserve.

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