Yesterday’s bomb blasts in India’s financial capital Bombay that killed at least 50 people were evil in the extreme. For a city that suffered five other terrorist attacks since December, this was the worst. The terrorists were clearly out to achieve maximum destruction, maximum slaughter — smashing the city’s communications lifelines, its economy, its international reputation, its tourist industry and its communal harmony in one fell swoop. In terms of consequences, it will probably turn out to be even more devastating than the blasts in May 1993, in which over 250 people died.
The terrorists could not have chosen more prominent or more symbolic sites. The Mumba Devi temple is one of Bombay’s main Hindu temples; the Gateway of India is its main tourist attraction. A coordinated attack at the Gateway and the temple are akin, in Paris, to terrorists hitting the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame at the same time or, in London, Trafalgar Square and Westminster Abbey.
This attack hits India hard; it is as devastating as the attack on Parliament last December, perhaps more so. Bombay is India’s New York. If the past is anything to go by, people in Bombay are likely to respond, in anger and — more than likely — with violence. And regardless of who was behind the atrocities, the city’s Muslims will pay the price. Already the police have said they suspect militant Islamic groups of the attacks — although, for the moment, they are not pinpointing any particular organization. Many Indians, though, will jump to conclusions and believe that this was the work of Pakistan’s Lashkar-e-Taiba Islamic militant group, said to be responsible for the Parliament attack and blamed for the Bombay bus bomb in July which left three people dead. The fact that a Hindu temple was attacked will add to that conviction. So too will the belief that the attacks were timed to coincide with the release yesterday of an archaeological report on the controversial Ayodhya mosque site.
There is, though, a more compelling reason to fear for Bombay’s Muslims. The city is now the scene of bitter rivalry between the homegrown militant Hindu nationalists of the Shiv Sena party led by Bal Thackeray, and the national strain, the ruling BJP. Both have fanned anti-Muslim bigotry for political purposes. It would be too much to hope that they will not do so again. Whoever was behind this attack wants Hindu to kill Muslim, Muslim to kill Hindu. They may well succeed. At another level, the blasts could raise the tensions in the subcontinent. The atrocity is bound to result in Delhi pointing an accusing finger at Islamabad, undoing the efforts of both governments to draw back from earlier potential nuclear confrontation. The consequences do not bear thinking about.
