Even before the investigations could point to suspects in last week's bomb blasts in Bombay, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh decided to postpone the Indo-Pak talks at foreign secretary level scheduled for the last week of this month. The Indian leader charged Pakistan with not reining in Pakistan-based militant groups. "Without the support from elements across the border, the terrorists would not have been able to carry out strikes with such an effect," he said.
Manmohan refuted Musharraf's statement that the complaints that Pakistan was not doing enough were "aspersions being cast by the media. This is not the leadership's and the official stance on the issue..."
Popular sentiment explains Manmohan's reaction. The bombings have energized Hindu nationalism and put pressure on the prime minister to act. Some has to do with the Pakistani angle in factors like Dawood Ibrahim, Azhar Masood and the Kandahar hijacking. Background "briefings" to the Indian media have pointedly been blaming Pakistan. A distraught Indian public, as evidenced from their comments posted on various websites, is highly critical of the government's soft policy toward Pakistan, of its inaction to protect the Indian lives and of its pampering of the "minorities."
No denying that the terrorist bombs in Bombay has wreaked personal tragedy on hundreds of innocent citizens. Millions of Indians are anguished and outraged. Even worse, often inherent in the state's response to terrorism is the risk of undermining pluralism, tolerance and communal harmony. Terrorism can unwittingly dehumanize those who rise to fight it.
This is the challenge the Indian state and society faces above all - the challenge to fight the scourge of terrorism without undermining democracy, tolerance and pluralism.
The objectives of the death merchants who mercilessly planted eight bombs on the Bombay passenger trains could have been to exploit communal tensions in the area, to demonstrate the vulnerability of the Indian state or to undermine India's leading business center. A key objective would also be to undermine the Indo-Pak peace process that has continued uninterrupted since 2004.
Pakistan and India have honored the cease-fire along the LOC and have engaged in talks about the major issues dividing them, including Kashmir and the common terrorist menace. Despite the dialogue process, there is an absence of trust. Finger- pointing at Pakistan almost always precedes investigation results. Indians claim the now banned Pakistan-based LET is the main suspect. But we should remember that violence and terrorism have also surfaced within the broader Indian context. For example, the insurgencies in the northeast, the riots that followed the demolition of the Babri Masjid, the communal factor, the cycle of violence within Kashmir, the Gujarat killings and the Varanasi attacks. There is an internal dimension too as the radicalization of Muslim thinking after the Babri demolition and Gujarat carnage. That makes sabotage and subversion by neighboring states easy. Maybe there is even a fertile ground for Al-Qaeda. Indian authorities themselves claim that the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) maybe involved in the Bombay bombings.
SIMI, a students' group was set up in 1977 by a student of Aligarh University and now a professor in the US. SIMI, according to Indian writers, was radicalized after anti-Muslim riots in Bombay in the 1990s and in Gujarat in 2002.
The anger in the wake of the blasts is almost inevitable and understandable but the press calling for action against Pakistan before the investigation concludes must not be. To ensure that justice is done, that action is taken against responsible groups or institutions and above all to evolve a cross-national consensus on harsh steps against terrorism a transparent and credible investigation is needed. Tracking the sources of terrorism is complex but crucial. If there is the Dawood Ibrahim factor and the Lashkar-e-Taiba, then there is the less than upright record of the Indian security agencies. In the Chattisingpura massacre, they buried local Kashmiris claiming they were from Pakistan. The results of the DNA tests by a Bombay lab declared they were innocent locals. Significantly despite the popular wisdom in India about the Pakistani role in the attack on the Indian Parliament, the 200-page court verdict is silent on Pakistan because there was no evidence against Pakistan. Is Mammohan's decision, then, an attempt to tide over the intensely emotional aftermath?
As a democracy and as a country hit with this scale of tragedy India had to act. This is the common justification. Ultimately for India's own unity and security and indeed for its own internal stability, the Indian public needs to know that Bombay bombings is the outcome of a phenomenon more complex that just the "neighbor across the border." That just Pakistan bashing alone is not the answer. In fact it will take a genuinely unified response if South Asia is to tackle the scourge of terrorism that for all of the countries in the region is as much homegrown as it is exacerbated by external forces. Pakistan's president has already assured Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that his government and he himself are with him in any investigation he wants to carry out.
Pakistan and India need to jointly tackle terrorism. Putting a brake on the peace process maybe good for Indian politics, but not for defeating terrorism.
