Mumbai

Back in August, I got into a row with a Delhi cinema manager over his security policy. I wasn’t allowed in with a bag, he said, even though they had electronic sensors to check everything. Irritated by this stupidity (and the fact that women were allowed to bring in their handbags), I talked down at the manager with Israeli condescension. “Look, I live in a country where a few years ago suicide-bombers were attacking every other day, and even then you were allowed to bring a bag into the cinema.” The manager was unmoved. I left my bag with a nearby kiosk-owner and went inside to watch The Dark Night.

Jaipur was bombed three days after I arrived in India. This is what I wrote at the time: “Terrorism – in its rational form – is successful only if it can impact on the civilian population, to change their behavior enough in order to draw concessions from the government. In a country the size of India this is a near-impossibility. To use the callous language of risk assessment, sixty dead in India is but a statistic.” After the near-schadenfreude of yesterday’s post on targeted assassinations, my reaction to yesterday’s awful events in Mumbai is rather more humble. India is now arguably the country with the greatest terrorist problem of them all. Even worse, the terrorism is increasingly adopting chaotic forms, forms which in many ways reflect life on the subcontinent, but seem impervious to attempts at prevention.

The Mumbai attacks seem to have been targeted at foreigners, and the demands for US and British hostages implies some kind of Al-Qaeda inspired involvement. This is why the Maximum City is dominating the news cycle. But it’s important to remember that local train stations were hit as well. Random bombs went off. Shots seem to have been fired  manically, like the climactic scene in Waltz with Bashir. Even the Habad house didn’t emerge unscathed.

It seems futile to ask what the people who perpetrated this act want. As ever, there is talk of Pakistani involvement (the background being recent moves by the Pakistani Prime Minister against the ISI), or perhaps groups from Bangladesh. Outlook reports that the terrorist were speaking in Arabic, and may have numbered Somalis in their ranks – at this stage all this is speculation.  The backlash from the BJP and its cohorts will be quick to follow, another blow against the world’s largest pluralist democracy. What is clear is that India has a terrorist problem that may yet prove to be more difficult to deal with than those experienced in other countries. I fear that Mumbai will not be the last city to be targeted.