Confront terrorists of all hues

Terrorist attacks have shattered the peace in more than half a dozen Indian cities over the past year. Yet none threatened India's secular and democratic polity as much as the carnage that jolted Mumbai last Wednesday.

Mumbai is India's financial and commercial capital and arguably the country's most cosmopolitan metropolis.

By targeting, among other establishments, two of the city's most opulent hotels - the Taj and the Oberoi Trident - where the rich, famous and influential congregate to advance their business and political agendas, the terrorists struck at the very symbol of a resurgent nation.

The timing of the assault is equally significant, coming on the eve of elections to five provincial assemblies. Campaign rhetoric has polarised opinion along sharply antagonistic lines, essentially pitting the ruling Congress party, which swears by secularism, against the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.

After terrorist attacks in the past, the BJP had denounced the Congress party as being soft on terrorism in an effort to mobilise India's substantial Muslim vote in its favour.

The Congress, in turn, has attacked the BJP and its affiliates for bashing Muslims in order to consolidate its core Hindu vote. Indians have a peculiar word to describe this state of affairs - communalism, meaning a determined bid to exploit religious sentiments for electoral gain.

The effect of this competitive demagoguery has been disastrous on many counts. Terrorism suspects have been picked up at random and denied legal rights. Allegations of torture by police are routine. Questions have been raised about the "encounters" between police and terrorism suspects.

Suspects have been held for years as their court cases have dragged on. Convictions have been few and far between. Commissions set up to investigate particularly gory incidents of violence have taken their time to produce reports. Few are open for public debate.

The recommendations in these reports have been routinely ignored or else implemented in a highly selective manner. Muslims convicted in some cases have been punished while Hindus have been let off lightly or not punished at all.

As a consequence, some of India's Muslims have begun to lose faith in the Indian state, its institutions and its instruments.

Fundamentalism has pushed some youths onto the path of violence. Increasing evidence suggests that some youths have joined the ranks of the international resistance with close links to terrorist groups. These groups are widely believed to collude with those countries' intelligence agencies.

Credibility

To further complicate matters, a holy woman, a holy man, a serving officer of the Indian armed forces and some fundamentalists have been arrested for their alleged involvement in terrorist attacks.

It is now the turn of the BJP and its affiliates to charge that the police, at the behest of their "secular" masters, are failing to observe due process. Indeed, they charge that the Hindus have been framed to "appease" Muslims before the provincial assembly elections.

Simply put, some Hindus have also started to question the credibility of the police and, by extension, the state.

Wednesday's attacks in Mumbai can only compound fears in both communities that law enforcement cannot be trusted to bring the guilty to justice. And it is precisely such fears that have set the stage for bloody confrontations between the two groups.

These fears cannot be calmed unless the Indian state cracks down vigorously on terrorism, regardless of the suspects' religion.

At the Taj hotel, the terrorists asked for the numbers of the rooms occupied by foreign, especially American and British, guests. Another building they attacked housed Israeli guests. Overnight, Mumbai has been turned into a stage for clashes without any hindrance.

Wednesday's brutal assault raises many questions: Who are these terrorists? Who are their mentors and their local accomplices? Where did they acquire their arms and their organisational skills? Why did the intelligence agencies fail to keep track of them?

The answers to those questions will be determined in the coming weeks, but some developments already offer comfort. At present, the attacks have not led to an outbreak of Hindu-Muslim violence in other parts of India.

Politicians, who are often quick to react to such incidents, have been remarkably discreet. People of both faiths have condemned the attacks without indulging in a blame game.

Dileep Padgaonkar, a former editor of The Times of India, now edits the India & Global Affairs magazine.