Mumbai Terror Attack: Time to hit back

Mumbai Terror Attack: Time to hit back- Sudeshna Sen-Columnists-Opinion-The Economic Times

Excerpts from this article :

"....The reactions we’re getting are all very predictable. Shock, then anger, then the need to find someone to blame, and then grief, stoicism, denial are all classic symptoms of any trauma or mourning period, the shrinks will tell you. Yes, we’re tired of hearing about that famous resilience of Mumbai.

The fact is, more than half the people, cannot afford not to go back to work the next day, even if they may die. They depend on their daily wages for their next meal. Even sometimes their monthly wages or bonuses. The Maximum City doesn’t forgive slackers, whatever the provocation.

Reports say Mumbai has lost its innocence. With due respect, we lost our multicultural state in 1992, after that Babri Masjid episode, when we realised, for the first time since 1947, that some people are Muslims and others are Hindus, or Christians or whatever. We acquired our fatalism after the ‘93 blasts, as we first faced the nameless, faceless enemy that is the global terrorist, way before the rest of the world discovered a war on terror.

We realised you risk your life every time you step out, so what the hell. We learnt to live with - shrug off - train bombs, car bombs, regular riots and more..... "

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".... Here’s a question. Everyone is asking what the government and politicians were doing. Nothing.

But then we elected them, or didn’t care enough to vote, remember? South Mumbai, traditionally, has one of the lowest voter turnouts..... "

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".... What were India Inc’s leaders doing? We all know you’re pretty good at influencing excise duty changes, and dealing with power shortages and so on, how come you need to have a hundred people killed in South Mumbai before you take up the cause of security? ..... "

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"...... Anyway, these terrorists ticked all the right boxes. They hit at India’s economic story - putting PC in Home is clearly a desperate attempt to appease international and business interests, who are comfortable with him; they hit at stability in the region - let’s incite some war with Pakistan and disrupt South Asia; and they hit at the rich-poor divide within India.

It’s a sad fact, but let’s face it, there’s been far less footage of VT where lots of less ‘important’ lives were lost than at the Taj and Oberoi..... "

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".......Now we’ve moved on to discussion about the identity of terrorists. Does it matter whether they came from Pakistan, Deccan, or Alpha Centauri? The point of a terrorist is that he belongs to no country, family, faith, society or person. He has no identity, no affiliations and no beliefs except one of blind, universal hate.

How many more civilians and soldiers, Indian, American, Israeli, Palestinian, Chinese, British, Iraqi or Pakistani must die before we can accept that these creatures can only be defeated if ‘normal’ people everywhere refuse to be divided by them, and fight back? Anger is good. Unfocused anger will just fizzle into indifference. The trouble is, terrorists read the same psychology books."