After Mumbai

30 November 2008 |permalink | email article

With the terrorist siege over in India’s financial capital the obvious indication is that Pakistan and perhaps al-Qaeda too, would be blamed for the attacks.

But, as Robert D. Kaplan, national correspondent for The Atlantic reports online, the possibility exists that the terror rampage had its origins outside India, aimed as they were at international rather than Hindu targets.

“In at least once sense it doesn’t matter. For the attacks will aggravate a growing fault line between Hindus and Muslims within India itself,” said Kaplan who offers keen insight on the sharpening religious divide.

He notes that India has the third largest Muslim population in the world after Indonesia and Pakistan, and more to lose from extremist Islam than arguably any other nation.

The bottom line: it is not an ancient historical Hindu-Muslim divide so much as a recreated modern one with the “immediate result of the Mumbai terrorist attacks a further hardening of inter-communal relations within India.”

President-elect Obama issued a statement expressing condolences regarding news American citizens and others who lost their lives in the attacks.

“There is one president at a time. I will continue to closely monitor the situation….and grateful for the cooperation of the Bush Administration in keeping me and my staff updated.”

“The event will make it harder for the incoming Obama Administration to effect a rapprochement between the two countries, necessary for progress in Afghanistan, where the two subcontinent states are engaged in a proxy struggle that goes on behind the immediate conflict between the United States and al-Qaeda,” Kaplan added.

The increased likelihood of national elections early in 2009, and a victory for the Indian People’s Party who, as Hindus, compromise the overwhelming majority of Indian voters, adds to a new level of Indian insecurity and U.S. concern.

Update: Since Mumbai the mainstream media has been consumed about Indian incompetence in preventing the attack, blaming arch rival Pakistan and suspicions about the role of al-Qaeda. Indian nationalism and the Hindus-Muslim religious subtext are rarely mentioned.

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