Update [12-01-08]:
As more and more people on the streets show the disgust and anger against the entire political class Sonia Gandhi is trying to show as if she is with the people of the country and taking her party men to task. Great pretence is on its way. Shivraj Patil, who is nothing but a political insignificance has been shown the door just five months before the elections when it actually makes no difference and he has inflicted the maximum damage to the post as well as the country. Maharashtra’s Home Minister RR Patil has resigned too and the preparations are on to oust the Chief Minister Vilas Rao Deshmukh. To show how concerned she is she may sack the entire cabinet. Basically she is only concerned about herself and her sons political future. If she were so concerned she wouldn’t have appointed these political stooges in the first place but then this is too much to ask for in the current political scene in India.
There have also been some positive developments. A large number of people turned up to cast votes and this really sent jitters among various political parties that thrive on the right people not casting their votes. The political outlook — at least for the time being — seems to be totally altered. Wherever these politicians go people surround them, boo them and refuse to entertain them. Today in the morning I saw people mobbing Sanjay Nirupam when he went to attend apparently some public gathering. Yesterday when the Kerela Chief Minister visited the martyred NSG commando Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan’s residence the father of the commando got really angry and didn’t allow the Chief Minister to enter his residence. Various political parties didn’t allow the mourning family even to grieve privately. People are really disgusted and fed up with the current lot of politicians. I think this is good change. Even the local, highly opportunistic politicians like Amar Singh, Mulayam Yadav and Laloo Yadav have so far refrained from making public statements because in the past there have always been speaking in favor of Muslim terrorists and militants to garner Muslim votes. They know if they appear publicly and say something stupid and irresponsible people are going to burn them alive.
Another positive development is that the Muslims of Mumbai at the grassroots level have openly spoken against the recent terror attacks in which people from all the communities had to pay a heavy price, including Muslims. Muslims in Mumbai are demanding that the dead terrorists shouldn’t even get burying ground in the city. This is what an average Indian wants to see — only the Muslim community can constructively subvert such elements among them. Although it is a law and order problem it is also an ideological problem. There are many misguided Muslim youths and they become easy targets of fear mongers. The Muslim intelligentsia and the elders should take up the responsibility of spreading awareness and a feeling of mutual wellness among the youth. A message should be sent that the world in general is not against the Muslims and Islam and every community wants to live in peace. No jihads need to be fought and there is no danger to their culture and identity.
Update [11-30-08]:
Indias Home Minister Shivraj Patil resigned today in the wake of the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai. The government is finally accepting that there was a big intelligence failure. Bullshit. Although previously I too had stated that it was an intelligence failure but on second thought I would like to say that the intelligence agencies must have had the information all along and it was the government that didn’t feel like taking the necessary steps. Taking steps would have meant arresting some local Muslims and this would have angered the Muslim community.
The Maharashtra Chief Minister was foolish enough to say that the government had an inkling about the operations but didn’t have precise information where they were going to strike. How can you ever have the precise information? Even the terrorists involved in the operation never have precise information, they are informed at the last minute. Only those who plan the operations remotely know the exact location.
Shivraj Patil, is being used as a scapegoat because anyway he is of no use in whichever office he is, but this guy should have resigned months ago and in fact he shouldn’t have become the Home Minister in the first place. But then, our Prime Minister shouldnt have become the Prime Minister in the first place and this government shouldn’t have been here in the first place. Anyway, lots of mess, but this new development is like that Hindi saying: aasman se gire khajoor me atke that means you fall from the skies and you get stuck upon the pine, whatever that means. The portfolio of the Home Ministry is going to be with P. Chidambram who can be indisputably credited with the current economic mess in the country. I wonder what he’s going to do as the Home Minister. But then, I think anybody can be better than Shivraj Patil, even our buildings dhobi (this is just a hypothetical comparison, by no means I intend to insult the dhobi by comparing him with the outgoing Home Minister).
Update [11-29-08]:
The siege is finally over and the Islamic terrorists have been smoked out of all the establishments in Mumbai. In the morning I was watching TV and every channel was telecasting the last rites being performed for the dead commandos and policemen. The politicians were conspicuously missing and I think it was a good thing — people would have stoned them. What needless deaths. These kinds of attacks happen because our policymakers can never arrive at a consensus on how to tackle various terrorist outfits. The commandos, soldiers and policemen had to pay for the follies of our politicians, and of course for our inaction and a sense of disinterest in the daily affairs of the country.
I was commenting a few days ago that our policemen and soldiers can easily be termed as one of the best in the world. Fine, they do seem lanky, malnourished, clueless and demotivated, given the conditions they have to work under I think whatever they achieve must be highly appreciated. Our policemen don’t even have the basic facilities like proper clothes, protective gears and guns. In fact most of the guns are as old as 1857, if you can believe that. They are not trained, they are not educated, nobody respects them and they are heavily underpaid. Despite that, they rushed to the spots where the terrorists had attacked with latest weapons and a high degree of motivation. I think people of this country should put immense pressure on the government to halt all unnecessary expenses and invest heavily on building the police force from ground up; lots of money should be spent on making our policemen healthy, well-informed and well-equipped. It’s no use holding grand events like the Commonwealth Games when our policemen look like kids running around with toy guns and ill-fitting clothes.
I also couldn’t help thinking about Raj Thakrey and even Bal Thackrey. I wonder where these dudes are these days. Nobody even paid a visit to the attack sites. Didn’t they want to save their city? In fact I thought they would protest that why commandos and marines were coming from all over the country to fight with the terrorists; only Marathi commandos and marines should have been allowed to tackle the situation. The commandos and the policemen who died fighting the Islamic terrorists did not just belong to Maharashtra, they came from all over India. I hope the people of Mumbai will begin to ignore these thugs and work together for the physical and moral reconstruction of the city. Apparently Raj Thakrey went to ATS chief Hemant Karkares house to pay condolences but Karkares wife refused to let him in. Good decision.
The country, surely has come out stronger this time. Of course the politicians will try to bake their own breads in the current heat but people basically understand that they too are a big part of the problem. Precisely this was the reason why barring Narendra Modi no particular politician tried to draw mileage out of this attack — they knew it would only infuriate the public. People are also thinking, now that the extremely rich have been targeted the government will be forced to take positive action and rise above partisan politics and vote bank mentality.
My heart also goes out to hundreds of pigeons who died and got injured during this ghastly operation.
Update [11-27-08]: I was just going through this blog post by Dr. Mani (he is a renowned Internet marketer and I have been reading his articles since early 2000) in which he says:
So that you can actually FEEL the way they do.
Can you empathize with a 20 year old terrorist? Feel the way he did when he stormed ashore, carrying lethal weapons, prepared to claim innocent lives – and ready to die in the process? Are you capable of placing your own perspectives and values on hold to try and imagine, for even a passing moment, what might drive such insane behavior?
Maybe not. Especially when, like the vast majority of normal people, the behavior flies in the face of everything you hold sacred and important.
Yet, unless you can place yourself in their shoes, trying hard to understand what motivates, drives and powers them to such desperate acts of destruction and horror, I submit that you should neither sit in judgment on their actions, nor presume to be able to resolve the ensuing conflict.
Because at its core lies something inherently human, universal, and extremely potent at blinding our eyes and binding our hands against the effort.
Our egoism.
I intended to leave a comment on this blog post but one needs to log in. Although I do agree with Dr. Mani’s sentiment I wonder why we only need to be in the shoes of the perpetrators and not in the shoes of the innocent victims who have no business with their cause. For instance, how does it become my problem when some people only like to talk the language of gun and destruction? If we try to understand their problem, it’s like the prey trying to reason it out with the predator. When you are attacked and you are in danger of dying you don’t try to study the motivation behind the attack, you try to kill the attacker or at least save yourself. Studying can be postponed to a later stage when things are a bit more conducive for such constructive activities.
Again, empathizing with perpetrators definitely leads to long-term solutions and this can be applied to any kind of crime may it be rape, mass murderer and large-scale destruction. There is something that motivates a rapist, there is something that motivates a murderer, and there is something that motivates a terrorist to kill innocent people (of course you can always say that due to inaction and callousness these people lose their right to be called innocent, but that would be a different topic of discussion). Every civilized society must study why criminals behave the way they do.
Yes, the moment you start killing people you become a criminal no matter what is the motivation. This is high time we stopped finding excuses for terrorist acts and dealt with them the way we deal other crimes. I’m not saying it against some religion — this should be applicable to all religions and communities.
The old post follows:
The very first thing that comes my mind is how such a large scale terrorist operation (also see a WikiPedia page on 26 November 2008 Mumbai attacks) can be executed without the countrys intelligence agencies getting a whiff of it. An army of terrorists holding a metropolitan city under siege is not scary; the scary part is neither the police nor the politicians and administrators had a clue. The scarier part is that they can do it again and they can do it anywhere. Are we going to learn a lesson? The history says we wont.
Of course this is not the time to point fingers; this is the time to tackle the situation. But the situation cannot be tackled with the same ostrich mentality.
It must have taken the terrorists at least 2-3 months to plan and mobilize so many people with lots of local support. Were the dudes in the anti-terrorist intelligence agencies napping all the time or they purposely didnt take action? Taking action would have meant arresting some people from a particular community and this would have harmed our countrys secular image. It is really unbelievable that everything happened without the knowledge of the law enforcement bodies. We live in an extremely interconnected world, it is simply not possible to contain such a massive secret.
The last time I saw the news on TV, they had set many rooms of Taj Mahal Hotel on fire (someone on twitter said that the top portion of the hotel is collapsing), killed numerous foreigners, and taken hostage a Parsi community. The attacks had started last night with random bomb explosions and AK-47 firings at various places in Mumbai. Three top brass police officers have been martyred. The apologists are going to have a field day, as usual, as the rest of the country tries to make sense of this avoidable tragedy.
Here are some helpline numbers.
A couple of first person accounts by bloggers:
