What is Behind Mumbai Massacres?

We live in a time when hardly a day goes by without some terrorist mayhem somewhere. Still, the news of three simultaneous bomb explosions in busy markets of Mumbai which killed at least 21 people and injured hundreds more was deeply disturbing. It is not the number of casualties that is worrisome, more than that number die and are hurt in traffic accidents every day in that city, it is the inhuman nature and apparent futility of the acts. Why would any group of sane persons spend time planning and then commission their colleagues to give their lives in executing operations that kill and maim a large number of innocent civilians of all social and religious backgrounds including their own? What do they hope to achieve by inflicting such damage?

Three massacres in 2008 in the same city were worse. They killed hundreds of people including foreign tourists, damaged a major hotel and a Jewish centre and lasted three days. But they did not frighten the government of India into conceding Kashmir to Pakistan. If the idea was to cause communal disturbances in India, it failed too. They did not incite Hindus into revenge killings of Muslims although some extremist Hindus must have had hard time resisting the temptation. There was no report of any Hindu boss dismissing his Muslim employees nor did any Hindu change his faith out of fear of being murdered. Therefore, assuming that the planners have some ability to reason, it is fair to think that the terror was not inflicted to frighten India or to cause communal rift there. It seems to me that the only idea behind this carnage was to bring recently resumed peace talks between the two countries to a halt. If the talks succeed, and that is a big if, and the peace between the two countries were to hold, it could lead to a shift of massive expenditures from military complex to industrial development, more trade between the two countries and possibly a reduction in gaping difference in the level of economies of India and Pakistan. In such environment it could occur to the leadership of Pakistan that they would be better off in a federation with secular India, after all more Muslims live in India than in Pakistan and generally in less poverty and have better education and medical services. This could, with some luck, lead to eventual reunification of the two countries. It is not difficult to imagine that there are agencies in Pakistan whose existence is entirely dependant on the friction between the two countries; the army, intelligence services and misguided organizations like Lashkar–e-Taiba who covertly work with defense services. I suggest that it is not the ordinary religious fundamentalists who support the perpetrators of this carnage, leave alone organize them, but the leaders of these groups who use religion as a shield. After all there are many Islamic teaching institutions in India which cover a broad spectrum of fanaticism about religion but who also promote patriotism towards India in their followers. Some of these achieve great success and positions of leadership in all fields of endeavour. For example, India’s leading woman tennis player is a Muslim and India has had two Presidents of that faith. It is possible, albeit remotely, that foreign countries who have interest in promoting conflict between the two neighbours have supported the terrorist groups.

Given the politics in that country, it was an act of courage for the government of Pakistan to promptly condemn these acts. It should go further and find the guilty parties rather than shielding them as they did in 2008. However, howsoever much we may hope, there is no reason to believe that the political leadership is strong enough to take on the army. Therein lies the tragedy of Pakistan, past, present and the near future.