Cowardice act of extreme cruelty

The coordinated bomb blasts of 11 July in Mumbai Railway Transport Network is a grisly and cowardice act by any count. Mumbai is India's most populous city with eighteen million people and is its financial hub.

The Western Railway Transport Network stretches up to twenty kilometers into the suburbs, commuting some six million people to and from work daily. At least 200 were killed and more than 400 injured, when eight bombs exploded, in quick succession, on or near seven commuter trains traveling along the Western Railway during the Tuesday evening rush hour.

The bombs were timed and placed to inflict maximum loss of life. They blew apart railway cars packed with passengers. The police investigators said that many of the bombs were placed in overhead luggage carriers.

"The aftermath was televised across the nation, with images showing the wreckage of mangled trains, torn limbs and stunned, injured commuters, some with blood-streaked faces." Whatever the so-called aims of the bombers, the deliberate cruel slaughter of commuters is a horrific crime and can only promote political reaction in India and around the world.

As would be expected, the Bush administration, seized on the events to try to promote its "war on terror" -- the pretext it has invoked in seeking to establish, through military conquest, strategic dominance in the oil-rich Middle East and in mounting sweeping attacks on democratic rights at home. "We will stand with India on the war on terror," declared Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

The Indian government has ordered security forces to go on high alert in all Indian cities. In a statement released to the press, Prime Minister Manmoham Singh vowed that state authorities "will work to defeat the evil designs of terrorists and will not allow them to succeed."

No group had claimed responsibility for the terrorist attack. But Indian media are reporting that unnamed high-level government sources have said that the bombings were "clearly" the work of Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), an Islamist terrorist organisation that is opposed to the Muslim majority state of Jammu and Kashmir remaining part of the Indian Union. The bombings, according to these sources, were aimed at provoking communal strife within India, in the belief that a Hindu backlash against India's Muslim minority would rebound to the benefit of the anti-Indian insurgency in Kashmir and undermine peace negotiations between India and Pakistan.

India's security forces have sought to crush the insurgency in Kashmir and separatist agitations in other parts of the country through ruthless repression. Torture, murder, infiltration and provocation, and campaigns aimed at uncovering "terrorists" through mass detentions are routine.

A spokesman for the organisation has denied it had anything to do with Tuesday's terrorist attacks in either Srinagar or Mumbai. According to 'The Hindu', LeT representative Dr. Abdullah, condemned both attacks as "inhuman and barbaric" in a telephone call to several media organisations in Srinagar. "Blaming the LeT for such inhuman acts is an attempt by the Indian security agencies to defame the freedom struggle in Jammu and Kashmir," claimed Ghaznavi.

Indian Home Minister Shivraj Patil has said authorities were warned that an attack was coming, but the "place and time was not known."

In December 2001, India's government, then led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), seized on a terrorist attack on India's parliament, blamed on the LeT, to push through a draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) and to threaten war on long-time arch-rival Pakistan, which it accused of supporting the LeT. In an attempt to force Pakistan into making major concessions, India's government kept a million troops in battle formation near the Pakistan border for almost a year.

The United Progressive Alliance, which replaced the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance, as India's government following the May 2004 elections, repealed POTA, but many of its anti-democratic provisions were included in the legislation that it introduced in its stead.

In contrast to the reaction of the BJP government in December 2001, the Congress Party-led UP government has -- at least thus far -- leveled no accusations of Pakistani involvement in either the Mumbai or Srinagar terror attacks. Islamabad, for its part, was quick to denounce the Mumbai bombings.

The Shiv Sena -- the BJP ally and fellow proponent of Hindu supremacy that control Mumbai's municipal government and forms the official opposition in the state of Maharashtra -- responded to the terrorist atrocity by demanding that the Congress Party-Nationalist Congress Party state government resign, since it had failed to ensure the safety of the citizenry.

Shiv Sena party chief Bal Thackeray sought to blame the bomb blasts on the Congress' pursuit of better relations with Pakistan. "The Centre is busy operating bus services to Pakistan and Islamabad, on its part, is busy pushing terrorists into India," Thackeray told the Times of India. "I wish to warn Congress that people's patience is wearing very thin. If the terrorists are not dealt with firmly, there will be an explosion of discontent against Congress governments not only at the Centre, but in the states as well."

Billy I Ahmed is a researcher.