Grit and discipline

The bomb blasts in Mumbai, which have taken a toll of nearly 200 lives, are numbing in their brutality, design and lethal execution. Tuesday's carnage, which is like a mini holocaust, establishes, if such proof was at all needed, that terrorist depredation is here to stay on the subcontinent for some time. Any wishful thinking that the robustness of the Indian state and its growing international appreciation will create a sense of futility in the enemy will have to be given up. Instead, all minds have to be concentrated on tackling the challenge and, what is most important, preserving the character and idea of India. It will be a colossal miscarriage of history if the Indian republic overcomes this severe challenge but in the process swallows a poison pill that kills its essence. The Indian state, which has at times been called soft, must not only rise to the occasion but at the end of the protracted struggle (there is no doubt that such is the nature of the battle ahead) retain its essential pluralist and tolerant character.

The first and object need is to recognise that there has been a major failure on the internal security front. National preparedness to combat the challenge has been grossly inadequate, perhaps a victim of wishful thinking that it is an aberration that will go away. The whole national security apparatus has to be re-examined, redesigned, beefed up wherever necessary, and made to stand up to the challenge before it. Since the enemy for the most part operates surreptitiously within, a massive exercise is needed to educate the public so that every commuter or pedestrian on the sidewalks or shopper at a marketplace keeps a vigil to spot the danger signal or odd behaviour that portends elaborately premeditated attacks. The entire public has to become far more alert and disciplined. In fact, this need can be used to inculcate a degree of orderly public life that the chaotic Indian scene has not yet known. For their part, the authorities have to plan and deploy a level of mobilisation not yet known. The intelligence effort must be beefed up manifold and made to form the core of the protective armour. The least of the problem facing such planning will be resources. The issue will not be whether it is affordable, not even whether it is deliverable, but how.

Perhaps, even more than redoing the entire internal security act, it will be vital to ensure that there is no panic, security is not obtrusive to the point of bringing public life to a standstill and there is no intolerance or reprisal against sections of the composite national community. In being disciplined and calm and eventually getting the better of the enemy, it will be useful to recall the way Britain responded to the terrorist challenge posed by the Irish Republican Army. That long battle predates the present global outbreak of terrorism. The other point to remember is that the nation cannot afford to slip into the kind of violent reprisal that overtook Mumbai in 1993. Communal reprisal will be wrong because it will be counterproductive. Every innocent harmed is a potential terrorist of tomorrow created. Above all, it is imperative to remember that the enemy is bigoted, the secular Indian state is not. To lose that character in seeking to fight the terrorist is to play into his hands.