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Why the Attacks in India Should Surprise Nobody
Most Americans were shocked to learn that coordinated terrorist attacks struck the heart of Mumbai, India's commercial capital on Wednesday evening. After all, India is not Iraq or Afghanistan or even Pakistan. According to pundits such as Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, India is a shining capitalist success story and the next global superpower. In the pro-globalization narrative, India's eager-beaver working class has benefited greatly from neoliberal economic policies. Intellectuals extol India as the world's largest democracy and an example for the rest of the developing world to follow. Today, India is a popular tourist destination for everyone from backpackers on spiritual voyages to white-collar executives on business meetings.
Americans are largely shielded from the shocking reality of India. According to the World Bank's own estimates on poverty, almost half of all Indians live below the new international poverty line of $1.25 (PPP) per day.[1] The World Bank further estimates that 33% of the global poor now reside in India. [2] Moreover, India also has 828 million people, or 75.6% of the population living below $2 a day, compared to 72.2% for Sub-Saharan Africa.[3] A quarter of the nation's population earns less than the government-specified poverty threshold of $0.40/day. Someone should tell the starving masses who have remained largely marginalized and subjugated that India is a "success story" because that's not reflected in most Indian's lives. Income inequality in India, as measured by the Gini coefficient, is increasing at a disturbingly destabilizing rate.[4] In addition, India has a higher rate of malnutrition among children under the age of three than any other country in the world (46% in year 2007).[5],[6] India is possibly the world's largest democracy by some definitions; however, as Mahatma Gandhi, once asked, "What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?"
Pundits such as Friedman play golf with the global elite and then pontificate on perceived economic trends. In Friedman's book, The World is Flat, he suggests that "Indians should celebrate Y2K as its second independence day." Yet, by some estimates, the high-tech sector employs just 0.2 percent of India's one billion people. Americans are largely unaware of the violent, systemic poverty plaguing India because the country is reduced to a caricature where everyone fielding Americans' inquiries in call centers is prospering. Having lived in India for four years and visited the country every other year, I am painfully aware of the reality on the ground. India is a country where children are forcefully amputated by beggar-masters and sent to elicit money; where poor women sell their bodies to truck drivers and contract HIV at alarming rates; and, where American tourists nonchalantly spend enough money in one day to support a hungry family for months.
The recent attacks in India are morally repugnant, but the debate on how to curb terrorism needs to consider why people engage in such desperate acts in the first place. The perpetrators of yesterday's violence targeted two of Mumbai's most luxurious hotels: Taj Mahal and the Oberioi Trident. One night at either of these hotels costs, on average, Rupees 17,500 (US $ 355) in a country where the annual salary is Rupees 29,069 (US $590).[7] The death of over a hundred people on Wednesday should deeply upset the world, but it should also lead us to question the death of the 18 million people who die annually from the systemic violence of endemic poverty.[8] As Yale professor Thomas Pogge notes, the affects of poverty are felt exponentially more in certain parts of our "unflat" world: "If the developed Western countries had their proportional shares of [gratuitous] deaths, severe poverty would kill some 3,500 Britons and 16,500 Americans per week."[9]
Mahan Abedin, an insurgency analyst, told Al Jazeera after Wednesday nights attacks: "We have seen an increase in recent years in indigenous Indian Muslim organizations beginning to take a violent stance towards the Indian state and sections of the Indian society, particularly the commercial elite of places like Mumbai, in order to highlight, they would say, the sheer inequality of life in India."[10] Abedin continued, "there is a middle class of around 100 million who live very well but 800 million-plus people live in miserable conditions." Even people who commit heinous acts of violence occasionally make a valid point. The latest attacks should not evoke a knee-jerk effort to ratchet up the so-called Global War on Terror but, instead, make us question how to avoid such attacks in the future. By showing genuine concern for the plight of the millions of people who are at risk of death from poverty and by honoring the sanctity of the lives of the most destitute, we have the best chance of defeating the ideologies of hate.[11]
[1] http://timesofindia.
[2] http://www.thehindu.com/2008/
[3] http://economictimes.
[4] http://www.legco.gov.hk/yr04-
[5] http://siteresources.
[6] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/
[7] http://www.hindu.com/2007/02/
[8] Thomas Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights p. 99
[9] Pogge, Thomas W. World Poverty and Human Rights: Cosmopolitan Responsibilities and Reforms . Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 2002 p. 98
[10] http://english.aljazeera.net/
[11] Jeffrey D. Sachs "Net Gains." New York Times. April 29, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/
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Show AllBangladesh is 88% Muslim. Kashmir is not a country.
And naming a country that is very largely Muslim is not any kind of evidence that "dictators" have done what you claim.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinduism_in_Bangladesh#Return_to_democracy_.281991-present.29
Hindus were first attacked in mass on 1992 by the Islamic fundamentalists. More than 200 temples were destroyed. Hindus were attacked and many were raped and killed. the events are widely seen as a repurcussion against the razing of the Babri Mosque in India. Taslima Nasrin wrote her novel Lajja (The Shame) based on this persecution of Hindus by Islamic extremists. The novel centers on the suffering of the patriotic anti-Indian and pro-Communist Datta family, where the daughter gets raped and killed while financially they end up losing everything.
Prominent political leaders frequently fall back on "Hindu bashing" in an attempt to appeal to extremist sentiment and to stir up communal passions. In one of the most notorious utterances of a mainstream Bangladeshi figure, the current Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, while leader of the opposition in 1996, declared that the country was at risk of hearing "uludhhwani" (a Hindu custom involving women's ululation) from mosques, replacing the azaan (Muslim call to prayer) (eg, see Agence-France Press report of 18th November 1996, "Bangladesh opposition leader accused of hurting religious sentiment").
After the election of 2001, when a right-wing coalition including two Islamist parties (Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh and Islami Oikya Jote) led by the pro-Islamic right wing Bangladesh Nationalist Party came to power, many Hindus and liberal secularist Muslims were attacked by a section of the governing regime. Thousands of Bangladeshi Hindus were believed to have fled to neighbouring India to escape the violence unleashed by activists sympathetic to the new government. Many Bangladeshi Muslims played an active role in documenting atrocities against Hindus during this period.
Girls such as 14-year-old Purnima was raped allegedly by the members of Bangladesh Nationalist Party (the governing party), but rapists were not prosecuted. Intellectuals such as Gopal Krishna Muhuri also killed by the members of Islami Chhatra Shibir, the student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh. According to the human rights organizations, over 100 women were raped and 1000 people were killed.
The new government also clamped down on attempts by the media to document alleged atrocities against non-Muslim minorities following the election. Severe pressure was put on newspapers and other media outside of government control through threats of violence and other intimidation. Most prominently, the Muslim journalist and human rights activist Shahriyar Kabir was arrested on charges of treason on his return from India where he had been interviewing Hindu refugees from Bangladesh; this was ruled illegal by the Bangladesh High Court and he was subsequently freed.
The fundamentalists and right-wing parties such as the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Jatiya Party often portray Hindus as being sympathetic to India, and transferring economic resources to India, contributing to a widespread perception that Bangladeshi Hindus are disloyal to the state. Also, the right wing parties claim the Hindus to be backing the Awami League.
As widely documented in international media, Bangladesh authorities have had to increase security to enable Bangladeshi Hindus to worship freely following widespread attacks on places of worship and devotees.
After recent bombings in Bangladesh by the Islamic fundamentalists, the government has taken steps to strengthen the security during various minority celebrations, specially during Durga Puja.
On October 2006, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom published a report titled 'Policy Focus on Bangladesh', said that since its last election, 'Bangladesh has experienced growing violence by religious extremists, intensifying concerns expressed by the countries religious minorities'. The report further stated that Hindus are particularly vulnerable in a period of rising violence and extremism, whether motivated by religious, political or criminal factors, or some combination. The report noted that Hindus had multiple disadvantages against them in Bangladesh, such as perceptions of dual loyalty with respect to India and religious beliefs that are not tolerated by the politically dominant Islamic Fundamentalists of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party. Violence against Hindus has taken place "in order to encourage them to flee in order to seize their property".The previous reports of the Hindu American Foundation were acknowledged and confirmed by this non-partisan report.
On November 2, 2006, USCIRF criticized Bangladesh for continuing persecution of minority Hindus. It also urged the Bush administration to get Dhaka to ensure protection of religious freedom and minority rights before Bangladesh's next national elections in January 2007.
Bullshit
"When it comes to dealing with Islamic terror, the connection is a rather weak one at best. The 9/11 hijackers were mostly middle class, educated Muslims. The London train bombings and other Islamic terrorist acts in the U.K were committed by middle class Muslims. "
Please awaken from this fairy tale........
~ Some people live their whole lives without ever waking up ~
Drowning man, elaborate, please. What did I say that wasn't the truth in that statement you quoted? Are you a truther who believes Muslims are framed for terrorist acts? Could you please show me how poverty caused the September 11th attacks, the London train bombings, those thwarted attacks by educated Muslims(I think at least one was a doctor) in the U.K and the Madrid bombings? Thank you.
Eradicate poverty and economic oppression, and see if this does not have a significant impact on terrorism. Additionally, stop making war and producing instruments of war that always seem to fall into the 'wrong' hands. We forget that many of the problems we and the rest of the world are experiencing are interrelated, and are often symptoms of a more systemic cause. For example, oppression of the multitudes (now it's mostly economic in nature), has always led to some type of negative outcome (i.e., a violent revolution)in the past. Economic disparity has a LOT to do with it. And if it is not addressed here, the same thing will happen, homeland security or not. Hungry and desperate people do not make for a peaceful society. By impoverishing the multitudes, the greedy rich ultimately destroy themselves. While nature seeks a balance in everything, man thinks he can thrive by defying this principle--how is it working out for him?
"Economic disparity has a LOT to do with it."
True. However, attempting to frame this terror attack without recognizing the fundamentalist jihadism involved, only serves to deflect any genuine analysis of the issue. This attack can partially be attributed to the marginilization of Muslims in India and/or the Kashmir issue but that does not fully account for why Americans and British and Israelis were targeted.
Muslims are not being marginalized in India. In fact, they've been entering the country ILLEGALLY complaining about oppression in Pakistan and yet refusing to help their brothers and sisters in that country and instead entering the country ILLEGALLY and causing more trouble. In fact, it was the Muslims and Hindus who RUINED the Vedic Era that included equal rights and opportunities for both men and women. Between Monsanto and the extremists, the average Indian can't tell the difference.
Yes, "they". Your rhetoric pretty much reveals your agenda.
Say what you want but you sure have a way of "defending" Islamofascists. Seriously though, you haven't even read my posts and even if you had, you sound like you need serious remedial treatment to improve your comprehension and critical thinking skills.
And where exactly have I defended the "Islamofascists"? Please show me.
I've read your posts. You sound a like you are simply a typical fundamentalist atheist.
"And where exactly have I defended the "Islamofascists"? Please show me."
Go back and read your own Muslim-only slanted posts if you dare. It's obvious that you refuse to face reality and will go out of your way to defend the terrorists.
"I've read your posts. "
Apparently you haven't or you wouldn't be posting Islamo rightwing bullshit.
"You sound a like you are simply a typical fundamentalist atheist."
You don't even know what you're talking about. You're the one giving good Muslims a bad rap but pedal on.
Bullshit
If that's all you can say without backing up your name-calling, then same to you.
"Muslims are not being marginalized in India."
Ofcourse the 'Justice Rajinder Sachar Committee' report means nothing to you or your type. Google it before you vomit all over the board. Also look up http://www.cfr.org/publication/13659/indias_muslim_population.html#2. Ofcourse, coming from Americans this hypocrisy is unbearable, but it does state the truth. But then you need reading comprehension skills to understand whats going on and judging by your posts nobody can help your ass.
To Penelope---
"he will be tested."
Joe Biden, catholic zionist motormouth VP-elect. The senator who recommended a couple of years ago that Iraq (like Gaul) be divided into three parts based on Shi'ite, Kurd, and Sunni persuasions.
Meanwhile, notice how NPR (and doubtless others) is hinting that Pakistanis are to blame for the attacks in India...
-30-
NPR is correct here. Pakistan is known to "shield" and harbour most of the known Jihadist terror groups including Al Quaida.
And you know this how? What if I proposed it was Saudi Arabia? Or Afghanistan, remember that? Does either of us have any first hand information?
Do not be lulled into buying so called analysis that is created and fed to us in advance of military adventures. Obviously nobody really knew a rats ass about where bin Laden was or, if they did, they decided he was more useful as a fugitive figure to justify invasions, attacks, expenditures, military contracts and so on.
Don't be fooled again.
Joe
If you want to think that the Muslim realm is full of saints, you're sadly mistaken. Every nation knows that Pakistan is nothing but a safe haven for terrorists. The non-partisan independent news sources themselves make it clear.
Who said anything about saints?
Pakistan does not consist of haloed saints nor horned terrorists. It is a country populated by a variety of humans of all levels of morality and with a fairly repressive government, that we have been very willing to use for our purposes when necessary. As is usual everywhere, most people are family oriented and just trying to survive safely. You have to believe something along these lines unless you live in comic book land.
You say Pakistan is NOTHING but a safe haven for terrorists. Good de-humanization language that makes it OK to engage in wholesale destruction. After all, everyone there is either a terrorist or harboring one.
Joe
Have you even visited Pakistan let alone live in it? My wife's brother did for 2 years and based on the horror and religious intolerance against peace-loving Christians he had to endure, I hate to say it but Carla is correct. You won't find any churches or even Hindu temples in that country. And to make matters worse, if you don't choose to live a military-esque lifestyle, you're automatically shunned and blacklisted by the government and soon you're likely to be met by muggers. And if you're a woman and you are dressed in jeans or even short dresses in Pakistan, you're 10 times likely to be kidnapped and raped than in India or even the US. He wanted to convert to Islam but found it to be too purist and was shunned for wanting to be a peace-loving Muslim so he stayed Christian where peace-lovers are still welcome, well at least sort of.
Jason Jordan
Sandpoint, Idaho
Oh no, this factually wrong.....
I would invite you to take a look at this link -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_Pakistan#Community_Issues
Certainly the community has faced some difficulties, but for the most part Pakistani Christians are integrating into society. Or try taking a look at this link that shows dozens of churches in Pakistan -
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?s=9091f15dbc8a26805222b25d8fbf2932&t=402815
No I have never been to Pakistan. Some of my students are from there. Needless to say they are worried about the folks back home. The problems you list exist to some extent. Most Pakistanis are keeping a low profile and just trying to get through the day.
I still say we cannot solve problems including poverty, religious intolerance, corruption or repression of women by invading or dropping bombs.
Joe
"Meanwhile, notice how NPR (and doubtless others) is hinting that Pakistanis are to blame for the attacks in India..."
Pakistan (Military and ISI) has consistently supported, funded, armed and nourished a string of extremist groups with the idea of wresting the Kashmir territory from India. This used to be called the 'proxy war' and has resulted in the death of 50-70,000 people over the years. Alqaeda has definitely used these very groups to create this problem by recruiting disgruntled and marginilized Indian muslims, thereby tying the so called Kashmir cause with a supposed pan-islamic brotherhood.
While the present Pakistani leadership may not be involved directly in the attacks, they have absolutely no control over the ISI and other agencies with ties to fundamentalists. The likelihood of Pakistan based fundamentalist outfits acting in concert with some Indian outfits is certain.
"While the present Pakistani leadership may not be involved directly in the attacks, they have absolutely no control over the ISI and other agencies with ties to fundamentalists."
WRONG. When the Pakistani MISleadership can treat its own civilians like shit and run them into total poverty, the same can be done to CIA sponsored ISI and other terror groups. The MISleadership is simply CORRUPT and begs for money. They have the ability to hold ISI accountable. They just won't do it, PERIOD.
"They have the ability to hold ISI accountable. They just won't do it, PERIOD."
This statement reveals your complete lack of understanding of South Asian realities. The current Pakistani government is toothless and can at best administer the country on an economic level. True power is held by the security establishment which comprises of the Pakistani armed forces and the ISI (intelligence). Unless the ISI voluntarily disbands itself (keep dreaming), nothing short of armed force will dislodge their grip on power.
"The current Pakistani government is toothless and can at best administer the country on an economic level."
No, they're not toothless. They happily go against their own constituents who were dumb enough to vote against their own economic interests and allow the most hijackable religion to ruin their lives. And FYI, they chose to be puppets to the Islamofascist militants and persecute peace-loving Muslims who show tolerance and respect to non-Muslims.
"True power is held by the security establishment which comprises of the Pakistani armed forces and the ISI (intelligence). Unless the ISI voluntarily disbands itself (keep dreaming), nothing short of armed force will dislodge their grip on power."
Apparently, you don't even know the ISI. The ISI is nothing more than a CIA funded and empowered terrorist organization that serves no useful purpose other than to empower the Islamofascists. They might as well be bombed out and I'm all for abolishing the CIA that's responsible for heavily arming and funding the Taliban, Al Quaida, ISI, LET, Hamas, etc ... The residents of Pakistan, already shot down to total poverty have nothing to gain from the ISI.
Pretty soon, Opra will have her own Network and will take us to school to learn
the bnefits of Obama's win..
With all her power, does she believe that we had to invade Iraq?
Seems like she does not have a clue as to what is going on..
If Obama keeps re-introducing us to the New Clinton Machine, the Blacks who
supported him [like 95%] are in for a major surprise, one that will educate them
to the New World Order, as being practised by Obama..The rich will get
Super Rich, and we will become their Slaves once more, as we are on the way
to the plantation..
How many jobs did Hillary outsource to India? Time to fess-up!
The press is sleeping on this one, as was the Obama Machine..
Americans are largely shielded from all the benefits (poverty, famine) that Empire brought to India.
So let me crystal clear on this.....the author's whole attitude is terrorism is wrong, but he understands?
Poverty cannot be an excuse for every person in the third world to pick up a gun or plant a bomb.
They might have had my sympathy but now they've destroyed it. Try to excuse it all you must, but violence is violence whether it comes from a 19 year old American farmboy in Iraq or a 50 year old slum dweller in Calcutta.
Shame on the Left for trying to legitimize and justify these acts.
Help reduce the National Debt - TAX CHURCHES!
"Poverty cannot be an excuse for every person in the third world to pick up a gun or plant a bomb. They might have had my sympathy but now they've destroyed it."
THANK YOU !
"Help reduce the National Debt - TAX CHURCHES!"
I'm with you on that. Moreover, based on my childhood hell I had to put up with, religion is a DISEASE all too often which is why I am a proud atheist.
And atheism is a 'religion' like any other--i.e., a kind a bias. The real problem is not religion or lack thereof, it's ignorance. A sure sign of ignorance is clinging to any ideology or anti-ideology through identification. Ego is invested in identified ignorance, whether it be atheistic or theistic. Being a proud atheist is really no different from being a proud fundamentalist (of any religion); both are proudly ignorant of their nonsensical belief.
Actually, religion is a powerful tool used to control to the point of total fascism. Have you interviewed the corrupt leaders in the Arab world about their take on imperialism and the currently RIGGED capitalist policies? You'd be amazed as to how strongly they support them against their own constituents. In fact, more than any religion, women are the biggest and worst victims of abuse in the Muslim community and they would be better off ditching Islam if they really want to pull themselves out of their own misery.
Understand does not mean condone, neither does it imply that he would ever do it himself. I do not believe he is trying to legitimize them. If you do not at least try to understand you are never going to know how to avoid this kind of thing. That's George Bush thinking.
And of course, as usual, just spray this as being the fault of "the Left", if indeed these jihadists are the left; I suspect they have no such leanings, and what do we know of the author? The right has a history of violence too so let's not get into a discussion about that. How does this even come close to the fire-bombing of Fallujah? Could you understand that, or was that not necessary?
'And of course, as usual, just spray this as being the fault of "the Left"'
I am of "the Left" but I am also a realist. If I have a beef with the US Government should I take a group of Japanese tourists hostage? Do you really think that would get me sympathy for my cause? Unfortunately it doesn't work that way. Besides they're not demanding any kind of help alleviating poverty, they want their Muj buddies out of the hoosegow.
The group that claimed responsibility for this is facing world wide derision and rightfully so.
Please stop trying to paint a terrorist, criminal act as a cry for help.
Help reduce the National Debt - TAX CHURCHES!
You'll notice that in this forum, the group that's claiming responsibility for their attacks gets no attention. Instead, they blame the Hindus for everything even when it's not so. In fact, they don't even think that good Muslims grow a spine and hold the extremists in the Muslim community accountable for giving Muslims a tarnished reputation.
Yup, the worldwide Muslim community hasn't condemned these attacks. Nope, they have stayed silent.
I didn't know the Muslims have a pope. I thought it was less cohesive than that.
Joe
How can any sane person condone violence towards innocent people. Of course, it might irk some that in a third world country there are five star hotels that cater to the wealthy tourist. I tend to be a bit more outraged when poor Israelis are blown to bits by indiscriminate suicide bombers (and no, I don't condone Israeli policies towards the Palestinians). Still, terrorism in any form is barbarous.
The most intelligent thing Truth says is TAX CHURCHES--and not just to reduce the national debt. How dare tax free organizations such as the Mormon Church spend money to influence something like California's Prop. 8. It's high time churches are compelled to keep their views (and money) out of politics.
Bullshit
the writer makes very good points until the last sentence:
"By showing genuine concern for the plight of the millions of people who are at risk of death from poverty and by honoring the sanctity of the lives of the most destitute, we have the best chance of defeating the ideologies of hate"
the US is in a position to defeat ideologies of hate????
tell that to the palestinians in gaza who are being brutalized by the israelis with the support of the US. the US is a source of support for ideologies of hate.
The author's facts are correct, but the link to terrorism is untenable. While the structural violence of India's poverty and economic inequity dwarf terrorist violence, the latter isn't related to the former. The groups doing this are religiously motivated and not drawn disproportionately from India's poor. Much of the Islamist terrorism in India is sponsored by Pakistan, the US's ostensible ally in the war on terror; our foreign aid indirectly funds these attacks.
The perceived Indian occupation of Muslim-majority Kashmir, and the US's and UK's slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocents in Iraq and Afghanistan, are the proximate causes of these attacks, and until we learn the lesson the the Buddha, Jesus, Gandhi and Dr King tried in vain to teach us--that violence leads to more violence, and that just and compassionate behavior ends it--we're going to see more and more of it.
Let's hope the ordinarily perceptive and intelligent Obama figures it out soon. While he's thinking, he should consider that India--a secular, democratic country, for all its shortcomings--and not Pakistan is our natural ally in South Asia.
Alex
"Americans are largely shielded from all the benefits (poverty, famine) that Empire brought to India."
I wouldn't say shielded, more like distracted, preoccupied with their own survival. Americans are drowning too, and the true story of India isn't something that gets much attention in the mainstream US media. That's why I found this piece so enlightening. It proved my initial instincts correct.
The problem is not religion, it is capitalism and imperialism.
You kill poverty and disenfranchisement, you kill terror.
It is haves vs. have-nots, and the haves pit the have-nots against each other in any way they can.
Anyway, I was hoping to come across an article such as this concerning the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, and once again CD delivers. Thank you.
"The problem is not religion, it is capitalism and imperialism."
Excuse me but religion is the problem and in fact if it were not for religion, capitalism and imperialism would not exist. Furthermore, the religious fundies, Muslim, Hindu, Christian, or whatever support the imperialist and RIGGED capitalist policies against their own followers. As I found out the hard way, religion is a powerful tool used to impose control to the point of fascism.
P.S.: I'm a proud atheist after being the victim of religious abuse when I was a kid.
I've spent lots of time talking to sane, peaceful and sensible Muslims in India, including in Kashmir. One thing they will admit very quietly is that many live in fear of their neighbors. There may be a lot of Muslims in India but they are still a minority and still victims of prejudice from Hindus that surround them in many places. There has been a lot of unrest in Kashmir all this year starting will the attempt to give an important Hindu Shrine board land for rest stops for pilgrims this spring and continuing right into Kashmiri elections. Protesters have been shot by army and police and highways blocked by Hindu extremists. I don't think we have to look much farther than internal tensions in India itself for reasons for terrorism. Of course, Pakistan is not much help and would love to claim that all Kashmiris would prefer to join Pakistan and Americans and other westerners would love to see all terrorist activity as part of a huge centrally conducted terrorist operation aimed at them, but I don't think we have to look that far. As the writer said, living conditions are bad enough for the majority of all Indians to keep many angry people on the edge of revolt for any reason.
America may be finding out pretty soon itself that the cheapest way to keep poor people from murdering rich people in their beds is to feed them.
There will be no long term solution unless India can reduce its population through birth control. I told my first Indian coworker, 35 years ago, that I had once collected for a charity called "Wells for India". He smiled and told me something like: "Feed India and all you get is more hungry people".
BTW, this guy and his fellow Indian students at U Penn International House in West Philly once got so fed up with being mugged and beaten by African Americans, they all got sticks, went out on the street, and beat the tar out of the first black guy they came across. Terror begets terrorism.
As climate change continues to melt the glaciers supplying water to much of India (and China), the situation may even get worse, and as more areas of the world have to deal with overpopulation and declining food supplies and resources, India will become a triaged abandoned basket case with hundreds of millions starving.
The trouble in Mumbai are not unique or as simplistic as may first appear. As per Arundhati Roy: "In the state of Gujarat, there was a genocide against the Muslim community in 2002.
"I use the word Genocide advisedly, and in keeping with its definition contained in Article 2 of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The genocide began as collective punishment for an unsolved crime-the burning of a railway coach in which 53 Hindu pilgrims were burned to death. In a carefully planned orgy of supposed retaliation, 2,000 Muslims were slaughtered in broad daylight by squads of armed killers, organised by fascist militias, and backed by the Gujarat government and the administration of the day. Muslim women were gang-raped and burned alive.
"Muslim shops, Muslim businesses and Muslim shrines and mosques were systematically destroyed. Some 1,50,000 people were driven from their homes.
"Even today, many of them live in ghettos-some built on garbage heaps-with no water supply, no drainage, no streetlights, no healthcare. They live as second-class citizens, boycotted socially and economically. Meanwhile, the killers, police as well as civilian, have been embraced, rewarded, promoted. This state of affairs is now considered 'normal'. To seal the 'normality', in 2004, both Ratan Tata and Mukesh Ambani, India's leading industrialists, publicly pronounced Gujarat a dream destination for finance capital.
"The initial outcry in the national press has settled down. In Gujarat, the genocide has been brazenly celebrated as the epitome of Gujarati pride, Hindu-ness, even Indian-ness. This poisonous brew has been used twice in a row to win state elections, with campaigns that have cleverly used the language and apparatus of modernity and democracy. The helmsman, Narendra Modi, has become a folk hero, called in by the BJP to campaign on its behalf in other Indian states.
"As genocides go, the Gujarat genocide cannot compare with the people killed in the Congo, Rwanda and Bosnia, where the numbers run into millions, nor is it by any means the first that has occurred in India. (In 1984, for instance, 3,000 Sikhs were massacred on the streets of Delhi with similar impunity, by killers overseen by the Congress Party.) But the Gujarat genocide is part of a larger, more elaborate and systematic vision. It tells us that the wheat is ripening and the grasshoppers have landed in mainland India."
You are absolutely right on all counts on Gujarat and the crimes committed there. Lets also keep in mind that genocide only happens when people of color commit it. White people can bomb/kill/murder/slaughter millions of non-whites and justify it in the name of capitalism and oil. God Bless America.
"Lets also keep in mind that genocide only happens when people of color commit it. White people can bomb/kill/murder/slaughter millions of non-whites and justify it in the name of capitalism and oil."
So then the Germans who massacred the Jews and other 'undesireables' in the '30s and '40s where non-white? Or the Serbs/Croats in Bosnia in the '90s? If I recall, both events were considered 'genocide' - if not at the time, then shortly afterward - so I think you may be overstating your position.