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Tuesday 2 December 2008

An attack on India’s future

There are those in Washington and London who worry that Indian patience will eventually snap. But though it is early days the signs so far are encouraging. Within hours of the bombing the Pakistani government was offering interviews condemning the atrocities. The Indians resisted the temptation to denounce Islamabad. Just as important, certainly for the people of Mumbai, was the absence of an immediate sectarian response. In the past, attacks on one community have often led to horrific retaliation.

But there is that other universal imperative urging us to pay attention. Like the previous targets of such attacks — New York, London and Madrid — Mumbai is a place where ingenuity and energy are the spurs to human progress. The kind of economic boom which Mumbai is experiencing depends on openness and on the free movement of people. It is the very openness of Mumbai, of all our cities, that makes it so easy to attack. Striking at the city’s high-speed transport lines represents not only an attempt to maximise casualties but is an assault on the idea of modernity which Mumbai is rushing to embrace.

Every year many hundreds of thousands are drawn to this sprawling port city on the Indian Ocean. They come not to answer the siren calls of the Hindu Right or the Muslim fundamentalists, but because they have heard stories of what a man or woman might achieve there.

Will they be cowed and turned back to their villages and small towns by the horrors on the railways? More important, will they be transformed from energetic and questing citizens of a new India into vengeful fundamentalists? On both counts the answer must be a resounding ‘no’. The energy of the ‘Maximum City’ will see to that.

Fergal Keane reported on the Mumbai bombings for the BBC Ten O’Clock News.

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