dr.umer
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1 Dec 2008
Last week’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai will certainly have huge ramifications on the ongoing polls in key north Indian states.
LAST week’s terror assault on Mumbai once again exposed the vulnerability of the Indian state. For 60 excruciatingly painful hours, a group of heavily-armed desperadoes held the commercial capital hostage even as the three wings of the armed forces and the elite commandoes tried to neutralise them.
In the end, 14 terrorists, who had reached the metropolis by boats, were killed while one was captured alive. But not before they had inflicted a heavy toll in human life and gutted the city’s two best-known luxury hotels.
The bloody events were a grim reminder to all Indians that terrorists can strike anyone, anywhere at will. The worst-ever terror assault on the Indian soil — it is India’s 26/11 — began late on Wednesday evening. A group of fidayeen alighted from boats a few hundred yards away from the Gateway of India.
They had earlier hijacked a fishing trawler, killed its commander and made their way to the metropolis in small boats after abandoning the trawler at some distance from Mumbai harbour.
After commandeering private and police vehicles at gunpoint, they fanned out to different parts of South Mumbai. From the busy local rail terminal to an upscale cinema hall, they sprayed bullets at all and sundry, leaving a trail of death behind them.
The toll on Wednesday itself was nearly a hundred dead, including three senior police officers.
But even as the first lot of terrorists who had killed ordinary people at random fell to police bullets — and with one captured alive — their colleagues had stormed into two of the best landmarks in the city.
The iconic Taj Mahal Hotel at the Gateway of India and the Oberoi-Trident a few hundred yards away at Nariman Point were seized by terrorists armed with explosives, automatic rifles, grenades and oth-er deadly arsenal.
Almost simultaneously, another group of terrorists captured the nearby Jewish Centre housed in a multi-story building in the congested Colaba area.
In all these places, they took the inmates hostage and killed a number of them to establish their reign of terror.
In particular, the terrorists singled out British and American nationals in the two hotels for harsher treatment.
As myriad news television cameras rushed to the three “hijacked” buildings to take the traumatic drama in real time to the nation’s living rooms, there was utter confusion and paralysis in the government.
Initially, the local police reckoned that they would be able to flush out the terrorists from the two hotels and from the Jewish Centre. But, soon the local police stepped aside, handing over the rescue operations to the central forces.
Troops from the army and navy were pressed in, and the elite commandos of the National Security Guard were flown in from New Delhi. It was war being fought in the heart of Mumbai.
Fourteen determined men held the nation of over a billion people captive as it watched its ordeal at their hands live on television channels.
Anxious anchors interrupted emotionally surcharged commentary only for the viewers to hear the noise emanating from inside the captured buildings.
Explosions and gunfire could be heard intermittently at all three locations during the near 60-hour violent drama.
Fire in one or the other wing of the two hotels was a periodic diversion for viewers even as they learnt about the escape of a few traumatised guests from the kitchen door or by using the fire brigade’s ladders at the back of the two hotels.
There was much lamentation, too, over the damage inflicted on the heritage old wing of the Taj Mahal Hotel which had first opened its doors in 1903.
The iconic hotel was built by Jamsetji Tata, founder of the Tata Group of Industries, after he was denied entry to a nearby hotel which only admitted the English.
At the end of the siege, the bodies of several guests and hotel staff were found littered on almost all floors of the hotel.
The heritage gray stone structure had withstood the devastation well, but everything else had suffered extensive damage.
Ratan Tata, the head of the Tata group, publicly committed himself to restoring the hotel to its old glory.
The terrorist siege in Mumbai cast its deadly shadow over the on-going electoral process in the key north Indian states. Madhya Pra-desh voted to elect a new government on Thursday in the backdrop of the terror attack.
A day later, the opposition pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party took out huge newspaper advertisements, reading Brutal Terror Strikes at Will — Weak Government, Un-willing and Incapable — Fight Terror, Vote BJP.”
Forced on the back foot by media criticism and by the BJP campaign, the ruling Congress Party countered with its own ads, reminding people about the terror attacks when the BJP-led coalition was in power.
Meanwhile, the Manmohan Singh government publicly hinted at the involvement of Pakistan, though visiting Foreign Minister of Pakistan Shah Mehmood Querishi vehemently denied the insinuation.
Seeking to counter the general impression that his government was “soft” on terror, the prime minister addressed the nation on television on the second day of the Mumbai siege.
Committing his administration to fight terror, he sought to calm the nerves of an overwrought nation, reassuring it that no quarter would be given to terrorists.
Ordinary people, who required little persuasion about the complicity of its western neighbour, became doubly certain when the government officially asked Pakistan to send its head of the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI).
New Delhi said it would share concrete evidence about the involvement of certain official elements in the Pakistani establishment in the attack on Mumbai. A day later, Islamabad refused to send the ISI chief to New Delhi.
However, most people blamed the government for being unable to stop terrorist attacks at regular intervals.
Failure of intelligence, lax policing, political interference, lack of coordination between various agencies and between the central and state governments and, above all, a lack of political will and determination were blamed for repeated terrorist outrages.
The question in people’s mind was not whether there will be another terror strike but where and when?
Meanwhile, there was speculation that the Mumbai terrorists wanted to send out a signal to the global community that India’s financial capital was not safe for business.
They had sought no ransom, set no demands. Their objective was to inflict maximum damage on people and their iconic landmarks.
By targeting the two luxury hotels and singling out the Americans and the Britons, it was argued, the fidayeen sought to wreak revenge for the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.
