Kashmiri Terrorists Strike in India Killing Dozens

The Hindu festival of Diwali was fast approaching, and the Muslim celebration of Eid, which marks the end of Ramadan, was right behind. Then, the explosions came, three of them. The body count is 62 as of Monday morning, and a couple hundred have been injured. The cause is as stupid as it always is given the criminality of the act. And yet, the people of Delhi sounded an awful lot like those in New York, and Madrid, and Moscow and London. “Why should we be afraid? That would just give in to the terrorists.” They cannot win if the people resist.

The group that claimed to have murdered the 62 is Inqilabi Mahaz, a group founded in 1996 dedicated to the removal of Indian authority from Kashmir, a region disputed between India and neighboring Pakistan. As if it mattered. Children will still need schools, adults will need jobs, and the elderly will need medical care. No separatist group ever answers the question of how it will provide for these things. They merely blame the authorities and adopt some half-baked messianic ideology to excuse themselves from creating a program. Unfortunately, the chemistry of explosives is much simpler than political planning.

India has suffered communal violence of one sort or another from Independence (and before). One of history’s blacker chapters was the partition deaths caused by the separation of Pakistan from British India. These pogroms left anywhere from 300,000 to 3 million dead. Along side that, 62 isn’t too bad, but it is 62 too many.

One of the brighter patches, though, has been the common noises made by Indian and Pakistani authorities in this case. “This kind of cynical attack on the people of India is just not acceptable,” said Dr. Sanjay Baru, the Indian Prime Ministers media advisor, with the typical understatement of English as spoken in India. At almost the same moment, Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam told CNN, “The people and the government of Pakistan are shocked at this barbaric act and we express deep sympathy with the families of the victims.”

Kashmir, of course, was ground zero for the earthquake that has killed close to 100,000. India and Pakistan have extended their mutual cooperation in rescue efforts to new levels. The Line of Control, the de facto border in Kashmir, now has five open crossing points. Months ago, the Line was a secure as the Berlin Wall once was. Maybe that’s what has Inqilabi Mahaz upset, the fact that sovereignty over Kashmir isn’t the issue they thought it was. It does rather pale in comparison to all those facing a Himalayan winter in tents, if they can get them. If they really wanted to help the people they claim as their own, they wouldn’t be bombing Delhi; they’d be building shelters in Kashmir.

© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
Produced using Fedora Linux.


Home