Sunday 7 December 2008

Root Cause

The recent horrific attacks in Mumbai has 'awakened' the Indian public, government, as well as caused some fear and negative sentiment among Pakistan's public and media. Accusations have been made that the terrorists were 'home-grown', i.e. Indian based, whereas India finds evidence and backing by the US to say that they were in fact Pakistan based.

However, terrorism is a long term problem, and even if these attacks were not by home grown terrorists, there is a no doubt that there are Muslim communities in India, particularly so in Kashmir, which are hostile towards India. (This is NOT to say that all Muslims in India are like this). Why so?

In theory Muslims across India can command equal treatment like any other Indian, and Kashmiris especially have some privileges since its inception. But that theory has not been put into practice effectively. The real success of these would be achieved when every Muslim in India feels proud to be an Indian. This would be an enormous blow to all the terrorists who try to expand in India.

Sure it may be too idealistic, but so are all real goals. So people of India - yes we shall condemn terror, yes we shall make our government be more responsible, but lets make sure that responsibility spans across internal affairs as well as external ones.