187 reasons

It would be callous to file away the serial blasts on Mumbai8217;s local trains a year ago under the sub-head of 8216;terror strikes8217;. They left 187 dead. They left behind 187 stories of stricken families 8212; this newspaper tried to piece together every one of these distinctive narratives of loss in the aftermath. But there is indeed a way in which the Mumbai blasts do surrender their specificity, become part of a general theme. They reiterate the sameness of the government8217;s response to the terror threat. As our columnist today points out, the government8217;s inaction on probing the plot behind 7/11 is only matched by its sluggish efforts to bare the conspiracies and complicities behind the blasts at Varanasi, New Delhi and Hyderabad among others in a long list. As that list grows dangerously longer, Mumbai8217;s unanswered questions are a reminder of the urgent action not taken by India8217;s government.

These columns have consistently warned that the UPA government is showing itself to be unable or unwilling or both to face up to the security threat and counter it firmly. The reason why investigations into one high-profile strike after another never seem to progress beyond perfunctory charge sheets is not difficult to find. It lies in the Congress-led coalition8217;s unique politics. It draws upon a sequence of unexamined certitudes: that there is a monolithic 8216;Muslim Vote8217; out there; that it can be courted only by a policy that refuses to call terror by its name; that, therefore, the Congress-led government cannot be seen to act unambiguously against terror. It doesn8217;t seem to strike either the leadership of the Congress or the Left that such a politics impoverishes the idea of secularism and actually ends up labelling India8217;s Muslims, a large and differentiated community like any other, in 8216;communal8217; ways.

The UPA8217;s policy drift vis-a-vis terrorism is especially clear when contrasted with the increasing sophistication of the response of other governments the world over. The failed attempt to cause death and destruction in London and Glasgow recently has already led to a large flow of information 8212; and little or no name-calling 8212; in the public domain. As the terror threat becomes more complex for India, the response to it must also show some signs of lessons learnt. Plus, let us remind ourselves of the 187 deaths again.