I fell in love with Mumbai when I lived and worked there 2004/05 for 6 months and this news has really pissed me off. Mumbai did not deserve this really. Not the poor bloody Mumbaikers just trying to turn a quid. The civilians that died going home from work, they had no sane logical reason to die, except of course to make headlines for someone...
I would not necessarily write the Mumbai train blasts off as Kashmiri seperatists though.
There are many rebel groups that operate within India.
There are the different Kashmiri rebels who are being fingered for this henious act. There are the Maoists who attack Indian military installations around East India towards the Myanmar and Bhutan border. Also in this region are the Naxalites who have been stepping up their own 'terror' campaign in Northern states. ULFA is another group that has made headlines recently in the Assam regoion for acts of terrorism against the Indian government.
I was working in a city called Jorhat for 3 weeks which is east of Bhutan and north of Myanmar which was a hot spot for rebel activity. We got pulled up by the cops and were told to leave town because they could not guarentee our saftey, I am a 187cm blond with a big red beard so it wasn't like I could act inconspicuous and I was staying in a military guarded compound with armed guards with flak jackets every 50 meters. So we caught a flight to Kolkata (Calcutta) and stayed for 4 days. We got back to Jorhat and there had been a blast that took out a gas pipeline feeding a fertilizer plant, a bomb that split a main gas feeder(but was under half pressure thankfully) and a couple of tiffin bombs in the next town south of us. No one was injured but the thing is not one word of the attacks made it to mainstream media. It made the regional news and probably made it to a few lines in the Delhi media but other than that, nothing.
The reason all these groups have room to move is another story altogether. With a huge population the Indian government can't really make sure there is 'law & order' in all corners of their country. The rebel groups that operate in the rural areas give assistance to the remote villages in the form of cash, vehicles and animals so this is how they grow and prosper. I have heard a rumour that in Jorhat, the civilians there pay 2 lots of taxes, one to the state and the other to the Naxals as a pay off for peace.
After spending 9 months in the country India for me now is not one country. It is a collection of regions I think, states with their own 'Ball Game' and all try to get ahead of one and another. Foreign companies are investing huge amounts of money into the country and it does have it's problems.
There are tensions between Muslim and Hindi groups that don't add to the solutions. So many people pulling in different directions. Here is an interesting fact, there are more Muslims in India than in Pakistan. There are Muslim and Hindi groups that live side by side and have been doing so for hundreds of years, but there is one group, the RSS, that wants to see a purley Hindi India, and work closely with the BJP government party, but the RSS claim to be apolitical.
In relation to the US, the Indian population like GWB more than the American population does even after horrific events like Bhopal and the Enron White Elephant. I don't think America has an immediate problem right now but if the violence escalates either India or Pakistan will want America to get off the fence and stand with them. America has just sealed major arms deals with both countries and for a while there is looked as though India and Pakistan had gone into a full blown arms race. |
