Destiny's children

 The foreign hand alone could not effect the explosions in Mumbai’s trains that left over 200 dead and 800 injured. As any security expert will testify, such an attack requires military expertise, logistics and a network of people on the ground to execute the plan. Months of preparations and dry runs would be needed to ensure that the bombs go off at the designated time and have the maximum impact. Involved in the operation would be residents of Mumbai who provided logistic and other support to those who finally detonated the explosives through sophisticated timers. Why would these residents opt to be part of a plot designed to kill so many people? Is it ideology, religion, or anger against the Indian state, or a combination of these?

Mumbai is an expression of all that has thwarted India’s tryst with destiny. Urban planning is geared towards the rich and famous, leaving the masses who pour into the city, pushed out by cruel countrysides, to fend for themselves. Below the skyline of imposing skyscrapers lie the massive slums, cheek-by-jowl, rich and poor in a striking contradiction. This glaring disparity is fertile ground for criminal activity. Humanism can die in the wretched conditions of daily life. The state has failed. What attachment can the hovels have to government property or to the lives of some miserable others? Criminal activity is not the monopoly of the poor. Those who occupy fancy condominiums are those who made money the wrong way. Many of them are economic criminals who should have been behind bars rather than in the air-conditioned confines of their designer apartments. This realisation deepened by education and the mass media has contributed in no small measure to fuel this rage.

There is anger against the injustice and violence of the Indian state. Democracy is hijacked by money and muscle power and cannot accommodate differences. The context is ripe for young, angry, often unemployed youth to be driven towards fundamentalism. The Hindus join the Shiv Sena and the VHP to make India a Utopia, Ram rajya, whereas the Muslims look for other options. Some of them are getting attracted to Islamic fundamentalist organisations like the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) or the indigenous Student Islamic Movement (SIMI) that claim that with the establishment of the ummah all kinds of injustices would end.  LeT militants are fed on the idea “kill now so that there is no killing in the future”. These easy recruits from Mumbai and small towns are indoctrinated by these Islamic commissars and fed about how the Indian state is inherently communal. The demolition of Babri Masjid and the carnage in Gujarat are shown as the evidence of what lies in store for them if they do not organise themselves and blow up national assets.

Such feelings against the state would grow exponentially as long as the government does not work hard in re-engineering its cities so that they do not become crucibles for violent ideologies. Local administration needs to be more representative and responsible. The solution lies not in just improving security measures, strengthening the hands of security services, or even as some suggested in increasing surveillance on citizens, but in the state addressing root causes of the rise of religious fundamentalism and extremism.

Ever wondered why Kolkata is immune from the violence of Mumbai? The answer probably lies in the CPI(M)’s politics and also the representative nature of its local administration. If India has to keep its date with destiny then India’s city planners would have to create living spaces that people can live and work with dignity and harmony. It is then only that the promise made by Jawaharlal Nehru on August 15, 1947 can be realised.