So don't rush to conclusions just because the wealthy are the target for once

 by Kanishk Tharoor
 
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Ever since the 1993 blasts at the Mumbai Stock Exchange, India has weathered a rising tide of attacks. Two years ago, serial bomb blasts on Mumbai's commuter rail system killed about 200 people (a similar body count to last week's atrocities). More recently, Islamist-linked attacks have targeted public spaces in the west, south and far east of the country. Were any one of these outrages to occur in the West, it would be seen as cataclysmic. In India, this sort of terrorism has acquired the resigned air of routine.
This is what makes much of the Indian reception of the attacks in Mumbai so noteworthy and, in its own way, depressing. As the drama unfolded, Indian TV commentators veered towards the sensational, frequently invoking "9/11". Whereas attacks in the past mostly hit the marketplaces and trains of the lower middle class and poor – the "overcrowded parts" of the country, as one news anchor indelicately put it – never before have the more genteel climes of Indian society been so brutally assaulted. Prominent Mumbaikars cluttered the 24-hour news channels, recalling their visits to the famous Taj and expressing concern for loved ones and friends currently trapped in the hotel. For an elite that almost always emerges unscathed from violence in the country, the attack cut close to the bone.
But it reflects poorly on the world's largest democracy that the Indian press suddenly placed the country at a "9/11"-style crossroads.
India has suffered devastating attacks of this kind before. The murder of Indian citizens – no matter what their breeding – should have jolted government and civil society from their slumber long ago.

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