Mumbai’s cycle of catastrophe

The theories that many commentators have expounded, to account for the 26-29 November terrorist attack on Mumbai, are as flat and two-dimensional as the television screen on which these have been expressed. 

The attack has already pressed pause on the fragile India-Pakistan peace process. In Mumbai, an unprecedented if informal alliance of Indian, US, UK and Israeli intelligence agencies has sifted through the evidence which points to highly motivated terror agencies in Pakistan. Some Western commentators, dusting off the picture-books of colonial ethnography, have described the attack as one more episode in the supposedly centuries-old strife between Hindus and Muslims, each side depicted as volatile, animated by murder-lust. Others, with a better claim to reason, explain the attack as an outcome of the 61-year-old antagonism between India and Pakistan. Yet others see it in generic terms as the latest outrage perpetrated by the forces of global jihad. 

In actuality, the terrorist attack against Mumbai must be seen as a four-dimensional game. It marks the intersection of four distinct yet interrelated scenarios of South Asian cultural politics. The first and best known of these scenarios is that of global jihad: its ability to channelise the anger and resentment of Muslims across the planet against a ‘West’ that is seen to incarnate neo-colonial oppression; and also, specifically, the appeal it holds for young South Asian Muslims who have experienced inequity and injustice. 

But we must also consider, as a second vital scenario, the rise of Hindu religious extremism within India during the last two decades. Hindu majoritarian elements with strongly fascist leanings have repeatedly challenged the rule of law and violated the Indian Republic’s inclusive, multi-religious and multi-ethnic charter. They have assaulted the Muslim and Christian minorities, as well as liberal Hindus, their provocations ranging from mob censorship and rioting to full-blown ethnic cleansing. 

A third scenario emerges from the deep-seated antagonism that Islamic extremists in Pakistan — like their Hindu majoritarian rivals in India — feel towards the Indian Republic’s charter of ecumenical acceptance. To these radicals, multi-religious India’s continued existence challenges Pakistan’s claim to be the only legitimate homeland for South Asia’s Muslims. 

And fourthly, we must acquaint ourselves with the visceral rage that retrograde tendencies, both of the Hindu nativist and the Islamic militant variety, feel against Mumbai’s cosmopolitan ethos, with its blend of Indian, Asian and Western perspectives and populations. More than Mumbai’s wide range of strategic targets (a nuclear reactor, a naval dockyard, an air force base, a cantonment, two railway hubs, and two airports), it is this city’s richly hybrid, receptive, inventive and unabashedly transnational culture that has made it a natural target for fanatics committed to various brands of spurious purity, over the last two decades. 

Last week’s attack is the eighth terrorist strike against Mumbai since 1993. Each time, the terrorist’s sight-lens widens to include more of Mumbai’s unique panorama: its massive, multi-route railway system, which services several million commuters daily; its grand hotels, which embody transcultural dialogue; its vibrant centres of finance, banking and industry; and above all, its open-armed approach to the religious imagination, equally welcoming of Buddhists, Sufis, Hassidic Jews, Brahmins, Jesuits, and atheists. 

The killings at the Chabad-Lubovitch Centre were especially despicable: Jews have lived in peace in India, integral to Indian society, for 2500 years. Only twice have they suffered attack: at the hands of Portuguese settlers in 16th-century Kerala; and last week, at the hands of jihadists. 

As TV anchors refereed the battle between terrorists and commandos, I thought back to Mumbai, December 1992-January 1993, a city torn apart by the violence following the destruction of the Babri Masjid. I remember riding the north-south needle of the metropolis on empty trains. On one side was the silent sea; on the other were blazing shanties and timber warehouses. For several weeks, Muslims were attacked and driven from their homes by Hindu-majoritarian goon squads, while stone-eyed politicians watched. Mumbai’s cycle of catastrophe had begun. 

The writer is a cultural theorist