India’s Global Challenge

Indian diplomats have for years chafed at the US policy of always hyphenating India with Pakistan. Begun under Clinton, the de-hyphenation process was completed by the Bush administration with the signing of the civil nuclear agreement. The deadly assault on Mumbai by Pakistan-linked terrorists has now forcefully returned India and Pakistan back to their hyphenated existence.

The US would like India to hold the perpetrators of the Mumbai atrocity to account, but is worried that the move might upset its cooperation with Pakistan in fighting the Taliban and al-Qaeda along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Pakistan warning that any military move by India would lead it to transfer all its forces from the Afghan to the Indian side of the border has squarely placed Washington in the middle of the equation. By making US policy vis-à-vis India and Pakistan a zero-sum game, the two countries have been firmly hyphenated in the US strategic perspective. US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s visit to India, although billed as a show of support for India, will in reality be aimed at dissuading India from any move that would affect American-Pakistan cooperation.

The fact is that however much India may want to be unhinged from Pakistan, geography dictates otherwise. It will be in India’s interest to cooperate with anybody, including the Pakistan government if they are so inclined, to steer the country away from its “descent into chaos”, as the title of Ahmed Rashid’s prescient book puts it. The attacks on Islamabad’s Marriott and Mumbai’s Taj and Oberoi hotels are only the most recent evidence of the two countries’ coupled fate. However shaky the democratic government in Pakistan, it is the first time India has occasion to test its sincerity during a major crisis and help it find a stronger foot vis-à-vis the entrenched military.

The Mumbai attacks, however, showed that India is not just hyphenated with Pakistan; India’s fate is bound together with the rest of the world. The terrorists’ daring seaborne landing — the first in the bloody history of terrorism in India — in itself carried a message of a borderless world. This attack has for the first time brought India face to face with terrorists with a global agenda, with a global impact. Past attacks by Islamist youth and Kashmiri separatists were aimed at damaging India’s economic and political stability and inciting violence between Hindus and Muslims. Never before have terrorists in India tried to target foreigners especially Americans, British citizens and people of Jewish faith. The Mumbai attacks had a global agenda established by al-Qaeda to kill Hindus, Jews and Christian ‘Crusaders’ — not unlike terror attacks in Bali, London or Madrid. The well-known complaint about Indian repression of Kashmiris and minority Muslims was, of course, repeated by the terrorists but their actions showed a wider agenda. The murder of Jewish people who had flocked to India for safety two millennia ago and ever since lived there unobtrusively was the most shocking reminder of the global objectives of a war unleashed by Islamist extremists.

The terrorist strikes in Mumbai also proved to be the most globally viewed event in India’s long blood-soaked history of terrorism. Twenty-four-hour news channels, their video-streaming on the Web, Twitters and cellphone video reports kept the world focused on Mumbai for 60 hours as the drama unfolded. To spread fear and make India look like the most dangerous destination for business, tourists and investors was certainly one of the objectives of the terrorists and the wall-to-wall coverage helped them achieve that goal.

The demonstrated global nature of the Mumbai attack requires India to respond to the challenge in a globally responsible way. India needs to show the world that despite its ill-preparedness and its tardy, even if valiant, response, it is capable of dealing with the threat in a mature and effective manner without squandering the world’s overwhelming sympathy for the country. India’s increased integration with the world in the past 15 years has led to its prosperity counted by the streams of investors and visitors that pass through metropolitan cities such as Mumbai — the very success that terrorists targeted. India’s open door policy also brought it the business, friendship and respect of many countries whose citizens paid with their lives for their association with India. The only way forward for India and the world is not to raise walls or shun each other but to lock each other in an even stronger embrace of mutual support.