Amitav Ghosh
An intelligent op-ed in the NYTs by Amitav Ghosh.
He compares the reaction of Spain after the Madrid bombing to the U.S.
reaction after 9-11 and feels that India should respond the way Spain
did.
SINCE the terrorist assaults began in Mumbai
last week, the metaphor of the World Trade Center attacks has been
repeatedly invoked. From New Delhi to New York, pundits and TV
commentators have insisted that “this is India’s 9/11” and should be
treated as such. Nearly every newspaper in India has put “9/11” into
its post-massacre headlines. The secretary general of theBharatiya Janata Party, the leading Hindu nationalist political faction, has not only likened the Mumbai
attack to those on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, but has
insisted that “our response must be close to what the American response
was.”
There can be no doubt that there are certain clear
analogies between the two attacks: in both cases the terrorists were
clearly at great pains to single out urban landmarks, especially those
that serve as symbolic points of reference in this increasingly
interconnected world. There are similarities, too, in the
unexpectedness of the attacks, the meticulousness of their planning,
their shock value and the utter unpreparedness of the security
services. But this is where the similarities end. Not only were the
casualties far greater on Sept. 11, 2001, but the shock of the attack
was also greatly magnified by having no real precedent in America’s
history.
India’s experience of terrorist attacks, on the other
hand, far predates 2001. Although this year has been one of the worst
in recent history, 1984 was arguably worse still. That year an
insurgency in the Punjab culminated in the assassination of Prime
Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards. This in turn led to
riots that took the lives of some 2,000 Sikhs.
I was living in
Delhi then and I recall vividly the sense of besetting crisis, of
extreme fragility, of being pushed to the edge of an abyss: it was the
only time I can recall when the very project of the Indian republic
seemed to be seriously endangered. Yet for all its horror, the portents
of 1984 were by no means fulfilled: in the following years, there was a
slow turnaround; the Punjab insurgency gradually quieted down; and
although the victims of the massacres may never receive justice in full
measure, there has been some judicial retribution.
This has been another terrible year: even before the invasion of Mumbai, several hundred people had been killed and injured in terrorist assaults. Yet the attacks on Jaipur, Ahmedabad, New Delhi, Guwahati
and elsewhere did not set off chains of retaliatory violence of the
sort that would almost certainly have resulted 10 or 15 years ago. Nor
did the violence create a sense of existential crisis for the nation,
as in 1984. Thus, despite all loss of life, this year could well be
counted as a victory not for terrorism but for India’s citizenry.
The question now is this: Will the November invasion of Mumbai
change this? Although there is no way of knowing the answer, it is
certain that if the precedent of 9/11 is taken seriously the outcome
will be profoundly counterproductive. As a metaphor “9/11” is invested
not just with the memory of what happened in Manhattan and at the
Pentagon in 2001, but also with the penumbra of emotions that surround
the events: the feeling that “the world will never be the same,” the
notion that this was “the day the world woke up” and so on. In this
sense 9/11 refers not just to the attacks but also to its aftermath, in
particular to an utterly misconceived military and judicial response,
one that has had disastrous consequences around the world.
When
commentators repeat the metaphor of 9/11 they are in effect pushing the
Indian government to mount a comparable response. If India takes a hard
line modeled on the actions of the Bush administration, the
consequences are sure to be equally disastrous. The very power of the
9/11 metaphor blinds us to the possibility that there might be other,
more productive analogies for the invasion ofMumbai : one is the Madrid
train bombings of March 11, 2004, which led to a comparable number of
casualties and created a similar sense of shock and grief.
Amitav Ghosh is the author, most recently, of the novel “Sea of Poppies.”
More
Articles in Opinion » A version of this article appeared in print on
December 3, 2008, on page A31 of the New York edition.
He compares the reaction of Spain after the Madrid bombing to the U.S.
reaction after 9-11 and feels that India should respond the way Spain
did.
SINCE the terrorist assaults began in Mumbai
last week, the metaphor of the World Trade Center attacks has been
repeatedly invoked. From New Delhi to New York, pundits and TV
commentators have insisted that “this is India’s 9/11” and should be
treated as such. Nearly every newspaper in India has put “9/11” into
its post-massacre headlines. The secretary general of theBharatiya Janata Party, the leading Hindu nationalist political faction, has not only likened the Mumbai
attack to those on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, but has
insisted that “our response must be close to what the American response
was.”
There can be no doubt that there are certain clear
analogies between the two attacks: in both cases the terrorists were
clearly at great pains to single out urban landmarks, especially those
that serve as symbolic points of reference in this increasingly
interconnected world. There are similarities, too, in the
unexpectedness of the attacks, the meticulousness of their planning,
their shock value and the utter unpreparedness of the security
services. But this is where the similarities end. Not only were the
casualties far greater on Sept. 11, 2001, but the shock of the attack
was also greatly magnified by having no real precedent in America’s
history.
India’s experience of terrorist attacks, on the other
hand, far predates 2001. Although this year has been one of the worst
in recent history, 1984 was arguably worse still. That year an
insurgency in the Punjab culminated in the assassination of Prime
Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards. This in turn led to
riots that took the lives of some 2,000 Sikhs.
I was living in
Delhi then and I recall vividly the sense of besetting crisis, of
extreme fragility, of being pushed to the edge of an abyss: it was the
only time I can recall when the very project of the Indian republic
seemed to be seriously endangered. Yet for all its horror, the portents
of 1984 were by no means fulfilled: in the following years, there was a
slow turnaround; the Punjab insurgency gradually quieted down; and
although the victims of the massacres may never receive justice in full
measure, there has been some judicial retribution.
This has been another terrible year: even before the invasion of Mumbai, several hundred people had been killed and injured in terrorist assaults. Yet the attacks on Jaipur, Ahmedabad, New Delhi, Guwahati
and elsewhere did not set off chains of retaliatory violence of the
sort that would almost certainly have resulted 10 or 15 years ago. Nor
did the violence create a sense of existential crisis for the nation,
as in 1984. Thus, despite all loss of life, this year could well be
counted as a victory not for terrorism but for India’s citizenry.
The question now is this: Will the November invasion of Mumbai
change this? Although there is no way of knowing the answer, it is
certain that if the precedent of 9/11 is taken seriously the outcome
will be profoundly counterproductive. As a metaphor “9/11” is invested
not just with the memory of what happened in Manhattan and at the
Pentagon in 2001, but also with the penumbra of emotions that surround
the events: the feeling that “the world will never be the same,” the
notion that this was “the day the world woke up” and so on. In this
sense 9/11 refers not just to the attacks but also to its aftermath, in
particular to an utterly misconceived military and judicial response,
one that has had disastrous consequences around the world.
When
commentators repeat the metaphor of 9/11 they are in effect pushing the
Indian government to mount a comparable response. If India takes a hard
line modeled on the actions of the Bush administration, the
consequences are sure to be equally disastrous. The very power of the
9/11 metaphor blinds us to the possibility that there might be other,
more productive analogies for the invasion ofMumbai : one is the Madrid
train bombings of March 11, 2004, which led to a comparable number of
casualties and created a similar sense of shock and grief.
Amitav Ghosh is the author, most recently, of the novel “Sea of Poppies.”
More
Articles in Opinion » A version of this article appeared in print on
December 3, 2008, on page A31 of the New York edition.
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