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print versionDaily News and Analysis, November 30, 2008
The television has been turned off finally for the first time in two and a half days. The ensuing space and silence allows reflection and a reaction but little relief. The human cost paid has been unbearably high. As we grieve the losses, the grief gives way to a rightful anger, to necessary questions that demand more than routine, banal answers. Helplessness and defeat is what we just cannot afford.
Was it a siege, or a war, or a fullblown attack? The right words fail as we regroup somewhat to figure a response to this devastation. Were we equipped to deal with this brand of militarised and meditated violence? We laud the brave who laid down their lives, mourn the innocents who fell pray to vicious bullets and burns and also pick the right kind of holes, raising questions of where we may have slipped up, and possibly gone wrong. The most difficult question to answer is who was responsible.
For those who have lost their own, the recovery of the dear one’s body, the performance of that last ritual is as critical as knowing who was responsible for the loss. Only then is the grieving and healing complete. It is when we fail, as a society and state, to provide the honest answers that the space for a vicious, in place of righteous, anger opens up.
On the last count, close to 200 precious lives have been lost, over twice the number injured and the social and psychological costs too high to quantify. Since 1992-1993 when Mumbai, (Bombay then), was scarred irretrievably, segregation and unmarked borders have been drawn. We have had since, a dozen bomb attacks, one devastating flood and now this, our own brand of 26/11. Have we in years past, as tragedy after tragedy unfolded, asked, and asked relentlessly the right kind of questions? Or have we been satisfied in the comfort of a working city’s resilience to leave these uncomfortable issues well alone?
For the honest answers to come, the questions must be fair, dictated by clean professionalism and reason. Our record in punishing the guilty, those guilty of terror and mass violence, inspires little confidence. Will 26/11 be Mumbai’s defining and differentiating moment?
Saturday morning, 29/11 saw an unprecedented event. From Dadar’s Hindu colony to the Hindu crematorium near the sea shore, over 20,000 Mumbaikars, walked in silence to mourn the loss of Hemant Karkare, an IPS officer well loved and respected by his men for his courage and integrity. What made the mourning different, and special, was that a mixed sea of Mumbai’s citizens also joined in and mourned the loss. The silent grief of the mourners was barely broken by slogans and the dignity of the procession mocked the billboards of every political party, claiming the three police martyrs as its own!
There is palpable anger against those among the political class who would like to use Mumbai’s 26/11 to fish for votes. There are also questions about the failure to respond to warning of our coast’s vulnerability, Maharashtra’s and Gujarat’s, the failure to check the easy passage of the boat carrying the men and their ammunition to Mumbai’s shores, the inefficient and non-transparent functioning of our institutions of intelligence and law and order.
It is these questions, raised outside the framework of a nation and state going to elections (five states went to vote on 27/11 and 29/11, the country will vote in its next government in 2009 and Maharashtra too later in the same year) that need to be consistently raised. And answered.
In 60 plus years of our independent existence as a nation, we have failed to implement Police Reforms recommended by multiple National Police Commissions (1981-1989) that have the backing of the most seasoned and senior among the force. Our central and state intelligence agencies govern without accountability and transparency to the public.
Both these factors impinge on the critical question of the rule of law in general and specifically and critically impact when we are faced with terror attacks of the likes of 26/11.
For Mumbai and India to know the truth behind who and what planned 26/11 we must allow transparent and independent investigations. The guilty, whoever they are, whatever their ideology, must be punished.
The writer is Secretary, Citizens for Justice and Peace
