Attack on the idea of Indiia

indianexpress.com: "Cross-border terrorism’’ was yesterday’s problem. Today we face the far more serious problem of an attack on the very idea of India. I am willing to put in writing that even if by some miracle a solution was found in Kashmir tomorrow terrorist acts against India would continue. A new grievance would be found.

Liberal, ‘‘secular’’ Indian journalists would help find it just as some tried to link the train bombings in Mumbai to Gujarat. One national newspaper was insensitive enough to print names of dead Gujaratis on its front page to prove this point.

Before Gujarat it was Babri Masjid that was regularly summoned up to explain the Indian Muslim’s sense of grievance and before that there was the neglect of Urdu, Partition, poverty.

In Blair’s words, ‘‘Islamist extremism’s whole strategy is based on a presumed sense of grievance that can motivate people to divide against each other. Our answer has to be a set of values strong enough to unite people with each other.’’ The difference between India’s values and those of Pakistan, Bangladesh could not be better described."