American Blog

Submitted by YOUR NEW REALITY

By Darryl Masn

Christine Fair of RAND disputes heavy-rotation American corporate media allegations that the Mumbai attacks are the work of the Pakistan military, intelligence or Pakistan terrorists trained by groups fighting India over Kashmir :

…she pointed to India’s domestic problems, and long tensions between Hindus, who make up about 80 percent of India’s population of 1.13 billion, and Muslims, who make up 13.4 percent.“There are a lot of very, very angry Muslims in India,” Ms. Fair said. “The economic disparities are startling and India has been very slow to publicly embrace its rising Muslim problem…This is a major domestic political challenge for India.

“The public political face of India says, ‘Our Muslims have not been radicalized,’ she said. “But the Indian intelligence apparatus knows that’s not true. India’s Muslim communities are being sucked into the global landscape of Islamist jihad.”

“Indians will have a strong incentive to link this to Al Qaeda,” she said. “But this is a domestic issue. This is not India’s 9/11.”

In all major, well-coordinated terror attacks, where it is obvious that some or all of the terrorists involved have had military training, and access to military-grade explosives and weaponry, the first and most important question to be asked is not simply ‘Who did it?’ but ‘Who benefits?’

The incentive for India to blame Pakistan is, of course, to delay the day they have to finally confront the terrorism and terrorists within its own borders. That is terrorism perpetuated by both Muslims and Hindus, usually against each other.

The horror and carnage of the 60 hour long Mumbai military-style assault and massacre has memory-holed this story, which broke with stunning impact in India only a few days before the attacks began :

India is in something of a state of shock after learning from official sources that its first Hindu terror cell may have carried out a series of deadly bombings that were initially blamed on militant Muslims. The revelation is forcing the country to consider some difficult questions.

At least 10 people have been arrested in connection with several bomb blasts in the Muslim-dominated town of Malegaon in the western state of Maharashtra in September, which left six people dead. But reports suggest that police believe the cell may also have carried out a number of previous attacks, including last year’s notorious bombing of a cross-border train en route to Pakistan, which killed 68 people. Among the alleged members of the cell are a serving army officer and a Hindu monk.

Bomb attacks are not uncommon in India – there has been a flurry in recent months – but police usually blame them on Muslim extremists, often said to have links to militant groups based in either Pakistan or Bangladesh. As a result, the recent cracking of the alleged Hindu cell has forced India to face some difficult issues. A country that prides itself on purported religious and cultural toleration – an ambition that in reality often falls short – has been made to ask itself how this cell could operate for so long. India’s military, which prides itself on its professionalism, has been forced to order an embarrassing inquiry.

While some commentators have expressed surprise about the discovery of the alleged cell, others have pointed out that there has been growing concern about the possible threat from Hindu extremists. In the summer, two members of a right-wing Hindu group were killed while putting together a bomb, and two other suspected members of the same group died in similar circumstances in 2006.

Meanwhile, senior right-wing leaders have made no secret of their wish that Hindus should form suicide squads to protect themselves against Muslim extremists. Bal Thackeray, leader of a group called the Shiv Sena, which has been responsible for communal and regional violence in Mumbai, wrote recently in the party’s magazine: “The threat of Islamic terror in India is rising. It is time to counter the same with Hindu terror. Hindu suicide squads should be readied to ensure the existence of Hindu society and to protect the nation.”

At least one of the Mumbai terrorists is said to have made demands, by phone, for the release of prisoners, ‘our brothers’ or similar words, held by Indian authorities. The immediate assumption, the well-trained assumption, is to fill in the gaps and assume the terrorist was talking about releasing suspected Muslim terrorists. But was he, in fact, demanding the release of the alleged Hindu terrorists?

The miasma of conflicting reports and claims (was it ten terrorists, or were there 26?) surrounding the Mumbai attacks is sticky and thick, and now the last Westerners have escaped the hotels, it will quickly fade from the evening news and even ‘official story’ shattering news, should it arrive, on who did it, why, who trained them, will be of little interest to many, particularly if, or when, it turns out that whatever Al Qaeda is supposed to be today was not responsible for the three days of mayhem.

The Indian government has to make sure that Pakistan wears responsibility for the attacks, it has to follow the Western media narrative already in play, even if behind the scenes India’s leaders tell the Pakistanis, “Look, we know you guys didn’t do it, but our people will want our blood if we say Muslims born in India did it.”

And how to blame the violent tenets of religion only for the motivation to such bloodshed and death if it turns out that fanatical Hindus were involved in the Mumbai massacres?

There’s something truly gruesome about the feeding frenzy of media around the attacks. We needed to know what happened, and what was still happening, but we were educated once again that the possible death of someone from the US you’ve never met or heard of is far more important than the confirmed deaths of more than 180 Indians who’ve you’ve also never met or heard of. Why is a missing American or Brit of more immediate media importance than the locals? Because it has to be about ‘us’ and not them. It has to fit The Narrative of the War On Terror, and that is an angry, militant Islamic war against innocent Westerners. Oh yes, Fox News and the Rupert Murdoch newspapers tell us, Indians were killed, but it was Middle Class White People From The West the terrorists were really after.

An Australian man trapped in his hotel room for two days, giving ‘Live From Terror Hotel’ phone reports, soaks up fat chunks of coverage, and yet what did we hear of the dozens slaughtered in the train station while local police refused to open fire and kill the killers? Little. Which is, or was, the bigger story? There were no Americans, Brits or Australians at the train station (no white ones, anyway) amongst all those so callously gunned down. They are just more of the anonymously dead of the ‘War On Terror’.

We see people who look like us on the news, wearing our kind of clothes, flowing through airports safe and well and Back Home, where everything is safe and well, while hundreds of families prepare for funerals and endure the endless stall of time in hospital casualty waiting rooms, but we see little or nothing of them. Which is why we no longer need or even think of turning to the evening news to find out what’s going on, and therein is the very reason why the media institutions are dying. It’s not that kind of world anymore, the power to shape the narratives of and for this day and age are fading fast. The dead of India are not, and should not be, anonymous to us.

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