Islamic terror in Mumbai: What can India learn from Israel? – must read

The Region: India and Israel: The parallels
Nov 30, 2008 20:27 | Updated Dec 2, 2008
By BARRY RUBIN

For years, India has been subjected to periodic terrorist attacks throughout the country. But what happened in Mumbai is something new and different: a full-scale terrorist war.

This is the kind of threat and problem Israel has been facing for decades. What are the lessons for India from Israel’s experience?

First, India needs and has the right to expect international sympathy and help. It will get sympathy but will it get help? Once it is clear that other countries must actually do something, incur some costs, possibly take some risks, everything changes.

If the terrorists came from bases or training camps in Pakistan, India would want international action to be taken. Pakistan must be pressured to close such camps, stop helping terrorists and provide information possessed by Pakistani intelligence agencies.

But will Western countries make a real effort? Are they going to impose sanctions on Pakistan or even denounce it? Will they make public the results of their own investigations about responsibility for the terror campaign against India?

NOT LIKELY. After all, such acts would cost them money and involve potential risks, perhaps even of the terrorists targeting them. Moreover, they need Pakistan, especially to cooperate on keeping down other Islamist terrorist threats, not spread around nuclear weapons technology too much and cooperate on maintaining some stability in Afghanistan.

This parallels Israel’s situation with Syria, Lebanon and Iran. For decades, the US and some European countries have talked to the Syrian government about closing down terrorist headquarters in Damascus. The Syrians merely say no (though sometimes they have just lied and said the offices were closed). The US even did impose some sanctions. But by being intransigent, pretending moderation and hinting help on other issues, Syria has gotten out of its isolation.

So, despite all the pious talk about fighting terrorism, in real terms, India – like Israel – is largely on its own in defending itself from terrorism.

ANOTHER PROBLEM India faces, like Israel in the case of Lebanon, is that it is dealing with a country that lacks an effective government. Pakistan is in real terms a state of anarchy. Even within the intelligence apparatus, factions simply do as they please in inciting terrorism. Given popular opinion and Pakistan’s Islamic framework, even a well-intentioned government would be hard put to crack down.

In Israel’s case, the whole rationale for regimes such as those in Iran and Syria is radical ideology. So pervasive is the daily supply of lies and incitement to hatred that popular opinion supports the most murderous terrorism. Murder of Israeli civilians brings celebrations in the Arab world. Appeals to law and order, holding governments responsible for their actions, shaming them or going over their heads to turn to the masses on humanitarian grounds simply don’t work.

So what’s a country to do? It might consider cross-border raids against terrorist camps or retaliation to pressure the terrorist sponsor to desist. Sometimes it will actually take such action. But can India depend on international support for such self-defense measures or will it then be labeled an aggressor? How much is India willing to risk war with Pakistan even though it has a legitimate casus belli due to covert aggression against it by that neighbor country? And let’s not forget that Pakistan has nuclear weapons, a situation which Israel may soon face in regard to Iran.

Now we can see the logic of terrorism as a strategy by radical groups and countries pursuing aggression by covert means. Their victims are not only put on the defensive but have to make tough decisions about self-defense.

FINALLY, THERE is the dangerous “root cause” argument. Many Western intellectuals and journalists – as well as some governments – are ready to blame the victim of terrorism. In Israel’s case, despite desperate efforts to promote peace – concessions, territorial withdrawals and the offer of a Palestinian state – it is said to be the villain for not giving the Palestinians enough.

The terrorists and their sponsors use this situation to their advantage. By being intransigent – demanding so much and offering so little – they keep the conflict going and are able to pose as victims simultaneously.

Will some suggest that if India merely gives up Kashmir and makes various concessions, the problem will go away? This might not happen but it is worth keeping an eye on such a trend.

The Indian government is thus going to have some very tough decisions to make. How will it mobilize real international strategic support and not just expressions of sympathy for the deaths and destruction? How can it destroy terrorist groups, including installations outside its borders, and deter their sponsors?

Israel’s experience offers some lessons: Depend on yourself, be willing to face unfair criticism to engage in self-defense, take counterterrorism very seriously, mobilize your citizens as an active warning system and decide when and where to retaliate.

Defending yourself against terrorism is not easy. Unfortunately, even in an era of “war against terrorism” those truly willing to help in the battle are few and far between.

Since radical Islamists really believe their own propaganda, however, they tend to minimize their allies and maximize their enemies. You don’t want to make 900 million Hindus and additional other Indians, in South Asia and elsewhere, mad at you. There are about as many Hindus and Sikhs as there are Muslims and, as one Indian reader put it, “There is a Hindi saying: One and one makes 11. It is time for India and Israel to become allies. It is a jihad we are both facing.”

The writer is director of Global Research in International Affairs Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs Journal.

http://www.gloriacenter.org

Videos: Mumbai terrorists speaking, Paki media, British humor on Islamic terrorism

Hear the terrorists speaking to news channels about their demands here

Pakistan media having a go at Hindus for orchestrating Mumbai massacre. click here
Some black humor from John Oliver on these islam terrorists — must watch video

Debate or denial: the Indian Muslim dilemma — must read

Debate or denial: the Muslim dilemma

Jul 17, 2007,Hasan Suroor

More Muslims need to realise that Islamist terrorists are not simply “misguided” individuals acting on a whim but that they are people who know what they are doing and they are doing it deliberately in the name of Islam.

Judging from much of the Muslim reaction to the latest Islamist outrage — last month’s attempted bombings in London and Glasgow — the community seems to have talked itself into a default position in relation to violent Muslim extremism. The same old arguments are being flogged again betraying an unwillingness to acknowledge either the scale of the problem or its nature. The fear of making the community or Islam look bad has created a strange silence aroun d issues that lie at the heart of the Islamism debate.

Broadly, the Muslim argument is that it is all down to a host of external factors. Top of the list is the western foreign policy, especially with regard to the Palestinian issue, compounded by the invasion and continuing occupation of Iraq. Then there are social and economic reasons such as lack of education and high rate of unemployment in the Muslim community — again attributed to external causes such as racial or religious discrimination.

In other words: don’t blame us; it is all other people’s doing. We are only the victims. As someone who feels the same pressures as other Muslims, I wish this was true. But it isn’t. It not all other people’s doing. We are not just the victims.

I used the term ‘default position’ as an euphemism. There is a more robustly appropriate term, which is being increasingly used to describe the Muslim position: denial. The view that Muslims are in denial of the extent of the problem and their own responsibility in dealing with it is no longer confined to right-wing Muslim-bashers. Even liberal opinion has started to shift.

Appearing on an NDTV panel discussion last week, I was struck by how closely my two distinguished co-panellists — one in New Delhi and the other in Bangalore — stuck to the ‘default’ position. They kept refer ring to “looming images” from Iraq and Palestine; and to the frustration and “anger” bred by American and British foreign policy. There were obligatory references to social deprivation etc., etc. And as for the three Indian doctors suspected to have been behind the London-Glasgow plot, they were simply “misguided” individuals acting alone.

There was much hand-wringing when the anchor underlined the fact that Muslims had been behind all recent acts of terrorism. Yes, it was worrying. Of course, the community condemned any violence committed in the name of Islam, a peaceful religion. And, indeed, there was need for introspection and discussion. But all this was hedged in with so many “ifs” and “buts” that the whole debate seemed like a huge exercise in denial. At least up to the point where I was cut off because the satellite time ran out.

It is the response of a community that sees itself under siege and is irritated that every time a Muslim does something silly it is expected to stand up and apologise. Add to this the prevailing Islamophobia (it is pretty widespread, make no mistake about it), and it is not difficult to understand why Muslims are in this defensive mood. But how long will they continue to shy away from facing the truth? And the truth is that many of their assumptions about the underlying causes of extremism are flawed. Every fresh terrorist attack chips away at the idea that foreign policy and socio-economic factors are the sole drivers of Islamist extremism, making the Muslim default position more untenable.

Hassan Butt, a reformed British extremist, recalls how “we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy.” Writing in The Observer, he said if he was still stuck in his old ways, he would be “laughing once again” at suggestions that the June 29-30 failed attacks were motivated by anger over British foreign policy.

Mr. Butt criticised Muslims and liberal non-Muslim intellectuals and politicians for failing to recognise the “role of Islamist ideology in terrorism” — an ideology that, according to another lapsed extremist Shiraz Maher, preaches a “separatist message of Islamic supremacy” and seeks to establish a “puritanical caliphate.” Mr. Maher knew Kafeel Ahmed, the Indian who tried to blow up Glasgow airport and is now fighting for his life in a hospital in Scotland.

Both Mr. Butt and Mr. Maher were activists of Hizb-ut-Tahrir, one of Britain’s most controversial radical groups with a long and notorious history of recruiting potential jihadis in mosques and on university campuses. Mohammed Siddique Khan, who masterminded the 7/7 bombings, was a member of Hizb at the same time as Mr. Butt. The July 7 attacks were widely attributed to the invasion of Iraq and other west-inspired “atrocities” against Muslims. According to Mr. Butt, though many extremists were enraged by the deaths of fellow Muslims across the world “what drove me and many of my peers to plot acts of extreme terror within Britain, our homeland and abroad, was a sense that we were fighting for the creation of a revolutionary state that would eventually bring Islamic justice to the world.”

Arguably, defectors are not the most reliable of people and there is, inevitably, an element of exaggeration in what they say about the organisation they have left and of their own role in it. Yet, so long as we are careful to remember where they are coming from and don’t allow ourselves to be mesmerised by their insiders’ account, they remain our best guide to understanding the world they have left behind. It is only an ex-extremist who can help us get a glimpse of what goes on inside an extremist organisation and sometime that can change our perceptions of an issue in a fundamental way. So, when people like Mr. Butt and Mr. Maher debunk some of the most widely held assumptions about the nature of Muslim extremism it is important to pay heed. And they are not the only ones. Ed Husain, another ex-Islamist, has written a whole book (The Islamist) warning against complacency.

First and foremost, Muslims must acknowledge what Ziauddin Sardar, one of Europe’s most prominent Muslim scholars, calls the “Islamic nature of the problem.” Islamist extremism has not descended from another planet or been imposed on the community from outside. It breeds within the community and is the product of a certain kind of interpretation of Islam. And, in the words, of Mr. Sardar, terrorists are a “product of a specific mindset that has deep roots in Islamic history.”

In a seminal essay, “The Struggle for Islam’s Soul” (New Statesman, July 18, 2005), Mr. Sardar argued that Islamists were “nourished by an Islamic tradition that is intrinsically inhuman and violent in its rh etoric, thought and practice” and this placed a unique burden on Muslims as they tried to make sense of what their co-religionists were doing in the name of Islam. “To deny that they are a product of Islamic history and tradition is more than complacency. It is a denial of responsibility, a denial of what is happening in our communities. It is a refusal to live in the real world,” he wrote.

Mr. Sardar’s views are significant. He is a practising Muslim with deep grounding in Islamic theology. He was deeply upset by Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses and is often involved in verbal duels with Islamophobic commen tators. But as he points out because he is a Muslim and it is in the name of his religion that terrorists are acting, he believes it is his “responsibility critically to examine the tradition that sustains them.”

More Muslims need to realise that Islamist terrorists are not simply “misguided” individuals acting on a whim but that they are people who know what they are doing and they are doing it deliberately in the name of Islam. However perverted their interpretation it remains an interpretation of Islam and it is not enough to condemn their actions or accuse them of hijacking Islam without doing anything about it.

Let’s face it; there are verses in the Koran that justify violence. The “hard truth that Islam does permit the use of violence,” as Mr. Butt points out, must be recognised by Muslims. When Islam was in its infancy and battling against non-believers violence was deemed legitimate to put them down. Today, when it is the world’s second largest religion with more than one billion followers around the world and still growing that context has lost its relevance. Yet, jihadi groups, pursuing their madcap scheme of establishing Dar-ul-Islam (the Land of Islam), are using these passages to incite impressionable Muslim youths. Yet there is no sign of a debate in the community beyond easy platitudes, and it remains in denial.

Symptoms of Offended Muslim Syndrome and support groups

Symptoms of Offended Muslim Syndrome (OMS)
Irritability, agitation, anxiety at the sight of women who are not fully covered
Prolonged rage or unexplained killing sprees
Significant changes in immigration patterns
Brooding about the past glory of the Caliphate
Decreased effectiveness and minimal work productivity Difficulty in understanding new information without a trial lawyer
Feelings of despair or hopelessness about the existence of Israel
Recurring thoughts of death to the infidels

The complete article appears here

What Indian Muslims Should Do — Dr Rafiq Zakaria

Full article by Arvind Lakhare go here
What should Muslims do?

In his book “Communal Rage In Secular India” (Popular Prakashan, September 2002) Dr Zakaria devoted the entire last chapter to “What Muslims Should Do?”, and accepting that there is a great deal of among Indian Muslims who believed there is little they can do to save themselves, he recommended the following.

1. Confrontation has done no good to the Muslims. The only alternative is for them is to change their outlook. Muslims must try and become an integral part of the mainstream. They must wholeheartedly collaborate in enriching composite nationalism. For this, they must get out of their ghetto mentality, break the barriers of alienation and generate a harmonious environment.

2. They must discard their worn-out prejudices and outmoded habits and adjust themselves to the requirements of the changing times. They must stop asking for doles which will only cripple them, and instead learn to stand on their own feet because the fact is that they have no true friends; many who show them sympathy are not sincere and do so only for electoral gain. Even Muslims from other countries have never come to their rescue. This has been proved time and again, and the wise must now take the hint and correct themselves.

3. Muslims continue to live in a make-believe world of their own. Their leaders waste their energies in whipping up emotions and bringing more trouble to the ordinary Muslims. There are also the other “warriors” — priests, academicians, journalists — who add fuel to the fire by taking up cudgels on behalf of the community. Indian Muslims have to come out of this quagmire; they must show such self-appointed champions of their cause in their place; they must do their best to change the hostile attitude of the Hindus against them and take their proper share in the nation’s development.

4. Indian Muslims must join hands with liberal Hindus to work zealously for harmony between the two communities. To succeed in this task, they must change their own behaviour, indeed their entire perception.

5. Indian Muslims must boldly come forward to undergo all-round transformation in their style of functioning. The younger generation in particular will have to arm themselves both educationally and socially. They will succeed if parents shed their old habits, give up their outdated notions, and help encourage and help their sons and daughters to get the best education. Merit alone will give them reward; they must never seek patronage.

6. Indian Muslims must disarm the jihadis and disown the bigotism which has made Muslims pariahs everywhere. They must give assurance to the non-Muslims that their religion stands for “live and let live”. This reformation will rejuvenate Islam itself.

7. Without compromising the Quranic injunctions, Indian Muslims must agree to the introduction of certain much-needed, essential changes in the Personal, particularly the enactment of monogamy. There is, in fact, enough scope under the Shariah to amend the laws relating to marriage, divorce, dower and even maintenance.

8. The controversy on the singing of Vande Mataram is meaningless. It was sung by all Muslim leaders of the Congress during the freedom struggle. Those Muslims who do not want to sing it, may not, but they must stand up when it is sung as a mark of respect to an anthem which has a hoary past and is declared as a national song. Why add hurt to an already worsening communal relationship?

9. There is the question of family planning on which much of our country’s progress depends. It cannot be denied that Muslims have not taken to it as seriously as Hindus. This has to be corrected. There must be a vigorous campaign for its implementation among Muslims and their leaders in every sector must engage themselves to persuade them to adopt it so that they do not lag behind Hindus in fulfilling this most urgent task, without which India cannot succeed in eradicating poverty.

10. Muslims must make a sustained effort to convince Hindus that they should have no fear of them and assure them that they harbour no enmity towards them, nor are in a secret conspiracy with Muslims elsewhere to harm them. They must give assurance that Muslims are as much the sons of the soil as Hindus and as committed to the country’s glory and prosperity as Hindus are.

11. Finally, the punch line. “What Indian Muslims have to understand is that eventually it is not their leaders but they themselves who will have to make their destiny.”

Does Poverty Cause Islamic Terrorism?

Does Poverty Cause Terrorism?

August 22, 2008

I delved into this question towards the end of this post about Aafia Siddiqui from last week. The answer is no. Here’s yet another example affirming it:

AHMEDABAD: Many of those accused of planning and executing the serial blasts of Ahmedabad do not come from stereotypical backgrounds generally associated with terrorists – uneducated men from poor families. They are educated men with some form of technical training.

While this may surprise many, a recent study by two scholars from Oxford University says this is only part of a larger international trend. They have found that over the years, those with engineering degrees are over-represented in Islamic terror organisation.

Among the SIMI men Safdar Nagori is a mechanical engineer. Although, the man behind the ‘Indian Mujahideen’ terror email Abdul Subhan Qureshi alias Taufique is considered a computer whiz. Iqbal Shaikh holds an ITI diploma in electrical engineering while Gyasuddin Ansari has an ITI diploma in radio technology.

As I state in the above-linked post from last week, it’s ideology, not poverty, that drives Islamic terrorism. As for our old friend Aafia Siddiqui, her bio isn’t exactly a portrait of poverty and despair.

Terrorist activities in India is a part of global conspiracy to blame Muslim youths: Aminul Hassan

The below spin by a Muslim is being posted here to give an idea about the perverted and deluded mindset about the Muslim about blaming others for their problems.  Has the author ever considered the plight of minorities in Muslim countries?? Here are some examples

Hindu temple destruction in Bangladesh Police razes clandestine Hindu temple in Riyadh, deports three people Agony of Hindus in Pakistan
Terrorist activities in India is a part of global conspiracy to blame Muslim youths: Aminul Hassan
S.O. News service, Thursday, 07 August 2008:

Udupi: The Muslim youths are always the first one to be targeted when there is a bomb blast or any terrorist activity in India. They are harassed unnecessarily. Often the residents are unaware of any such activities or as to who is behind all this, say one of a prominent Muslim personality Aminul Hassan in Udupi Jamiya Masjid. Talking about the terrorist activities and their aim, he said that wherever the terrorist activities are happening in the world, America and Israel are behind it. These nations try to indulge Muslim in the terrorist activities. He said the terrorist activities are on a high in India and from Kashmir to Kanyakumari it is there. Everywhere the Muslims are being arrested after the attack without any substantial proof that often makes a Muslim individual retaliate against the government and this should be stopped immediately.

He said that the Muslims cannot attack another person as murdering a man in Islam is considered as the murder of whole humanity. Further, he said that in 2004 when Indian politics joined hands with Israel, terrorist attack had increased in the country. It might be Israel organizations are behind these attacks. Aminul Hassan further said that the main aim of Israel is to destroy Muslims and they are coming close to their aim very rapidly. Today the situation is that every Muslim is seen with suspicion. In schools and colleges also the Muslims are being targeted.

He said that the Muslims have every right to live in this country as others. The Muslims had equally sacrificed their lives with the others during the time of independence. During independence the British planted a seed of hatred and doubt between Hindus and Muslims and now after independence that seed has become a big tree. Nearly 10,000 communal violence have taken place in the country in which lakhs of people have lost their lives.

He called upon the government to reach the root of the terrorist attack in the country and arrest the real terrorists. He was not only angry for arresting Muslims only on suspicion but by this the Muslims will also retaliate against the government.

In the function, Yasir Malpe also expressed his views on the topic of terrorism. Moulana Ayyub Qasmi, Hussain Kodibengre, Asif Iqbal and lots of people from Udupi were present on the occasion.

Posted By : Aynaz

Global Jihad comes to India: Indian Mujahideen’s Declaration of Open War Against India

“Paradoxically, while many of the New Jihadis are home-grown, the reason for their energetic mobilization is global. As the Indian Mujahideen said in their email, they are motivated by the belief that “we Muslims are one across the globe.” India, therefore, in the minds of the New Jihadis, is but one front in the global jihad.”

The New Jihadis
By Nitin Pai for Pragati, 13/06/08
It is abundantly clear that a pattern of contemporary global ‘jihad’ has manifested itself in India.

It is hard to say, but it may well be that the Indian media prevented the Indian Mujahideen from setting off their tenth bomb in Jaipur.

The earliest reports of the contents of their email message made them appear merely dangerously confused. But as we learn more about what exactly they said in their email, it is clear that their message was not merely incendiary.

It is, as Praveen Swami put it, a political manifesto, for the “Indian Mujahideen’s Declaration of Open War Against India.”

Because that document has profound implications for India’s psychological preparation for the long war ahead, it is incumbent on the media and the government to make the entire document public.

It is abundantly clear that a pattern of contemporary global ‘jihad’ has manifested itself in India. Now, terrorist attacks by Islamic groups are nothing new for India – but in the past these were linked to the secessionist movement, the proxy war in Jammu & Kashmir, or to any number of Pakistan’s extended jihadi apparatus, including the Dawood Ibrahim’s organized crime network.

The difference between those attacks and the more recent ones is that whereas the former involved either foreigners or “hardcore” locals, the latter involve individuals and cells from a broader section of the India’s Muslim population.

Paradoxically, while many of the New Jihadis are home-grown, the reason for their energetic mobilization is global. As the Indian Mujahideen said in their email, they are motivated by the belief that “we Muslims are one across the globe.” India, therefore, in the minds of the New Jihadis, is but one front in the global jihad.

While they cite the demolition of the Babri Masjid and the Godhra riots as the reasons for their attacks – which their apologists are quick to unquestioningly ingest – the fact that their violence is directed against the Indian people and the Indian state, including against Muslims who disagree with their ideology – suggests that these grievances are either excuses or propaganda slogans for their real agenda.

At this point, it is common for the Indian public debate to be hung up on whether injustice leads to terrorism or vice versa. But because the New Jihadis see themselves as part of a global religious war, it is reasonable to conclude that no amount of justice – short of the impossible goal of reordering Indian society according to their demands – will convince them to halt their struggle.

What this means is that the only course open to India is to fight the New Jihadis to the finish. They have already declared war on India. Now, it is not that the Indian government is not fighting – it is, and it has notched some notable gains against the Student’s Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) in recent years. But because the entire debate of counter-terrorism has been painted in the tired old colors of “communalism,” “secularism” and “minorities,” the Indian government, and the political establishment, has failed to mobilize the nation for this war.

There are two broad arenas where the war must be fought: on the ground and in the mind. First, there is near unanimity in the law-enforcement community that the Indian Penal Code is inadequate when it comes to fighting terrorism. If the war against the New Jihadis has to be fought constitutionally – as it must – the legal framework must address the new challenges.

As Philip Bobbitt contends in Terror and Consent, a special anti-terrorism law is necessary. The political establishment must draw the right lessons from the partisan debate over the erstwhile Terrorism and Disruptive Activities Act (TADA) and Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA), drawing from the valid concerns of both sides of the debate. A new act, with more stringent checks and balances lies within reach of the political class.

Perhaps in response to the stinging criticism of his government’s incompetence in the area of internal security, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh belatedly called for the formation of a new national counter-terrorism agency. Now whether or not there is a need for a new bureaucracy to fight this war is a matter of technical efficiency.

Is it cheaper to restructure and network existing law enforcement and intelligence organizations, or to build an entirely new one? On the face of it, reengineering and rejuvenating existing agencies is desirable. Not only because creating a whole new bureaucracy is generally a bad idea. But also because politicians would find it convenient to cite the creation of an anti-terrorism agency to convey an impression of progress, even when there is none.

The second theatre of this war is in the mind. For that, citizens must know that India has a war imposed on it, and that they are considered “legitimate targets” by the New Jihadis. Clearly this war is against some of its own Muslim citizens, but to cast this as a “communal” issue – as is the case today – is incorrect, dangerous and self-defeating.

For the contemporary global jihad has a component that involves a conflict among Muslims. Like in Britain and Pakistan, this involves a struggle for primacy within the Muslim community – from battles over control of mosques to those over control over political leadership. Those prone to view the Muslim community as a “vote-bank” are unlikely to want to notice this.

That the Indian Mujahideen, like their counterparts elsewhere, condemn Muslims who oppose their world-view as much as they condemn non-Muslims should erase doubts as to the nature of the problem.

For the same reason, the argument that a no-nonsense counter-terrorism policy will antagonize the entire Muslim community is untrue. But it is often pointed out that moderate Muslims do not meaningfully oppose the extremists. To the extent this is true, isn’t it reasonable that they should be afraid of doing so when they do not see the Indian state credibly committed to fighting the New Jihadis? So too the oft-repeated concerns over communal harmony. If the government makes a clean breast of the situation, it would be downright patronizing to suggest that Indian people will begin large-scale rioting.

It remains to be seen whether an enlightened political and intellectual leadership will emerge to take India through this war. Unfortunately, the last few years have seen positions on several issues of national interest – from geopolitical partnerships to nuclear policy to counter-terrorism 0 reduced to dogmatic mantras of partisan politics.

However, given the likely intensification of attacks by the New Jihadis, parties hoping to see themselves in power next year would do well to start stepping out of the corners they have painted themselves into.
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Nitin Pai is editor of Pragati and blogs at The Acorn (acorn.nationalinterest.in).