Word: bombay
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...bombers issued no public statement of responsibility, so it's impossible to be sure who organized the attack. But a leader of the outlawed Student Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) met TIME in Bombay two months ago and spoke plainly of his group's intentions to target the city. "Umar"?a name given to him by TIME?stressed that although his men might accept technical or financial help from fellow militants from Pakistan or elsewhere, the terror campaign in Bombay in recent months was a domestic response by Indian Muslims to years of discrimination at the hands of the Hindu...
...also raises concerns that SIMI might be functioning with more sophisticated help from abroad. Monday's blasts involved the use of RDX explosives, which are favored by several Pakistan-based Islamic militant groups and which are far more lethal than the crude agrochemical devices deployed in previous strikes in Bombay. The coordinated timing of the detonations to within 15 minutes of each other was a further sign of increased technical prowess...
...surprisingly, India's more hard-line Hindu politicians have been quick to seize upon the possibility that Pakistan?not Gujarat?might be to blame for the Bombay attack. Visiting the scene of the blasts, Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani declared, "Pakistan's nefarious designs are not limited to Kashmir or Punjab but to the whole of India." He specifically cited his suspicion that "SIMI has been acting in conjunction with the Lashkar-e-Toiba." Similarly, Gujarat's BJP chief minister, Narendra Modi, who returned to office last November on a wave of Hindu self-assertion, blames what he calls...
...India's standards, though, reactions to the blasts were relatively subdued. There was no violent Hindu response, as has happened so often in the past, and the charges against Pakistan seemed somewhat half hearted. Even Bombay's BJP-allied Shiv Sena party, normally vociferously anti-Pakistan, held an uncharacteristically silent protest march. The change from a year ago?when India and Pakistan were on the brink of war and New Delhi seized any opportunity to point a finger directly at Islamabad?is "striking," says a Western diplomat in Delhi. "India knows that this is a local issue, but 18 months...
...same sensitivity. Perhaps the most divisive issue between Indian Muslims and Hindus is the disputed holy site of Ayodhya, in the north. When a Hindu mob tore down the ancient mosque at Ayodhya during a BJP rally in 1992, it sparked bloody riots across the country and Bombay's first bombing campaign?a deadly day of strikes in March 1993 by the city's Muslim underworld that killed 257 people. Last week, on the same day as the latest Bombay blasts, the government-run Archeological Survey of India (ASI) lent official support to the Hindu fundamentalist cause, declaring that...