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Why India is a target 

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Manjeet Kriplani Posted: Dec 02, 2008 at 0214 hrs IST
We’re poor. We’re illiterate. We’re still traditional. Too many religions, too many languages, too many ethnicities.  What do we have that the extremists repeatedly make us the target of their terrorism?  

Those very things — poverty, illiteracy, tradition, multiple religions, ethnicities and languages. Not because they are a fertile breeding ground for radical recruits but because India is finding workable, affordable and replicable solutions which will help it overcome the same problems. Those solutions are being emulated by emerging societies across the world, giving them hope for their own futures. That is why India’s unexpected rise is threatening to those forces that work in the darkness of despair.  

Socially, politically and economically, India sits between two extremes: the West and China. The models of the western world are too developed to be easily adapted — 50 years of aid has not been effective. China is autocratic, its top-down growth delivered by an appointed, disciplined elite to an obedient population. Neither condition is universal. India’s is. “India is, in a sense, the crucible of the world,” says Prableen Sabhaney of Fabindia. Under the umbrella of India, in varying stages of development, is the rest of the world — south Asia, where it is the mother culture, but also Africa, some nations of the Middle East, south and central America, central and south east Asia. These are regions rich in assets, and human capital with the potential and now the desire, to develop. They all think: If India can do it, so can they. 

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India is showing how a developing country can transform itself — from the bottom up. Politically, it is democratic, pluralistic, inclusive. Its democracy is chaotic and imperfect, but it functions and it is moving forward. What counts is the vote, first and foremost. Accountability... that’ll come later, at some point when democracy has produced enough social and economic equality. But that vote is empowering, it creates upward mobility and a huge constituency of the poor and underprivileged for democracy that gives it staying power.  

The executing machinery of this democracy is often faulty, but understands the constraints within which it operates. The election commission knows how to access and include people from the remotest corners of the country and overcome the boundaries of tradition — a case study that Afghanistan could use. The judiciary is overburdened and inefficient but also activist when necessary — Pakistan has seen that. The press is free and self-serving but enough times the watchdog it needs to be; the parliament is obstructionist but vital. Rather than spill blood, Indians have learned to use electoral politics and affirmative action to negotiate their way up and out of the centuries-old repressive caste system that left craters of inequality.  

... contd.

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The cause of terrorism is the desire of Islamic Ummah by Madhup Rathi on 2008-12-02 05:01:25.170552+05:30
One more simplistic explanation of the phenomenon of Islamic terrorism. Pakistan has used terrorism since 1980s (remember Punjab and Kashmir), when India was still floundering with socialism. The real reason is the cause of partition of our country. The cause of the partition is Muslims' inability to accept Hindu rulers of this country, given that British had mandated democracy. This is entirely consistent with the Muslim elite's belief that they ruled this country for centuries and after the exit of British, it was their natural right to be the ruler. Since they could not achieve that, they settled for partition, as living under the rulership of Hindus was far worse than accepting a part of nation that they could rule by themselves. However, the fact that they only got only 1/4th of the nation was never digested by this medieval mind-set. The jehad for Kashmir and the infiltration in Assam
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