Almost everyday there is a “rasta rok” or stone-throwing, railway service disruption, bandh or straight forward arson and looting. No Mumbaikar can plan his day, nor is he sure of reaching home in one piece. If this is routine, the terrorist attack just multiplies the insecurity and uncertainty of life. In such explosive conditions, where the police and the politicians are both distrusted by the people, it is not easy to collect intelligence. The so called intelligence failure is an inevitable result of the fractured police, political skullduggery, and destruction of community life.

The terrorist attack of March 1993 followed the destruction of the Babri Masjid, and large-scale communal riots ensued. But it must also be remembered that the January 1993 communal inferno was limited to Mumbai and the systematic killing of Muslims in the city. Since then, there has been a cycle of terrorist attacks almost every year, and every time there is this benumbing of mind and body. The only difference is in the methods used by the terrorists. It is difficult to say whether the “Hindu terrorism” is a reaction to “Muslim terrorism”, or the whole cycle began with extremist Hindus destroying the Babri Masjid.

Mumbai did not have either a communal history or this kind of terrorist cycle before the nineties. Mumbai was known for gang wars and mafia chains. Normal city life was not disturbed by those gang wars. Moreover, cynically speaking, the mafia was “secular”, in the sense that Hindu and Muslim mafiosi worked in perfect tandem. The growth of the real estate and the builder-contractor lobby slowly brought the mafia into the life of the city’s middle-class. Selling or buying flats could not be done without those “service providers”. So the city’s sprawling middle-class not only tolerated the dons — small or big — but also used them to sort out their problems. It was not exactly bonhomie, but a kind of co-existence.

... contd.