That is the key word: together.

Time had come a long time ago to depoliticise our response to terror just as other great democracies around the world have done. We can mourn that we lost all that time. But now, even if a tragedy like this cannot make both sides — in fact the entire political class — make amends, we have no right to call ourselves a great nation, democracy, civilization. And that is a right we must not deny ourselves. If the Mumbai attacks had not happened, we were looking quite good. In a global economic meltdown, we were looking at 7 per cent growth, we even touched the moon. We had just busted the gang that’s said to have bombed so many of our cities. The 60 % voting in Kashmir would have been the top story of this week, and for a nation, some of whose leading intellectuals were suggesting just ten weeks ago that we “should let the Kashmiris go”, there couldn’t be better news. We can’t let a bunch of murderous thugs rob it all away from us. We have to also ensure that others of their ilk are never to hit our people, or our foreign guests again. Ever.

There is also a special responsibility on Manmohan Singh’s shoulders. In 1991, he liberated our economy. Over the past five years, he modernised our foreign policy. Partly distracted by that, and partly by the politics of his coalition, he has not been able to make the slightest difference to our internal security. He has to now start fixing that. And doesn’t matter, come May and a new Parliament, whether he is still there to complete that process, or he leaves it for a successor, of whatever political persuasion.