Casualty list shows Muslims also victims, like other communities
By
Ravi Velloor, South Asia Bureau Chief
Two-year-old Moshe Holtzberg, orphan of Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivka who were killed, during a memorial service in Mumbai yesterday. -- PHOTOS: ASSOCIATED PRESS, REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
MUMBAI: Sohel Abdul Sheikh, Abdul Razak, Rajendra Prasad, Ramachandra Nair...
The casualty list of last week's terrorist strike on Mumbai carried a stark message for people across this nation with its many communities and ethnic identities: Terror has no religion or particular regional identity.
Victims are in this together
LONDON - THE Bush administration stopped short of blaming last week's terror rampage in India on Pakistani extremists on Monday, but said the new civilian government in Pakistan must cooperate fully and hide nothing.
'This is a time for absolute transparency and for letting the evidence lead where it may,' Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said during a European goodbye tour overshadowed by the terror rampage last week in Mumbai. Dr Rice rearranged her schedule and will go to India for direct talks later this week.
The attack on Mumbai killed some 180 people and wounded more than 280 as a group of militants targeted hotels, train stations and other areas in this vast metropolis.
The one gunman captured alive gave a Muslim name and said during interrogation that he was from Faridkot, Pakistan.
The identity of the attackers has raised concerns of fresh communal tensions in India's most vibrant city, which saw large scale rioting in 1993 following a wave of terror blasts.
This time, though, the anger seems tempered with awareness that Muslims have been victims of the attacks as much as other communities.
Mumbai's landmark Leopold Cafe, where the attacks started, is owned by Muslims. So were many of the people coming to the city's JJ Hospital, where bodies of the victims were taken.
A wealthy American tourist who escaped certain death at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel says he owes his life to a hotel employee named Hussain.
When the firing started, he recalled, Hussain appeared out of nowhere and led him and two others into a broom cupboard. The four spent the next day and a half together, pressed against each other before being rescued eventually.
Likewise, people from southern India and the north, traditional and recent targets of the right-wing Shiv Sena group that dominates Mumbai, were victims and heroes last week.
'Tell Raj Thackeray that Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan is a south Indian from the Bihar Regiment of the army,' was one text message buzzing around Mumbai phones these past three days.
The major, a commando in the National Security Guard, died battling the terrorists inside the Taj.
His roots are in the southern state of Kerala, while his parents live in Bangalore, capital of next-door Karnataka State.
Mr Raj Thackeray, a thuggish politician who is trying to upstage his uncle and former mentor for control of Mumbai, has recently turned his goons on people from Bihar and other northern Indian states, including iconic actor Amitabh Bachchan.
He says they rob locals of jobs and do not show enough respect for the local Maratha culture.
Mr Raj's uncle, the feared Balasaheb Thackeray, built his Shiv Sena group by attacking Tamils and other South Indians in similar fashion.
Besides Major Unnikrishnan, two top police officers died battling terrorists. One of them was the head of the Anti-Terror Squad, Mr Hemant Karkare.
Mr Karkare had been under fire from the older Mr Thackeray for going after Hindu extremists who had set off terror blasts in the town of Malegaon and bombed a train to Pakistan.
He had alleged that Mr Karkare, renowned in Mumbai for incorruptibility, had been acting to please the Congress party by showing to the world that there were Hindu terrorists as well.
At the weekend, Mr Balasaheb changed his tune.
In an editorial he wrote in the Shiv Sena's publication, Saamna, he praised the late Mr Karkare as a valiant son of Maharashtra.
