Some explanations why India has frequent terror attacks

Last Saturday's twin bomb blasts that killed 43 in Hyderabad scarcely received any notice in western media. Perhaps it's because such incidents are all too familiar in India.

I was particularly haunted by the three bomb blasts that happened in Delhi in October 2005, given that the Sarojini Nagar market is within 15 minutes walking distance of my brother-in-law's home and that his family often shops there. This article Hyderabad blasts timed for Vinayaka festival from TOI notes that as with last week's bomb blasts in Hyderabad, the October 2005 Delhi blasts were timed before a festival, namely Diwali.

As with every terrorist strike, there is the usual debate on how to prevent another terror attack. Tavleen Singh, in her column A Violent History (found via Naxal Terror Watch), notes, "...we are losing the war against the jehadis who target India with increasing frequency is because successive governments, both in Delhi and our state capitals, have done nothing to fight back." She cites Ajai Sahni, Editor, South Asia Intelligence Review (SAIR), who notes in his article Hyderabad Déjà, Déjà, Déjà Vu that India has too few police and "deficiencies of capacity" in intelligence. Tavleen Singh notes that more police would not be enough and then places blame on those in her profession who hamstring investigations: "If [police] enter Muslim neighbourhoods in search of clues they are charged with racial profiling and for this we in the media are more to blame than the politicians. We make the loudest protests without realising that the result is that the jehadis are winning the war against India."

The unfortunately titled We're our own worst terrorists, again from TOI, intimates that additional police would not be enough by putting the blame on bribery and corruption endemic at all levels of government in India:

It is often said that India is a 'soft', insteadof a 'hard', state. This means that we, collectively and individually, arewilling or unwilling accomplices to a flagrant flouting of the laws of the land. From the street constable who can be bought for Rs 50 to let an errant trucker or motorist go free, to a chief minister who, indicted in a scam, can openly defy the legal system by saying that he is answerable only to the 'court of the people’, the Indian state — as exemplified by its representatives at various levels — is commonly seen to be up for sale or otherwise open to subversion from within.

Time and again, our top law enforcement agencies have been reprimanded by the judiciary for hopelessly bungling or inexcusably delaying investigations with regard to crucial criminal cases, be they terror related or otherwise.

The inevitable suspicion arises as to whether the perpetrators of such acts enjoy political or other patronage which puts them out of reach of the truncated arm of our law: they are above or beyond the law...

A 'hard' state has to learn to be tough on itself first, in upholding its own rule of law and being seen to do so, before it can be tough against terror. Do we — should we —build the political and ethical sinews to do this? It’s a question for our collective conscience. And till we decide, we’ll have to learn to live with terror from outside, and our complicity with it within.

I have updated my map of terrorist attacks in India to include the most recent bomb blasts in Hyderabad.