Whats happening

What is happening in India nowadays? Is there a body responsible for internal security or not and if at all there is, have these people even been briefed about their responsibilities? It sure does not look so from the grim pictures that can be seen from time to time on television, newspapers and magazines. One after the other the country has been ravaged by terrorist attacks and the most disappointing thing is that there is nothing that has changed from the time of the previous blasts to the latest one. There has absolutely been nothing learned from these lapses, its as if no event no matter how gruesome in nature or sinister in plot is ever going to shake India from its eternal sleep. The toll that these have taken, their intensity and the repeatability fills the air with eerie silence.

The callous attitude of the common citizen towards there events is even more unnerving and dangerous. It just means that like always we have resigned ourselves to our fate and accept whatever carnage is heaped on us. We are champions of suffering silently and our attitude towards the suffering of others is absolute indifference and an utter lack of sympathy. I have watched the common man’s response to these events each and every time they unfold. This has always frustrated me to no bounds and this time I am absolutely pissed, so what do I do, I take it out on my keyboard and punch some words on it with the intensity of a pile driver.

Each and every time when we switch on our television and watch the ghastly pictures splashed across our screen, with BREAKING NEWS screaming from the bottom of the screen. We know that the anonymous killers who have no name or face and much less, a conscience have struck again. It hits you that another bomb blast has struck us, in the first few seconds, you frantically look for the name of the city that these lunatics have managed to breach at the same time you hope that its not Mmbai. When you find the name, you think of the people from that place, whom you know. Then you frantically look for the number of dead, which is a mind numbing thing to do and when you do manage to so, you turn silent for a while. The immediate next reaction is disbelief, how can they let this happen over and over again? You switch channels for different views and notice that the toll steeply rising.

After a while, things just cool down, you go out and find people talking about it as if all this has happened in Iraq. Everytime it’s the same nonsense about the corrupt agencies and the politicians, yet the pictures of people with blood oozing out and being carried on shoulders splash across and you wanna look away.

The next day is the usual, no change from the previous days, life goes on as usual as if nothing ever happened and that things are hunky dory. The day after, no body even talks about it, there is no news either. The media finds some thing else to talk about and all the carnage all the causalities are totally forgotten, people carry on with life like they used to.

Until one normal looking day, you very calmly and unknowingly, turn on the television and see death and destruction and blood soaked bodies screaming on the screen with BREAKING NEWS splashed across the bottom. You ask yourself unknowingly, what the hell is happening?

The below is a list of bomb attacks that have struck India in the last 10 years and the losses that they have caused.

• February 14, 1998 - Coimbatore bombings, 46 deaths.
• October 1, 2001 - Terrorists attack Jammu-Kashmir assembly complex, killing about 35.
• December 13, 2001 - Attack on the parliament complex in New Delhi, 7 deaths.
• September 24, 2002 - Terrorists attack the Akshardham temple in Gujarat, killing 31.
• March 13, 2003 - A terrorist bomb attack on a commuter train in Mumbai kills 11 people.^[6]
• May 14, 2003 - Terrorists attack an army camp near Jammu, killing more than 30, including women and children.
• August 25, 2003 - Simultaneous car bombs in Mumbai kill about 52.
• August 15, 2004 - Bomb explodes in Assam, killing 16 people, mostly school children.
• Jaunpur train bombing – 2005, 13 died and 50 injured.
• July 5, 2005 - Shri Ram Janmabhoomi attack in Ayodhya
• October 29, 2005 - Three powerful serial blasts in New Delhi at different places just two days before Hindu festival Deepawali^[7]. About 70 people died in this incident.
• March 7, 2006 - At least 21 people killed in three synchronized terrorist attacks in Varanasi in Shri Sankatmochan Mandir and Varanasi Cantonment Railway Station.
• July 11, 2006 - At least 200 people killed in a series of 7 train bombing during the evening rush hour near Mumbai.
• September 8, 2006 - at least 37 people killed and 125 injured in a series of bomb blasts in the vicinity of a mosque in Malegaon, Maharashtra
• Samjhauta Express bombings - 18 February 2007, 68 dead and 50 injured.
• May 18, 2007 - at least 13 people were killed, including 4 killed by the Indian police in the rioting that followed, in the bombing at Mecca Masjid, Hyderabad that took place during the Friday prayers.
• August 25, 2007 - at least 42 people were killed in two blasts in Hyderabad's Lumbini park and a restaurant. The police reportedly managed to find and defuse another bomb in the same area.
• May 13, 2008 - at least 63 were killed in 9 bomb blasts along 6 areas in Jaipur.
• July 25, 2008 - at least 2 were killed and 20 injured in 8 low intensity bomb blasts in Bangalore.
• July 26, 2008 - at least 29 were killed and over 110 injured in 17 serial bomb blasts in Ahmedabad.
• September 13, 2008 - at least 21 were killed and over 110 injured in 5 bomb blasts in Dehli markets. The toll continues to rise.

• To date, at least 768 people have been killed in terror strikes in India since 1998.

• This does not include the Indian embassy bombing in Kabul on July 7, 2008, which killed 58 with over 158 injured. This is the biggest attack on India outside Indian soil.

I noticed one grim detail from the above, the frequency of the attacks have increased alarmingly since the attack on the parliament on 13^th December 2001, which happened a few months after 9/11. Its as if the entire world scenario has changed after that. The above drives home the point that India is a soft state. It shows just how easily attacks on Indian soil have been carried out with unnerving frequency and one wonders what prevents them from striking bigger targets in the future.

India needs to be more vigilant so as to prevent such attacks in the future and whatever needs to be done to ensure this, must be done.