Dartblog

From the Journal’s moving reporting on the terrorism in India:

On the 20th floor, the gunmen shoved the group out of the stairwell. They lined up the 13 men and three women and lifted their weapons. “Why are you doing this to us?” a man called out. “We haven’t done anything to you.”

“Remember Babri Masjid?” one of the gunmen shouted, referring to a 16th-century mosque built by India’s first Mughal Muslim emperor and destroyed by Hindu radicals in 1992.

“Remember Godhra?” the second attacker asked, a reference to the town in the Indian state of Gujarat where religious rioting that evolved into an anti-Muslim pogrom began in 2002.

“We are Turkish. We are Muslim,” someone in the group screamed. One of the gunmen motioned for two Turks in the group to step aside.

Then they pointed their weapons at the rest and squeezed the triggers.

Indian authorities have come in for a good deal of blame; stateside, we see it most hideously projected in the New York Times, which, perpetually unable to get itself much exercised about Muslim violence directly, has been running wildly on about the Indian response. The Indian response was horribly weak, but Indians themselves are the ones who will shame their government into getting a bit leaner, a bit meaner. India is a country still in quickening, with a people significantly more advanced than their political leaders who, whenever they do anything seem to emit a puff of oil and musk, like a geriatric postman bent double making his last couple of rounds before he expires. The good news is that India possess the rudimentary institutions necessary to, over time, bring the government closer to the governed. Little glints of the mad world such as Mumbai saw last week will speed the evolution, I think.