For a community-led role in counter-terrorism

As India haemorrhages from and mourns the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, a sense of despair and hopelessness is sinking into the national psyche. From every corner of the country, people are staring blankly at one another and wondering whether the dark night of random and indiscriminate violence aimed at innocent civilians will ever end. To use Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul’s phrase, terror-ravaged India is a “wounded civilisation” that is simply unable to concoct the right medicine for a phenomenon driving public insecurity and fear.

As one of the world’s oldest civilisations, India has the resources and genius to ensure human survival and societal preservation for ages. Had there been no respect for the sanctity of life and the dignity of the human person, India would never have acquired the status of what Jawaharlal Nehru called “an ancient palimpsest on which layer upon layer of thought and reverie had been inscribed.” At no point in history since Harappa and Mohenjo daro has India become barren, depopulated, evacuated or extinct. (The Hindu)