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India was a soft target: Meghnad

PANAJI: Renowned economist Lord Meghnad Desai has hit out at the Indian state, calling it “a soft target” for terrorists.

Speaking to The Hindu on the sidelines of the International Film Festival of India here on Thursday, Lord Meghnad called the Mumbai terror attack “a war on the Indian state,” that was the “equivalent of 9/11 and 7/7.”

“India has no idea about the seriousness of the attack. Indian politicians see terrorist attacks as merely a communal issue. It is much bigger than that.”

“It is not a Hindu-Muslim thing. It is not an intra-India attack at all. The country needs to separate terrorism from communalism. The attack has not been done by the Lashkar-e-Taiba or the Taliban or any fictitious organisation nobody has heard of earlier. It is the Al-Qaeda’s handiwork. The Indian state was all along worried about Pakistan and underestimated the Al-Qaeda. It has done thorough research. After 9/11 America is impregnable. Europe is well protected. China retaliates everything. So, India was a soft target.”

Ruling out the involvement of Pakistan, he said, “Indians always tend to take things in a parochial way. We look at things like Americans from a narrow personal perspective. The terrorists chose Mumbai and not Delhi because their target was foreigners. There are fewer foreigners in any one pocket in Delhi and there is no seashore either. And Jew hostages are good chips for bargaining. There is a high concentration of foreigners in Mumbai and this is the peak tourist season in India. They knew about every corner of the hotels. These guys wanted to send a message to the world, they were very well armed. The Taliban or the LeT won’t have that kind of wherewithal, only the Al-Qaeda has. After the decline of the Soviet Union there is an open arms bazaar. It is not difficult for terrorists with resources to get arms now.”

He said the recent nuclear deal was of no avail to India. Growing proximity with the U.S., he believes, might have sent a signal to the Al-Qaeda. “Like it or not, Osama bin Laden puts India in the league of the West.” He refused to read much into the trip of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Leader of the Opposition L.K. Advani to Mumbai. “It is not time for Congress-BJP politics. The terrorists are not interested in elections in Madhya Pradesh or Delhi and Rajasthan. Their targets are much bigger.” He hoped that the attack will foster “greater unity within the country.”

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