The Gateway of India becomes a Door of Death

By Nick Gier, Unfiltered 12-04-08

THE GATEWAY OF INDIA BECOMES A GATEWAY OF DEATH

By Nick Gier

The Gateway of India, a basalt arch 85 feet high facing the Arabia Sea, is Bombay's (now Mumbai) most famous landmark. It was built to commemorate the visit of King George V and Queen Mary in 1911.

After the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, the British Crown took direct control of India, and they introduced a policy of discrimination against Muslims that dramatically reduced their participation in Indian society. Muslims were excluded from the civil service, and today they rank lower than their Hindu compatriots in infant mortality, education levels, life expectancy, and per capita income.

During my four stays in India I always made a point to visit the Gateway of India. I would meet my Indian friends for dinner at the nearby Taj Mahal Hotel. I would also take a rickety boat, one of thousands in the harbor, to the famous Shiva temple on Elephanta Island.

On the evening of November 26, the assistant supervisor of Taj Hotel noticed eight men unloading heavy packs from a rubber dinghy at the base of the Gateway. The U.S. has reminded the Indian government that in September 2008 it gave them intelligence about the imminent threat of seaborne attacks from Pakistan.

Later that night the Taj supervisor would watch in horror as these men took over his hotel, shot many of residents, and held out against India's top commandos for three days. Before attacking the Taj and Oberoi Hotels and a Jewish center, the terrorists killed 50 people at the main train station.

A gateway through which British royalty entered India and Mumbai's multiethnic citizens and tourists have freely congregated will now be known as a gateway of death and terror. The death toll from the attacks is currently at 171, 26 of whom were foreigners (including 6 Americans and 6 Israelis), and 327 wounded.

Since 1970 India has experienced 4,108 terrorist acts that have resulted in over 12,000 deaths. Over the past 16 years Mumbai has been the main target for these attacks. After Hindu fundamentalists demolished the Babri Mosque in Northern India on December 6, 1992, I was there to read about the riots all over India and 900 Mumbai residents, mostly Muslims, lost their lives.

In 2002 over 2,000 Muslims were killed in riots in Gujarat, a nearby state governed by Hindu fundamentalists. Muslims were wrongly blamed for setting fire to a train load of Hindu pilgrims, and to this day the government has done nothing to arrest the perpetrators. When one of the Taj Mahal attackers defended his actions by saying that Hindus had killed his brothers, he was referring either to the Gujarat massacres or to the conflict in Kashmir.

In March of 1993, 13 bombs targeted the Bombay Stock Exchange, hotels, shopping centers, an airport, and cinemas. The casualties were much higher than the most recent attack: 257 dead and over 1,400 injured.

In August 2003 two car bombs went off at the Gateway of India and a Hindu temple killing 52 and wounding 150. In July 2006 bombs were placed in Mumbai's urban railway cars and the blasts left 209 dead and 700 sent to the hospital.

Police determined that the Kashmiri militants of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Righteous) and Students' Islamic Movement of India were responsible for these attacks and the most recent one. A group calling itself the Indian Mujahideen has claimed responsibility for recent bombings in four other Indian cities.

India is a microcosm that reflects the world-wide resentment of many Muslims who feel, rightly or wrongly, that their low standard of living is the result of Western imperialism. These grievances do not in any way justify terrorist acts, but they must be taken into consideration if any long-term solutions are to be reached. For South Asia specifically the full cooperation of Pakistan is imperative.

When the last British troops sailed from the Gateway of India, they left in their wake not only the discriminatory policies against Muslims, but the missionary idea of a pure religion that required the rejection of all other faiths.

My own research shows that Hindu and to lesser extent Muslim fundamentalists learned their rigid views of religion from the West, and their 20th Century followers are expressing this religious dogma in the most vicious and destructive ways possible.

Nick Gier taught religion and the philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31 years. Read draft chapters for his book on the origins of religions violence at www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/orv.htm. Read his other columns at www.NickGier.com.

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