Mumbai Carnage Shakes India's Political Landscape

If those responsible for the terrorist carnage in Mumbai were hoping to drive India and Pakistan toward military conflict, they failed. But if they meant to generate upheaval in India's immediate political future, they chose their targets well.

India is no stranger to terrorism. In 1993, the coordinated detonation of 13 bombs killed at least 250 civilians in Mumbai, then known as Bombay. In December 2001, five Kashmiri militants armed with automatic weapons burst into the Indian parliament in New Delhi, killing seven. These are merely the most spectacular of more than a dozen major attacks in the past several years.

But the massacre in Mumbai represents an unprecedented shock for the Indian nation. One of the terrorist targets, the Taj Mahal hotel, has stood for more than a century as a monument to India's modern identity and its triumph over colonialism. Jamsetji Tata, the "father of Indian industry," is said to have built the Taj after he was refused entrance to a nearby British-operated whites-only hotel.

The iconic nature of the Taj helps explain why terrorism-weary Indians consider this latest attack "India's 9/11." More killings at the Oberoi and Trident hotels have added to fear among international investors and business leaders that foreigners, particularly Westerners, are not safe in the country's commercial capital.

No sooner had the smoke begun to clear than Indians pointed fingers toward Pakistan. Suspicions are widespread, in India and elsewhere, that the militants arrived in Mumbai via Karachi -- though Pakistan's civilian government is almost certainly guilty more of negligence than of complicity. But some Indian officials charge that the attackers could not have carried out such an ambitious plan without active support from sympathetic elements within Pakistan's intelligence services.

India's beleaguered Congress Party-led government now has every incentive to talk tough on Pakistan, and the attacks will halt further diplomatic progress between the two countries for at least several months. But the risk of military conflict is minimal, and longer-term damage to Indian-Pakistani relations will be minor. India has little to gain from destabilizing Pakistan's already fragile government or in provoking the Pakistani military.

Indian officials are well aware that their country's growing importance for global financial markets means that stability at home and peace with the country's neighbors remain paramount. Its government also knows that it must avoid actions that spark conflict between majority Hindus and the country's 150 million Muslims.

Across the border, the Pakistan Peoples Party-led government has far too many enemies at home to risk creating new ones in New Delhi. Like India's Congress Party, the PPP faces an opposition ever ready to profit from its mistakes and a military as likely to veto government orders as to execute them.

In addition, Pakistan has security problems of its own. The country suffered fewer than 10 suicide bombings in both 2005 and 2006. In 2007, the number climbed to 56. More people have died this year in suicide attacks in Pakistan than in either Iraq or Afghanistan. Saddled with a growing economic crisis, the Pakistani president has turned reluctantly to the International Monetary Fund for loans worth billions of dollars and hopes for more support from Washington in the future. War with India is not on the agenda.

But the aftershocks from the bloodshed in Mumbai will likely be felt across the Indian political landscape. The Congress Party must survive national elections in the spring. Even before the terror attacks, it faced an uphill struggle. Despite several consecutive years of robust growth, the global financial crisis has triggered fears for the safety of bank deposits, a steep stock market drop, and threats of job losses that have forced senior government officials, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, to reassure the public in recent weeks. Power cuts this spring left millions in the north of the country without water and electricity, sparking riots. Not surprisingly, the party has troubled relations with some of its coalition partners.

Sensing an opportunity, the opposition Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) wasted little time in blaming the ruling coalition for the horror in Mumbai. Before Indian commandos had finished off the last of the attackers at the Taj, the BJP had purchased an eye-grabbing front-page ad in a leading daily newspaper featuring a not-so-subtle message: "Brutal Terror Strikes at Will. Weak Government Unwilling and Incapable. Fight Terror. Vote BJP."

The opposition party's case won't be tough to make. Damning press accounts of inadequate training and equipment for Mumbai's police are everywhere. Reports that many officers were equipped with bulletproof vests that weren't bulletproof, plastic helmets, and firearms better suited for the 1950s have ignited a firestorm of public criticism. Sixteen policemen, including the head of the counter-terrorism force, died in the attacks. Communications equipment failed again and again. More than once, reports that the attackers had been subdued proved premature.

Popular outrage has forced the resignations of several senior officials. That's unlikely to satisfy voters that the government has paid a fair price for its incompetence. Who knows what the terrorists hoped to achieve, but their attack may well have provided the final push for an Indian ruling party already on the brink.