TERRORISM preoccupies Indian minds as pre-planned, organised violence is perpetrated on crowds of shoppers, week after week.

Saturdays are no longer the relaxed weekend for shopping, sightseeing or visiting. The festival season is on, with Aidilfitri gone and Puja coming. Deepavali is but two weeks away. But these have become occasions for fearsome foreboding. Where and when will the next attack come?

India is bleeding, even as it surges ahead on the economic front, with 45 nations enabling it to gain access to nuclear energy and a range of technologies. This is a pity.

These are painful, testing times for people who have for long practised the ideal of unity in diversity but stand divided as Hindus, Muslims and Christians.

While, on the one hand, Muslim youths calling themselves "Indian mujahidin" have been carrying out explosions in different cities, on the other, schools and hospitals run by Christians and their churches have been vandalised by Hindu youths.
Violence against Christians, besides the loss of men and material, has damaged the psyche of the millions who have benefited from the Christian missionary-run institutions for the past two centuries.

The grouse against Christians is that they are forcibly converting people to their faith, although the census figures show a drop in the number of Christians in India from 2.5 to 2.3 per cent.

Thirty-eight bomb blasts have ripped through four cities since May 13, killing 158. Many more have been maimed.

Last year's score, or that of the previous year's, was lower, but no less vicious.

India has faced terrorism for a long time, attributing it to its volatile neighbourhood. But what it is facing in recent years is indigenous militancy, which is more dreadful, more painful.

Part of the reason is the post-9/11 backlash that much of the world is facing. But events at home (to call them "mistakes" may be appropriate but certainly not sufficient) by the Hindutva forces have contributed to it in a big way.

It is possible that the example of terrorism in the Middle East and elsewhere had primed the misguided among Indian Muslim youths for similar acts in India.

But for the vicious anti-minority stance of the Hindutva camp, it is unlikely that they would have adopted terrorist tactics.

As is known, Indian Muslims had taken little interest in the Kashmiri insurgency even if Kashmir was mentioned in the same breath as Palestine, Bosnia and Chechnya by groups abroad to enlist recruits.

Not a single Indian radical was found in the camp of Osama bin Laden.

But all that has changed. Whatever the provocation and help, from inside or outside, some Indian Muslim youths have become the foot-soldiers of what they consider jihad.

They say they want to avenge the 2002 riots in Gujarat. But that is not helping the Muslims there who have learnt to move on.

Like the terrorist who triggers it, an explosion has no faith. When the historic Makkah Masjid in Hyderabad was targeted twice, just after the Friday namaz, more Muslims than Hindus died.

This drives me, like many others, to conclude that the real agenda is to trigger a war between the two communities. It has not worked so far and, I emphasise, it never will. If that happens, it will destroy Indian society.

But minds have been vitiated by doubt and fear. In the name of terrorism, some are patriots and others are traitors. The public discourse is shrill and much of it partisan.

The level of mutual respect and tolerance has plummeted. The events are viewed in partisan manner. The state's power and popularity are measured by its ability to catch the culprits, come what may.

Given poor internal security and a tendency to treat communities as political vote banks, some excesses are inevitable. And some have undoubtedly been committed.

An "encounter" near the university campus of Jamia Milia Islamia led to the killing of three Muslim youths and two policemen.

Two more boys who escaped were suspected of placing bombs a week earlier at New Delhi's busiest market places, killing 28 shoppers.

Like two sides of a coin, two versions emerged. Thousands gave the slain policemen a heroes' farewell. But at the risk of being called "traitors", sections of the media questioned the official version. Muslim bodies and individuals have spoken out.

Jamia vice-chancellor Mushirul Hasan said he would not interfere with investigations and the processes of law. But he would extend legal help to the youths, his students, who are deemed innocent till proven guilty. That is natural justice in any civilised society.

Hasan has been criticised. The government, accused of "appeasing the minorities", has supported him.

Says columnist Vir Sanghvi: "Each time we compromise on values and sacrifice our sense of justice, we move from being the world's largest democracy to become the kind of 'mobocracy' that these religious fanatics want to create. Allow them to make us more like they are, and they have already won."

Some political parties are taking dubious advantage, so cynical have they become as elections come closer. Terrorism is to be vote-cashed.

To counter it, some other parties and individuals take up the cause of the minorities, the entire communities, in a manner that can only render them disservice and alienate them further in the eyes of the majority.

Both these approaches scuttle the effort to fight terrorism.

Terrorism is unlikely to vanish into thin air soon.

India needs to make long-term plans with a response that is both political and security-minded.

A week after Jamia, another travesty occurred. An explosion rocked Mehrauli, close to Delhi's 12th century Qutb Minar, 10m from the 150-year route of the Phoolwalon Ki Sair, a festival of flowers. It is a celebration of Hindu-Muslim harmony.

Who was killed? A 9-year-old saw two men on a motorcycle drop a packet and speed away. Thinking it had fallen off, the kid picked it up and ran after them.

His parents are inconsolable.