We should never underestimate the marxist undertones of the so-called Islamic terrorism. The Mumbai massacre has claimed 101 lives so far, and a hostage situation is still ongoing. The official media interpretation is that this was an attack on foreigners. However, all the news channels deliberately omit an important detail. These are not just foreigners. These are rich foreigners.
I visited Mumbai two years ago on New Years Eve. It is a place which defies not only the western imagination, but even my eastern european imagination.
The first thing I have to say about this city, and I am going to be brutally honest here, is that it's filthy. The vast majority of what would here be called the "urban" sprawl is really shanty towns, where the more luxurious residences are decrepit one-story concrete blocks with walls missing. Inside these boxes, bathing in dust and sometimes in moist mud of - to-put-it-mildly, suspicious origin, sit, lie on one side, or squat children, toothless old men, old women whose faces have dried up like glazed prunes, or figs, or dates. Brazen chords of monkeys, afraid of nothing, drag semi-decomposed trash seeping through the holes of,unfortunately, non-decomposable plastic bags and bottles. You would think the whole place stinks of rot, but it doesn't, because the predominant smell which fills the nostrils, the lungs really, day and night, is the smell of benzene, from the rikshas, TATA cars and motorcycles, which are somehow magically able to find their way around each other, to turn left without street lights in the face of ongoing traffic, to stop, pick up and drop off passengers, and carry a family of four, without helmets. There is a woman somewhere in the Mumbai of my memory, who is serenely washing her newborn baby in a bucket of water, in the middle of a two-boulevard intersection. That is what the so-called financial capital of India looks like. It is poor.
But a rich westerner visiting Mumbai need not see that. If you can spare, say $300-500 a night, you can be welcomed into the Taj Mahal, or the Oberoi, the two hotels which came under attack last night. You can relax in shady courtyards under the soothing sounds of artificially pumped water, which is probably cleaner than the one that woman in the intersection gives her child to drink. You can wash your face from gold-plated faucets. You can have your bags taken in, packed and unpacked, by a bus-boy dressed in a raja-esqe costume. You can get a massage, and grab a piece of fresh fruit from your complimentary welcome basket. Because Mumbai, it is poor, but you, you are rich.
There are many westerners on Mumbai, and not all of them can afford $300-500 a night. I got to see the shanty towns because I booked a hotel for $30. There were no other foreigners where I stayed. But one doesn't have to be that extreme. There are perfectly good hotels in the city center, for $80 or $100 a night. Typically, these are small, family-run establishments. If someone wanted to simply capture or kill foreigners, any of them would be a much easier target than the Taj or the Oberoi, which are probably the most heavily guarded. Which brings me to my point today. The militants didn't simply pick a hotel with foreigners. They went to extraordinary length to take the two most expensive, most lavish, most outrageously extravagant places in the city. They went shootin' on the rich.
In no way do I condone or sympathize with killers of any sort, regardless of nationality, religious or political beliefs. However, I do think that it is important to fully understand the motives behind attacks like these in order to stop them. Grotesque inequalities of the kind described in this diary provide a fertile ground for terrorist ideology, and Islamic extremists are simply the ones which got there first. In a climate like this, any ideology which manages to channel the people's anger would rapidly become popular. Thus the war against terrorism should really be a war on inequality.