Pratap Bhanu Mehta: Away from the spectacle

The nature of the 26/11 attack, its reach and scale, its televised vividness, and its subsequent political significance, makes it a pivotal event in the politics of the Subcontinent. It is constantly remembered to mourn the victims, and to acknowledge the city that bears the scars of this national humiliation.

Yet in a strange way, the remembrance of 26/11 has itself produced a different kind of amnesia. Bombay lost its identity twice. Its renaming to Mumbai was a sign of its politics becoming parochial. The renaming of its iconic film industry “Bollywood” was a sign that this increasingly vernacularised politics paradoxically took cultural referents from America; Indian culture could be measured only in the context of globalisation. In a way, the designation 26/11, with its constant allusion to 9/11, was understandable: Both were acts of terrorism that inflicted suffering in a politics of spectacle. But the consequence of this iconic remembering has been that the history specific to the Subcontinent is in the danger of being lost.

26/11 was an event of its times. But it was also an event in the continued and tragic aftermath of our own history: Partition. Partition may have been inevitable. But its scars continue to destroy Pakistan and still inflect the politics of self-esteem in India. To own 26/11 in our own history, and not as some simulacrum of globalisation, will require the Subcontinent to come to terms with the lingering effects of Partition — a discourse of nationhood and politics that is still being played out, in different ways, in Pakistan and India. If we want no more victims, that politics will have to confronted.

The attack did three things. First, it, almost forever, seemed to destroy the possibility of a sensible rapprochement and modus vivendi between India and Pakistan. The Manmohan-Musharraf framework was the closest the Subcontinent came to putting forward sensible ideas to mitigate rather than deepen the tragedy of Partition. 26/11, in some ways, put an end to those kind of efforts, for more than a decade now. It accomplished what it hoped: That talk of peace becomes nearly impossible. Second, it was also an important moment in laying bare the emerging character of the Pakistani state... read more:

https://indianexpress.com/article/26-11/mumbai-attacks-26-11-terrorism-security-5462015/