The Hindu Business Line : Reaction to blasts `incredibly English'

THE kind of calm and discipline with which Londoners reacted to the terror attacks on Thursday was almost surreal. And, this, in the face of the gravest of provocations; after all, it was the worst kind of terrorist attack this financial global hub has ever seen. Four co-ordinated blasts — three in the massive underground rail network famously known as the Tube and the fourth in a double-decker bus that simply crumpled under the impact of the explosive — ripped the underbelly of the city, killing over three dozen people and injuring hundreds of others.

As the explosions, believed to have been set off by timer devices much along the lines of those that rocked Madrid last year, ripped apart corridors of the underground, there seemed to be little doubt that they bore the deadly al Qaeda signature.

But, while there was shock and grief, blood and tears, and a variety of emotions, what were conspicuously absent was surprise and panic. It was almost in disbelief that the rest of the world, glued to their television sets, watched the people of London calmly responding to the news that the entire underground system — that handles three million people a day — and the bus network had been shut down. What the television footage showed were hordes of people that comprise one of the richest ethnic mix anywhere in the world, calmly walking along the roads cleared of any kind of traffic. There was no pushing or jostling, no screaming or ranting...

So was it the famous stiff upper lip on display?

Hardly. What was obvious was that Londoners, and for that matter all British people, had awakened one fine day to find their worst fear come true; a fear they had harboured after 9/11 and which had further gripped their hearts after their Government had joined the US-led attack on Iraq.

The massive protests that the streets of London had seen then were proof enough that the people of UK were not wholeheartedly behind Prime Minister Tony Blair's decision to attack Iraq and send British troops to keep the peace there. While the US-led forces managed to topple the Saddam regime in Baghdad, they failed to find any weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and have since then failed to keep the peace in Iraq.

Iraq today is a cauldron that threatens to destroy any chance of peace that these uncertain times hold for nations across the world. What is worse, along with Afghanistan, it has given a tremendous opportunity to jihadis and terrorists of all hues, to regroup, convert young and innocent minds to their terror cause so that terrorism can flourish.

Earlier, Spain bore the brunt for sending its troops to Iraq; now it is the UK and nobody knows where the hand of terror will strike next. India, of course, has been battling with terrorists for long, with the latest being in Ayodhya earlier this week.

But look at the difference between our politicians and other leaders and theirs. While after the latest attack in Ayodhya, saffronites like VHP General-Secretary Praveen Togadia tried their best to inflame communal passion by inflammatory speeches, British leaders, beginning with Blair himself, were very cautious in what they said.

Even while saying that the terrorists might have acted in the name of Islam, he made it clear that an "overwhelming number of Muslims" in the world were peace loving and law-abiding citizens.

When at the press conference a journalist asked one of the London police chiefs about "Islamic terrorists," his response was to question the reporter's question.

Cautioning the journalist not to "associate terrorism with Islam," the police officer said that Islam, or for that matter any religion, had nothing to do with terrorism. Just because practitioners of a particular faith indulged in terrorism, that did not mean that the faith itself encouraged violence or terrorism, was the essence of his reply. Such measured responses make all the difference in preventing, or at least controlling, the backlash during such times.

Returning to the attacks on this vibrant city, the mindless act leaves one numb with pain and a feeling of helplessness. Those of us who have darted in and out of the London Tube, whose complex map is etched in the memory of regular commuters, and blessed it for providing to budget tourists a speedy, efficient and inexpensive way of getting to the various exciting innards of the city, will never be able to step again into an underground station without a shudder... at least for some time.

And without worrying or wondering in which corner lurked a terrorist or an explosive planted by him. The mind and the heart will then definitely go back to the innocent victims who paid a price for a decision not of their making.

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