Media images of terrorists at Mumbai as captured off security cameras at the Mumbai Railway. Source: dotcompals
Our PhD graduate student from India, Kanchan Gandhi, offers her thoughts on the recent tragedy in her homeland.
I have been glued to my TV for the last two days following the news of the Mumbai attacks. It is very shocking and painful to see my country bleeding regularly due to terrorist attacks. Two and a half months ago when I was in India – a bomb blast occurred near my house in Delhi on September the 13th. I think continuously – “Who are these people? What do they want? Why do they kill innocent people? Why doesn’t the supreme power punish them? Why does there have to be so much violence and bloodshed?”
It makes me think of Chris Philo’s 2005 article on the “Geographies that wound” where he emphasises on the “interconnected geographies (and histories) through which vectors of blame might be traced, but also on questions arising about how to ‘treat’ the wounds of the vulnerable” (Philo, 2005:441). Every time a communal riot or a terrorist attack takes place in the region – the wounds of the 1947 partition are torn open. Are we still paying the price of our colonisers’ infamous “divide and rule” policy or the price of the decisions of political leaders from the past and the present? Why does this wound not get healed? What is the larger context of the non- healing of this wound? Philo further posits that while some wounds are treated, others are left unattended to fester. Indeed the repeated attacks in India are examples of untreated wounds that open afresh with every terror attack.
