There is never any way to cushion the shock. This is not the first time that terrorists have targeted Delhi; the memory of a similar attack before Diwali and Eid in 2005 is still fresh. Besides, Jaipur, Bangalore and Ahmedabad were targeted in May and July in 2008 alone: all big cities in India have been on high alert ever since. Yet, there is always a sense of amazement at the pure cruelty of such attacks. To place bombs on a Saturday in the most crowded and cheerful markets at the beginning of the long festive season is also to target a large number of women and children, and young people on an evening out. Ordinary people thrown into disorder, terrified, hurt, dead and grieving — that is all that the killers desire. As the dust settles, it is time again to look into the quality of the state of “high alert” as so many times previously. In spite of the fact that some arrests have been made after the blasts in other cities, emails traced to the area of their origin, Surat saved from blasts, more explosions prevented in Delhi by the discovery of unexploded bombs, for the vulnerable citizen this is just not enough. If intelligence fails to anticipate blasts in the capital, the time and place of which could perhaps been guessed at from previous patterns, how are people in the rest of the country to feel confident?

There is another danger. The killers may now have given themselves a name and taken to sending boastful, often mocking, emails to the authorities, but their aim seems simply to kill and destabilize. They claim to be meting out “punishment”: sometimes for Babri Masjid, sometimes for post-Godhra Gujarat, and sometimes for the alleged police harassment of the minority community in Andheri, Mumbai. Yet they kill indiscriminately, for their victims can be of all communities, part of the crowds which flock to markets and bazaars, go to the cinema or restaurants, board trains and buses. They are hijacking the name of their religion for murder and destruction. What is needed urgently is a strong protest from the religious community they claim to be avenging, clear and repeated rejections of the so-called principle behind their bloodshed. Unless the many citizens of the minority community consciously urge their difference with the terrorists, fundamentalists from the majority community will have a field day. It is the responsibility of the leaders of the community, the articulate and educated, the religious heads, to speak up. Tragedy can be of many kinds; fundamentalist politics and violence are ones that can still be avoided.