In part two of our interview with Siddharth Varadarajan, Siddharth and Paul discuss the political implications of the attacks inside India. Siddharth believes that the attacks were designed to spark revenge violence toward the Indian Muslim community the Indian public have been extremely unified in their rejection of this path. Furthermore, they have equally rejected efforts on the part of the Hindu nationalist party, the BJP, to use the attacks for political gain. Meanwhile, the Indian authorities believe they have sufficient evidence that the attackers were from Pakistan, and are asking Pakistani authorities to produce certain wanted individuals in order to be dealt with via the Indian legal system. Siddharth believes that there is no real threat of conflict between the two states as long as India believes that it is dealing with a democratically elected government that is working to be independent of the military, as Siddharth believes Zaradari is trying to achieve.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
