This time the barbarians were at the temple gate. They had only changed the venue, not their macabre method. The massacre inside the Swaminarain temple complex in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, was more than just another terrorist attack; it was the latest assault on the idea of India. The symbolism of the target and the timing of the strike give further evidence of the tireless mind of the enemy. At this moment, an attack on a Hindu temple in Gujarat is a provocation meant to make the social divide on the Sabarmati communally starker, bloodier. Culturally it was Godhra by other means. The meaning of Godhra was: the enemy desperately wanted a Hindu backlash-and the benefits of ghettoised victimhood. In the history of terror, such manufactured victimhood has always been an effective stimulant. India has become used to its nihilistic expressions. Once again, the dead and the wounded in Gandhinagar will be added to the already staggering statistics of "terrorist victims"-and forgotten. And Gandhinagar happened at a time when Gujarat was healing itself, and, more significantly, Kashmir was defying fear to declare its democratic rights. Someone is determined to deny the nation such luxuries.

Sadly, the alertness of the enemy is hardly matched by the Indian national response. Call it the Hindu rate of patience or the stoicism of the victim state, the Indian attitude makes the job of the tormentor easier. This is a resilient nation that suffers and talks, and talks, like an incorrigible fatalist. The enemy, permanently vigilant, continues to exploit this Indian trait. The Jammu and Kashmir assembly complex in Srinagar, Parliament in Delhi, the army residential colony in Jammu-they were all yesterday's big news of India Under Attack, and the sources of the national rhetoric of Time to Strike Back. In retrospect, it looks like they all happened sometime in a distant past. As a nation of forgetting and forgiving, ever ready to bleed and wail, India is unique. That is, India is not Israel. For this country, in spite of being one of radical Islamism's easiest targets, national defence means passive resistance and active rhetoric. Still, India as a nation is alive and one, and it is not an achievement of the political class. Rather it is the triumph of the idea of India. Politicians may have let it down. The people haven't, despite Godhra, Gandhinagar...