We seem doomed to live in an age of endless terrorism, whether in Israel, Indonesia or India. No place on earth seems safe. The men behind 9/11 belonged to the educated middle-class, the ones in Kashmir tote guns, the Tamil Tigers are killers wearing flip-flops and the Palestinian suicide bombers are teenagers. After the twin blasts in Mumbai last month, India saw a new face of terrorism.

Our July 31, 1997 cover

For the first time in recent memory, an entire family was accused of acting against the state. A husband, wife and their teenaged daughter are charged with storing explosives, assembling, transporting and detonating bombs that killed 52 people.

They did not do this for money or as personal vendetta. They have confessed that it was an act of larger revenge in the aftermath of the Gujarat riots. An ordinary working man was ready to risk the life of his entire family. Such conviction alone is scary.

India will have to deal with this new kind of terror, produced by what is called the "cell". The cell is the smallest unit prepared to cause the greatest damage. Syed Mohammed Hanif, his wife and daughter did not have a history of crime or memberships of outlawed groups. They were faceless, but motivated enough to execute not one but two bombings. They maintained secrecy even in the cheek by jowl existence of a Mumbai chawl. Their casual callousness is revealing: Fahmida planted the bomb, shopped for vegetables and returned home to cook as if she was just another housewife.

Our cover story this week looks at the transformation in the minds of Hanif and his family in the days leading up to the bombings. Special Correspondent Sheela Raval, who is a fearless tracker of crime, terror and the underworld, painstakingly retraced the footsteps of the first family of terror, talking to neighbours, friends and the police. She says, "In the line-up of criminals I have reported on, the Hanifs stand out because they are so ordinary."

The question confronting India is, how does a democracy handle a threat it can neither trace nor track through conventional means? On the individual level, this is a chilling story of the cold-blooded criminalisation of an entire family. On a larger level, it is time to recognise the politics of hate for what it is and wipe it out of our national life. India cannot go to war against its own people.