The Mumbai Attacks of 2008 and the Indian Election of 2009

On Wednesday, November 26, 2008, at 9:40 pm, ten Pakistani men associated with Lashkar-e-Taiba stormed buildings in the tourism center of Mumbai, armed with automatic weapons and grenades. The gunmen had arrived by boat from Karachi, Pakistan. The locations targeted were Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus railway station, Leopold Cafe, Taj Mahal Palace & Tower Hotel, Oberoi Trident Hotel, Metro Cinema, Cama and Albless Hospital, and Nariman House.

The multiple, coordinated attacks hit Mumbai’s tourism, transport, and financial districts. There were also shootings in the streets and strikes on other locations. The attacks ended early Saturday morning, November 29, after nine of the gunmen were killed. One surviving attacker, Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, was executed after his trial in November 2012. In total, 172 people died in the attacks.

Around seventy Indian news channels covered the events live for over sixty hours, alongside CNN and the BBC. Mumbai residents began tweeting within minutes of the attacks. “Hospital update. Shots still being fired. Also, Metro cinema next door,” tweeted @Mumbaiattack. “Mumbai terrorists are asking hotel reception for room #s of American citizens and holding them hostage on one floor,” tweeted @Dupreee. Headlines the next morning included “Terrorists strike Mumbai” (Times of India) and “Who is to blame for Mumbai Attacks?” (CNN).

The Indian election of 2009, which was conducted over the months of April and May, took place against this backdrop of a major terrorist attack. In the US, Senator John McCain borrowed an American metaphor to describe the atrocity as “India’s 9/11.” In Indian media shorthand, the attacks have occasionally come to be known as 11/26.

In the case of Mumbai, this paper finds a number of concerns about transparency, responsibility, and accuracy in how Indian news outlets covered the violence. My interviews with Indian journalists and media analysts show that the recently liberalized media, with hundreds of private satellite channels in the hands of private owners, sought to exert its independence from government watchdogs. As the attacks in Mumbai unfolded in real time, hundreds of journalists working for dozens of commercial networks rushed to cover the dramatic story. The pace of the coverage meant that fair and accurate reporting practices suffered.

In the days, weeks, and months following the attacks, there was sustained criticism that the media response, while comprehensive, was at times confusing and caused on-the-ground operational difficulties, as ambitious reporters jostled with soldiers and members of the police force trying to re-establish order. In one case, the prominent NDTV journalist Barkha Dutt was criticized for identifying on live television where guests might be staying at the Taj Mahal Hotel and the Oberio Trident.

Mumbai was also unique as it was one of the first major terrorist attacks to unfold in the era of widespread use of social media. Over one million unique users posted more than 2.7 million tweets over the course of three days. The dissemination of rumors added to the confusion. Users on Twitter erroneously reported blood banks running low on supplies. In the months following the attacks, the government and media would collaborate to enact a new media law to prevent future disruption. Charges from readers and viewers about media sensationalism and repetition have remained to this day.

Years before the attacks in Paris and Nice, the Mumbai attacks of 2008 heralded a new dimension in the evolution of terrorism as an ongoing, multi-hour operation.³⁷ The attackers also appeared to be adhering to a scripted plan in a deliberate effort to maximize media attention. One of the terrorists, Imran Babar, even called India TV from Nariman House, a Jewish outreach center, to explain his motivations. The call, broadcast live, lasted seven minutes.³⁸ Babar listed a number of grievances, including the 2002 riots in Gujarat where 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed, as well as Muslim deaths in the Indian controlled territory of Kashmir. “Are you aware how many people have been killed in Kashmir?” asked Babar. Later, he said, “We die every day. It is better to win one day as a lion than die this way.” Babar’s interview crossed a new line in broadcasting: India TV was no longer acting as a filter, but a platform. For viewers, temporarily at least, it ceded control to one of the attackers. It is worth noting that were the attacks to be repeated in 2016, Babar would not need to call a TV station to broadcast his statements—social media services like Facebook Live could duplicate the event and bypass traditional media entirely.

As Mumbai showed, terrorist-induced violence is neither irrational nor indiscriminate. It is part of a strategy that uses violence to make terrorists visible in public spheres. Terrorists and terrorism seek the ubiquity that can only be granted to them by extensive media coverage. News organizations risk being manipulated as a tool to erode public faith in the state or the state’s policies.

By the time of the attacks in Mumbai, India was already witnessing an increase in terrorist bombings. Over 800 people had been killed in two dozen attacks across the country since mid-2006. Mumbai, a city of twenty million residents, had always been a prime target. In March 1993,³⁹ 257 Indians were killed and 717 injured when thirteen car bombs coordinated by the underworld criminal Dawood Ibrahim exploded at the Mumbai stock exchange, hotels, and shopping centers. In July 2006, a series of seven bomb blasts across the city’s rail network, planned by a group linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba, left 209 people dead and over 700 injured.⁴⁰

The Mumbai attacks struck at the heart of the city’s elite landmarks. They also occurred at a time when India, like many other developing nations, had seen a large increase in the number of citizens embracing the internet, mobile technology and social media. As the violence began, on sites like Facebook and Twitter, the hashtags #mumbai, #mumbaiterrorattacks and #mumbaiattacks cataloged every new iteration of fact and hearsay. Mumbai residents and citizen journalists uploaded images to Flickr.

The attacks also highlighted the competitive nature of the Indian media market, with hundreds of local TV channels broadcasting in dozens of languages. As Rajdeep Sardesai, then the editor-in-chief of CNN-IBN, said in an interview: “The media (beast) has to be constantly fed with sensational stories and dramatic scenes to attract the readership and the audience. The information flow from the government sources was terrible and excessively politicized which does not cater to the tastes of today’s audience.”

Other editors and journalists interviewed were more forthcoming about the media’s failures. “It’s high time we realize and accept that we are at fault,” said Shishir Joshi, editor director of a Mumbai newspaper called Mid-Day. “We did well getting into the line of fire, but from an ethical point of view, we screwed up big time.” Barkha Dutt agreed the media should be cognizant of ongoing security operations and show restraint: “If there is even a shadow of doubt of security being compromised, the industry should be willing to delay-telecast so that we can once and for all end this argument.”

“The coverage of Mumbai reflects global trends in some ways which point to a dangerous mix of nationalism and profit driven motive,” said Rohit Chopra, author of “The 26/11 Network-Archive: Public Memory, History, and the Global in an Age of Terror,” in an interview. “The Indian media has integrated into the global media, as has the Indian economy. The journalists have a tendency to make themselves as heroes of the show. I think what you lack in India, as opposed to America, are the kind of advocacy groups you come across in the US who might campaign on broadcasting standards. With social media there is a democratization for no democratic ends. It is a different kind of notion of credibility. Not to say the experts always get it right, but on social media you do see a battle waged between government voices, the media, experts, and day users who all compliment and contradict each other in all kind of ways.”

The boom in media production is echoed in other industries. India’s buoyant newspaper industry will see print circulation grow by 8 percent per annum over the next three years. And even though the number of Web users in India is relatively small, around 17 percent—compared with 46 percent in its northern neighbor, China, and more than 80 percent in the US and Japan—India has seen a leap in the number of connected citizens. The number of internet users doubled from 50 million in 2007 to 100 million in 2010. Web users had tripled to 300 million by 2014.⁴¹

As Mumbai illustrates, Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr proved to be more adaptable than traditional 24-hour news channels, which anchored themselves and their coverage in front of large stationary backdrops. Ordinary Mumbaikars used digital cameras and smart phones to post first-hand information to a Google map of Mumbai’s metropolitan area. A Wikipedia page kept track of new developments in the affected areas.

“In a way, it wasn’t just people being held hostage, it was the city being held hostage for media consumption,” said Dr. Faisal Devji, Director of St. Antony’s College Asian Studies Center and the author of The Terrorist in Search of Humanity: Militant Islam and Global Politics.⁴² In an interview, he added: “Bombay is a city defined by its film industry and television. It was the perfect site for this form of spectacle and set into motion two kinds of media. One was the official news media, and the other was social media, which was far less controlled. Interaction between those two forms was very new at the time. The official reaction was quite conventional—shock, horror, and human interest. As the siege continued, though, both were accused of pushing into the narrative and showing parts of the city to terrorists and their handlers. Both became part of the action and the terror.”

Another report, “The print media coverage of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks: A study on the coverage of leading Indian newspapers and its impact on people,” examines how four leading English newspaper covered the attacks.⁴³ The study also looks at how readers reacted to the coverage and how the public was impacted by the media. The research analyzed The Hindu, Times of India, New Indian Express, and the Deccan Chronicle. Newspapers from November 27 to November 30 were studied. In a survey of 90 respondents, 32 percent said coverage was sufficient, while 41 percent complained of overdose. At 46 percent, TV was considered to be the most effective way to cover the attacks, to 24 percent for newspapers. While 64 percent said the newspaper coverage was unbiased, 68 percent said newspapers sensationalized the issue. Among those who said newspapers had sensationalized the violence, 38 percent of them felt India was less secure as a result of the coverage and 21 percent said the reporting resulted in feelings of fear.

The coverage had an impact on public responses to terrorism. One study showed coverage not only multiplied public panic, but also negatively affected viewers. Around 70 percent of respondents were noted to have felt an increase of acute insomnia, paranoia, and severe panic attacks.

In the days after Mumbai, Indians first turned on the government’s lack of preparedness by calling in to TV shows and joining hosts in their criticism of the government for overlooking a prior warning of the attack, for poor coordination between security agencies, and for failing to act on increased “chatter.” Three prominent police officers, including the leader of the Anti-Terrorism Squad, Hemant Karkare, were killed during the attacks. Escalating criticism over security failures saw the resignations of India’s Home Minister Shivraj Patil, Vilasrao Deshmukh, the State Chief Minister of Maharashtra, and Deputy Chief Minister Raosaheb Ramrao Patil.

Social and traditional media also diverged in impact. While users primarily used Twitter to get updates, Indian news coverage adopted a tone of aggressive commentary which served to amplify criticism of the government. The print coverage of the attacks centered on the slow responses of India’s security apparatus. In “The 2008 Mumbai Attack and Press Nationalism: A Content Analysis of Coverage in The New York Times, Times of London, Dawn, and The Hindu,”⁴⁴ the authors find that the government’s failures received the most focus. In newspapers published between November 27 and December 13, it was mentioned on twelve occasions in The Times of London, twenty-eight times in The Hindu, on eleven occasions in The New York Times, and fourteen times in Dawn. These failures would have immediate and long-term consequences.

Mumbai prompted a number of far-reaching anti-terrorism measures.⁴⁵ The Indian government, the Congress Party-led United Progressive Alliance, introduced two new laws: the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Amendment Act of 2008 (UAPA) and the National Investigation Agency Act of 2008 (NIA) were in line with laws enacted in the US and the UK to expand surveillance, police powers, surveillance, and the scope of detention for suspected terrorists. The new legislation followed 2002’s Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA), passed in response to terrorist attacks on the Indian Parliament and the bombing of other landmark buildings in 2001 and 2002.

Like the US PATRIOT Act, the Indian legislative response to the Mumbai attacks was marked by governmental overreach that impinged on civil liberties. The UAPA extended the police detention and custody period for terror suspects without any charge detention to 180 days without bail. The law also denied bail to foreigners and reversed the burden of proof for the accused. The NIA established a new central police organization, the National Investigation Agency, which was tasked with investigating acts of terrorism and offences committed under the UAPA.

Both the UAPA amendment and the NIA were subject to stiff criticism from human rights groups. Amnesty International said the laws would “violate international human rights standards.” Amnesty’s criticism focused on a number of new features of the Act: the “sweeping and overbroad” definitions of “acts of terrorism” and the maximum period of detention. Amnesty also argued existing detention laws were “already far beyond international standards.”

The rolling media coverage also led to criticisms over sensitivity. Senior politicians said the militants were able to avert counter-terrorism measures by watching Indian TV. A month after the attacks, the News Broadcasters Association (NBA) agreed to ban live phone-ins with terrorists and refrain from broadcasting live security operations. The NBA also agreed to stop broadcasts of graphic shots of crime scenes in the future.⁴⁶

“The Mumbai attacks seemed to hit a unique narrative in India,” said Pamposh Raina, the author of “Framing of the Mumbai Terror Attacks by the Indian and the Pakistani Print Media,”⁴⁷ in an interview. “There is a defined history between India and Pakistan which stretches back to partition. It covers terrorism, Kashmir, Afghanistan, and security. At the same time, in the years before 2008, the Indian media market had become more competitive with new television stations. You had reporters on the scene for what seemed like twenty-four hours and every time the scene [quieted], there were endless updates on social media.”

Beyond the mounting death toll, the media focus rested on criticism of the government’s inability to secure the scene. Politically, there were immediate attempts by the opposition to criticize Congress for its lack of readiness. According to “The 2008 Mumbai terror attacks: (re-)constructing Indian (counter-)terrorism,” the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party published an advertisement on the front pages of major daily newspapers on November 28. The ad featured a large red drop of blood framed by a black background. The text read ,“Brutal Terror Strikes at Will. Weak Government, Unwilling and Incapable. Fight Terror. Vote BJP.”

In its manifesto for the 2009 elections, the BJP described the preceding five years as a “macabre dance of death and destruction.” The party promised to modernize India’s intelligence agencies, set up a “Digital Security Agency,” and equip state governments and police forces with the latest weaponry and communications technology. The BJP also pledged to set up special terrorism courts that would fast-track prosecutions.

The election of 2009 saw both major parties, Congress and the BJP, campaign on diverging platforms with differing political priorities. Congress highlighted the UPA’s achievements since 2004: strong economic growth and providing rural development. The BJP campaigned on security, development, and the UPA’s failure to provide a muscular foreign policy. In one campaign ad, the BJP showed its 81-year-old leader, Lal Krishna Advani, pumping iron at the gym, a reference to the party’s promise to be tough on Muslims. The criticism backfired. In a country where corruption often prompts more scrutiny than security, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was viewed as above suspicion.

The BJP’s own record on fighting terror was also less than exemplary. In 1999, the BJP-led government of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee conceded to the demands of Pakistani terrorists who had hijacked an Indian Airlines plane, landing it in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Vajpayee freed three terrorists from Indian jails to overwhelming criticism.

Held over five stages and over the course of a month with around 714 million people eligible, India’s election mostly centered around traditional anxieties such as the price of flour, water, and electricity. As 2015 figures show, nearly 70 percent of all Indians are rural; urban terrorism in the tourist center of Mumbai would be an unlikely influence on their politics. Prime Minister Singh was returned to power and became the first leader since Jawaharlal Nehru in 1962 to be re-elected after completing a full five-year term.⁴⁸

Although Congress improved its share of the vote by only 2.1 percent over its 2004 victory, it was enough to gain 61 additional seats in Parliament and a 262-seat majority as the head of the UPA coalition. The BJP dropped from 138 to 116 seats and saw its share of votes fall from 22.2 percent in 2004 to 18.8 percent in 2009.

The findings demonstrate that the fear of the frailty of Indian secularism over nationalism was misplaced. The Indian electorate appears to have voted for the party offering them the politics of moderation, and Singh resisted the BJP’s attempt to manipulate the election. “The achievement of Congress was to make sure Mumbai wasn’t seen as a cliché of terrorism,” said Vijay Prashad, Professor of South Asian Studies International Studies at Trinity College, Connecticut, in an interview. He continued: “That paid off dividends in the polls. Singh reacted to Mumbai as a technocrat, not in an emotional sense. He said India’s reaction should be to find out who did it and bring them to justice.”