India blames Pakistani, Bangladeshi groups for bombing

The Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, has blamed unnamed "terrorist organisations based in Bangladesh and Pakistan" for the recent bombings in Hyderabad, which killed 42 people.

Meanwhile, Indian President Pratibha Patil has indicated that the intention of the bombers had been to harm harmony between Hindus and Muslims in the city (BBC).

Is the Indian authorities' tendency to blame most terrorist attacks on Pakistani -- and recently Bangladeshi -- groups a symptom of the fact that they do not possess adequate knowledge of terrorist groups possibly operating within their own country? In other words, why did it have to be Pakistanis or Bangladeshis, and not Indians?

The very idea that terrorists from Pakistan and Bangladesh supposedly cooperated in this attack is kind of hard to take given the sheer distance between the two countries. On the other hand, operatives representing unsavoury groups in the two countries may have met up in India, in which case someone was possibly harbouring them, and that someone might be an Indian group. So any way you look at it, blaming Pakistani and Bangladeshi groups looks like a copout.

Indian president-elect retracts statement on the veil

Pratibha Patil, who has been elected India's first female president, recently told a group of Muslims that the veil had first come into use in India to protect Indian women from Mughal invaders. She retracted her comments after they drew protests (BBC).

I'm glad President-elect Patil is wise enough to have taken her words back, instead of starting out with half-hearted apologies, the way some other famous people have done in recent years after offending Muslims with ill-informed statements.