Terror comes to India.

I returned to India for my brother's wedding, which was on December 11. When I landed in New Delhi, life seemed to be going on in the city's normal, chaotic way. Even security at the Indira Gandhi International Airport did not seem to be tighter than usual, though for many years it has been much more rigorous than in the United States.

Two days after the wedding, my family and I were sitting down for lunch at my parents' home when a cousin of mine rushed in and informed us that he had just seen television footage of the attack on the Indian Parliament. People in India, after decades of terrorism, have become so inured to such attacks that no one among us got up to take a look at the television coverage. We figured all the gory details would be in print in the days to come. And sure enough, the covers of Indian publications in the subsequent weeks were emblazoned with photos of the mangled bodies of the militants, photographs so bloody that not many U.S. journals would dare print them.

The December 13 attack gave India its own version of September 11, albeit on a smaller scale. The same militaristic reflexes were evident, the same outbreak of nationalism, the same crackdown on civil liberties.

During a two-day train ride that my extended family and I undertook from my hometown of Basti to Chennai in the south, the topic of terror came up often. Like a lot of Indians, my relatives are fed up with what they see as Pakistan's attempt to bleed India to death by sponsoring such attacks. The only way to end this, they said, was an all-out war with Pakistan, even if it involves the possibility of nuclear conflict. I have the feeling that my counterarguments failed to make much of an impact on them.

The terrorist attacks of September 11 and December 13 fit in very well with the mindset of many in the Hindu-dominated upper middle class in India (a segment I belong to). The episodes validated their notion that nearly all global terrorism is Muslim-inspired. Never mind that this ignores the various other types of non-Muslim insurgencies pervading South Asia. These range from the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka (Hindus who have mastered the science of suicide bombings) to the Maoists in Nepal. There are a number of rebellions in India itself that have nothing to do with Islam, such as secessionist uprisings in North-East India (conducted mostly by indigenous tribe members) and Maoist rebels (called Naxalites) in other parts.

These distinctions were lost in the rubble of September 11 and December 13, which a lot of Hindus took as confirmation that Islam is an inherently violent, intolerant religion.

The Indian government seized on September 11 to demonstrate to Washington what India has been going through for the past two decades. It urged Washington to join India in a crusade against terrorism, including that being perpetrated by Pakistan against India. It was the misery-loves-company response. "India's immediate reaction was that now the United States knows what India feels like," says Naresh Fernandes, an editor with The Times of India.

This isn't surprising when you consider the support base of the leading party in the governing coalition. A wave of Hindu chauvinism helped bring the Bharatiya Janata Party, or the BJP for short, into power. It is true that any other party in authority would also possibly have been compelled to react as harshly to the attack on the Indian Parliament. It is also true that the, BJP is not uniformly made up of Hindu zealots, with Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee being a prominent exception. Plus, the BJP is part of a multiparty ruling coalition, which keeps its extremist tendencies somewhat in check.

After September 11, the BJP's militant face came to the fore, as it saw in the U.S. response to September 11 justification for a hard-line response to the Kashmiri militancy. It offered unconditional support for the United States in the war on terrorism, eager as it was to root out the Taliban and tarnish the Pakistani military regime, the two governments that in tandem had been training and arming the Kashmiri militants. (One of the chief reasons that Pakistan set up the Taliban in Afghanistan was to counter India and fuel the insurgency in Kashmir.)

"September 11 came down as a fantastic opportunity for India, and it made a lot of officials and BJP leaders very happy," says Praful Bidwai, one of India's leading columnists and the co-author of New Nukes: India, Pakistan, and Global Nuclear Disarmament (Olive Branch Press, 2000). "It was their chance to tell the world that all their complaining about cross-border terrorism was not mythical, but serious."

Since then, and despite the U.S. need to keep Pakistan as an ally, the Indian and U.S. governments have drawn closer together.

"The United States is fueling the jingoistic delusions of New Delhi," says Fernandes. "Its support to the BJP even furthers the Indian government's message that terrorism is our number-one enemy, not the lack of education or the development of our people."

"The two sides have since developed an intimacy that has never been seen before," says Bidwai. "There has been the setting up of a number of joint operations, and the stream of U.S. officials to India has been the highest ever."

Internally, the BJP used September 11 as justification for various repressive measures.

In late September, it banned the Student Islamic Movement of India, an organization with fundamentalist views, which it alleged had ties to militants in Kashmir and contacts with Al Qaeda. However, it displayed a benign attitude toward Hindu fundamentalist groups such as the Bajrang Dal and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, organizations that have a record of fomenting anti-Muslim and anti-Christian sentiments and violence.

The government also pushed for harsh anti-terrorist measures that went much further in their suppression of civil liberties than their American or British equivalents.

The Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance, operative for three years, allows detention without charges for three months, which can be extended to 180 days, and mandates harsh sentences for members of terrorist organizations, as well as for sympathizers. There is no definition of what a terrorist organization is; it is what the government deems it to be. Parliament has yet to approve the ordinance, issued by India's ruling coalition, but it still has the force of law.

Then December 13 happened. The suicide attack on the Indian Parliament stirred so much outrage that the BJP received a big boost. The press coverage of the attack was strikingly reminiscent of the post-September 11 coverage in the United States, with headlines reading "A Nation Outraged" and "Capital Terror." (It must be said in fairness, though, that the Indian media were more divided than the media in the United States over the question of whether retaliatory force should be used.)

The Indian government took several measures. It began with a severance of transportation links with Pakistan and a curtailment of diplomatic staff. It soon proceeded to a huge military buildup on the India-Pakistan border and a sharp volley of words with Pakistan. Top Indian army officials treated the prospect of war casually, with India's army chief S. Padmanabhan saying, "If we have to go to war, jolly good." Some Indian leaders went even further in threatening a nuclear exchange. "If at all war happens, the intensity will be so strong that there will be no need for a future war with Pakistan," said Indian Parliament Affairs Minister Pramod Mahajan. "And the results will be there for everyone to see."

The BJP was playing a game of brinkmanship, designed for both an external constituency and a domestic one. The external constituency is the United States, which the Indian government wants to frighten enough so that it will put maximum pressure on Pakistan to end its support for the Kashmiri insurgency.

That seems to have worked, with Pakistani leader General Pervez Musharraf making a pivotal January 12 speech, at least in part due to Indian and U.S. pressure, where he promised to crack down on militant groups in Pakistan. Although there is still room for skepticism about how sincere he will be in his follow-through (justifiable, given Pakistan's track record), he arrested more than 1,000 militants in the subsequent days and closed down a number of offices of such organizations.

"It was a landmark speech," says Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist and the author of Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (Yale University Press, 2000). "A president of a country can't make such a speech and then not implement it. He should be taken more seriously by India."

The internal constituency the BJP is catering to in the confrontation is the electorate of my home state of Uttar Pradesh, the most populous in India, which had elections in mid-February. The BJP felt a desperate need to win reelection in the state so as to secure its hold on power. By whipping up passions around the December 13 attack, it was clearly trying to get votes. Unlike many Western correspondents, Indians were fully aware of these factors at play and hence took the Indian government's bellicose posture with a grain of salt.

"All this will last only till the U.P. elections are over," a friend of mine commented. "After that, things are going to start cooling down."

This cynicism about the machinations of the Indian government resulted in a strange dichotomy during my stay in India, where even after December 13 people went about their lives in a nonchalant manner, while the increasing tensions between India and Pakistan blared from the television and newspapers.

What made the brinkmanship different this time is the nuclear arsenal of the two countries. Although both sides seem to be aware of the potential destructiveness of these weapons, this has not stopped them from repeatedly adopting belligerent postures since the May 1998 nuclear tests.

"Even a 1 percent chance of nuclear war would be unacceptable, and this is considerably higher than that," says Bidwai. "It is far more dangerous than any day of the Cold War after the Cuban Missile Crisis."

Bidwai explains that this is because the two countries have been at war a number of times. Plus, there is their proximity, which gives a response time of just three-to-eight minutes to either country. And the ramshackle nature of their command-and-control systems does not inspire confidence.

Rashid agrees. "It presumes too much" for both governments to believe that they could have a conventional war without it "escalating into nuclear war."

Progressive forces are fighting an uphill battle against the prevalent sentiments in both countries, although Rashid credits Pakistani progressive groups for helping bring about the recent changes in Islamabad.

"The pressure from the progressive movement has been an important factor in influencing Musharraf and creating mass support for his speech," says Rashid. "There's great support among women's groups, human rights groups, and NGOs for the rollback of Talibanization."

The Indian peace movement, although it has had some high-visibility figures such as Arundhati Roy associated with it, has had only modest success in changing the atmosphere.

"The peace movement's impact has been very limited," admits Bidwai. "It has had some impact on the intelligentsia and on center-left parties. We have issued statements, held demonstrations and marches, and are going to convene a people's parliament to discuss these issues from a different perspective."

The stalemate continues, with India refusing to de-escalate until it is convinced that Pakistan is sincere about its change in policy and Pakistan hands over the twenty people India charges with terrorism and criminal acts. The Indian media are already carrying reports that the policy change is a sham, with Pakistan just apprehending some administrative officials and letting actual militants go. Pakistan says that handing over Pakistani citizens is out of the question, although it may be willing to hand over Indian citizens if it can locate them in Pakistan, a transparent stalling tactic. And India is unwilling to enter into dialogue with Pakistan unless it is certain that Pakistan has ended its support for the Kashmiri militancy.

"The prospects are very grim at the moment," says Rashid. "There has to be a dialogue on Kashmir. Otherwise, the situation will be stalemated for a long time to come."

A couple of days after the December 13 attack, my family and I went to visit the nearby town of Ayodhya, where a mosque was demolished nine years ago, leading to riots all over the country. Security personnel were visible everywhere. They were not allowing vehicles to approach the major temples, forcing people to walk a long distance to pay obeisance to the gods.

But security is spotty. In Chennai, the fourth-largest city in the country, there weren't many signs of it. And my wife's hometown of Udaipur, a popular tourist destination, had even fewer, though on the flight from Chennai to Udaipur our carry-on luggage was thoroughly searched a number of times and we had to identify and reidentify our bags.

By the time I reached New Delhi in the beginning of January, life had seemingly returned to normal, even with the threat of war in the air. On the plane, I carried with me a copy of India Today with the headline "A Nation Shaken: Who Was Responsible? Can India Strike Back?"

But the question is not can it but should it.

Amitabh Pal is Editor of the Progressive Media Project, an affiliate of The Progressive magazine. He wrote "A Pacifist Uncovered" in the February issue.