And the answer is..

Normally when terrorists want to trigger communal violence they attack places of worship, usually Hindu temples or holy cities. On September 2002, terrorists attacked the Akshardham temple in Gujarat, killing 31. On July 2005 there was a two-hour gun fight between LeT terrorists and Indian police on the site of the Ram Janmabhoomi in Ayodhya in which six terrorists were killed. On March 7, 2006, a series of blasts occurred in the Hindu holy city of Varanasi. On April 14, 2006 two blasts occured in the Jama Masjid in Old Delhi killing five people and injuring thirteen.

When terrorists attack Mumbai trains in which people of all religions travel how do you find a communal angle to it? You can if you want to and if you are the editor of a major newspaper. This is exactly what Shekhar Gupta did in his opinion piece in Newsweek. Shekhar Gupta wants to believe that the Mumbai terrorist attacks were an attack on secularism and is connected to the 2001 Gujarat riots in which both Hindus and Muslims were killed. His reasoning is that people who travel in first class compartments are rich upper-caste Gujarati Hindus.

This explains why one of my friends survived the bombing. He was traveling in one of the trains in which the bomb exploded. Fortunately he was in a different first class compartment. Probably the terrorists after realizing that he was a upper-caste Malayali Hindu moved the bomb to another compartment. And if the aim of terrorists was to murder upper-caste Gujarati Hindus why did they come to Mumbai when Gujarat is right next door, as Sandeep asks.
But finally we have an answer to The Acorn’s question: who is the bigger fool?