 "Photo:")
With darkness just falling on McKeldin Mall, a crowd of graduate students gathered in silence in front of McKeldin Library yesterday and shielded flickering votive candles from the wind in honor of the victims of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India.
Many of the Indian graduate students on the campus are from the Mumbai area, said food science graduate student Avani Sanghvi as she held out a bag of candles for passersby trickling in to the vigil. The places that were attacked - including hotels, shops and train stations - were places they pass by every day, meaning the attacks hit especially close to home, Sanghvi said.
Shivering beneath thick jackets, some shed tears as the candles commemorating the 195 victims were laid out one-by-one on the library's steps. Just the fact that so many students showed up was inspiring, Sanghvi said.
"It's great that even away from home, there are still people here who support the Indian people," she said.
Kinesiology graduate student Anusha Venkatakrishnan described the mood of her relatives back home as tense, angry and helpless.
"The places attacked are ones that they visit on a daily basis," she said. "You don't have a choice, beyond a point. If you've got to take a train to school or to work, then you have to take that train, even if they might bomb it."
As the crowd milled around, chatting in hushed tones in groups of two or three, many said they were still reeling from shock. Some talks turned to the repercussions and who is to blame.
Agriculture and resource economics graduate student Anmol Ratan said India's government failed to respond to the attacks long before they occurred by ignoring the warnings of attacks by sea. But they failed even more by not responding within the first nine hours of the massacre, crucial moments when most victims were claimed, he said.
"But even the best of planning couldn't have accounted for the terrorists, who played it out and prolonged it for the people watching on television," he said. "They really want some kind of response. We have to be careful not to give them what they want."
Ratan said he is worried there will be a knee-jerk reaction against Pakistan, but he added the country would have no answer for the international community if it were to turn out the groups had connections to the country.
In contrast, the anger is not a knee-jerk reaction at all, Venkatakrishnan said, but instead is based on continual threats and attacks over the years by terrorist groups based in Pakistan.
"We don't want to keep blaming Pakistan, and it's not the people of Pakistan whom we are against," she said. "It's the select people who keep breeding terror. It's been said enough that terrorism is a global threat. We need to be united in standing against these groups."
sticedbk@gmail.com
Be the first to comment on this article!