Mumbai after 26/11

I visited Mumbai in January and wrote this based on my experiences and the debate in the run up to the Indian elections.

One of the great tourist attractions in Mumbai is the Gateway of India, the Arc de Triomphe-like arrival point for ships to the city, built in 1924 as an expression of Britain's imperial might and the scene of the final departure of British troops in February 1948. But the backpackers and travellers tend to be looking across the road these days, at the magnificent and somewhat discomfiting sight of the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, the most famous landmark of 'India's 9/11'.

The attacks on the 26 November - '26/11' as it's now called here - have left surprisingly few scars on the Taj. While the old part of the hotel is closed as the extensive internal damage is assessed and repaired, externally there is little sense that this was the site of a pitched gun battle a few weeks ago. Indeed, the modern, tower extension to the Taj reopened in December, less than four weeks after the attacks.

The weird sensation of being somewhere so familiar from our TV screens is even stronger at Leopold's Café on nearby Colaba Causeway. But the attacks have hardly scared the punters away. Indeed, my guide - once a regular at Leopold's in her college days - bemoaned the fact that even on a Tuesday night it was now hard to get a seat and we were crammed into a corner of the upstairs bar underneath a big TV screen. Clearly, being able to say you've eaten at the (slightly) bullet-scarred café is a selling point to the regular stream of backpackers passing through town.

Elsewhere, life in Mumbai seems barely touched. The relentless noise of beeping horns provides a soundtrack to a city that is the very embodiment of 'bustling'. Yet the media is full of debate about what is to be done about terrorism. India Today demands that the country should 'Declare War on Terror. Indeed, every big newspaper seems to be campaigning against terror in one way or another. The big stories of the last couple of weeks have been a dispute affecting petrol supplies, a couple of major financial scandals and the awards success of Slumdog Millionaire. But the constant underlying theme has been the issue of terrorism.

Indeed, the calls for action predated the November attacks - and no wonder. According to the US National Counterterrorism Center, over 1,000 people died in terrorist attacks in 2007 alone. In September 2008, following bombings in the capital, Delhi, which killed 20 people, the media seemed united in demanding tough legislation. The Hindustan Times demanded that 'firmer anti-terror laws are put in place - never mind where the suggestions come from', while the Times of India suggested that 'At this time of crisis, some of the liberties that we take for granted might have to be curbed to ensure that terrorists, who follow no norms and rules, are effectively restrained'. The cries have only got louder since 26/11.

This bunker mentality has asserted itself in everyday life in sometimes farcical ways. At Churchgate Station - where 1,500 commuters pass in and out every minute during rush hour - walk-through metal detectors have been installed. While the lights on top flicker from 'WALK' to 'STOP' as a constant stream of passengers set off the detectors, the police stand around unable to usefully do anything. Stopping everyone would be impractical. Indeed, during my travels round India, these metal detectors seem to have become the must-have accessory for almost every government building, posh hotel or shopping mall - and they're all pretty much useless.

More ominous is a distinct anti-Pakistan mood, reinforced by politicians looking for an easy explanation for the 26/11 attacks, most notably with the 'dossier' of evidence linking the attacks to Pakistan presented by the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, two weeks ago. Even if the attacks originated in Pakistan, it seems unlikely that the terrorists had official Pakistan government backing. But that hasn't prevented populist hawks from turning up the anti-Pakistan rhetoric. Neel Mukherjee, writing in the Guardian, illustrated this trend with the case of a Mumbai bookstore whose owner had had a friendly visit from local cops 'suggesting' that it might be wise to remove Pakistani authors from his shelves.

The reason for my visit to India - to act as a judge for the schools debating competition Debating Matters - provided an ideal opportunity to talk to Mumbai residents about the attacks. Chatting with teachers and students from the suburb of Thane, they were in accord that life had got back to normal almost straightaway. Like people in New York and London, there was a certain amount of nervousness about future attacks. So, one parent asked in a debate on terrorism and civil liberties what - if anything - could be done to protect her children while they were out at the mall. But people had to get on with their lives. As one fellow judge joked, Mumbai seems so chaotic it's a wonder anyone noticed an attack going on.

Another interesting viewpoint was provided by another debating judge, a senior Mumbai policeman. His biggest headache was the traffic arrangements for the forthcoming Mumbai Marathon rather than another act of terrorism. But he was also concerned at trends towards a greater involvement of the military in day-to-day life: 'Armies are for borders; cops are for cities', he told me. In New Delhi, uniformed men with automatic weapons seemed almost as commonplace as the metal detectors.

While ordinary Indians have been getting on with their lives, many outsiders seem to have lost their nerve. One distinguished doctor I met in New Delhi, who preferred not to be named, complained that a major international medical conference he had helped to organise, which was due to take place in the city next month and had taken three years to prepare, had been cancelled after the sponsors got cold feet. The irony is that a conference that would have been a thousand miles and three months removed from the 26/11 attacks has been shifted to the apparent safety of Washington DC, scene of the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon. The disgruntled conference organiser told me that a number of other big conventions had been cancelled.

India is a huge country with multiple political problems, many the legacy of the disastrous carve-up of the sub-continent when the British left, 60 years ago. While ordinary Indians may feel even more cynical about politics and politicians than their counterparts in the West, the government is still accountable to them at the ballot box and India is a largely open society. The frenetic and sometimes alarming behaviour of drivers whizzing around Mumbai's crowded roads are testament to a society keen to get on - in a hurry. It would be a tragedy if, with national elections expected in April or May, people are bullied into sacrificing more of that freedom in the name of dubious measures to 'tackle terror'.