Stop blaming other countries

Talking about the recent terror attacks in Mumbai, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said: "A great multi-faithed democracy has been laid low by terrorists. It raises huge questions about how the world addresses violent extremism."

I agree. But the answers to those questions so far will only exasperate the problem.

Quoting Indian "security sources", the front page weekend headlines of our newspapers were virtually unanimous in linking the attacks in Mumbai to British Muslims from Bradford, Hartlepool, Leeds, etc.

So let me get this right. The Indian security services knew that the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan was blown up by terrorists but did nothing to look at the vulnerability of large hotels in India's own major cities?

The hotels had been given a detailed warning of the attacks eight days earlier but did nothing to prevent them.

And it took 12 hours for India to get its commandos to the scene of the carnage. Then those same commandos took more than 60 hours to put an end to the carnage caused by just 10 young men.

And how can this same outfit, without knowing even the names of these young men, suddenly know from which towns in the UK they had come from?

What nonsense. And all this despite our Foreign Office repeatedly stating that there was no evidence of British involvement in the attacks. That our media was so willing to play along with the Indian diversionary tactics is shameful. Such baseless accusations only serve to further alienate British Muslims.

Since then, the Indians have back-tracked and reverted to their original knee-jerk and well-oiled "if you have no clue, blame Pakistan" policy – apparently, now all of the attackers are from Pakistan.

India has got it wrong on many occasions before. The fire-bombing of the Samjhauta Express train between New Delhi and Lahore in February 2007 was first blamed on Pakistan, but later linked to Hindu extremists supported by an Indian army colonel.

What India does not want the world to know is that it has a range of home-grown extremists from all different faiths and backgrounds.

Suicide bombing as a terrorist tactic – since copied in other parts of the world by people of other backgrounds and faiths – was first brought to the world's attention many decades ago in India, when Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by a female Hindu suicide bomber.

Or how about when the Indian government stood by as thousands of Muslims were massacred by Hindu extremists in Gujarat, not to mention Kashmir or Assam.

If India is to learn anything from this, and there is plenty to learn, it must accept that it has huge internal problems that will not go away by blaming others.

It may deflect attention short term, but over time the problems will get worse. This may sound harsh at this time, but true friends of India will say the things it needs to hear, not what it wants to hear.