Why Attack Hotels?

The terrorist strike against India was aimed at luxury, global capital, and our way of life.

By James McGirk,  December 19, 2008

Take the population of New York City, double it, cram it into an archipelago half its size, and turn up the temperature: you get Mumbai, a city whose luxury hotels are its best escape. These air-conditioned comfort bubbles, far above the sweltering, seething masses, afford the world-weary traveler or Indian executive access to the best restaurants, luxuries like crisp croissants and pepperoni pizza, glossy magazines that haven't yet gone limp in the relentless humidity, water that won't give you "Delhi Belly," and respite from the traffic jams and screeching hawkers on the streets below.

These "five-stars" anchor the leisure time of India's elite in a way that defies comparison in contemporary American life. The closest equivalent to their looming presence on Mumbai's social skyline might be one of those snooty country clubs that seemed so ubiquitous as proving grounds in a certain subgenre of eighties-era suburban teen movie: pretentious, but carefully controlled; a safe place.

No longer.

On November 26, four wild eyed men clad in designer denim burst into the lobby of the Taj Palace Hotel, unzipped black duffel bags, removed scythe-shaped AK-47 assault rifles and began firing. Then, as flames gutted the Taj, grenades exploded, and gunfights raged, a second team stormed the Oberoi Trident Hotel. A third group attacked Victoria Terminus, the central railway station; a fourth, Nariman House, home of the city's only Orthodox Jewish synagogue.

During the raid, according to the New Yorker, gunmen conferred via cell phone with their senior leadership, vetting hostages according to caste, religion and race. A few Muslims were spared. Jewish hostages were tortured before being killed. An estimated 183 people were slaughtered over 60 hours, almost all while they were at their most relaxed and vulnerable. It was more than just a terror attack. It was an assault on India's innermost sanctum. A life of luxury on the Indian Subcontinent can never seem as safe or as comfortable again.

So why mount this particular attack? After all, the Taj Palace Hotel is owned by a famous Parsi family (the billionare Tatas); and there are far easier targets to hit than a five-star hotel, which are easy for police to surround, have their own security teams and are constantly on-guard against kidnappings and smash-and-grabs at their swank jewelry stores.

Maximum City author Suketu Mehta says that "there's something about this island-state that appalls religious extremists, Hindus and Muslims alike. Perhaps because Mumbai stands for lucre, profane dreams and an indiscriminate openness."

"Mumbai," he says, "is all about dhandha, or transaction… the city understands money and has no guilt about the getting and spending of it." The five star hotels are the gleaming-glass, information-age foundries of this deal making: a direct uplink to the global economy, beacons absorbing and disseminating information and wealth.