Unfazed by bombings, India has an option: peace

— With a deadly attack on its embassy in Afghanistan, Pakistani troops clashing with its soldiers in disputed Kashmir and Islamic militants bombing its cities, India has in recent months seemed a country under siege.

Just don't ask it to live like one.

Its ancient markets are as packed as ever. Its bright new malls bustle as never before. And few talk of avenging attacks that just a few years ago would likely have brought South Asia's nuclear-armed rivals to the brink of war.

It's a turn-the-other-cheek attitude that is tempting to see as weakness, and some here say it reflects the lack of options available to India, where seemingly no one wants to abandon a four-year peace process with Pakistan.

But in India's restraint, many here also see a pragmatic approach to a problem as old as the country itself. It's the response, they say, of a nation with ambitions to become a global powerhouse, not a mere player in an unending regional feud.

"We can't keep going back at it with Pakistan. C'mon man! Where would that leave us?" university student Sanjay Joshi asked. "We've done war. We're in a different place now. It's not about India-Pakistan.

"It's about India, what can we do as a country, what can we achieve," he said.

Sitting in one of the bright, new coffee shops that have sprung up in recent years throughout this land of roadside tea stalls, Joshi gave off the air of a man unrestrained by ancient traditions, old rivalries, past injustices.

One of his friends, 21-year-old Reema Sarin, said: "What do I care for Pakistan? We should all leave each other alone."

It's a sentiment that flies in the face of history.

Hindu-majority India and Muslim Pakistan were born in the bloody partition of the subcontinent at independence from Britain in 1947. They have fought three wars, held tit-for-tat nuclear weapons tests and engaged in countless battles before peace talks got under way in 2004.

For India, the timing could not have been better. Its economy was taking off and the dialing down of tensions with Pakistan allowed it to start carving out an identity separate from its troubled neighbor.

India could start claiming what it always considered its rightful place as a world power. It began lobbying for a U.N. Security Council seat, flexed its economic muscles and, within a year, it reached a landmark nuclear energy cooperation deal with the United States.

The agreement would reverse three decades of American policy by allowing atomic trade with India, which has not signed international nonproliferation accords.

India's leaders say the deal will help the country power its energy-hungry economy and raise its global standing.

However, the deal must still be approved by the Nuclear Suppliers Group of countries that export nuclear material.

A Western diplomat whose country belongs to the NSG said any serious ramping up of tension with Pakistan could make such approval difficult to secure. The diplomat insisted on anonymity because of the sensitivity of the deal.

But that doesn't mean India and Pakistan are close to securing a lasting peace.

Last month, tensions rose after a suicide car bombing at New Delhi's mission in Kabul killed 58 people. India and Afghanistan — and, reportedly, the United States — believe Pakistan's spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, orchestrated the attack.

The bombing is widely viewed as a Pakistani attempt to undermine India's budding friendship with Afghanistan, which Islamabad considers a strategic rear base in any potential conflict with India. Pakistan denies any role but has promised to investigate.

"We know the promise is weak, but there is relatively little India can do short of military action and we do not have the stomach for that," said Radha Kumar, the director at Jamia Millia Islamia University's Nelson Mandela Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution.

Both India and Pakistan also blame each other for the 19 shootings this year across the fortified frontier in divided Kashmir, an overwhelmingly Muslim region in the Himalayas that lies at the heart of their rivalry. Once an everyday event, gunfire on the frontier had become rare since a 2003 truce.

The two countries nonetheless reaffirmed last weekend their commitment to the peace process at a regional summit in neighboring Sri Lanka.

India seems to have fewer answers for the 13 bombings that have struck the country's cities since October 2005, killing more than 552 people. The latest came in late July, when 22 synchronized explosions killed 42 people in the western city of Ahmadabad.

All have been blamed on Islamic militants, but no one seems to agree on who's responsible: homegrown militants? Pakistanis? Bangladeshis? A combination of the three?

Still, the attacks have done little to alter life for most Indians, as terror-related deaths only account for a fraction of India's 1.1 billion people. The U.S. National Counterterrorism Center reported 3,674 deaths from January 2004 to March 2007, second only to Iraq.

"Danger is everywhere. But I have to live my life," Manoj Bose, a 45-year-old fruit vendor in Ahmadabad, said a day after the bombings. He was back on the street selling fruit a block from where one of the blasts struck.

"What are the chances that I will be killed? I survived this time."