Mumbai 26/11 at seventeen: Memory, justice and the end of impunity

Seventeen years have passed since the night of 26 November 2008, when Mumbai—India’s largest, loudest, and most restless city—suddenly found itself under siege. What started as the ordinary hum of a weekday evening quickly turned into a theatre of violence as ten heavily armed terrorists landed on the city’s shoreline and began a coordinated series of attacks that would last nearly sixty hours. By the morning of 29 November, 166 people had been killed, and more than 300 others wounded. Among the victims were waiters, commuters, police officers, tourists, hotel managers, a rabbi and his wife, and countless ordinary people who happened to be in the path of the gunmen. Nine of the attackers were killed; one, Ajmal Amir Kasab, was captured alive, tried under Indian law, and executed four years later.

Each year, the anniversary of 26/11 forces us to confront more than just the loss of lives. It prompts us to reflect on the anatomy of an attack that transformed India’s approach to security, diplomacy, and counter-terrorism. Mumbai was not chosen at random. It represented India’s global face—a city of financial strength, cinematic imagination, and multicultural coexistence. In late November 2008, the city hosted European trade envoys; its streets were crowded with tourists; Nariman House was a beacon for Jewish travellers; and Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus was filled with thousands of people moving through the vital arteries of India’s railway system. It was this mix—this density of life, commerce, faith, and movement—that the attackers aimed to turn into a spectacle of suffering.

The operation's origins were far from the Gateway of India. The conspiracy was devised in Pakistan by Lashkar-e-Taiba, a jihadist organisation cultivated over many years through a sophisticated mix of indoctrination, disciplined military-style training, and support from Pakistan’s security establishment. Young recruits were initially immersed in ideological narratives that portrayed global events through a lens of grievance and divine struggle. They then progressed through basic and advanced combat courses, culminating in urban warfare and maritime infiltration training that enabled them to hijack a fishing trawler, sail across the Arabian Sea, and slip into Mumbai’s harbour. Their movements were supported by months of reconnaissance carried out by David Coleman Headley, a Pakistani-American operative who, under the direction of LeT and his handlers, carefully mapped the Taj, the Oberoi-Trident, Leopold Café, and other targets, walking through their corridors with cameras and notebooks under the guise of an ordinary traveller.

When the gunmen arrived in Mumbai, the city was caught unawares but remained resilient. The first to confront them were local police officers who, with little more than their service weapons and their instincts, tried to halt their advance. Their bravery—often at significant risk—bought crucial time for India to mobilise the National Security Guard. Commandos flown in from Delhi launched what became known as Operation Black Tornado, a gruelling and perilous mission to clear the hotels and Nariman House room by room, floor by floor, even as buildings burned around them and hostages were trapped inside. The scenes were harrowing, yet extraordinary acts of humanity matched them: hotel staff shielding guests, firemen rushing into smoke-filled stairwells, hospital workers caring for the injured day and night, and ordinary Mumbaikars opening their doors to strangers fleeing the chaos.

It is tempting to look back after seventeen years and believe that the world has decisively moved beyond the lessons of 26/11. India has undoubtedly bolstered its coastal surveillance, overhauled its intelligence-sharing systems, and enhanced the speed at which specialised units can respond to attacks. Internationally, there is a much deeper understanding of the network of Pakistan-based militant groups than there was in 2008. This year’s Operation Sindoor, launched in May 2025, also indicates India’s increasing willingness to target terrorist infrastructure directly—including facilities linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed—when such threats cross its red lines.

Yet the deeper challenge remains troubling and persistent. Many of the architects, facilitators, and ideologues behind 26/11 continue to reside openly in Pakistan, protected by layers of political ambiguity, judicial inertia, and bureaucratic indulgence. Their organisations rebrand, splinter, or mutate, maintaining the same goals under new banners. The international community, meanwhile, often slips back into the easy rhetoric of “dialogue” and “engagement,” even when the empirical record shows that these groups operate with a sophistication and reach that no responsible state should tolerate. The complacency is widespread and familiar: a slow normalisation of terror as an unfortunate but routine hazard of an interconnected world.

This is why anniversaries matter. They serve as our defence against forgetting. To remember Mumbai is not to indulge in grief; it is to uphold a commitment to clarity. There is nothing abstract about the forces that attacked the city. They were trained, funded, and directed. They crossed borders with preparation, confidence, and logistical support. Their aim was not only to kill, but to reveal what they believed were the vulnerabilities of an open society. The appropriate response to such acts cannot be polite evasiveness or softened language. If the world is serious about preventing another Mumbai, then it must be serious about recognising the networks that made Mumbai possible.

And yet, the enduring story of 26/11 is not only one of loss or security failures. It is also a story of remarkable resilience—something uniquely, almost stubbornly, Mumbai. After the smoke cleared, the city did not retreat into itself. Hotels were rebuilt and reopened. Commuters returned to CST. Colaba’s cafés filled again with travellers. The rhythms of daily life—messy, crowded, sometimes chaotic—resumed with a defiance that the attackers could neither understand nor extinguish. Mumbai’s answer to terror was not silence, fear or division, but a continuation of the very coexistence that the gunmen had tried to break.

Seventeen years on, that spirit remains the city’s most significant memorial. Our duty is to honour it with honesty and resolve. The tragedy of 26/11 was not inevitable; it was enabled. It will be repeated elsewhere—perhaps in different forms, through new technologies or new proxies—if the structures of impunity around cross-border terrorism persist. The world owes the victims of Mumbai more than condolences. It owes them vigilance. It owes them honesty. It owes them a refusal to normalise the kind of violence that aimed to turn one of the world’s great cities into a headline.

Mumbai stood tall in 2008. Today, it stands taller. The obligation now rests with all of us to ensure that no city—whether in India or anywhere else—ever has to endure what Mumbai endured during those three terrible days.