IT TELLS you something hopeful perhaps that, for all the horror unleashed when two bombs laid by presumed militant Islamists ripped through a crowd in Hyderabad on February 21st, India’s public response has been muted. The blasts killed 16 and injured 117. Both the method of the attack (bombs in metal tiffin boxes strapped to bicycles) and its location (near a Hindu temple) point to a home-grown Islamic group, the Indian Mujahideen.

Apart from a brief debate about policing and about the competence of the home minister, Indians responded phlegmatically. Terror is not novel, and bombings have grown less frequent and bloody of late. Muslims broadly, including politicians in Hyderabad, were quick to call the latest violence an assault on all Indians; Hindu politicians echoed them. Two days later, in the goat-filled lanes of Taj Ganj, a Muslim quarter in Agra, south of Delhi, the capital, descendants of workers who built the Taj Mahal cheerily said India’s faiths rub along fine. There was no reason to change now.

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