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Taj Mahal Terror Threat As India Celebrates

Other News Materials 15 August 2007 17:30 (UTC +04:00)

( Sky ) - Security has been tightened around the Taj Mahal amid fears terrorists will strike as India celebrates 60 years of independence.

Police say there was a specific threat to attack the iconic "marvel of marble".

One senior officer added that India had sealed its border with Nepal, fearing Islamic militants will infiltrate the country and carry out suicide attacks.

Security has been stepped up across the country as events take place to mark independence from Britain, a day after Pakistan celebrated Partition.

The mood is triumphant, with many feeling India is finally taking its place as a major global player.

But the optimism born of economic growth was balanced by the fact that many of the country's 1.1 billion people are being left behind.

Indian children are more likely to be malnourished than African ones, and the country is home to about a third of the people in the world living on less than 50p a day.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh focused on that forgotten majority in his Independence Day speech.

" India cannot become a nation with islands of high growth and vast areas untouched by development," he said.

He also made reference to Mohandas Gandhi, the revered independence leader, saying: "Gandhi's dream of a free India will only be fully realized when we banish poverty from our midst."

However, there was no talk of neighbouring Pakistan.

India and Pakistan gained independence when the departing British split the subcontinent in 1947 and saw it quickly overshadowed by one of the most violent upheavals of the 20th Century.

Some 10 million people moved across borders in one of history's largest mass migrations as the states were divided into Muslim Pakistan and Hindu-majority India.

The fasting and pleas for peace of Gandhi did little to stop the sectarian carnage and up to one million people were killed.

A year later Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu fanatic.

Since then, the neighbours have fought three wars and nine years ago engaged in tit-for-tat nuclear tests.

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