The images of the mangled wreckage of trains and bodies strewn across Bombay’s rail network have a grim resonance around the world. The atrocities come a year after the bombings on London’s transport network; to the people of Madrid they bear ugly similarity to the attacks that killed so many in 2004. Terrorism is truly global, a scourge of all civilised societies.

Western security experts have long feared that India, a rising power and a nation becoming a bulwark of democracy and stability in Asia, would be a prime target. As Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister, called an emergency Cabinet meeting, his Home Minister admitted that Indian Intelligence had known that an attack was coming but not the time or place. There can be no doubt about the perpetrators’ motives. Al-Qaeda and Islamist extremists have every reason for wanting to destabilise India, to disrupt its growing prosperity, stir up sectarian violence and plunge relations with Pakistan back into crisis. Not only do the jihadists and obscurantist extremists see Hinduism, like Christianity and Buddhism, standing in the path of global Islamist dominance; but for militants in Pakistan and beyond, Kashmir has long been the cause to rally the Muslim masses to the cause of embattled fanaticism.

India has become an obstacle to the extremist cause. Its steady, purposeful commitment to rapprochement with Pakistan has reduced tension in Kashmir, and undermined the claims of the militants to supremacy in Pakistan. India’s warm relationship with America, embrace of democratic values, importance in the global economy and support for moderation in Afghanistan and the Middle East are seen by al-Qaeda as a sell-out to the West. Also, to the jihadist mind, retribution for historical slights is a powerful element in the thinking — to zealots, the loss of Andalusia is as raw as the Hindu opposition to militant Islam.

Both Dr Singh and President Musharraf of Pakistan understand immediately the extremists’ aims and the dangers to their societies. The Pakistani leader issued an immediate statement condemning the attacks as a “despicable act of terrorism”. By coincidence, each was born in the other’s country before Partition. Each has a personal commitment to rapprochement. And each understands that only determination, co-operation (including the sharing of intelligence) and a refusal to be pushed off course will thwart the extremist attempt to wreck relations.

Both have also much to lose. President Musharraf has many enemies, including Islamist dissidents within the Army and the security services who have never accepted his abandonment of the Taleban or his crack-down on Kashmiri militants. Here al-Qaeda has found fertile ground. Dr Singh is also challenged, by Hindu nationalists on the one hand and by those demanding vengeance for the communal killing in Gujarat in 2001. He knows that renewed sectarian violence would set back years of economic and social progress. Both men, like the humane everywhere, know that extremism must be defeated.