I've been reading a little more about this in the aftermath. Apparently, it could have been much worse than it was. They planned to kill thousands of people, and had the weapons to do it.

Conversely, if the Indian authorities had acted more competently, it could have been prevented or significantly mitigated.

The Mumbai police didn't have anything resembling a SWAT team, and they weren't trained to deal with an attack on this scale. 3 high-ranking anti-terrorism officials were traveling in a van together (which, in itself, violated internal procedure and common sense), and they were killed in the beginning of the attack, paralyzing the initial response.

As a result, it took several hours for personnel trained to deal with this type of thing to be mobilized, and they were based a few hundred miles away. They had to be flown in, and because the Mumbai police don't own any helicopters, they had to take buses to the sites of the attacks. By this time, the attackers had been acting with near-impunity for hours, and had time to take hostages and get holed up in the hotels.

I haven't seen anything that points at Pakistan the nation as the culprit, although it does look like Pakistanis operating in Pakistan are responsible. Why do you think the attacks were sanctioned by the Pakistani government?

Probably not directly.

However, it's been known for quite some time that rogue elements in the Pakistani military and intelligence services have supported the Taliban, and terrorist attacks in India, so I wouldn't rule out that type of connection.

However, it would be suicidal for the de jure government to have any involvement in this. India and Pakistan have already fought 3 wars with each other - all of which occurred before either country had nukes.

The leadership in Pakistan probably know that if they were directly implicated in this attack, it could easily lead to war with India, further destabilizing the Pakistani government, and ending in disaster for both countries, especially if there were a nuclear exchange between them.

That's a big part of it. The tribal regions which border Afghanistan are almost completely autonomous, which is a holdover from British rule.

Though my understanding is that the terrorists in that area are largely elements of the Taliban and al Quaeda, which primarily object to Western presence in the Middle East.

The groups that have their quarrel with India are not closely connected to them. At least that's how I understand it.