Your cover story (The Second Fake Encounter of Ishrat Jahan, March 14) exposes how the leaders of the ruling dispensation are nothing but traders in corpses. First, they connived to kill an innocent teenager; now, they are weaving new stories around the murder.
DEHRADUN Rakesh Agrawal
I read your cover story with a pinch of salt: you have P. Chidambaram claiming that of the two affidavits in controversy, the first was filed without his approval. Is this possible? If it did, what action did he take against those who went out of line? But that’s a question that I, a reader, am asking: you chose not to make a counterpoint of it, the way you questioned G.K. Pillai’s contentions.
And you write: “...the first affidavit was neither revised nor changed; only a supplementary has been filed”. But Chidambaram says it was his duty to correct the affidavit. So who is right? You, or the one who corrected it and says he did?
You also claim that David Headley might have been tutored in prison to talk about Ishrat Jahan. Is that possible? When was the last time the Indian authorities met Headley?
I would say that the statements of Pranesh Pillai’s father and Ishrat Jahan’s mother and sister are emotional outbursts. News magazines need not play detective; but they must at least demonstrate some objectivity.
MUMBAI G. Venkataraman
You argue that terrorists must not be killed in cold blood. I suppose we must wait for them to kill innocents before we decide to act against them. Ask yourself what you are saying!
ON E-MAIL Amaresh Mishra
Outlook seems to have conclusive proof that the Ishrat Jahan encounter was fake—much before the judiciary arrives at a conclusion through evaluation of evidence!
VIJAYAWADA Duggaraju Srinivasa Rao
Apropos And What Of Those Bullet-Sized Holes in the Narrative, the only moot point is whether it was a real or a fake encounter. With the judicial system compromised, I think the elimination of criminals through encounters is a good option and many would support me on this. Recall Nehru’s call for hanging all the corrupt politicians.
ON E-MAIL R. Narasimhan
Reading about the Ishrat Jahan case, I am reminded of how a policeman in America applied a brutal takedown on an aged Indian man, a Patel from Gujarat, just because he thought the old man was moving about suspiciously and could not answer questions because he knew very little English. For all we know, if the policeman had had a tip-off from intelligence about suspected terrorist activity in his beat area, he might have even shot the old man dead. The American media did not play up the case, and the court too let off the policeman. In contrast, look at what is playing out in India!
SUFFOLK, VA P.B. Joshipura
For 10 years, the anti-Modi tribe of journalists and commentators tried to get Narendra Modi implicated in the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case. The people of India gave them a befitting reply in April 2014, electing Modi’s party with a resounding majority. Now, they are having a go at tweaking Headley’s deposition. I’m sure that even if God himself appears on earth and declares Ishrat a terrorist, the journalist brigade would term him a Modibhakt.
LUCKNOW M.C. Joshi
When politicians at the highest level are part of a criminal conspiracy to stage a fake encounter, no effort can be spared to turn the truth upside down and make the PR glossy.
DALLAS Anwaar
Shame on G.K. Pillai (His Master’s Voiceovers) for committing enormities without listening to his conscience!
KARIKKUDI Nasar Ahmed
If the four victims were indeed LeT terrorists, it does not matter how they were kiled. What matters is that they were killed. And so far no one has denied that at least two of those killed in the encounter were terrorists or had terror links.
CHENNAI Akash Verma
There’s nothing fake about the killing of Ishrat Jahan. Since she was an operative of the LeT, she should be treated as combatant waging war on the nation.
ON E-MAIL Dayal
Apropos “Pranesh was with me in Kerala”, I really feel sorry for this man who allowed his son to cross over to the dark side.
WASHINGTON J.R. Rao
Apropos the cover story on Budget 2016 (Has Modi Junked the Gujarat Model?, March 14), it needs to be pointed out that finance minister Arun Jaitley has done a good job of spelling out the priorities on the economic front as the government enters the second half of its term. There is a clear attempt to shed the Modi regime’s pro-business image. Allocations in the rural and social sector, coupled with additional taxation on motorcars and surcharge on the super-rich, show that this is no longer a suit-boot ki sarkar.
HYDERABAD J.S. Acharya
It was refreshing to see a Gujarati writer stripping Modi’s model of its veneer of development (Like Those Mythical Waters, Mar 14). The emperor never had clothes to begin with, but for those who don’t know the state’s history, the world began only in 2001.
ON E-MAIL Avinash Varma
Budgets are difficult to understand. Modi’s detractors are badmouthing the budget because they have nothing better to do. It is a good budget that is harsh only on pensioners.
MUMBAI Amar Singh
Budget 2016 is a lazy cut-paste job, drawing nearly everything from the very UPA-era populism that it criticised at first. Have Modi and his team run out of ideas for big-ticket reforms? With no fresh ideas and saddled with the heavy weight of violent ultra-nationalist rhetoric, this budget has all but unmasked the sad sham that May 2014’s demi-god of the public has turned out to be.
CHANDIGARH Dinesh Kumar
There seems to be a serious effort by politicians to bury Ishrat’s murder once and for all.
chennai R. Srinivisan
Apropos Shanghaiing Indraprastha (March 14), it’s hard to believe that the authorities of Trade Fair are considering the demolition of a structure which takes only about six-odd acres of space in a vast ground. Surely, we can have a new design that can preserve the Hall of Nations which was designed as a permanent exhibition complex in 1972 and is unique in having employing the newest creative techniques in conjunction with India’s rare fortune of a massive labour force. More than 1,000 labourers came from Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana with their families and carried out this gigantic task of building an avart-garde goliath of 256 feet within eighteen months. Such an effort by so many people cannot be obliterated. One hopes that good sense will prevail and the heritage will remain unharmed.
Delhi Jaikeshav Mishra
Urban architecture is an important part of a citizen’s life—one mostly neglected in Indian newspapers and television. In this bleak situation, Priyadarshini Sen’s piece is a heartening read. Contemporary Indian architecture has significant achievements which are being appreciated internationally for their originality and skill but goes unnoticed at home. Let’s not allow the Hall of Nations complex to be another fantastic public project to disappear without leaving a legacy or commentary.
Delhi Amrita Haldar
I am writing this in response to An Unimaginable Spectre (March 14), where the writer argues that the 2016 budget shows a tilt towards socialism. Socialists collect tax to dole out money to the poor in return for their votes. Arun Jaitley will have none of that. No doles are being handed out. It is a carefully crafted budget that incorporates provisions for supporting farmers; for eradicating malpractices that have enabled middlemen to siphon off the lion’s share of welfare expenditure; and for stopping India from turning into an economy of the service sector which, in practice, is no better than slavery.
DELHI Claire Smith
Reading P. Sainath’s column (If This is Pro-Farmer, March 14) only confirmed for me that this government knows what it is doing. Otherwise, in trying to reduce ‘foregone revenue’, it would have raised income tax to 90 per cent a la Indira Gandhi’s ambition in the ‘garibi hatao’ years (Wouldn’t she have taken it right up to 90 if she could?). No doubt the poor need a helping hand and none but the government can offer it. But in the name of helping the poor, let us not kill their desire to stand on their own feet.
VARANASI Masa
This year’s budget can be called an election budget. It is about the ruling party trying to please voters. So schemes galore have been announced, in keeping with election-budget tradition, everyone knows exactly how much this will benefit those whose votes are being solicited.
DELHI Mahesh Kapasi
Both the UPA and the NDA must be held responsible for burning a huge hole in the country’s exchequer. While banks reach for a middle-class debtor’s throat over non-payment of a single EMI, they simply look the other way when a fat-cat businessman like Vijay Mallya refuses to return thousands of crores. And no one cares for the huge amounts written off by the government in corporate income-tax and other levies on big business. This leaves the government with less funds for development and welfare of the poorer sections, who, ironically, are abused as a drain on the country’s resources.
ADYAR K.R. Narasimhan
This is about Outlook’s article on the controversy about Sheldon Pollock’s editorship of the Murty Classical Library (Persecutors Won’t Read The Classics, Mar 14). Just because Outlook can’t find any complaints on the classics MCLI has released so far doesn’t mean Pollock can continue. He has shown bias and misinterpreted material, and he’ll continue in this vein. And what do the authors mean by ‘whiff of Brahminism’? Do they think leading a life following traditions is inherently bad? Are they against Brahmins? Further, when it’s mentioned that most petitioners were not from linguistics, why did they quote professors of Asian studies? Could you not find another Sanskrit scholar or professor to agree with you? What does that say about the story?
Delhi, VD
Either through poor comprehension or for mischievous reasons, the petitioners have misunderstood Pollock’s articles with an almost creative flair. The man cited Macaulay and Weber precisely as examples of the point of view he is against, as people who fail to see the value of India’s ancient knowledge system.
Bangalore Akash
Sheldon Pollock is a persecutor of Hindus. He says Rama is “absolutely heteronomous”. For the illiterate Hindus who support him, that means Rama is incapable of making moral decisions freely. According to Pollock, when Rama agreed to go on exile, he was showing his absolute incapability to make moral decisions. Who can tolerate a man like this?
On e-mail Surya
Outlook’s article is outright biased. It starts by calling the petitioners persecutors! Have you analysed both sides already? I propose you invite Rohan Murthy and Pollock for a fair debate with Rajiv Malhotra. If you’re wondering who that is, he is the gentleman who wrote The Battle For Sanskrit, the book that led petitioners to make the move. I doubt if your journalists even went deep enough to know this. For the sake of unbiased journalism I urge you to listen to the other side’s arguments.
Delhi Deepak
Most people who have taken note of the efforts of the petitioners to remove Prof Pollock from the editorship of the MCIL are not scholars themselves, which includes myself. But you don’t need to be a scholar to know that Rohan Murthy or his team of scholars are not addressing the core issues being raised. Rajiv Malhotra’s The Battle for Sanskrit claims that Pollock is of the view that Ramayana was created by Brahmins to motivate Hindus against Muslims, and that adhyatmika sadhana is only to fool people (he doesn’t believe in transcendence). But such views don’t disqualify Pollock from translating Sanskrit classics, nor does Murthy need to remove him. But neither side can pose as if they are doing a great service to India. Pollock and Malhotra need to have a scholarly debate of some kind and matters should be settled there.
On e-mail Ranjith Vadiyala
I bet Harvard University, and not Rohit Murthy, has the rights to the Murty Classical Library. If we find issues with the translations, it would be too late. Harvard won’t let anyone make changes once the books are out. So asking for the library to be completed and published prior to comments is ridiculous. Pollock has said that the Ramayana was politically motivated—a nexus between Brahmins and kings written to propagate Brahmin power, social oppression and to portray kings as divine. In his introduction to the translation of Ayodhya Kanda, Pollock’s focus is to show that shastras have taken away the freedom of Hindu minds, and that Rama shows no capability to reflect freely on morals. He writes: “According to his (traditional Indian intellectual’s) own interpretation, there can be for the thinker no originality of thought, no brand new insights, notions, perceptions, but only the attempt better and more clearly to grasp and explain the antecedent, always already formulated truth. All Indian learning, accordingly, perceives itself and indeed presents itself largely as commentary on the primordial status.” Doesn’t Murthy not know that Pollock will influence translations for them to fall in line with his own reading of literature? Murthy should provide independent funding of a similar nature to create a fully Indian version of the translations.
Houston Rohit K
First Doniger, now Pollock. Why is it always the Americans who land in this hot mess?
Toronto Varun
I am dismayed by Outlook’s stance, where a petition to the powerful by a group of academics is termed persecution by a coven! What is a more civilised and mild form of protest than a petition? Max Mueller wrote that “the translation of the Vedas will hereafter tell to a great extent on the fate of India.... It is the root of their religion, and to show them what the root is, I feel sure, is the only way of uprooting all that has sprung from it during the last 3,000 years.” At that time, Hindus didn’t pay much attention.
New Jersey Arun Gupta
Within a few opening sentences and headlines of the article, the authors have used adjectives to label both sides even before a discussion on the real issue. Thus, the MCLI and Pollock are ‘persevering’, ‘prestigious’ and ‘ambitious’. The petitioners are ‘bizarre’, ‘persecutors’, and ‘dubious’. The article claims the petition is a personal attack on Pollock. How would the authors explain Pollock’s position on supporting a petition against PM Modi’s ‘Digital India’ initiative? How does one describe his position on signing a petition to support JNU students?
Princeton Yogesh
You deliberately misrepresents facts. Pollock’s paper on the shastras shows what kind of lens he uses to evaluate Sanskrit texts. Those western/Marxist/postmodern lenses look only for political issues, and sniff out social oppression in texts. There is no appreciation of the sacrality of the texts. Pollock’s paper on the death of Sanskrit makes ridiculous claims based on selective cherry-picking of data. Truth is, Pollock has no qualms about mixing academics with politics and actively promotes this form of interpretation.
Boston MP
The same kind of arguments as Outlook’s were advanced when Wendy Doniger was exposed earlier. Why should Hinduism be in the cross-hairs of some scholar, no matter how famous he is? Pollock is no saint. Take his series of the Ramayana articles and see the way he twists and contorts facts; he concocts a theory that the Ramayana was a tool of social oppression. Malhotra has merely highlighted these theories that have gone unchallenged so far. The reporters can’t be labelling all who question Pollock.
Houston Satchidananda
This is biased reporting at its worst. Where are the comments from Rajiv Malhotra, the author of Battle For Sanskrit? Where are points of views from the professors who initiated the petition? Have the reporters read Malhotra’s book? Or Pollock’s many papers and books? If not, how did they embark on this article?
Mumbai Sapna
All these attacks against scholars just show that, as a people, most literate Indians have no concept of serious scholarship, or about the pursuit of truth. The reason is not difficult to find: there was no concept of history in India, just myths and puranas that people accepted as histories. Every semi-educated IT professional reads a few articles on the net and considers himself an expert (it’s no accident that a majority of websites and articles on any topic are from these people). The heroes for such pseudo-scholars are Rajaram and Malhotra. Does anyone remember the Harappan horse fiasco of Rajaram?
Washington T. Nayak
Apropos That Boy’s Life (March 14), Leo’s Oscar was one long overdue. Whatever the memes may say, this was a moment of glory in the career of a great actor. That he didn’t win it for The Wolf of Wall Street was bad enough. Let’s not ruin this triumph with bad jokes.
San Jose Natarajan S
Suddenly the Ticker was Flashing (March 14) gets it right: PTI has a rich history. If politicians are going to interfere in its editorial decisions, it will mean another blow to the tradition of independent journalism in India. Forget censoring, the government’s interventions will probably result in bad, boring reads. Only experienced editors can turn ordinary happenings into interesting, readable reports, and editing is not a subject that can be wholly taught. Without the hard work and experience behind them, the editing will be sloppy and the credibility eroded.
Kerala Somanatha Panicker
