Khushwant Singh is right when he, in his column Oh! That Other Hindu Riot of Passage (Nov 15), says that while the assassins of Indira Gandhi were hanged within four years, the killers of 10,000 Sikhs remain at large 20 years hence. It is nevertheless surprising that he should jump to the conclusion that "in secular India there is one law for the Hindu majority, another for Muslims, Christians and Sikhs who are in minority". No doubt there are two sets of laws in the country, but one is for the High and Mighty, the other for the common citizen. If what happened to Indira Gandhi were to happen to our incumbent President (a Muslim), the PM (a Sikh) or the head of the party in power (a Christian), the law would catch up with the culprits equally fast!
Deepak Ajwani, Pune
I object to the title of Khushwant Singh’s piece. The killing of Sikhs in 1984 was not a "Hindu Riot of Passage" but a "Congress Riot of Passage". A sign of Khushwant Singh falling into that old Brit ploy of Divide and Rule?
Avinash Dharne, Mumbai
The ’84 riots were a criminal act managed entirely by a political party. I cannot therefore understand Khushwant Singh’s convenient and repeated reference to the rioters as Hindu. No doubt the fateful events went against a particular community. But while his personal tribulations may arouse sympathy, there is nothing to substantiate the religious dimension implied in the title of his piece. Someone like Khushwant ought to be more circumspect with his use of words and judicious about the space given to him by a national magazine.
S. Murugesh, on e-mail
Khushwant Singh is cunningly trying to blame the Hindus for the Sikh pogrom. The butchers who did in the Sikhs were not Hindus, but Congress goons. Keeping this in mind, Khushwant should remonstrate against not the Hindus, but perhaps Manmohan Singh for having accepted in charity the post of PM offered by the leader of the party which butchered the Sikhs.
Vinod, Birmingham, UK
Khushwant Singh’s piece is nothing but an exercise in minority appeasement. When learned and able citizens like him stretch their article taut across a ‘you majority, we minority’ frame, you know where the country is headed for. Whoever said, "I have seen the enemy, it is us", was sure right.
Sudarshan Bengani, Calcutta
What gives Khushwant Singh the idea that it was Hindus who killed the Sikhs? It was the Congressmen. And now that a secular government headed by a Sikh is in power, nothing should stop the community from getting justice.
Sampath Kumar, Chennai
Yet another blunder to cover earlier ones. Khushwant Singh has to understand the difference between an assassination and riot killings. Mrs Gandhi was not a Hindu but the prime minister of a country who was killed by her own bodyguards who happened to be Sikh. None of the riot victims in the country have got justice till date since Partition, and the ’84 riots are no exception. This is the only Hindu majority country in the world which has had five presidents and prime ministers from among the minorities, including Sikhs, in less than 60 years. And contrary to Khushwant’s assertion, it was not anti-Sikh violence that gave boost to the demand for a separate Sikh state but vice versa.
A. K. Mittal, Calcutta
I was travelling down GT Road the day after Mrs Gandhi was killed. The road was empty of trucks—all the Sikh drivers had chosen to stay off the roads. The Sikh killings of 1984 are only a part of this dark abyss the country occasionally plunges into. India’s glorious secular past has been marred by horrendous communal incidents: and the cycle has not yet been brought to a closure. If we are to move ahead, it’s these ghosts which have to be laid to rest first.
Shariq Ahmad, Abu Dhabi, UAE
I agree with Khushwant Singh regarding the justice delayed to the riot victims of 1984. But he, like any other fundamentalist, makes the mistake of treating a human being on the basis of his caste, race or even colour. I admire Manmohan Singh for his ability and intellect, not because he is a Sikh. I don’t think his attitude or intellect would have been any different were he not a Sikh.
Ambuj Kumar, Saint Petersburg, US
1984 was without doubt a very sad chapter in Indian and Hindu-Sikh history. I also consider Sikhs as inseparable from Hindus. But the double standards frustrate me. How many of us, including Khushwant Singh, bother about bringing to justice those who pulled out Hindus from buses, lined them up and shot them year after agonising year in Punjab and in Kashmir? Where do I go as an Indian and a Hindu for justice? Khushwant Singh can at least go back to Pakistan where he came from if he does not feel at home with the Hindus. Of course, he is dead right when he says there is one law for Hindu majority India and another for the Muslim, Sikh and Christian minorities. That’s only because Hindu majority India is foolish enough to give special rights without imposing obligations on its minorities.
E. Raveendran, Bangalore
Khushwant Singh is the voice of reason in the jungle of confusion that is India. We need more people of his kind who accept democracy as it is rather than distort it for political or religious gain.
Rakesh Kapoor, London, Canada
The 57-year-old sanguinary saga of genocides and pogroms goes to show that India has not yet achieved true independence. The yoke of slavery has been replaced by the mess of quasi-freedom. That’s all.
Ashley Coutinho, Mumbai
Khushwant Singh’s piece on the 1984 anti-Sikh riots was some plainspeak—candid, sincere and convincing. Justice delayed is indeed justice denied. The Congress primarily, and the bjp too, owe an explanation for the delay still continuing.
Keshav Prasad, on e-mail
While I am not the greatest of fans of Khushwant Singh, I thoroughly enjoyed reading his article. You’ve got to give it to him. It’s a simple, yet profound piece. There is a deep sense of anguish over the events of those tumultuous years yet there is no ranting or raving of a wounded Sikh. Rather there is an overwhelming optimism of a hopeful Indian for a brighter future. The world salutes the Jews for all that they have endured during the Holocaust. Indians too, I am sure, feel the horror of what the Sikhs went through in 1984. The riot victims may not have been given due justice yet, but the fact that we have a Sikh as a prime minister and another one heading the Planning Commission, should be some salve for their wounds.
Abey George, Washington, DC, US
It’s nice to see that Khushwant Singh does not blame the Hindus, absolve the Congress or Bhindranwale and his ilk for all that happened, but just raises the basic question, ‘Is it right that the life of one human be worth more than that of another?’ Rather than concentrate on who/what caused the death of innocent Sikhs/Hindus/Muslims/Christians/Jews/others, we should perhaps focus on what can be done to ensure such mindless killings do not happen in the first place.
R. Pankaj, Oakville, Canada
As I see it, everyone in India belongs to some minority group or the other. I’m a Malayalee Nair and my community is minority too. With so much division in our country, who gets to decide which minority needs more pampering than another? Isn’t it time we stopped identifying ourselves as belonging to a particular region or community and accepted the fact that we’re Indians first? It’s even more disturbing when so-called secular intellectuals like Khushwant Singh put a communal spin to a political riot and in blatant hypocrisy defend the current ruling party which was solely responsible for the entire riot. The entire tirade sounds very hollow and the act of a desperate attention-seeker. Pseudo-secularism is back in fashion and how!
Venu, on e-mail
Let me be a silent observer while this indictment of India’s secular credentials is debated. Perhaps this will show me a politer side of Indian Hindus.
Joseph Pereira, Karachi, Pakistan
This is just to let you know that I haven’t forgotten. And to me that makes all the difference.
Somveer S. Anand, on e-mail
I usually rather enjoy Ramachandra Guha’s slightly demented diatribes against his fellow writers, but since it is now my turn to be the target of his ire, I feel that I should at least point out that he misquotes and misrepresents me no less than four times in as many paragraphs.
Firstly, I never argued, as he asserts in his piece, The Djinn of Conceit (Nov 22), that Pankaj Mishra is a fine writer because he comes from a humble background. What I argued was that his background made him something of an outsider in the world of Indian writing in English, which is still dominated by authors from elite backgrounds, and that it gives his writings about mofussil India a real authority derived from personal experience. Anyone who doubts this should have a look at his sublime essay, ‘Reading Edmund Wilson in Benares’ on the New York Review of Books website (www. nybooks.com) which demonstrates all the qualities of subtlety and profundity so lacking in the sour and embittered polemics of someone like Ram Guha.
Secondly, Ram claims that in a private conversation I once expressed ignorance of Dr Ambedkar. In fact, I have written about Ambedkar and his Dalit Buddhists intermittently since the late 1980s, so could hardly have responded in the way he claims I did, even if this invented conversation had actually taken place.
Thirdly, Ram asserts that I claimed that Ahmed Ali desperately wished to return to Delhi after Partition but was continually prevented from doing so by Indian law. A quick glance at the City of Djinns (p65) will show that this is a total inversion of what I actually wrote. There I quote Ali as saying that having been prevented from returning to India from his posting in China in 1947, he thereafter refused to set foot on Delhi soil, on one memorable occasion refusing to vacate an airplane that had been diverted there, arguing "How could I revisit that which was once mine and which was no longer mine?" When the staff of the airplane begged him to be reasonable, he remained in his seat and quoted Mir Taqi Mir at them:
What matters it, O breeze,
If now has come the spring
When I have lost them both
The garden and my nest?"
Finally, I do not believe that someone’s background should disqualify them from writing about a particular subject—how could I, as a Scottish-born writer obsessed by India?—and have always been enormously grateful for the tolerance, warmth and generosity with which Indian readers and critics have responded to my successive books about their wonderful, complex and endlessly fascinating country.
William Dalrymple, New Delhi
Ican understand that, like with Gujarat, Outlook was eagerly wanting and waiting for John Kerry to win. But why did it have to force its disappointment on its readers and abuse the Americans (Pope of the Prairies, Nov 15)? The political blindness which Sunil Khilnani speaks of in his interview, if it can be attributed to the Americans, it can hold equally true of Outlook’s attitude towards democratic processes. How else could it assume that "the rest of the world wanted Kerry to win"? Was it on the basis of a survey? And if it can say "half of America voted for Kerry" now, why couldn’t it say the same for the bjp and the Congress in this year’s general election where both parties won an almost equal number of seats but the latter was able to form government because of Left support? Inconsistent objectivity is nothing but partisanship and we expect better from Outlook.
Sridhar Subramaniam, on e-mail
All of Sunil Khilnani’s comments with regard to George Bush’s re-election are sadly, and frustratingly, true. Fifty-five million Americans, myself included, worked very hard to keep this from happening. We knew this would be a very close election but were shocked and depressed at the final result. John Kerry and Ted Kennedy are my state’s Senators; both are tenacious, dedicated and outspoken opponents of ‘god’s little president’. Please don’t write America off as John le Carre expressed last year in his essay, ‘The United States of America Has Gone Mad’. There are 55 million of us who’re reasonably sane and believe that, in spite of the current leadership, the future of our country is not beyond hope.
Joanna Melanson, Wakefield, US
The bible belt couple Vinod Mehta quotes in his edit God in the White House as going up to Bush and saying, "It is good to know that God lives in the White House" obviously meant that faith lives in the White House, not that Bush himself was God. Why should Mr Mehta think so?
Anand K., Santa Clara, US
Wasn’t Mr Mehta the one who beatified Sonia Gandhi and declared her a saint on the Outlook cover? Did she deny it? Why blame Bush then? It only shows that the sycophancy in America is as sickening as it is in India.
Srinivas Rao, Delhi
The Democrats could never have won an election with support from loony leftists on either coast. You hear these guys and the word ‘liberal’ sure starts sounding dangerous. No wonder the Republicans have held office for 28 years in the last 40 years.
Muralidhar, Omaha, US
Karl Marx had said, "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce." It was tragedy when George W. Bush was first elected president. Now let’s wait for the farce.
Diana Sahu, Cuttack, Orissa
Religious fanaticism is a global phenomenon, and even liberal America has shown itself to be susceptible to it. The Republicans are to the American Christians what the bjp was/is to the Indian Hindus.
Shukoor P.S., Bangalore
One trend that has gone almost unnoticed in these latest US elections is how the results of almost all opinion polls have held true. All leading pollsters gave Bush a clear 3-5 per cent margin over Kerry, and the results backed the opinion polls. Perhaps therein lies a lesson for certain Indian newsmagazines whose own polls went awry during our Lok Sabha elections.
Eashan Ghosh, Noida, UP
Outlook must have gone into a state of mourning since the day Bush won. Kerry was a strong candidate who raised very pertinent issues but the fear of Islamic terrorism instilled in the American mind post 9/11 worked even stronger. Also, what many don’t admit openly is that the American ‘war’ against terrorism’ is actually a war between Christianity and Islam. And when it comes to that, what would you have the Americans choose?
Siddhartha Shukla, New Delhi
Prem Shankar Jha’s piece The Republic of Fear is typical of Indian and other non-American perspectives in American politics. Which is to say it reflects the views of a dominant group in the US comprising the big media, the so-called elite, the faculties of prestigious universities, Hollywood stars, self-serving billionaires, among others. This power elite knows nothing of the large number of people who live in the ‘flyover’ country and who have nothing but contempt for the values and opinions of this group whose views are depicted and trumpeted around the world as that of
the ‘mainstream’. Day in and day out these people of the ‘flyover’ country see and hear the representatives of this group like Michael Moore, George Soros, Warren Buffet, Peter Jennings, Dan Rather, Bruce Springsteen, Madonna and other rap musicians whose names I can’t and don’t care to remember and wonder how they pretend to speak for a country they hate. For once, these ‘dumb’ blokes said to themselves, no, they do not speak for us and made their own decision. The Democrats lost because of the people who spoke for them, including their presidential candidate.
Vadakadathu P. Abraham, Belle Mead, US
Prem Shankar Jha’s conversation with "two white Americans" is so obviously made up that it’s funny. To say that there is a unanimous opinion amongst white Americans against immigrants, etc, is like saying that all Indians (not even all Hindus) subscribe to the vhp’s viewpoint. Bush won because he came out stronger and more consistent on matters that Americans, across all segments, care about. How else can Jha explain that Bush was more popular with (first-generation immigrant) Hispanics than Kerry?
Kartikeya Singh, Green Belt, US
Hats off to John Kerry for conceding victory to George W. Bush in the US elections. It was exemplary behaviour and our own politicians could well emulate it!
J. Akshobya, Secunderabad
What a coincidence, Outlook, India Today and The Week, all three carried the same cover photo of Bush, showing thumbs up. Who copied whom?
Nikhil N., Bangalore
