Apropos the cover story, Wait For The Ricochet (July 25), there is now a need to look at Islam in a different light—as a religion and also as a motivating factor for jehad. What happened in London should be an eye-opener for countries which had reservations on the "Islamic terrorism" front. The West, unfortunately, is witnessing today what India has suffered for ages. The time has come for an honest, collective effort against the scourge of terrorism, if nothing else to save the present and future generations.
Dhirendra Mishra, Allahabad
It is imperative that the Muslim community effectively identifies and isolates the terrorist/fundamentalist elements in their midst. The scenario is more compelling for those living in ‘foreign’ countries, lest the entire community has to bear the brunt for the mindless acts of a handful.
K.V. Raghuram, Wayanad, Kerala
This logic of Muslims getting mad over ‘US-occupied’ Iraq really doesn’t wash. If the West applies the same logic, why shouldn’t they be mad at Muslims for destroying Byzantium, occupying Jerusalem and the former Christian lands of the Middle East etc! It will be an entirely different ballgame if that happened. There is only one way to deal with those that imperil our lives—unrelenting pursuit and war.
Adi, on e-mail
Ironically, the US-led attack on Iraq has become a war on terror while the retaliation by Muslims is classified as the effects of terrorism. There’s something wrong here if the majority believes the above to be true. The propagators of ‘terrorism’ may have to redefine themselves.
R.S. Sami, Tiruvannamalai, TN
The London events show that India should take Pakistani bonhomie with a pinch of salt. cbms are nothing but a communal ballistic missile. The language they talk here and at international fora don’t go hand in hand.
Vinod Phadke, Tiptur, Karnataka
The London tragedy is the end-result of tolerating Muslim fundamentalists under the guise of idealistic hokum like ‘openness’, ‘inclusiveness’ and other such nonsense. It’s time saner societies did what they should have done years ago: shut the doors, man the ramparts.
Sumant Bhattacharya, Ghaziabad, UP
The London bombings show two things. One, a desire to get back at the ‘allied’ forces for the illegal occupation of Iraq. (Bombing civilians in the occupier countries etc may not be judicious and will not fetch the desired results. Still, the ‘resistance’ must act.) Secondly, the cia, the isi and Britain’s MI-6 are known to have coordinated and secretly encouraged terror groups in the past. Is it still going on? After all, any violence against Iraq’s occupation can now be used as justification to prolong their occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s also one more example of ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ to be used as an excuse to threaten other strategic nations like Iran, Syria.
Vidhi Kumar, Mumbai
My hypothesis is simple: responses are conditioned by respective sports cultures. The Americans are culturally aggressive (check out the mayhem that is American football). Attack them, they hit back mindlessly. The Brits, on the other hand, are more refined—personified in the game of cricket. A measured response, no mention of "war on terror", the Opposition supporting the government in seeking out the culprits and the cause. Contrast this with India after the Ayodhya incident: the Opposition immediately sought to make political hay, bandhs were organised, buses burnt... maybe our culture is shaped more by gulli danda than any other sport.
Alok Chandra, Bangalore
Native Hindus from Kashmir have not blown themselves and others up anywhere, despite the atrocities heaped on them. Does it mean that the Pandits have no feelings, no self-respect, no love for martyrdom, etc? Or, perhaps they are spineless cowards, lacking jehadi technology? Liberals with bleeding hearts should watch out. Unlimited bleeding may drain them out.
K. Vijayan, Chennai
Congratulations on the imagination shown on your cover (July 25) ‘London Bombings—The Pakistan Connection’. There is a caption here which reads "British police question a Pakistani as a terror-stricken couple pass by". How did you assume that he is Pakistani...from his cap? And why did you think the policewoman across the cordon was ‘questioning’ him? Was there any point to it, other than leading on the readers?
Narayani Gupta, on e-mail
London launched on Wednesday/Shocked on Thursday/Cried on Friday/Mourned on Saturday/Prayed on Sunday/And Monday...Life must go on 24x7!!
Amit Basu, London
Blasts on the 7th day of the 7th month of year 2005 (adds up to 7). Are our numerologists crying doomsday?
Nitin G. Panchal, Mumbai
Indeed, the taxpayer’s money has not grown on the eternal tree of wealth till now (It Don’t Grow on Trees, July 25). The Congress is in no hurry yet to bribe the poor Indian with free lunches for his precious vote. After 50 years, they have it down pat: keep the peasants just about alive until the eve of the next elections. They have managed to create, sustain and encourage a special breed of poor, India’s ‘downtrodden’, a permanent, patented votebank. Let’s hope and pray that the ‘Secular Almighty’ springs an early election so that our poor will be able to nourish their empty bellies, clear their foggy minds and gain just about enough strength to blot out the Congress party.
Raj Purohit, Toronto, Canada
Salman Rushdie’s one line on the Imrana episode says it all (Polscape, July 25). Though a democratic republic with a written constitution, we have allowed communities to have their own laws, in effect creating a nation within a nation. Nothing good can come of it.
H. Rajagopal, Mysore
The Left parties are hardly in a position to air displeasure at Manmohan Singh’s Oxford speech (Yours, Obediently, July 25). Their siding with the British in the freedom struggle, (the cpi) supporting Emergency, allowing in illegal Bangladeshi immigrants to build their votebank, supporting the Tiananmen Square atrocities does not bequeath on them a track record that qualifies them to criticise any form of governance. The Brits are accused of being imperialists draining our wealth, furthering their own interests and creating elitist babus. The Brits did not build a global empire as part of Christian charity. They came here as traders, they couldn’t help it if the Indians sold themselves out. Creating elitists! Yes an educated elite layer, unlike the present-day uncouth rich elite from the Hindi-speaking cow belt. It’s great being a citizen of a free country, but one can acknowledge the contribution the British made too, the least of which was a fine education system, a superb civil service, the railways. All these then were way ahead of anything any other country in Asia or Africa or many in Europe had.
Kaly Bose, Gurgaon
The British did have ulterior motives behind their now-controversial ‘good governance’ in India. It goes to our credit for having made the best use of the institutions they "left behind", like the railways (which were built using Indian resources, but intellectual property rights could be argued). We ought, perhaps, to have scrapped their administrative machinery and started afresh. About Manmohan’s speech symbolising Indian maturity: we need to keep in mind the context of the Raj. It existed in the closing years of the imperial era. It was accepted then that powerful nations would, for their own ends, eventually—and sooner rather than later—resort to military force to dominate weaker ones. Nationalism, although more or less established in Europe, was still a new, barely awakened force in India. Where India stood unique in the world in 1947 was in her throwing off of the imperial yoke largely by peaceful, non-violent means. If we had that level of maturity then, can we not now do as Manmohan Singh did?
Arun Masilamoni, Hyderabad
Khushwant Singh is right. Present-day politics has virtually ruined our country, with a system of justice skewed in favour of those in power. The reason: we got independence from the Britons but never learnt discipline, honesty and integrity from them. We proclaimed ourselves ‘omnipotent’ once we realised the fruits of freedom. My father, a postmaster in the British era, narrated endless stories about how the English had great regard for the law and its execution.
R.P. Shahi, Pune
Manmohan’s praise of the Empire is akin to Jews extolling the unintentional benefits they received under Hitler’s rule. The Brits never did anything for India’s benefit. We might have become like the Red Indians or the aborigines (almost extinct!) if not for our freedom fighters.
Navdeep Hans, Delhi
I’m a bit confused over the July 25 issue of the magazine, especially the cover and the inside cover story. Aren’t the two supposed to have something in common? In this instance, the cover displays photos of the London bombings, but the cover story on page 62 is about Shrinking Himalayan Glaciers! Don’t get me wrong. I am not a virulent critic of Outlook like some of the others who write to the Editor. I do not wear any hues, so I do not have an axe to grind. In fact, I am, and will still be, a regular subscriber, because I like the magazine’s outspokenness and in-your-face attitude. To these qualities you may now add another one: unpredictability! The copy of the magazine I received had some other oddities as well. Pages 11 to 18 and 67 to 74 were missing, but as though to make up for the total number of sheets, pages 27 to 34 and 51 to 58 were repeated! Be that as it may, Outlook is still my preferred newsmag, warts and all.
K.N. Pillai, Noida
Editor’s note: The London bombings were a breaking story which we decided to put on the cover at the last minute. Sorry about the missing pages.
Who’s interested in Ilayaraja’s roots (Tandav Tenor, July 25)? Anyone who practices Hinduism is a Hindu. We need to think only of Ilayaraja’s present, whatever his "original" denomination may be.
R. Marur, Abu Dhabi, UAE
It’s a terminal affliction. If an Indian achieves anything outside the country, we go ga-ga over him. But anyone who gets success staying on is pulled down. Raking up his low-caste Christian origins is perhaps Outlook’s ruse.
Arumugam Bhupathi, on e-mail
Instead of judging Thiruvasagam as a musical composition, you wonder why a Catholic group sponsored it and if that has a connection with Ilayaraja’s Christian past! And why compare his music to the ‘protest forms’ of Marley or Dylan? Raja’s music is a celebration of life and the divine.
Sridhar S., on e-mail
I’d always thought Ilayaraja’s music was Brahminical...but now it makes sense. No wonder he never produced protest music along the lines of hip-hop. When will that happen,
I seriously wonder. It does happen in local Tamil music, but I guess that’s a little raw for most people.
T. Mukumbe, Philadelphia, US
Vinod Mehta is doing only half the job when he calls for more community voices denouncing the Muslim terrorist (Somebody Save Islam) in his Delhi Diary, (July 25). Responsibility does lie on the immediate community but also on leaders, governments and nation-states who have sullied the image of democracy and rule of law; on people who do not vote, and so let leaders hijack their opinion; even on those who vote but are swayed by lies and poison of another kind. It has to include all of us who’ve allowed this world to be filled with hypocrisy, where power defines what is right and wrong, just and unjust. When justice and fairness take leave, because a Bush or a Blair lies to his people and the world, it creates and sustains Saddams and bin Ladens. The terrorists’ message to world leaders is: this world shall be a moral and just world, or the world shall cease to exist, a very real possibility in the nuclear age.
Salman Kureishy, Dubai, UAE
I believe the London bombings are changing something for the better. Never before have I heard Muslims so sincerely denounce terrorism committed in our name as I did on my visit to Britain a few days ago. But I don’t understand how moderate Muslim leaders can reject, flat-out, the notion that religion was a factor here. What makes them so sure that Islam is an innocent bystander? What makes them so sure is literalism. We Muslims, including moderates in the West, are raised to believe the Quran is the final and perfect manifesto of God’s will, untouched and immutable. This is a supremacy complex. It’s dangerous because it inhibits moderates from asking hard questions about what happens when faith becomes dogma. To avoid the discomfort, we sanitise. Why do we Muslims hang on to the mantra that the Quran—or Islam—is pristine? God may very well be perfect, but God transcends a book, a prophet and a belief system.
Irsad Manji, on e-mail
"Islam’s reputation as a strict but tolerant faith has been damaged...." This kind of glossing over and political correctness is the problem. If people don’t identify the problem, it can’t be solved. There is no indication in history—except niche /localised movements like Sufism or Kabir, Akbar—that Islam had the reputation of a "tolerant" faith. No organised religion is tolerant. Hinduism would lay claim to a reputation of being lenient and accommodating. But then it was/is a very "unequal" faith. Christianity also in the past couldn’t lay a claim on "tolerance". The West partly changed this, making "religion" less central to their civilisation with the coming of the renaissance, democratisation, industrialisation, urbanisation. Islam can take the same path.
Arun Maheshwari, Bangalore
Islam, or any religion in its most basic form for that matter, is hardly inclusive or tolerant of a contrary opinion. The problem with Islamic societies, however, is that they refused to outgrow their religion. Unlike the West and large parts of Asia, where human dignities and ethics are the dominant forces in shaping the law of the land, in Islamic societies it is a 1,400-year-old book which shapes the law of the land. Any lasting change has to obviously come from within.
Vivek Gupta, Atlanta, US
Mr Mehta should stop worrying about Islam. Nobody attributes the terrorism of the ira, ltte, Naxals etc to the respective religion or community or raise the cry of Save Christianity, Buddhism or Hinduism. Why does Islam spring to everybody’s lips every time a terrorist act is committed? There is nothing Islamic about jehad. On the other hand, outfits like Al Qaeda appear to be the brainchild of neo-western imperialism, as after every act of terrorism associated with them, some misfortune dawns on the Muslim world, be it Afghanistan or Iraq.
A.T.M. Anwar, Hyderabad
Mr Mehta rightly praises the orderliness of the British (Minding Their Qs). An old incident comes to mind. When G.V. Mavalankar, the first speaker of the Lok Sabha, went to London for a conference, he was given a ration card for sugar which at the end of World War II was in short supply. When he went to the ration shop, he saw a long queue which turned out to be of people who wanted to return the excess sugar left with them! Such was the social consciousness of post-warUK! Indians are, always, only jumping the "Q"!
K.T. Chary, London
What was new in the Bucharest Diary (July 18)? Half the piece was on where it is, while the rest was reworked fable. Be honest, wasn’t it cooked up sitting in Delhi? PS: Isn’t the writer the same guy who managed a UN job from the Fiji quota?
Atin Gupta, New Delhi
