Abhinav Bindra standing on the medal stand looking like he always belonged there...that was an Olympian moment for India—one that can change the future of sports in this country (Now, Midas..., Aug 25). It was wonderful to see him as a picture of poise just minutes after he had shot a 10.8 to win India its first gold medal in an individual event. It’s amusing to see the government trying to usurp credit for the feat which we know was the result of Bindra’s dedication and support from his family.
Farzana Nigar, Ranchi
Bindra’s triumph reaffirms one fact: you have to be really, really rich to win a big title for India in a sporting event.
Tuneer Banerjee, Calcutta
Bindra’s gold may have unveiled the vast gap between India’s rich and poor, but it also shows the government’s stepmotherly attitude towards male sports. When female athletes receive unabashed pampering, it took a boy to win a medal for us! Kudos Bindra!
Parthasarathy, Chennai
Abhinav means new. And, true to his name, Bindra has marked a new chapter in Indian sports.
Haseeb Ahmed Khan, Nagpur
I’m not too impressed by Bindra’s victory. Air rifle shooting is a sport that requires neither super intelligence like in chess or physical stamina like in athletics and many other games.
S. Raghunatha Prabhu,
Alappuzha
Bindra has woken up India from a prolonged nidra.
C. Saroja, on e-mail
Okay, only Bindra won us a gold at Beijing, but let not our billion-plus population forget to salute the spirit of those who tried. Medals shouldn’t be the sole objects of veneration; any striving mind or body deserves respect. It’s not just one who loses who must accept defeat gracefully. True sports lovers must aspire to such a capacity.
A.P. De’Sousa, Pune
Bindra’s win has shown it’s high time the government stopped focusing on cricket alone. It’s also a message to corporate houses. Let it not be said that our collective resources cannot buy for every deserving athlete the same top-notch facilities that Bindra could fall back on because of a rich papa.
Kartikeya Mehta, Ahmedabad
Hope our business tycoons now realise their folly in being indifferent to sports other than cricket. They must honour our medallists with some belated bonanzas. That would still be poor compensation.
R.J. K., on e-mail
What really ails Indian sports is not the absence of patrons, but the despotic way they run top bodies like the hockey federation and cricket associations.
Balvinder Singh, Chandigarh
Your story missed this fact: Tamil Nadu was the first of our state governments to reward Bindra—with Rs 5 lakh.
Gokul Krishnan, Chennai
Now that the heat and dust at Beijing has settled, let us wake up to the broader truth: India and China, giant economies apart, are no match as sporting nations. Not just the medal tallies, even their opening and closing ceremonies confirm it.
Farzana Z. Khan, Pune
Your report on Kashmir (The Funeral Season, Aug 25) seems to show concern only for the deaths in Kashmir during the current agitation. And is anyone killing Muslims in Jammu, where another agitation is on? In more than 60 days of agitation, not a single Muslim has been killed in Jammu. In fact, every Muslim organisation worth its salt there has supported the Amarnath Sangharsh Samiti.
Gourav Gupta, New Jersey, US
Your articles on Jammu and Kashmir present a one-sided picture. The unrest in Jammu is not just the result of the Amarnath land row, it is the expression of pent-up feelings of frustration at decades of neglect. The Muslims living in Jammu are very much a part of this movement.
Mridula Punj, New Delhi
There is no acknowledgement of the suppression the Indian government has unleashed on Kashmiris all these years. Forget about Kashmiri self-determination, how is it logical and moral that anyone else should decide what Kashmiris should do or not do?
Sathish Pon, Pune
If the Amarnath Sangharsh Samiti, the RSS, VHP, and BJP thought blocking the Jammu-Srinagar highway would evoke no reaction in the Valley, they were sadly proved wrong. The cry for azadi, which had never been heard so loudly in the last two decades, is a result of the blockade, and if there’s a vivisection of Jammu & Kashmir, driving the Valley into Pakistan’s embrace, we well know who will be to blame.
Dr Z.A. Sayeed, Chennai
Why did it take six days for the Centre to open the blockaded Srinagar-Jammu highway, causing the Valley’s fruit crop to rot and denying people there supplies of medicines and other essentials? If apples and pears from the Valley don’t find markets in India, they will surely be sold in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and Pakistan. So will political ideas.
Vijay Agarwal, Northampton, UK
The Kashmir crisis was never deeper and is worsening by the day, the result of a series of wrong decisions. The need of the hour is to bring Atal Behari Vajpayee on the scene. Bring him in a wheelchair, bring him on a palki if need be.
Dr Mookhi Amir Ali, Mumbai
The agitators in Jammu have resorted to vandalism, burning and damaging public and private property. They have no moral or spiritual sense. I am sure they have annoyed the Lord of the Amarnath shrine with their false devotion.
Dr Abdul Hameed Maqdoomi, Gulbarga
Prem Shankar Jha (India’s Phantom Limb is Paining Again) is out of sync with the reality in Jammu & Kashmir. It’s the people of Jammu—and not just Hindu fanatics, as he implies—who are protesting, and they are doing so in such a big way for the first time in 60 years. Protest is not the exclusive right of the Muslims of the Valley.
Mahesh Sharma, Jammu
Shivraj Patil is nothing more than a lifeless mannequin maintained and manipulated by Sonia Gandhi (A Natural Calamity). She would have done the nation a great favour had she let Patil occupy Rashtrapati Bhavan. Before Patil messes up further in Jammu & Kashmir, the PM had better move him to the coal ministry. And don’t brand Lt Gen S.K. Sinha as pro-BJP or communal. You wont find a better scholar and patriot.
Col C.V. Venugopalan, Palakkad, Kerala
So, dictatorship has gone and democracy has taken its place in Pakistan (The Exit Sign, Aug 25). But have you noticed how many times the LoC ceasefire has been violated in the last one month? Does this mean Pakistani democracy would be more harmful to India than Musharraf’s dictatorship?
Udita Agarwal, New Delhi
A good commando is one who knows when to make an appearance and when to disappear. Musharraf did capture power with the aplomb of a commando, and like an expert practitioner, maintained an upper hand during his stewardship of the country. He, however, seemed to forget the second half—to exit when the going was good. He hung on even when it was apparent that things were turning sour and was left with no choice after his ill-advised declaration of emergency and the sacking of judges. But will Pakistan be better governed now that he’s left? Seems unlikely. There is no let-up in terrorism and Islamic fanaticism, the economy is in bad shape, and the army with the slimy isi continues to dictate, set and change the rules of Pakistani politics. Even the new regime, friendly to India, is unlikely not to take advantage of the turmoil in Kashmir.
R.J. Khurana, Bhopal
Two significant developments in the subcontinent—the swearing in of Prachanda as the Nepal PM and the exit of Musharraf—are bound to reduce India’s influence in South Asia. Prachanda will be in Beijing to meet Chinese leaders—Nepal under his premiership will certainly move away from India’s sphere of influence. And Musharraf’s ouster will certainly lead to the strengthening of fundamentalism, helped along by the unrest in Kashmir.
Sawraj Singh, on e-mail
While there have been many examples of the misuse of the Official Secrets Act—the celebrated cases of Maj Gen V.K. Singh and Iftikhar Gilani included—a country certainly needs a law of this nature for the safeguard of its security (India’s Best Kept Secret, Aug 25). Even western democracies have such laws in some form or the other. I do agree that some clauses being categorised as offensive is ridiculous. But there is always an option of making amendments in the Act. The government should take a completely fresh look at the matter, bringing the law in line with present-day requirements from its archaic shape.
Nutan Thakur, Lucknow
As a lawyer, I’m disappointed by the sweeping conclusions drawn from the finding—even if true—that the OSA was not notified in the Official Gazette. The OSA itself does not provide that to be valid and enforceable, it must be so notified. It seems to me that unless such a limitation is imposed in the statute, it is valid and enforceable upon passage by the legislative body and assent of the head of state. I should think that if it got the nod of the then governor-general after due enactment, that is all the formality required to make it valid. The writer should cite the source of law that supports the theory that mere failure to notify would render a duly-made law invalid. He should read the General Clauses Act, Section 5, for starters. That said, the OSA should be banished from the statute book anyway. It is a law fit for life in a prison, not a free society.
Jaipat S. Jain, New York
The most astute comment in the oil prices story (What Price Caution?, Aug 25) came from former petroleum secretary S.C. Tripathi: "I feel a sense of despair that eminent economists...have been unable to bring about a consensus in the government." Shallow political expediencies have reduced oil pricing to a populist war cry. The administered pricing mechanism (apm), the last descendant of the methodic regulation of petroleum prices (beginning with the Damle report), was scrapped in 2003. Any substitution has been put on hold, time and again, based on some election or the other, as the Centre resorted to cut-and-paste tactics. It is this collective denial, a reluctance to square up to the issue, that has resulted in this runaway inflation, oil being at the centre of it. In the current scenario, a divorce of the Indian oil prices from those in the global markets is not an option.
K.S.C. Nair, Fremont, US
The hype around Akshay Kumar, srk et al is nothing but pure balderdash (Crown Prince Akki, Aug 25). Their recent box-office successes are a victory of efficient film distribution, not extraordinary performances. We have not produced any great performance this century, even after taking Aamir Khan into account (Saif Ali in Omkara was passable). It reminds me of all the brouhaha around Heath Ledger’s Joker in the recent Batman movie. But one has to see the villain of No Country For Old Men to see what a class act really is, how villains are a product of their crimes, not their antics. Akshay will be remembered as a steroid for cash registers, that’s all!
Kunal Talgeri, Bangalore
I am surprised to see even Outlook buying into the hype around Singh is Kinng. It is nothing but a clever marketing strategy like Om Shanti Om. Audiences can be fooled once, maybe twice, but not forever. It is sad that small and more intelligent films are getting crushed in the process.
P.L., Mumbai
The drafting of standard treatment guidelines is a very welcome move indeed (Chemical Alley, Aug 25). Earlier, some doctors would prescribe whatever medicines were pushed by medical representatives. Medical schools teach anatomy and pharmacy only in a general sense. If stg is introduced in medical colleges, it would be even better.
P.K. Kumar, Pune
Salman Rushdie seems to be one of the pet targets of Amit Chaudhuri (Bibliofile, August 11). This can be easily construed from his book of essays, Clearing A Space. While he is all praise for Tagore and others, he says that the much-eulogised new Indian fiction bores him. Post-Rushdie writing, Chaudhuri says, is ‘polyphony’, which he castigates as a ‘rhetoric of excess’. Chaudhuri makes it clear that unlike many Western admirers who treat Rushdie as the harbinger of a new literary era in India, he holds Rushdie responsible for the chaos, confusion and incoherence in modern Indian English writing.
Amitabh Thakur, Lucknow
We must salute our patriots, but history should not play a partisan game (The First Martyr, Aug 25), especially when it comes to contributions of minor and fringe groups. If history forgets that patriots emerged before 1857, one should remind oneself of Tilka Manjhi, a Santhal from Jharkhand who organised a community revolt against the East India Company in 1781 (until his death in 1784) in Bhagalpur. Similarly, in June 1855, Santhal rebels Sidhu and Kanu Murmu mobilised 10,000 men and declared war on the British. Will Indian history accommodate these sacrifices? Or will it forget them conveniently?
Francis Minj, Berkeley, US
The entire article about gated communities is prejudiced (Free From India?, Aug 18). They are a larger version of cooperative housing societies, which are fenced, have common power back-up, intercom with security checks and gate passes for servants.
Ravi, by e-mail
The phenomenon of gated communities is nothing but a secession of the successful.
Niamul Hossain Mallick,
Burdwan, West Bengal
Boston is undoubtedly an interesting city, but it only lives in the past and its past snobbery (Boston Diary, August 25). Daniel Lak seems to buy into that. There are at least 15 other cities in the US that are as interesting, say San Francisco or St Louis.
S. Vishwanathan, Eluru
Being a Kumaoni, I found Ira Pande’s Kumaon Diary (Aug 11) interesting. The ugly rash of cement houses that she says now dot the once-pristine landscape have come up because people have no other option—affordable timber for building houses is not available any more. Dire economics has made people fall back on concrete and cement.
Jiwan, on e-mail
I found Ira Pande’s description of Almora quite engaging. However, she has missed out on some prominent people who have visited or stayed in Almora, like the viceroy, Lord Mayo, Mahatma Gandhi, Guru Dutt, Salil Chaudhuri, Laurie Baker and writers Rahul Sankrityayan, Mahadevi Verma, Agyeya and Dharamvir Bharati.
Anil K. Joshi, Ranikhet
Apropos your article The First Martyr (Aug 25), the Barrackpore Mutiny of 1824 cannot be called the first anti-British mutiny. There was actually no revolt, though many soldiers died when they were fired upon by British troops. The incident was an instance of bad man management by ignorant and arrogant British officers, rather than an uprising by native soldiers. The first anti-British revolt occurred in 1806 at Vellore, where troops loyal to Tipu Sultan’s family rose against the British when they were asked to remove caste marks, shave their beards and wear leather cockades. There were no British casualties at Barrackpore; in Vellore, over a hundred Europeans, including over a dozen British officers, were killed by the mutineers.
Maj Gen V.K. Singh, Gurgaon
