Your cover story Is War the Only Option? (Dec 15) omits the most obvious reason why India shouldn’t go to war: we would lose. Six lakh Indian troops and paramilitary forces have been unable to defeat 3,000 militants (a ratio of 200 to 1) in Kashmir, because the local population believes in the struggle against India. Do we really believe we can defeat militants in a different country, facing a hostile population and one of the world’s largest armies? The talk of military options is propelled by hate politics, the same hate politics that claims that 200 dead in Mumbai is terrorism but 2,000 dead in Gujarat is patriotism.
Shankar Gopal, New Delhi
As an educated, liberal Pakistani youth who wants to live a peaceful life and condemn terrorism of every type, I wish Indian newspapers would provide space to deliver the opinions of moderate Pakistanis to Indians.
Zaheer Kissana, on e-mail
Is war the only option? No. Iswar God) is.
H. Raghuram Pai, on e-mail
Let’s face it. We can’t go to war. Not because we do not want to, but because we as a nation can’t ‘do’ aggression. We’re too self-absorbed to let war interfere with our peace. Our politicians and bureaucrats are busy playing power games, our middle class is busy chasing the American dream or bringing it home. Defence personnel are mulling post-retirement options, getting themselves mba degrees or turning corrupt. They play no role in the power hierarchy of our country and are the most insignificant in the social pecking order.
Hari Parmeshwar, on e-mail
Looking at the covers of India Today and Outlook, I found your rival had declared war while you advocated restraint. I bought Outlook. I strongly feel India shouldn’t go to war. We are not a rich country, and can’t afford a war; even the US is suffering for its war on terrorism. And even assuming that we went to war, what are the chances that China won’t help Pakistan or the US will support us, not Pakistan?
Ashwin Kumar, Bangalore
Whenever I see the games Pakistan and the US play vis-a-vis terrorism in India, I think of a Kannada proverb—"Nee sattante maadu, Naa attante maadteeni (You pretend like dead, I pretend like crying)."
Nagaraj Shenoy, Bangalore
In one of his very first addresses to the nation, President-elect Barack Obama announced that America would, within the next 10 years, no longer depend on West Asian oil. The intention being not only to make America self-reliant and that much stronger in facing any international energy crisis, but also to dry up one of the main sources of terrorist funding—petrodollars—a realisation dawned belatedly on US think-tanks. Developing our own oil resources is a target worth emulating but war is not an option—the luxury of so-called punitive strikes on training camps is best left to a superpower like the US. India could do so only if it had an unmanned air vehicle like the Predator, which the US has been using blatantly. It could well step up such attacks on terrorist camps, if Pakistan still refuses to play ball!
R.C. Acharya, on e-mail
After every terrorist outrage, an Indo-Pak war seems only a sabre-rattle away. This time, the rattling is even louder. But it’s easy to talk war than actually wage it. In these times of anti-Pak hysteria, it may seem ‘unpatriotic’, but there may be a case for helping its government combat terror within its own territory than to encourage the call to take up arms.
J.S. Acharya, Hyderabad
With Laloo and Paswan as his colleagues, Amar Singh and Mulayam Singh as hisf riends and Ahmed Patel as his guide, how can Manmohan Singh seek the help of the international community and point fingers at Pakistan?
Harshita Choudhary, Jaipur
The question is, whom do we fight—Pakistan’s fledgling civilian government, its military establishment, the Islamic State or jehadist ideology? International opinion is governed not by "compelling proof" but by the West’s vested interests, easily manipulated by promoters of the jehadi agenda in Pakistan, as we’ve seen in the past two decades. The US created the military-jehadi nexus in the Cold War years with petrodollars providing the oxygen and America providing the AK-47s. History teaches us that those who create monsters must take them on and destroy them. If the US doesn’t intervene decisively and swiftly, a bigger calamity might be in store for the world. As for India, if we were to learn from this and reform and restructure our police, intelligence and judicial systems, it would be a gift from Pak’s military-jehadi nexus! Now that the p3ps have tasted the aam aadmi’s plight, I hope they’ll goad our netas out of their slumber.
Prof N.V. Ratnam, on e-mail
"I Oppose Military Action. I Backed Operation Parakram, Lost Polls", says Farooq Abdullah. He should know: war or no war you get what you deserve.
Raj, Chicago
People seem to think they’ve given terrorism a befitting reply by blaming politicians, and the government seems to think it’s done the needful by sacking a minister. Both are wrong. Working for social justice, secularism and democracy will be the most effective way to combat terror. We should do it with a sense of urgency, for our growing prosperity makes us a more attractive target for those who wish us ill.
Deepak Seth, on e-mail
Apropos Diction Matters (Dec 8), no government can stop terrorism in the world. But who set off Islamist terror in India? The bjp. Had they not demolished the Babri Masjid, the 1993 riots would not have taken place. Then the Godhra incident took place, followed by unprecedented riots that left a lot of Muslims dead. The vicious cycle of attack and retaliation hasn’t stopped. It’s high time the bjp apologised minus the rhetorical nonsense.
B.P. Chatterji, on e-mail
On his website, bjp leader L.K. Advani has posed 10 questions on terrorism to the Manmohan Singh government. But when the government had called an all-party meeting to discuss the very same issue, he was busy with a political meeting in Ajmer. What, really, are Advani’s priorities, I dread to think. We should also remember that it was his rath yatra that started the marginalising of the Muslim community, starting with the attack on the Babri Masjid in 1992. As home minister in the nda government, he did not inspire much confidence. Instead of posing those questions, he should be answering them himself.
S.N. Iyer, Bangalore
Apropos your opinion poll, the bjp in the last election got around 25 per cent votes...so 36 per cent of the vote (be it of your 524 respondents speaking for one billion of us) would easily mean around 190-odd seats for the party.
Rahul, Delhi
Your poll says 78 per cent Bangaloreans "equated terrorism with Muslims". Which street-corner did you get off at? We equate terrorism with Pakistanis, not with Indian Muslims. Of course, there are some Indian Muslims who rejoice when Pakistan wins a cricket match, but they are just harmless bootlickers with unresolved identity issues, not terrorists!
Avinash Chandra, Bangalore
Why sack only Shivraj Patil, why not nsa M.K.N arayanan, the home secretary, the raw and IB heads, the navy and coast guard chiefs?
A.Y. Alurkar, Pune
When national security is violated in the most blatant way, the nsa is nowhere in the picture (Why M Sounds Better Than MK). When sundry other fall guys are being hounded out, this man has gone underground; and it already looks like he will reappear with the benign indulgence of our PM.
Manish Banerjee, Calcutta
It seems only Malayalis can climb up the ladder in raw.
Koman Vijay, Stillwater, US
I fear Narayanan, apart from the time he spends fawning on the Gandhi family, was always focused on some personal vendetta against Eelam Tamils.
Sathish, Pune
The carnage in Mumbai has shown that Pakistan will always be ruled by its military and not by its false civil fronts!
T. Sathyamurthi, Folsom, US
It’s shameful that the unsc—and not Pakistan—had to initiate action against the Jamaat-ud-Dawa. And how does banning an outfit help anyway? It’ll just re-emerge under another name. And Pakistan would have gained time in fooling the world yet again.
S. Lakshmi, on e-mail
No amount of cowering behind lies and excuses will hide the atrocities planned and executed by LeT under the guidance of Hafiz Saeed ("It Will Be Unfortunate Indeed If India Attacks Muridke"). The stated objective of LeT does not stop at Kashmir. Its war extends beyond—to fly a green flag on the Red Fort and make India a part of a radical new Caliphate extending from Turkey to Indonesia. That, I’m sorry to inform him, will not happen in his lifetime or that of the next ten or hundred generations. We know what feeds the hatred of the likes of Hamid Gul: the dismemberment of Pakistan (with the creation of Bangladesh). They should realise that Pakistan brought it upon itself through its own arrogance; India only facilitated it as a strategic objective.
Anonymous, London
Outlook should be banned for sedition. How could it allow its pages to be used by a jehadi like Hafiz Saeed?
Vibhaas, Doha, Qatar
Every time there’s a terrorist attack, Islamic apologists claim that it’s the poor, ignorant and gullible youth who are responsible, but the exact opposite is true. Just look at Hafiz Saeed.
Bodh Ramdeo, Springfield, US
The strip ‘Heroes of 26/11’ under Hafiz Saeed’s picture on the cover, however inadvertent, was unpalatable.
Pankaj Bhatia, on e mail
Kiran Nagarkar in his piece I Write Fiction, But Reality? says that he was incensed at the foreign media’s focus on the Taj, Oberoi and Chabad House during the terror strikes. But can they be blamed when the Indian media was not very different? A major part of air time was concentrated on the places where the society’s elite ‘hang out’ with little talk about cst or Cama Hospital. Even now it is the people who lost their lives at these places who get most of the media attention. This goes to show that the aam admi is just that, a commoner whose life is of lesser worth than the rich and the famous, at least according to our visual media!
Mamatha Ramesh, Bangalore
Should a writer ever publish such sloppy prose and expose one’s Literary Dysfunction?
Anil Chakradar, Hyderabad
What is Gautam Bhatia trying to say (Only the Dark Skyline Joined Our Ghettos Together)? How does the idea of two cities tormented by spectacular terrorist attacks relate to what happened in Mumbai?
Shrikar Keskar, Liverpool
As Bombay, Duck (Dec 15) put it aptly, the Mumbai blasts proved that plus matter, plts don’t. And as long as large sections of the people do not matter, no resolute fight can be put up against India’s enemies.
Haridas Rao, Lucknow
Especially liked the bit about how class matters in India. Of course it does, as everywhere else in the world. Would 9/11 have made waves had it not been for the deaths of those mega stockmart players?
Parthasarathy, Chennai
This kind of an apology of an analysis is not only asinine and dumb, it is supremely dangerous because it ends up partially offloading the extreme dislike for terror acts ("Chill man, only a few rich guys have been killed") by providing a justification—to the effect that these acts are not as evil as we think, nor deserve the outrage seen.
Varun, Bangalore
Where is the problem? Would we not discuss the death of a top leader more than the death of a common man? The answer also points to the reason why some things are more discussed than others. There’s nothing wrong in this.
Siddharth, Houston, US
I’ve nothing but contempt for Raj Thackeray and his storm-troopers, but the sms barb Rahul Singh quotes in his Bombay Diary—that the mns fuhrer could sleep peacefully because 200 nsg commandos, all of them north and south Indians and not Marathi manoos, were fighting the terrorists—was unfair to the Mumbai police. Fourteen officers of the local police force of various ranks—starting from Hemant Karkare and Ashok Kamte, through inspectors Vijay Salaskar and Shashank Shinde, SI Tukaram Omble, and down to six humble constables whose names aren’t even mentioned anywhere—died in the line of duty. Scores of other police officers like Sanjay Govilkar and Hemant Bawdhankar (pic above) lived to tell their tales. All these officers are Marathi manoos, and they protected all Mumbaikars, whether they were from the north, south , east or west.
Ramesh Ramachandra, Bangalore
It may be Bombay to you, Mr Singh, but it’s still Mumbai to the rest of us who live in and love this city. Were the policemen who died not worthy of your respect because they were Maharashtrian? Shame on you, you’re no better than Raj Thackeray. At a time when Mumbaikars are in need of healing, you use the tragedy to score cheap points.
Anu Medhekar, Chicago, US
All over Maharashtra, boards have been put up in memory of the three senior police officials who were killed while fighting terrorists. The real hero of the fightback, however, was Tukaram Omble, who held on to the gun barrel of the terrorist in the Skoda at Chowpatty and took all the bullets in his chest but did not give up. I request all to join in asking for a posthumous Ashok Chakra for Omble.
Sanjay Ranade, Pune
Shefalee Vasudev admires Kavita Karkare for being "dressed in a red and light brown sari, a small bindi on her forehead, a red bangle on one of her arms, her hair neatly combed...." She notes that "the life-denying white of widowhood is now being given a decent burial" (Last Rights). While the writer’s heart is in the right place, her facts are not. The educated Maharashtrian does not grieve in the way that their north Indian counterpart often does. My grandmother was widowed over 35 years back. She did not wail publicly; she wore coloured sarees, bindi and bangles till the end of her days. All widows amongst our relatives dress up the way they did when their spouses were living.
Sreekant Khandekar, Noida
I’m hurt by the way my words have been used in the article What Do You Feel When I Hurt? I had said on a popular social networking site: "People of Pakistan, tell me, do you support these cold-blooded terrorists? Are you proud to see them killing? Proud that they are even remotely associated with your country, your people?" Used out of context, they seemed like a rant against Pakistan, which wasn’t my intention at all. In fact, I and my friends have been trying to promote a sensible, balanced debate, and have even started a group—"Every Muslim is not a terrorist, neither is every terrorist a Muslim."
Jagat Sohail, on e-mail
Inspired by Gandhi’s monkeys, Pakistan will see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil (Acute Angles). No wonder the collapsing nation is degenerating into a rogue state.
Shyamal Mukherji, Mumbai
I admire the sane voice of Vinod Mehta’s edit Look Before You Leap. We must consider how simple it can be for Pakistan to stage an attack in Lahore by members of a minority Pakistani community, leaving trails of Hindu jingoist material printed in Urdu, a couple of cellphones from the million false connections in India, garments made in Ludhiana, Kurkure, itc cigarettes and so on. Besides, how many countries do we attack—Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh? Sri Lanka too? How many of the supporters of this direct action are willing to join or, if too aged, let their children do a two-year service in the armed forces? How many of them would financially commit to taking care of the family of a jawan who loses his life in a war? The amount can’t exceed their club bills. Let’s not become terrorists in trying to nab terrorists, as the US has in its seven-year-old search for Osama and Al Qaeda.
Partho Datta, Calcutta
Although I generally agree with Mr Mehta, I’m chagrined at his reference to the Taj Mahal Hotel as his "second home". Only in India can privilege be so utterly unselfconscious, even among liberals.
Satadru Sen, St Louis, US
One would have expected a journalist of his calibre and exposure to have a holistic grasp of the terror conundrum we face, but Vinod Mehta, sadly, has showed no signs of that faculty. By merely imposing caution on the Indian State, he has chosen to sit on the fence. To handle terror, one has to be clear about three non-negotiable postulates: Ends, Ways and Means. The desired End for India is total elimination of terror. The only Way left for India is to follow the American example post-9/11, of a dedicated anti-terror ministry (the department of homeland defence) which has all the wherewithal at its command: focused intelligence, trained personnel, transport, infrastructure, funds, global networking, 4G technology, legitimacy (vide an act of Parliament), and not the least, accountability. VM has also been patently unfair to the army, in not giving it credit for so effectively handling the terror attack. He has nowhere mentioned that the cutting edge of the nsg—the Special Action Group, which took out the terrorists—comprises entirely of volunteers from the regular army.
Maj Gen (Retd) Raj Mehta, Mohali
The tendency to lionise our armed forces mystifies me, for the navy did not come off too well in the intelligence fiasco preceding 26/11. Most Indian institutions are dysfunctional, and if there’s one thing India can be proud of, it’s democracy, certainly not militarism.
Aroup Chatterjee, London
We shouldn’t lose sight of one thing: that it is a politically very weak Pakistan we are dealing with right now. Not just that, "the monkey also has a matchbox in his hands".
P.P. Singh Chadha, on e-mail
Is Vinod Mehta for real? He’s still unconvinced even after it’s been established independently that the terrorists came from Pakistan!
Raj Shorey, Dallas, US
The greatest risk in life is not to take any risk, Mr Mehta.
G.N. Seetharam, Melbourne
It’s unfortunate that we ask no questions, but even assumptions are made on solid past information (Conveyor Belt Hacks, Dec 15). Is Nasim Zehra suggesting there are no terrorist training camps in Pakistan? Is it not true that the main aim of these organisations is to destabilise India? I agree the media is hyperactive, but her argument really has no juice.
Aleya Jung, New York, US
Now that it has been established without a shred of doubt that the attackers were indeed Pakistanis, I wonder what Ms Zehra has to say.
Harish, Hyderabad
Contrary to her advice, Ms Zehra herself jumped the gun and rushed to print. By now she must be eating her words.
V.K.Rayadu, on e-mail
This is classical terrorist/jehadi sympathiser masquerading as liberal/democratic activist. But really, who’s afraid of Nasim Zehra? We have our own Commies and anti-national crooks like Arundhati who are more insidious.
Vivek, Hyderabad
What all crimes against humanity the Pakistan media has stood by for? The lesser said of the 9/11, 26/11 and the Holocaust-denying Pak media, the better.
Vic Sangha, Toronto
Ms Zehra’s article was good in parts like a Curate’s egg but some of the not-so-good parts tend to stick on her face.
Santhanam Krishnan, on e-mail
It’s a bit rich that any member from the Pak media should give us lessons on objective journalism. We did not hesitate to bring charges against a sadhvi and a Lt Col Purohit when we discovered they could be behind the Malegaon blasts. Can Pakistan do the same with Hafiz Saeed, Masood Azhar or Dawood?
Aninda Sardar, Calcutta
Maybe the Indian media should take a cue from the media in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Libya and Iran.
Narendra Vasireddi, Boston, US
The Indian media’s frenzy was quite appalling. The bozos behaved like monkeys in front of microphones, competing for trps. I understand the people of India need to be informed but this crazy to-the-minute misinformation was pure nonsense.
Rajat, Munich
Flip through some Pak channels and you’ll hear ridiculous statements like this was the handiwork of Indian Zionists, whatever that means.
Selvan, Manama, Bahrain
The piece At the Edges of Restraint was the understatement of the year. Nearly all our news channels are unprofessional, substandard and sensationalist. The standards of our media have fallen off a cliff in the last 10 years. Oh, how I long for the DD News of the ’80s. Sure, it was all state-controlled, but at least they did not lie outright to cause a sensation.
Ravi, Denver, US
Loved it when those shrill, almost comical TV anchors were unceremoniously shooed away by security personnel when they ventured too close to areas that were cordoned off.
G. Bhatia, Dharamsala
The Bibliofile item (November 10) on the children’s literature festival Bookaroo insinuated that it was the result of a "messy divorce from the Jaipur litfest". This is far from the truth. There is no connection at all. Bookaroo was the result of a lot of hard work and thinking by a group of children’s books lovers and publishers, each of whom played a very important role. We wish the reporter had stuck to the facts without drawing half-baked conclusions.
Venkatesh, Editor, Heek Magazine & Co-organiser, Bookaroo Children’s Festival, New Delhi
An inadvertent editorial error crept into Vijay Kranti’s letter in the December 8 issue. The operative portion should have read, "Since the past few years, a nefarious alliance has started taking shape between the Maoists in South Asia and those sections of the western church who have openly declared their goal of making the 21st century a century of ‘harvesting souls’ in Asia", and not as published.
