U.S. policy

Thanks for your informative article on U.S. President George Bush's war-drumming (October 11). I learned from your piece a lot that is not published in the U.S. Isn't it ironic that my country (I do love it, despite its faults) gets so crazed when another country tries to develop nuclear capability when we ourselves have multiple nuclear devices. (My country imposed sanctions on India for the nuclear breakthrough it made.)

Although your piece is probably correct in most of its statistics, I did notice that you failed to mention the many people Saddam Hussein killed (Kurds) after the Gulf war. (Of course, we did not support them, either.) You also made the observation that when things do not go well for governments, they often offer a pacifier. In that same vein, in a television talk show here, the host was satirically suggesting names for a war on Iraq. One suggestion was: ``The We Didn't Get Osama War.'' Not that we should treat Bush's threats as a joke — I pray every day that all should live in peace, all religions (which, unfortunately, seem to be at the bottom of so many conflicts).

I enjoy your paper The Hindu when I am in India — especially the Religion column. I am going to try to e-mail your Frontline piece to some of my friends here.

Rosemary Dudleyreceived on e-mail

``Target Iraq'' exposes the double standards of the U.S. regime led by George Bush. While it accuses Iraq of violating U.N. resolutions, it is silent on the violations of innumerable U.N. resolutions by Israel on the Palestinian issue. Bush does not talk of a regime change when the Oslo agreements signed in the presence of his predecessor, Bill Clinton, are violated by Ariel Sharon by ruthlessly destroying the lives and property of Palestinians.

A.K. Anwar BatchaCoimbatore

``Come September"

Arundhati Roy has left a significant scene out of her impressive cinematic sweep of world power politics (``Come September, October 11). While she talks about the U.S. government's encouragement to Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, before he was declared Enemy No.1, she misses out an even closer collaboration, which flourished between the U.S. and the Third Reich during the Second World War. The ``Trading with the Enemy'' Act provided ways for U.S. corporations to continue to do business with nations with which the U.S. government was at war. International Business Machines (IBM) custom-made its first punch cards for the database management needs of the Holocaust, revising them according to specifications. Had the U.S. really intended to put Adolf Hitler out of business, it could have at least halted the technical support to the massive and systematic ethnic cleansing operation.

L.S. AravindaMumbai

Arundhati Roy has drawn pointed attention to the sins of corporate globalisation in her essay. Contextually and supportively, one recalls that the theme of the Davos Conference (dominated by corporate giants) in 1998 was `Responsible globality'. The forum's president, Dr. Klaus Schwab, mentioned at the conference that the process of globalisation was almost completed and that the problem that the world faced was that ``we don't have the necessary structure to deal with globality"! He made an impassioned plea to the international community to deal with globality in a responsible manner, to control globality rather than be controlled by it.

K. John MammenThiruvananthapuram

West Asia

In the last couple of issues you published reports on Palestine. It was good coverage of Palestinian opinion. The interview with Yasser Arafat (September 27) was quiet revealing. How about the Israeli perspective? That would provide us both sides of the issue. Please keep up the good reporting.

Latha RaghuSecunderabad

John Marshall

V. Venkatesan's contribution on Fali S. Nariman (``Award for F.S. Nariman'', September 27) made good reading. But the reference made in passing to John Marshall and Richmond needs emendation. Firstly, John Marshall was born not in Richmond but in Germantown, now Midland, Va. He moved to Richmond some years later. Secondly, he was not the first U.S. Chief Justice; the first person to hold the office was John Jay, who resigned believing that the U.S. Supreme Court as it existed then was defectively constituted and would not be able to acquire the status and dignity it needed. Marshall's long and successful tenure changed all that.

Drawing attention to such obiter dicta which do not detract anything from the essential theme of an otherwise well-written article is something of a bore, and I beg to be excused for being so fussy. But John Marshall was an exceptionally capable man, one of the foremost institution-builders in a young and evolving society and an important interpreter of constitutional law.

K.K. BaksiKolkata

Frontline

It was a long time since I had read Frontline. The August 2 issue is with me, but I should say that after reading it I am really disappointed. This is because of the totally biased views expressed in most of the articles and also because government-bashing is the only line in most of them.

I am an Army officer and I believe I am secular, both in thoughts and deeds. I am shocked and surprised at the relatively myopic view with which most of the articles have been written. This compels me to say that the Frontline I used to read previously, which carried good articles, has lost its poise, politically.

Dhiraj Udapure56 APO

Police response

The murder of two schoolgirls in the United Kingdom (``A crime beyond belief'', September 13 ) caused a great deal of havoc in the minds of parents. The quick action by the British police in such situations, with extreme sensitivity to the victims of crimes, could be emulated by our policemen.

Sanjeev Kumar PandeyMotihari, Bihar

Plebiscite and Kashmir

While replying to questions in the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) programme ``Hamari Bat BBC Ke Sath'' on September 1, Abdul Ghani Bhat, the All Parties Hurriyat Conference leader, repeatedly asserted that India had reneged on its promise to hold a plebiscite in the State of Jammu and Kashmir in order to determine the status of the State. In this regard I would like to place the following historical facts, which are self-explanatory.

Following the invasion of his State by tribesmen from Pakistan, Maharaja Hari Singh sought help from India and signed an Instrument of Accession on October 26, 1947, and Lord Mountbatten, the Governor-General of India, indicated his acceptance of it in the following terms: ``I do hereby accept this Instrument of Accession.'' It was unconditional, voluntary and absolute. It bound the State of Jammu and Kashmir and India together legally and constitutionally.

On January 27, 1948, India and Pakistan submitted to the President of the U.N. Security Council draft proposals to solve the Kashmir dispute. In its proposal, India agreed to the holding of a plebiscite as the ultimate determinant of Kashmir's status. The Indian representative observed on the floor of the Council:

``In accepting the accession, India refused to take advantage of the immediate peril in which the State found itself and informed the ruler that the accession should finally be settled by plebiscite as soon as peace has been restored.''

As per the proclamation issued by Yuvraj Karan Singh on May 1, 1951, elections to a Constituent Assembly, held on the basis of adult franchise, were completed by August 1951.

In his opening address to the Constituent Assembly on October 31, 1951, Sheikh Abdullah, the Prime Minister of Kashmir, called it a ``day of destiny'' and said that the Assembly would, while framing the Constitution for the State, also decide its constitutional relationship with the Union of India. The Constituent Assembly of Jammu and Kashmir ratified the State's accession to India on February 15, 1954. No one, not even its worst critic, ever doubted the representative nature of the Constituent Assembly.

Self-determination is a one-time act. The people of the State, through their elected representatives in the Constituent Assembly, took a final decision and therefore any further need for `self -determination' or a plebiscite does not arise, legally or morally.

The 1954 resolution of the Constituent Assembly was followed by the incorporation of Section 3 in the Constitution of Jammu and Kashmir, which reads: ``The State of Jammu and Kashmir is and shall be an integral part of the Union of India.''

S.B. SinghBuxar, Bihar

Jayalalithaa's game plan

It is clear that the polarisation for the next Lok Sabha elections has begun with parties getting divided between pro- and anti-Sonia Gandhi camps, following Jayalalithaa's salve in New Delhi (``Seeing a foreign hand'', September 27).

Jayalalithaa trounced her arch-rival M. Karunanidhi in the elections in Tamil Nadu and ascended the gadi again for a second time, in a phoenix-like rise from the ashes. She is now supremely confident that her special task force will catch that forest brigand Veerappan soon, a task which neither her predecessor nor the Congress(I)-ruled Karnataka government could accomplish. She will be applauded by the world then.

Jayalalithaa is a highly intelligent person with an incisive grasp of the nuances of coalition politics, the murky side of it in particular. She knows that A.B. Vajpayee and the BJP are in failing health and their heady days as the leader of a coalition are numbered, especially after the Gujarat holocaust. Jayalalithaa can emerge as the undisputed leader of yet another coalition if she plays her cards right in vanquishing Sonia Gandhi, a formidable but vulnerable contender. The `foreigner' bogey has come in handy at this time and it may still work by splitting the Congress(I) at its seams with a little more nudging by the AIADMK supremo.

The nation can now brace itself for the ascent of yet another Indira Gandhi, indigenously grown, for the rat race to power at the Centre.

Kangayam R. RangaswamyMadison, U.S.

Narmada valley

I am pained and enraged to witness the situation forced on the families displaced by the Sardar Sarovar dam in the Narmada valley. Thousands of people living on the banks of the Narmada are facing unprecedented, illegal submergence. These people are not provided with any alternative land or housing and have no other place to go and their homes and lands are being flooded with the rising dam waters. What are they supposed to do? They have just two options — to flee to save their own lives, or to stay in their own houses and challenge the illegal submergence. The people in the Narmada valley have chosen the second, more difficult, option.

Displacing people without proper rehabilitation is a blatant violation not only of the orders of the Supreme Court and the Narmada Tribunal, but of the right to life, guaranteed to every citizen by our Constitution.

Except for the government of Maharashtra, no other State government seems to believe in any democratic means to resolve the issue through dialogue and discussion. The Central government, along with the governments of Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh, seems to go all out to flush people out by allowing submergence in broad daylight. This is the way the governments want to treat one of the most important non-violent struggles of our times.

Once again it is the tribal and peasant communities that are expected to make a ``sacrifice'' in the name of national development. The question is whether we are going to be mute spectators of this blatant injustice, or raise our voice against it.

Amrita PatwardhanClark University, U.S.

Bhansali's Devdas

I read with interest Sudhanva Deshpande's ``The unbearable opulence of Devdas'', a critique of Sanjay Leela Bhansali's film Devdas (August 30).

Except for some comments about the first Bengali and the first Hindi versions of the film, I concur with most of his criticism of the latest Devdas. However, I must object to the writer's concluding statements: ``At last, a mediocre novel has got the mediocre film it deserved. Perhaps we should thank Sanjay Leela Bhansali after all.''

What exactly does the writer mean by this? I assume that he is making the preposterous statement that Saratchandra Chattopadhyay's Devdas is a mediocre novel and the Bhansali film provided it the treatment it deserves. Devdas may not be Chattopadhyay's masterpiece, but certainly it is not mediocre fiction, for the simple reason that Chattopadhyay's writing is never mediocre. In fact, Devdas depicts realistically the socio-economic life of rural Bengal at the turn of the 20th century. The film completely perverts the original story, written in the context of the then prevailing societal mores in Bengal. I suggest Deshpande stay with his criticism of Bollywood films, not of literature.

Dipak L. Sengupta

received on e-mail

Aga Khan Award

Thank you for the interesting article about the barefoot architects of Tilonia and the return of the Aga Khan Award (August 2). Architecture is like a medal with two sides — service to the user, and art. As an artist, an architect tends to overestimate his role; but as a servant of the user, his contribution is limited by the necessity of cooperation with other professionals and the users. Therefore, the Aga Khan Award has focussed on the main part of the work and correctly handed over the prize to the Barefoot College as an organisation for its specific approach to architecture. I think we can learn a lot from the Barefoot Architects and should rethink our education system.

To avoid such situations, we, as a public institute for architecture, have started to estimate the role of the user and owner of the structure/building. Without his money and will, there would be no architecture at all. Maybe Neeher Raina can see some sense in this viewpoint.

Markus BerchtoldManaging DirectorVorarlberger Architektur Institut