Letters to the Editor Chicken-hearted and headless chickens SIR, ~ Your editorial, “Brutally routine”, this morning has rightly focused on the anger generated by killings from across the border, and the meaningless responses by people unable to empathize with the tragedy. Sections of the opposition seem to share your concern and demand that talks should be suspended. But the issue is not about having talks or no talks. The real issue is what must be said if there are talks. Regretfully the critics are silent on this. They are eloquent about what they do not want. They are mute about what, if anything, they do want. I have repeatedly advocated in your columns that if talks deserve to be abandoned there is the hard option ~ break diplomatic relations and resort to non-military measures to dismember Pakistan. I believe it can be done. But before launching on such a painful, costly and hazardous enterprise it must be clear that peace talks cannot succeed. To test that, a tangible demand must be made to Pakistan. I have indicated what it should be. What do the critics have to say, if anything at all? Goody-goody comments by bleeding hearts are deplorable, but the empty chauvinistic rhetoric by the no-talks brigade is equally deplorable and self-serving. Not only does it reveal a bunch of headless chickens, but also serves as a rude reminder that they are chicken-hearted. yours, etc. rajinder puri, new delhi, 28 september. Rationalist & patriot SIR, ~ This is with reference to Swami Sandarshanananda’s article, “Patriot of Patriots” (25 September). Raja Rammohun Roy was perhaps the finest intellectual and the most enlightened rationalist patriot. It is always unwelcome and futile to compare the levels of geniuses. However, one cannot ignore the fact that Rammohun was the pioneer and he did not have any Indian before him to help him imbibe the spirit of rationality and patriotism in the modern sense of these terms. We wonder what spirit was Rammohun born with. We know of the famous song composed by Rabindranath: Kon aaloke praaner pradeep/ Jwaaliye tumi dharaay aaso/Saadhak ogo, premik ogo,/ Paagal ogo, dharaay aaso (With what light do you fire your life, oh devoted, oh lover, oh lunatic, while coming to this world). That is also our question in respect of Rammohun. At the age of 16, he wrote a book against idolatry which was not liked by his parents who expelled him from their home. He then travelled to Tibet where he had some intense exposure to Buddhism in the company of the Lamas. But his independent thinking was not appreciated by them and a plan was hatched to kill him there. Somehow he managed to flee. Earlier, he had spent three years in Patna to study Arabic and Islamic religion and four years in Varanasi to master Sanskrit and study ancient Indian religion and philosophy. He translated different books of Vedanta into Bengali, English and Hindi and published them for being distributed free of cost. In 1803-04 Rammohun wrote a book in Persian, named Tuhfaat-ul-Muohahidin, with a preface in Arabic. Here again his independent way of thinking found its way. The book generated so much antagonism against him that the contemporary Islamic bigots attempted to kill him, as has been reported in the authorised history of twenty-five years of the Brahmo Samaj . But the rationalist Muslims were overwhelmed by the depth of Rammohun’s knowledge of the Koran and other Islamic scriptures from which he drew his arguments and quotations in plenty, and they called him Jabardast Moulvi. In fact Rammohun had to cut short his service with the East India Company in Rangpur and return to Calcutta as the Muslims there were annoyed with the ideas expressed in Tuhfaat. Rammohun’s concept of freedom and nationalism was, however, not circumscribed by any geographical border as such. His nationalism went hand in hand with universalism. But that is another story. yours, etc., susanta nag, kolkata, 26 september. Assessing a patriot SIR, ~ This is in response to Swami Sandarshanananda’s article. “Patriot of Patriots”. While the piece is written in the extremely elegant prose for which Swami Sandarshanananda is known, the contents, especially towards the end, would have been richer if he had considered some of the modern critical reservations against Swami Vivekananda, of which one is “Hindu reactionary.” Sandarshanananda could have also mentioned the fact that Ramchandra Guha has not included Vivekananda in his ambitious Makers of Modern India volume, and why this omission could be read as a serious critical flaw in the text. It is not enough to simply mention Subodh Chandra Sengupta as a critical reference. yours, etc., sreemati mukherjee, kolkata, 27 september.
Posted on: Sun, 29 Sep 2013 19:44:40 +0000
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