Letters to the editor Thoughts on Indira’s assassination SIR, Your editorial, ‘Back to blackmail’, as well as Rajinder Puri’s article, ‘Rahul and Indira’s murder’ (25 October) rightly stress the need for utmost circumspection in public speeches delivered extempore by such VIPs as Rahul Gandhi. Among audiences, generally, we not only have loyalists ~ that you flippantly call adulatory chamchas ~ but also fanatics! Of these I once had a traumatic experience. As a 22-year-old ‘refugee’ I used to attend Mahatma Gandhi’s prayer meetings at Birla House, New Delhi. On 20 January 1948, Madan Lal Pahwa ~ a callow teenage RSS member ~ flung a bomb that luckily exploded behind a wall away from where Gandhi would hold prayer meetings. While the Mahatma was virtually unmoved, the audience was rudely shaken! Ten days later, Nathuram Godse ~ of the same group ~ shot the Mahatma dead at point-blank range. This great tragedy occurred because Gandhi had turned down Sardar Patel’s entreaties for body-search of those who attended the rallies outside the bungalow gates. As for the tragic assassination of Indira Gandhi, Mr Puri lends an air of grisly mystery by pointing to Beant Singh’s induction as the PM’s bodyguard despite the latter’s “tainted record” ~ whatever that might imply. In this context, the conviction of Kehar Singh happens to be highly controversial, based on circumstantial evidence. Indeed, the eminent lawyer, Ram Jethmalani, had, on 5 January 1989, pleaded with the Supreme Court for a reprieve ~ only to be turned down. Then, the same evening, Fali S Nariman, India’s sole representative in the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists, phoned the then President, Mr R Venkataraman, to convey the information that the Commission’s secretary-general in Geneva had appealed to the President for a reprieve for Kehar Singh. But the Secretary to the President, Mr Prem Kumar, politely put off the caller, saying “Rashtrapati Ji is sleeping and cannot be disturbed”. The then Prime Minister, Mr Rajiv Gandhi, was holidaying with friends. The following day, a youthful Satwant Singh and a greying Kehar Singh were hanged in Tihar Jail, their bodies hurriedly ~ almost surreptitiously ~ cremated in the jail premises. Your editorial now talks of ‘Rahul’s gutter-level tactics, while ~ on the same page ~ Mr Puri deplores that ‘the Supreme Court gave Kehar Singh the death sentence. It was an atrocious judgment”. Mr Puri however errs in regard to the occupant of Rashtrapati Bhavan. It was Mr Venkataraman; Giani Zail Singh had retired long before. He is ‘dead right’ in deploring the fact that “we are living in crazy times”. Yours, etc., Saran Singh, Kolkata, 27 October. POOR VERSUS POOR SIR, Apropos Seema Mustafas article, ‘Pitting the poor against the poor’ (25 October), democracy does not automatically guarantee social justice and equal opportunity to all. It rather seems to be tolerant of mass poverty. To alleviate poverty, politicians in democracies prefer direct to indirect measures, such as enhancement of productivity and generation of assets. Direct measures, predominantly disbursements of various types of subsidies, job reservation, transfer of assets etc., are widely packaged in the name of the poor and appear to be visible to the poor. But the benefits are reaped ultimately by the middle class. The way the middle class looks at state spending on the poor has been termed as “positional perception”. The middle class, the high-income group (around 15 per cent of population) and the working class (around 30 per cent of the population) have more votes. This facilitates formation of a solid vote-bank. The poor remain poor, if not poorer. Nevertheless, the poor join a largely hollow and illusory democratic process to choose a particular political party which promises no solution to their problems, but might accentuate them if wrong choices are made. The poor are poor because they are poor. They don’t use the subsidised sectors, notably power, trains and LPG. The framework to alleviate poverty rests on two pillars ~ improving the investment climate to accelerate growth and empowering the poor to participate in and benefit from this growth. Yours, etc., Jaydev Jana, Kolkata, 28 October. WHEN NATURE STRIKES SIR, This refers to your news item on 14 October, Phailin affects 1.02 crore, 17 dead. What an irony. Man has the capacity to plan and stand up to Natures furious Phailin. So remarkable indeed that out of 10 lakh affected, only 17 lives were lost, which works out to one in 50,000! But he is unable to face his own fellow mens follies. Pilgrimage disasters are neither the will of God nor the retribution of Nature. The recent temple tragedy in Madhya Pradesh resulted in a fatality ratio of one in 20. A safety mechanism for pilgrims should be in place in all religious sites. A list of such places and the standard operating procedures must be prominently displayed. The district officials who can be held accountable must be named. Such smart expressions as Phailin mean nothing, only to be left with mud in the face as in MP on the same day. Yours, etc., R Narayanan, Ghaziabad, 20 October.
Posted on: Fri, 08 Nov 2013 19:09:15 +0000
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