LETTERS

Ayodhya

I agree with A.G. Noorani's view that even if a Hindu temple did exist before the mosque was built in Ayodhya in 1528, it does not justify the demolition of the mosque in 1992 ("Vajpayee and the Constitution", January 5).

Going by the logic of those behind the demolition of the Babri Masjid, many ancient monuments the world over would have to be demolished and we can destroy the monuments constructed by the Mughals and the British. History can never be erased.

R. Swaminath
Ratlam, Madhya Pradesh

Attacks on Christians

The continuing attacks against Christians in Gujarat are horrifying ("A concerted campaign", January 5).

In a secular democracy it is the duty and responsibility of the state to protect every citizen and his/her rights, including the right to worship.

Political parties that try to divide the people on religious and caste lines must be shunned.

A. Jacob Sahayam
Karigiri, Tamil Nadu

Ceasefire

The olive branch held out by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to the separatists in Kashmir in the form of a unilateral ceasefire declaration has been welcomed by all right-thinking people ("From ceasefire to dialogue", December 22). Although there wa s some initial scepticism, the Pakistan government was expected to react favourably to the offer.

The problem for the Indian government is that it has to deal with too many militant groups, a few of them reportedly interested in peace and others keen on a jehad. There are also a few non-militant groups clamouring for attention. What can the go vernment do under such bedevilling circumstances?

Kangayam R. Rangaswamy
Durham, United States

Disinvestment

The idea of indiscriminate disinvestment is flawed ("Disinvestment apace", December 22). It has not been proved that government control has been the malaise of the Indian economy.

The real problem lies in inefficiency and corruption. Unless these issues are tackled, no solution can be found, be it capitalism or socialism.

Secondly, there is no point in selling profit-making public sector undertakings. It would only amount to passing national wealth, created through a hard and long struggle, into a few private hands.

Given the level of corruption in the government, one can imagine the kind of regulatory mechanisms that are in place to provide good services to the citizens. Still, reasonably affordable services such as public transport, postal services and phone servi ces are available now. With privatisation, even these will vanish.

Dr. Samir Kelekar
Bangalore

NCERT

The article "A biased agenda" (December 22) makes shocking reading. It is a gross misrepresentation of facts and a case of twisting of the purely professional intentions of the apex body, the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), in the field of school education.

The NCERT has put before the country the purely professional point of view regarding what the 'National Curriculum Framework for School Education' should be like. The process of the development of this document has undergone an unprecedented democratic s eries of multilevel consultations involving all those stakeholders in the process of education. However, it is true that political parties have not been consulted and it is not the mandate of the NCERT to consult political parties on ideological grounds for what the children of the country should read or should not read. The ideologically oriented senior academics of the NCERT, about whom numerous references have been made in this article and also in earlier writings, have had no courage to make their p oint during the process of consultations within the NCERT.

The people of the country need the future citizens to be good with strong moral and ethical values. It is not possible for the common man to find out why the ideologically committed senior academics of the NCERT and the reports of the press are against v alue inculcation among children. The document had no point of reference to the values of any particular religion or community. It emphasises the greatest secular values of respect for all the communities and all the religions.

We wonder if the writer of the article under reference and the senior NCERT academics collaborating with these have any professional vision to prove that the country today needs people with no values, no attachment to the country and no respect for the f aiths of others. The article more or less seems to be proving that all those people who want to create among India's children love for India's traditional, cultural and intellectual heritage are anti-national.

An esteemed journal like yours is expected to contribute positively to the process of national development and not to add to the confusion already prevalent in the country by contributing to particular ideological prejudices and ill-will. We hope that yo u would kindly take corrective measures in this respect and project a dispassionate, professionally sound academic picture of the efforts being made by the NCERT in the direction of improvement of school education.

Sanjay Kumar
Public Relations Officer, NCERT
New Delhi

The Indus script

The articles by acknowledged experts in the field of archaeology on the Indus script ("Horseplay in Harappa", October 13 and "A tale of two horses", November 24) were educative.

It was Fr. Henry Heras, the Dravidian from Spain as he proudly called himself, who first declared that the language of the Indus Valley seal inscriptions was proto-Dravidian. His Studies in Proto-Indo-Mediterranean Culture, Volume I (1953) is a cl assic that gives rare insights. Although experts who tried to decipher the Indus script later have not accepted the particular readings given by Fr. Heras, no reputed scholar has contested his conclusion.

Among those who have tried to decipher the Indus script as proto-Dravidian are Walter A. Fairservis (no more with us now), Asko Parpola, Y.V. Knorozov and Iravatham Mahadevan. Among the eminent archaeologists and philologists who endorse this view are th e great Sanskritist Dr. Burrow Bridget and Raymon Allchin (archaeologists) and Kamil V. Zvelebil, one of the foremost Dravidian linguists. The best summary of this issue has been given by Zvelebil in Dravidian Linguistics, An Introduction (Pondich erry Institute of Language and Culture, Pondicherry, 1990). No reasonable person can cavil against his conclusion that "the most probable candidate is and remains some form of Dravidian".

Stanley Wolpert paraphrases this scholarly consensus in a more telling manner in his An Introduction to India (University of California Press, 1991): "We assume from various shreds of evidence that they were proto-Dravidian, possibly using a langu age that was a grandfather of modern Tamil."

Among the numerous attempts made by Tamil-knowing scholars (apart from the doyen among them, I. Mahadevan) to decipher the Indus script from the proto-Dravidian angle, the work of Dr. R. Madhivanan, Chief Editor of the Tamil Etymological Dictionary Proje ct, seems to be based on a sound knowledge of ancient Tamil etymology and grammar (beginning from Tholkappiam) and an awareness of all the proto-historical, archaeological, cultural and anthropological backgrounds of the issue. Madhivanan's work < I>Indus Script - Dravidian (Tamil Sandror Peravai, Chennai, 1995) gives his readings of the seal inscriptions as syllabic representations of names of merchants, chiefs, priests and gods of proto-Tamil vintage. Madhivanan buttresses his reading withth e bio-script metal seal discovered by Indrapala at Anaikottai in Yalpanam with the word Tivu Ko (according to Madhivanan) in Indus Valley script and also in southern Brahmi script; and the Indus script-like cave inscriptions at Keezhavalai on the Villupuram-Thiruvannamalai road in Tamil Nadu.

Scholars such as Parpola and Mahadevan have not accepted the readings of Madhivanan so far. However, there is no gainsaying that attempts to decipher the Indus script cannot ignore the sound linguistic and grammatical parameters set by Madhivanan for dec ipherment.

P. Ramanathan
Chennai

Nuclear question

The National Security Advisory Board's Draft Nuclear Security Doctrine says: "Details of policy and strategy concerning force structures, deployment and employment of nuclear forces will follow from this framework and will be laid down separately and kep t under constant review." But who will plan the force structure?

The think tanks on defence are not supplied with any information regarding the existing nuclear weapon capacity, the future programme of nuclear research and development and the state of production of nuclear weapons. The Kargil Review Committee had aske d the government to publish a White Paper on the nuclear weapons programme, but the government has not accepted the suggestion.

Under the circumstances, the Indian think tanks are groping in the dark about nuclear weapons issues. Their "research" is mostly based on the information - sometimes misinformation - handed out by foreign institutions and analysts. They depend on the Military Balance published annually by the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) even to know the strength of our armed forces and the quantity of weapons they possess.

So, what these experts project as Indian nuclear force structure is as realistic as the proverbial blind men's version of the elephant.

Nuclear weapons cause unimaginable destruction to mankind and they do not have a deterrent value. The way to ensure national security is to make South Asia a nuclear weapons-free zone.

N. Kunju
Delhi

Bharati

I liked the write-up on the film on Subramania Bharati ("Portrait of a poet", November 10). It is interesting that a Marathi actor, Sayaji Shinde, was chosen to act as a Tamil poet when a Malayalam actor, Mammootty, was chosen to do the role of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar.

W. H. Pande
Akola, Maharashtra