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The Cover Story is a comprehensive account of Paul Volcker's report on the Oil-for-Food Programme ("Figuring out Volcker", December 2). The exact allegation made against former External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh is not clear. It is now reported that his name was not on the original list and that it was first added by a Central Intelligence Agency-run survey group. More likely than not, there seems to be a planned attempt to tarnish the image of an India following an independent foreign policy. It is distressing that a person of Natwar Singh's integrity became the first political casualty of the dubious report.
V.K. Sathyavan Nair
Natwar Singh's `conviction-before-trial' indicates a strong bias, especially because there is no real evidence cited in Volcker's report even to warrant his resignation. It is possible that the report is just another trick of the neo-conservatives in the U.S. to attack anyone who gets in the way of their plans for a global empire. It is hard to ignore the view that the report is manipulated by the Bush administration to tar nations, individuals and organisations who opposed the war in Iraq, including the United Nations. Natwar Singh, who projected non-alignment as a pillar of India's foreign policy and who was not kept in the loop when the decision to vote against Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency was taken, paid a heavy price.
R.R. Sami
French riots
The article "Flashpoint in France" vividly underscores the gross discrimination faced by the hapless immigrants from North Africa in France (December 2). The riots have tainted the image of France, which boasts a high tolerance towards multiculturalism. The predicament of these marginalised immigrants have worsened with the rise of `Islamophobia' in Europe.
Dipankar Baidya
K.R. Narayanan
The articles on K.R. Narayanan (December 2) were impressive. Gopalkrishna Gandhi's tribute was very touching and gave a glimpse of the humane nature of the former President. The country has lost a distinguished scholar, a born leader and an illustrious personality. He was one of the few Presidents with a sense of humour. In a speech he gave at the London School of Economics at their centennial function, Narayanan spoke eloquently of the contribution of Jews to LSE and the world community. Here is an extract:
"First there was Moses who looked up to the skies and said that everything came from the Heavens. Then came Solomon, who looked further down and declared that everything came from the Head, that is, wisdom. He was followed by Jesus who looked further down and said that everything came from the Heart. Next was Karl Marx who decreed that everything came from the stomach. Then came Sigmund Freud who looked a little further down and asserted that everything came from sex. And finally up popped Albert Einstein who was certain that everything was relative."
P.P. Ramachandran
The nation has lost a multi-faceted personality and a noble soul. K.R. Narayanan was an upholder of secular values and constitutional norms. He set an example by joining other citizens at a polling booth to cast his vote. He will be remembered for breaking the diplomatic ice with China at a difficult time and for returning for reconsideration two questionable Cabinet decisions sacking elected State governments during his tenure as President. Narayanan never forgot his roots and worked for the benefit of the masses.
S. Balakrishnan
Uma Bharati
After leading the Bharatiya Janata Party to a thumping victory in the last Assembly elections, Uma Bharati deserved the Chief Minister's job and, by all accounts, carried out her assignment well ("Rebel at work", November 18). All she expected from Babulal Gaur, whom she nominated for the post, was to keep the chief ministerial chair warm for her. Like all politicians who have tasted power, Gaur now finds it hard to step aside. But Uma Bharati should know that there is a certain dynamics in politics that often forces leaders to take decisions that may be unpalatable to individuals but are beneficial to the organisation.
Megha A.
Asymmetry of power
The articles "The fall of Saigon" and "Agent of death" rightly remind us of the huge asymmetry in military power that existed between the antagonists in the Vietnam War, which ended 30 years ago (November 18). An equally huge asymmetry exists in the casualty figures. How many U.S. citizens died then? We know how many quite accurately: most of them were "brought home in body-bags", as part of the U.S.' "blood and treasure". But we know the far larger number of Asian (gooks, in imperial U.S. parlance) dead only within millions, at best. Half a million South Vietnamese, may be more, suffered the effects of dioxin poisoning. But we cannot be sure: the voices of those who are in a position to know best are inaudible to the rest of us, drowned in the roar of superpower propaganda.
The asymmetries between powerful nation-states and rebels can be seen over and over again in Nicaragua, Haiti, El Salvador, Chile, Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Nepal and so on. We lost our humanity by failing to remember that it existed. But, even if we do remember that it does, we may lose it anyway. The Einstein-Russell Manifesto told us, in 1955, that an all-out war in the Atomic Age meant that we will all go.
Where are we today? In 2002, we learned that the full use of nuclear weapons was barely avoided during the Cuban Missile crisis of 1962. Since then, the U.S. government has blocked the U.N. from declaring space a demilitarised zone, walked out on international negotiations aimed at preventing biological warfare, attacked Iraq, threatens to attack Iran and claims the sovereign right to attack any nation that "intends" to attack it.
The number of potential nuclear weapon states, those able to go nuclear within a few years, has reached 82 according to Mohammed ElBaradei of the IAEA.
Meher Engineer
In the matter of Agent Orange and Monsanto's role, I would like to point out that the case was heard on March 10, 2005, and the judge issued his carefully considered 233-page ruling dismissing the lawsuit for not demonstrating cause or presenting evidence for the claim and for not having any basis in domestic or international law. The judge found that Agent Orange and other herbicides were designed to kill plants and protect Allied soldiers. He found that the plaintiffs had no basis under a wide array of domestic and international laws for their claims.
The use of Agent Orange in the Vietnam War was initially authorised by President John F. Kennedy to protect the lives of U.S. and Allied servicemen. The manufacturers of Agent Orange followed government instructions for its production. The overwhelming weight of independent scientific evidence continues to show that there is no connection between exposure to Agent Orange and any serious human illness, as the Judge noted in his decision.
The U.S. government, which filed a brief in this case, expressly stated that issues concerning claims of citizens of Vietnam arising out of alleged exposure to Agent Orange are best left to negotiations between the two countries' governments and Monsanto continues to support that position.
Notwithstanding the `warning' that the author has thought fit to issue to your readers, we would like to tell you that we abide by the Monsanto Pledge - of which integrity is the foundation. Our pledge commitments clearly serve to guide Monsanto in its public behaviour; they also provide the framework for interactions between the company and its employees and among individual employees. Building on those values, we are committed to dialogue, transparency, sharing, benefits (in terms of delivering high quality products that are beneficial to our customers and to the environment) and respect.
Ranjana Smetacek
Nuclear ethics
I hope Praful Bidwai's revealing column ("The Ayatollahs are here", November 18) on the Indian government's hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy regarding nuclear proliferation and the shameful volte-face on Iran will provoke outrage and force the government to change its stance. One can only imagine what the neoliberal Prime Minister and his team would have done without the restraints (which seem to be weakening every day) imposed by the left.
Hari Chathrattil
Ronald Inden
This is in response to Debraj Chakrabarti's defence of Ronald Inden (Letters, October 21). Evidently, my reproduction of Inden has been taken out of context, viz., his methodology of invoking Edward Said's call for "indigenism". It is well known that in the typical Saidian mode, Inden tried to recentre the Indian world allegedly by purging off the biases of the 18-19th centuries' Orientalists and Indologists. My concern, however, is that behind this facade is the neo-colonialist mind which has not been able to offload many of its racist and divisive images. Inden's major preoccupation in Imagining India is to reconstruct "imperial formation" ostensibly "as a replacement for the construct of Hindu civilisation". However, he ends up doing so only within the "theophanic polity" - a construct which has no space for non-Brahmanical, non-Sanskritic and anti-Vedic strains of Indian civilisation.
Chakrabarti's quote from page 130 has been culled from a three-page "Critical summary" of the third chapter of Inden's book, which is otherwise marked by conspicuous absence of quote marks. Even the "Table of contents" showing details of this chapter entitled "Hinduism: The Mind of India" does not use single quote marks, which is the practice when an author tends to show his/her disagreement with terminology/phrases of earlier formulations.
If Chakarbarti had cared to compare Inden's formulations with writings of such German Indologists as Sontheimer and Stietencron since the 1960s, the real face behind the mask of Inden would have become sharper. Stietencron was also, like Inden, concerned with the preconditions of Western researches on Hinduism and their consequences but came out with an essay in 1989 entitled "Hinduism: On the Proper Use of a Deceptive Term" (reprinted in 2005 with emphasis). Notwithstanding my serious reservations about the German scholar's usage of communalised periodisation of Indian history in certain other contributions, I do find some qualitative difference in the reconstructions of the Indian Mind attempted by Inden and Stietencron.
Reviewing Edward Said's Culture and Imperialism in 1993 (Times of India, July 17) the noted critic Sham Lal had remarked: "Few today can miss the irony of the post-colonial world in which Western hegemony has become more pervasive and remote control is able to do things which presence on the spot in force in more primitive times could never hope to." Are not the Saidians apologists of that remote control?
K.M. Shrimali,
Bihar
In the article "EC measures and some protests", Muzzafar Nagar is mentioned as a district in Bihar. In fact, it is a district in Uttar Pradesh. The district referred to in the article is Muzaffarpur.
Rajnish Kumar
Correction:
The article "Silencing protests" (December 2) said that Utkal Alumina International Limited (UAIL) is setting up the Vedanta Alumina project at Lanjigarh. Vedanta Alumina is a different company and belongs to the Sterlite Group, while UAIL is a joint venture of the Birla Group and the Alcan of Canada.
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