IT is evident from the recent cases of atrocities against Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes that the S.C./S.T. (Prevention of Atrocities) Act does not actually address their problems (Cover Story, December 4). The Act should be amended in such a way that it specifically addresses the various types of harassments they face.

The Union and many State governments in collaboration with big business houses are involved in indiscriminate industrialisation of forest areas where S.C./S.T. communities have lived since time immemorial. Though there are certain shortcomings in the S.C./S.T. Act, it can be effectively invoked against cruelty to Dalits, but it needs clauses that will guarantee better protection for victims and witnesses. The establishment of a national authority to monitor and ensure the proper implementation of the Act is necessary.

C. Koshy John
Pune

PRIME Minister Manmohan Singh noted in a joint statement with President Obama that they “shared values cherished by their peoples and espoused by their founders – democracy, pluralism, tolerance, openness, and respect for fundamental freedoms and human rights”. But India’s track record on human rights is so dismal that the U.N. Human Rights Council is all set to ratify the fact that casteism is a form of racism.

Ravikiran Shinde
Pune

EVERY non-governmental or social organisation has only a one-point agenda: “harassment of Dalits by caste Hindus”. They never try to understand the nucleus of the problem. Constitutional provision was made to ensure reservation for the S.Cs and S.Ts for 10 years, and then they were to be brought into the mainstream. But even after 70 years, the status of 99 per cent of S.Cs/S.Ts is unchanged. Dalits suffer at the hands of caste Hindus and those who benefited from reservation. Nobody dares to speak out this truth.

R.N. Agarwal
Bikaner, Rajasthan

EVEN after 60 years of democracy and legislations for the emancipation of the downtrodden, India still has not achieved the desired goal.

K. Nehru Patnaik
Visakhapatnam

M.P. Koirala

THE review of the book by M.P. Koirala, the first commoner Prime Minister of Nepal, had a lot of topical comments and observations (“Neighbour’s memoir”, December 4). The reviewer deserves appreciation for taking Nepal’s case to a wider audience in India. However, two points need to be corrected: First, M.B. Shah, not N.B. Shah, was Nepal’s ambassador in the 1950s in New Delhi (his full name was Mahendra Bikram Shah). Secondly, the reviewer said that some of the documents were in Hindi;they were actually in Nepali.

D.H. Adhikary
Kathmandu, Nepal

Vande Mataram

THE Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-hind and the Darod Uloom Deoband have raked up a controversy over the singing of Vande Mataram (“Vande Mataram: In rewind mode”, December 4). Jawaharlal Nehru wrote to Mohammad Ali Jinnah: “The two stanzas that have been recommended by the Congress Working Committee for use as a national song has not a single word or phrase which could offend anybody from any point of view and I am surprised that anyone could object to this fact” (Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Volume 8, pages 236-37).

I have come across a little-known fact in the book Political Awakening of Hyderabad, Role of Youth and Students (Hyderabad, Visalandhra, 1985) written by S.M. Javad Razvi, a communist activist of Hyderabad. A group of Muslim students of Osmania University led by Alam Khundmiri defended the right of Hindu students to sing Vande Mataram on campus. Khundmiri and his associates started a movement against the autocratic rule of the Nizam that came to be known as the Vande Mataram Movement.

A definitive history of the song Vande Mataram is available in Sabyasachi Bhattacharya’s book Vande Mataram: The Biography of a Song.

A.K. Dasgupta
Hyderabad

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