After the visit

8226; Congratulations on your brilliant editorial 8216;Act of courage8217; June 7 which has ...

8226; Congratulations on your brilliant editorial 8216;Act of courage8217; June 7 which has put in the right perspective the issue of L.K. Advani8217;s Karachi message. A proper evaluation of his message brings to mind the great physicist Niels Bohr8217;s famous words: 8220;There are two kinds of truth, the simple truth whose negation is obviously false; and the deep truth whose negation is another deep truth.8221; While the fulminations of the Sangh Parivar were expected, one cannot but admire Advani8217;s deep sense of maturity in his present role as BJP chief which puts a heavy burden on his shoulders, especially when Atal Bihari Vajpayee is no longer in his prime, thus making it imperative on him to shed his hawkish image which the Sonia Congress on the one hand, and the Left comrades on the other, have been exploiting to the hilt all along. It is easy for his detractors to accuse him of opportunism, since such a stance on his part is bound to eat into their carefully cultivated minority vote bank. But Advani8217;s opportunism in politics must not be judged from a moralistic angle. Even if Advani8217;s motivation, at long last, is to wrest the initiative of 8220;minority appeasement8221; from his pseudo-secular rivals, it should be no less welcome to the people at large, and maybe to the minorities too, who must have been equally fed up with their stark hypocrisy, but do not know where to turn to, in the face of no visible alternative.

8212; A.N. Mitra Delhi

8226; L.K. Advani has predictably raised a storm with his Jinnah/secular remark in Pakistan, culminating in his resignation. From what one knows of his habits, Mohammad Ali Jinnah was obviously no fundamentalist. Till date, we gave struggled to choose from Congress center-left, old, ever willing to pander to all kinds of minorities in the name of secularism and social justice, centralised, autocratic, regional parties parochial, rural focused, state-as-a-gravy-train mentality, BJP extreme right-wing, old and the Left irrelevant but refuses to die. With this development what I see is 8212; shorn of all and there will be many during the transition complications 8212; the emergence of the first centre-right national alternative.

8212; Nikhil Prasad Ojha New Delhi

8226; Nobody doubts about the intellectual ability of Indian politicians. They select an ideology and fool the public throughout the land. But I don8217;t understand why the BJP president chose Pakistan for committing political suicide.

8212; Vishal Kulkarni Kolhapur

On a straight path

8226; The UPA must completely ignore the objections and noise raised by the Left 8216;Don8217;t look Left8217;, IE, June 7. Unfortunately it would be the Left which would be responsible for an economic disaster in the country. It seems everyone in the Left is an ace economist. They object to all proposals quoting the CMP. The programme prescribes the minimum, and not the maximum.

8212; F.S.K. Barar Jodhpur

Line to peace

8226; The gas pipeline project is very important for both India and Pakistan. This will only encourage peace and cooperation in other fields. The world must understand there is only one war and that is the economic war.

8212; Rajesh Dharia Edison, New Jersey