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Journalism of Courage
• It would not be an exaggeration to say that the days of one-party majority rule at the Centre are over ‘And there were nine’ by Shekhar Gupta, We have been seeing for almost a decade that a coalition government has ruled at the Centre but with great difficulty. Any minority party supporting the coalition blackmails the majority party and serves its own narrow agenda. It also threatens to pull out and topple the coalition government at will or when it sees a pullout would be advantageous.
We must seek a way out if we want real progress for our country. An amendment to the Constitution can be made to the effect that a minority party must not withdraw support to the coalition for a prescribed time.
— Niranjan Solanki
Vadodara
It’s public
• A lot of noise was made in the media about the Amreli collector touching the feet of the Gujarat CM. But then such a drama has been enacted in other states too. These are only very tiny public demonstrations, in fact, as they say, the tip of the iceberg, of a sinister reality which is being played out behind the curtains, and at times in public too, in the form of cringing servility. We must thank the collector for highlighting the reality.
— A. Prasad
Craven parallel
•It is time the prime minister reviewed Shivaraj Patil’s continuance in the home ministry. For a strong country it is imperative that the home minister and the external affairs ministers are dynamic, diplomatic and statesmanly. India has never had a home minister so inept and unpatriotic like Shivaraj Patil, who equates Parliament attack convict, Afzal Guru, and Sarabjit Singh — a case of mistaken identity. It is difficult to find a home Minister anywhere in the world who embarrasses his own government with a statement that defeats all our efforts to save Sarabjit from the gallows. Sarabjit’s family members some time back declared that Sarabjit need not be spared if that entails the absolution of Afzal Guru from the heinous crime of attempting to blast the Parliament.
— Swetha R. Deepak
Community care
•This refers to your thoughtful editorial on Home Minister Shivraj Patil’s remark, comparing Afzal Guru with Sarabjit Singh ‘Strange symmetry’, . Patil has betrayed the shallowness and hypocrisy that lies beneath the Congress’s concern for the Muslims of India. The Congress-led UPA, it seems, has not hanged Afzal Guru for fear of hurting the sentiments of Muslims. But what does Afzal have to do with the Muslim community? Is this not tantamount to branding the entire community as terrorists, something which we often accuse the Sangh Parivar of doing? Thus the community is trapped between two evils: prejudice (Sangh Parivar) and hypocrisy (the Congress).
— R.P. Subramanian
