Jinnah, again

• Apropos of the pieces on Jinnah carried in the Express, the key to his min...

• Apropos of the pieces on Jinnah carried in the Express, the key to his mind is his 1940 address to the Muslim League, where he rested the two nation theory on his fundamental belief “Hindus and Muslims belong to two different civilizations”. But, as Nehru writes in The Discovery of India, “Mr. Jinnah’s family, it is interesting to note, was originally Hindu”. Jinnah might have sported a Western air and held his fellow Muslim Leaguers in contempt but he felt that religion had a civilisational basis, even more fundamental than culture, and that a change of religion would necessarily involve a change of civilisational roots.

— Anil Dhar Mumbai

• Excellent! The piece,‘Behold the real Jinnah’ (IE, June 23) picks holes in all the theories about Jinnah without partiality.

— S.S. Jeyaraman Coimbatore

Change and BJP

• Sudheendra Kulkarni’s prescription to “secularise” the BJP is a very sane one. With RSS’s ‘Hindu only’ formula, the BJP would repeat past mistakes and spell its doom. In the RSS there is no scope for free, healthy thinking. It is a closed group suffering from orthodoxy, gerontocracy and religious obsession (‘Kulkarni’s paper sparks fresh BJP, RSS debate’, June 21).

— F.S.K. Barar Jodhpur

• I fully agree with Kulkarni’s views. If the BJP does not wake up now, like Rip Van Winkle it will find itself nowhere in the Indian political scene.

— N.C. Ramasubbu Coimbatore

• It is a fact that the BJP cannot rule the country if it ignores the interests of 15 crore Muslims. However, this concern must be expressed in a befitting manner. Stating that Jinnah was secular puts historical facts upside down.

— Brij Kishore Mital Lucknow

Indo-Pak process

• Apropos of ‘UPA, BJP in war of words over Indo-Pak process’ (IE, June 22), the Pak government’s intentions were made amply clear by Musharraf when he said the presence of the Hurriyat delegation in Pakistan had proved that now India has accepted Kashmir as disputed territory. Now, after being questioned by BJP, the PM has admitted that Pakistan’s decision to invite the Hurriyat to Islamabad was in violation of the agreement on the bus service.

— M.C. Joshi Lucknow

• Pakistan is playing games with the Muzzafarabad-Srinagar bus service. It was meant for residents living in Kashmir and Azad Kashmir. Passports were waived to prevent undue delays like a possible pile-up of passport applications the bus service of may cause. It was definitely not a facility for passport carrying leaders seeking to make political capital from the ride. We feel future attempts by other Pakistani dignitaries to use the bus service should be treated with circumspection.

— Naveen Mittal London

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• Hurriyat’s visit to PoK and to Pakistan has benefited the Indo-Pak peace process. First, it has increased Musharraf’s own credibility in Pakistan amidst the outcry of the supposed “compromises” he had made. Second, while Hurriyat leaders may have been given a warm welcome on the other side of the LoC, the truth is that ground realities are now more clearly exposed. The question of who represents the Kashmiris remains as valid as ever.

— Gaurav Dua Delhi