To Mr Thackeray

Bill bluster

• Apropos of your editorial ‘Hers not to inherit’ (March 9), there is no reason to praise the Congress president for issuing a directive to her party’s Jammu and Kashmir unit to review its support to the bill.
It is a PDP-Congress alliance government in Jammu and Kashmir, with the deputy chief minister belonging to the Congress party. The notorious bill must have been cleared by the state cabinet before its introduction in the state assembly and Congress MLAs must have supported it in the state assembly when the bill was passed in just six minutes. Who, then, is the party now trying to fool by asking its state unit to “review” its support to the bill? Nobody needs to be told that it is just a damage control measure. The compelling reasons behind the swift move are obviously the strong reaction against the bill and its possible adverse effect on the party’s electoral prospects.

— M.C. Joshi On e-mail

No justice

• This refers to the report ‘Gujarat riots a blot on NDA, says Advani’ (IE, March 8). There is still no sign of justice for innocent victims of these riots. The Gujarat government must move more efficiently to prosecute those involved in these inhuman killings.

— Khanna Shree On e-mail

A different cast

• It is preposterous on the part of T.N. Gopalan to suggest that Sri Lankan Tamils’ internal struggle is divided on caste lines (‘Karuna revolt may have a wider impact on Lanka’, IE, March 9). It is quite the opposite. The LTTE’s policy is that neither caste nor religion should play any role in Eelam politics.

— T. Sivathasan On e-mail

• Although the caste system prevails among Sri Lanka’s Tamil and Sinhala populations, you need to look at what has been happening in Sri Lankan politics for the past five decades on both the Tamil and Sinhala sides. The political parties and factions on the basis of language and only language were and still are the norm. The current trend may be due to the protracted civil war and the forthcoming general election where everyone is trying to find a niche. Since no other socio-economic conditions support this practice these days in Sri Lanka, such a political trend may not prevail for long.
For example, at the present time both the east and north are suffering economically in more or less the same magnitude and time will tell if such a division being sought along regional lines is tenable.

— K. Thirukumaran On e-mail