Opinion Letters to the Editor: Bilateral Reboot

Blogger Deaths

The reign of terror unleashed by Islamists on bloggers who spearheaded the campaign for secularism in Bangladesh is a matter of serious concern. Fundamentalists wedded to obscurantist ideologies pose a grave threat to humanity. It’s time the international community came together to weed out elements bent on spreading hate. Eliminating such terror holds the key to international peace and development.

– M. Jeyaram, Sholavandan

Defining Fascism

Apropos Praveen Swami’s ‘The Fascist impulse’ (IE, May 13), it’s difficult to define fascism using a left-right binary. Fascism emerged around World War I out of the Italian National Syndicalists, who combined leftwing and rightwing views. The religious braggadocio of Dayanand Saraswati cannot be called fascism, since it singularly lacked the defining fascist feature of violence, so pronounced in Sayyid Qutb’s manifesto. On the other hand, Antonio Gramsci’s abiding faith in “education” and “living together in a well-ordered and well-administered state” notwithstanding, all the erudition of Hitler’s cronies didn’t come in the way of the concentration camps.

– Ajay Tyagi, Mumbai

Killing Machine

If the report is true, it proves the self-styled supreme leader, Kim Jong-un, has now become a sadist of the worst order (‘N. Korea general executed for falling asleep at event’, IE, May 14). We can do nothing except sympathise with the hapless people of North Korea.

– V. Chandramohan, Mumbai