Opinion Housing dispute
The repeated adjournments in the 15th Lok Sabha are condemnable.
* This refers to the editorial ‘The House we lost’ (IE, February 13).The repeated adjournments in the 15th Lok Sabha are condemnable. Have we elected our representatives to the so-called shrine of democracy so that they can stall the House on issues like the Telangana bill? Even our railway minister was interrupted while delivering his speech on the interim rail budget. With this state of affairs, we cannot expect constructive debate on the various bills before Parliament. This will ultimately result in loopholes in the laws that are passed. Our anarchist MPs can take the credit for that.
— K.R. Suryawanshi
Karad
No surrender
* This refers to Pratap Bhanu Mehta’s article, ‘Silencing of liberal India’ and the editorial,’Intolerable Surrender’ (IE, February 12). Dina Nath Batra and his Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti have made Penguin India agree to trash all copies of Wendy Doniger’s The Hindus: An Alternative History within six months. With the vast resources at its disposal, the publisher could have gone to the Supreme Court but chose not to, presumably because of the facts presented in Batra’s petition. The description of the book as “seminal” is questionable. Mocking Hinduism is not liberalism. It would be good to know what exactly compelled Penguin to come to a compromise with the petitioners. This is not an intolerable surrender on the part of the publisher but the rectification of some mistakes.
— S.C. Panda
Bhubaneswar
Tuning in
* It was interesting to learn from Jawhar Sircar’s article, ‘Riding the waves, a shared history’ (IE, February 13), that Rabindranath Tagore christened All India Radio “Akashvani” way back in 1938. True, Radio Ceylon gave tough competition to AIR, but many recall that even prior to Radio Ceylon, the commercial station from Goa (then under Portugese rule) had captured Indian listeners with broadcasts of Hindustani film-recordings. Finally, a correction. The great playback singer Shamshad Begum was an Indian artiste, and not Pakistani. But of course, culture, especially music, recognises no geographical boundaries, particularly between India and Pakistan.
— Sukumar Shidore
Pune
Full toss
* A few days after it was declared that N. Srinivasan would be the chairman of the ICC, a report comes out indicting his son-in-law for illegal betting and spot fixing (‘Taking fresh guard’, IE, February 12). Srinivasan’s attempt to cover for Gurunath Meiyappan has been exposed. World cricket’s apex body, the ICC, has maintained a more or less clean image so far. But now, with the BCCI wielding influence at the ICC and people like Srinivasan at its helm, I doubt the international body can continue to do so.
— Anshul Mittal
Mansa
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