[Reader-list] SRK BLUNDER

[Rakesh Iyer]

Dear Bipin jee

My views on the above subject:

1) India is a democratic country, and one thing we should accept is that we
have people believing in different kinds of views in this country. Hence,
everybody has a right to express his/her view, whether it be Shiv Sena or
Shahrukh Khan. Bal Thackeray is within his right to believe and say that
Shahrukh is a traitor, and similarly Shahrukh has a right to say that IPL
should have Pakistani cricketers.

2) You are right. Shiv Sena has no right to indulge in violence. One may
have an opinion and may dislike some person, but that doesn't give him/her
the right to go around killing that person or threaten that person. That is
unacceptable and should be thoroughly condemned.

3) India (meaning: The Indian State) has been pseudo-secular right since
independence. The day Mahatma Gandhi died, India has been secular only in
name and not in deed. There are missiles in this country which are named
after Hindu gods or Hindu mythological characters: a symbol of Hindu
appeasement. There are pogroms in this country organized to achieve
political ends by parties which profess themselves to be secular and call
others as communal, resulting in the deaths of innocent people just because
they belonged to a particular religion. And then there is worst kind of
vote-bank politics practised in the country whereby politicians indulge in
creating hatred or portraying special attention only on particular
communities (while actually doing nothing), resulting in such
pseudo-secularism running through the veins of the nation.

India is a pseudo-secular state. Secularism is nowhere to be seen. We may as
well change the preamble of the Indian Constitution.

4) Asking Pakistani singers, musicians or others to leave this country, or
ensuring that Pakistani cricketers don't play the IPL, is not going to
ensure that Hafeez Sayeed doesn't do anything against India. It will only
lead to more hatred between the two countries, and is certainly one of the
worst ways to practice diplomacy (if it was one).

The people-to-people contacts should actually be enhanced, while also giving
repeated diplomatic snubs to the top leadership of Pakistan simply because
they are either against the Indian state (and its citizens), or they don't
put enough efforts to ensure that those acting against Indian people are put
behind bars, or extradited to India.

If the Indian govt. seriously thinks about solving the problem, then it
should simply undertake two tasks, both humongous ones:

1) Firstly, introduce police, judicial and administrative reforms across the
country. Wipe out injustice from the map of India, from the lives of the
1-billion plus population living in this country where many suffer for the
actions of a few. Ensure that the law and order machinery works well, and
justice is not delayed much, and is certainly not denied. Automatically,
terrorism or at least related incidents will go down in no.

2) Strengthen the intelligence network of the country, and introduce covert
operations on Pakistani land, whereby only terror group heads (like Hafiz
Sayeed) and those acting against India are targetted. Civilians should be
completely left alone from such kind of actions. Only when such people
realize that there is a cost to their actions, will they stop perpetrating
mindless terror on hapless people.

Rakesh