Right from our independence, the erstwhile ussr was friend, philosopher and guide. In the past 56 years, we have rubbed the US the wrong way on several occasions whereas Pakistan has been its steadfast ally. In their war against terrorism, our support was qualified but Musharraf’s was unstinted. Conduct of foreign affairs involves a great deal of quid pro quo. So, when the US decides to reward Pakistan, don’t dub it Uncle Sam’s Sly Sally (Apr 5), they’ve earned it. D.V. Madhava Rao, Chennai
For long, we’ve ridiculed the Indian team as ‘lions at home, lambs abroad’ or dismiss them as ‘chokers’. Now they have announced their arrival on the world podium, bearding the Pakistani lions in their own den. To borrow a cliche from Adam Gilchrist, "Bring on the kangaroos". Looks like we’re ready. Umesh S. Shukla, Ahmedabad
It is good that reportage about Pakistan in the Indian media has increased exponentially. If only the vibes about our country improved on the plus side too. A case in point are the pieces by Manu Joseph which seem to convey that Pakistan belongs to a different planet. Just to set the record right, before his return to India I want to invite him to my place in Karachi to share a beer, some sorpotel and good conversation. Joseph Michael Pereira, Karachi, Pakistan
Your cover photo of the Indian team, with the coach John Wright edited out, captures the graceless attitude of the Indian press with regard to our recent successes. While praise for Saurav Ganguly’s captaincy and the team’s impressive cricketing skills are no doubt justified, coach Wright should be thanked for implanting steel in our backbone. He’s made a crucial difference in ways that may be subtle and therefore overseen, but they are a lot important nonetheless. Vikram Vasu, Chennai
Brilliant cover piece. Witty, in parts venomous, with veins of sarcasm running through. But why ‘La Horde’? What other evil designs do you weave? M. Keerthivasan, Chennai
Apropos Inning Winning (Apr 12), it was terribly unprofessional of Sachin Tendulkar to have aired his double century demons (194 n.o.) even as the match was still on. And that too against someone like Rahul Dravid who has even donned the gloves in the interests of the team. It’s no wonder the Little Master’s hundreds have rarely resulted in a win for the team. For hundreds should come on our way to victory, not in the way of victory. S.M. Shervani, Delhi
The heavens would not have fallen if Dravid had held on for a couple of overs. And couldn’t help but notice on TV that Ganguly was pressing hard from the sidelines when he was not even playing. That said, one can’t excuse Tendulkar’s slow run-rate, which was about half that of Sehwag. Is he the same man who visited Pakistan 15 years back? I’d hate to hazard a guess. M.N. Agarwal, Delhi
This is for all those critics, if they didn’t notice. Tendulkar contributed not only with the bat but with the ball too in our Multan Test win—never letting the ‘disappointment’ affect his performance. On a lighter note, Dravid should gift the six runs he scored to Tendlya so that his double century is complete. Amjad K. Maruf, Mumbai
No sooner than the Multan match was won, that perennial gossip ghost Mr Matchfixing rose from the grave again. We need a law against all these killjoys. It should say that herewith they should provide solid evidence or forever hold their peace. It’s strange that when India loses to Pakistan, there’s no talk of fixing. But when we win, all hell breaks loose. Why, why? J.S. Acharya, Hyderabad
You are a young magazine, and I have been a regular since your inception. But this continued obsession with cricket—and on the cover too—in the past few months suggests a paucity of ideas. Or a slide into immaturity, especially since there have been so many other boggling issues at hand during the time. Sunil N. Rangaiah, Nanjangud, Karnataka
Ironically, it is sometimes said that cricket in India is always at fever pitch. Perhaps, this has had a rub-off effect, for the rising temperatures have been good for protocol too. Allowing the tour has been the wisest step Vajpayee’s come up with, a far cry from the days of the Kargil war. Vineet Kumar, Muzaffarpur
And to think it all started with the NatWest final against England when two boys came of age and led to us a fairytale victory over the Brits. And that fairytale continues to the day, be it in India reaching the World Cup final or our heroics in Australia. And now, the icing on the cake: winning the odi series and one Test. As for the rest, I have my fingers crossed. Dr Rajni Kant, on e-mail
There is a new dawn in Indian cricket and the sight is as stunning as the averages of some of our players. Pakistan came within sniffing distance of pulling one over us in the odis but, in the end, we prevailed. Even the most sceptical of our critics will concede that the core of the present Indian team is one of the best ever to don Indian colours. So what if we look set to lose this Test match. Bijoy Raj Guha, Jabalpur, MP
"A Pathan on every street in Pakistan," Miandad says, but they haven’t seen a southpaw swinger like ours. Milind Kher, Mumbai
I was dismayed that your reviewer seemed to think that I had "rationalised" or "justified" instances of temple desecration in Indian history (Balbir Punj’s review, Books, Apr 5). If I had left that impression, then perhaps the fault is mine for not clarifying the intent of my essay (in Beyond Turk and Hindu). Historians try to explain, not justify, past events or processes. They’re trained how to ask questions, frame issues, hunt down sources, weigh the evidence, and apply rules of logic in order to establish matters like chronology, motivation, or causation. Above all, they endeavour to place past events in their unique time and place, and to see them as having grown out of conditions particular to that context. In this way, they hope to learn why the past worked out in the particular way it did—why something happened here, but not there; why it happened now, but not then. By contrast, some see the world as a b&w moral drama, filled with winners and losers, heroes and villains, oppressors and victims. In this view, the past becomes a screen on to which this drama is projected. One then takes sides, becoming either a cheerleader for the heroes or a prosecutor for the villains. At this point the study of history ceases being a dispassionate search for understanding, and becomes instead a shouting match ("my people were greater victims/ heroes than your people," etc). At its worst, this sort of thinking can lead to the dangerous notion that the wrongs of the past can and should be "corrected", and that the way to do this is to meddle with the present. Regrettably, this seems to be the position of V.S. Naipaul, who would have Indians find ways to "balance" the past. But by what calculus can we reach a state of final and permanent balance? Whose past is to be balanced first? Which part of their history are we going to balance? And who then balances the excesses of an overzealous balancer? Especially those backed by state power? We’re all descended from oppressors and victims alike. Plenty of them. Richard M. Eaton, on e-mail
The good thing about the rss is that everyone is a historian there, even Mr Punj. And everyone knows all that need be known about Islam: that it was a scourge, out to eliminate all other religions, Hinduism in particular. Any suggestion that such a long history of a world religion has many more shades to it can only be made by a liar, a communist, an apologist—take your pick. One of the great strides social sciences, history included, have made in the past three or four decades worldwide is abandoning oppositional analytical categories of class vs class, nation vs nation, community vs community. The logic has led to looking at class, nation, gender, community, etc as multi-layered, complex entities. If, therefore, professional historians do a splendid job of capturing these complexities of Hindu-Muslim relations in Beyond Turk and Hindu, all Mr Punj can do is call them ‘communists’! Eaton would have the last laugh for he learnt Persian as a Peace Corps volunteer in Iran in the ’60s! Harbans Mukhia, JNU, Delhi
In India, the discipline of history, unlike economics or sociology, has become one where non-historians have no qualms in making pronouncements. This can have somewhat comic outcomes. One, scholars are often bunched into categories which would surprise them. "William Dalrymple and his Marxist cartel of Romila Thapar, Satish Chandra and Nurul Hasan" (Tarun Vijay in The Erect Hindu Spine, Apr 5), "the secularists, which include communists of various hues" (Balbir Punj).Two, communities are homogenised. Whatever is "the Hindu psyche" (Punj)? The notion of the ‘good Hindu’ and the ‘bad Muslim’ is really getting a bit dreary. And when Punj states that "after 1947, ‘Pakistani’ became the contemporary equivalent of medieval ‘Turk’ for Muslims in the Indian perception", are we to equate ‘Indian’ with ‘Hindu’? Three, time is telescoped, particularly 711 AD to 1947. This ignores the essential feature of history—that it’s about context, temporal and spatial. Narayani Gupta, Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi
Punj’s review reveals an utter lack of scholarly method. This was the strategy the bjp-vhp employed in the ’90s in their discussions on Ayodhya. It’s this strategy that eviscerated a rigorous discipline (History) at the same time that it began to drive away its professional practitioners as "communists". This double-bladed scythe has apparently now knocked down the famed independence of your journal as well. Since you choose untrained reviewers to assess the work of trained scholars, let me ask you: would you as blithely have a volume on Panini’s grammar reviewed by one who didn’t know Sanskrit? As a teacher of South Asian history, I find your collective anti-intellectual stance against the discipline of History even more distressing than the bilious strictures Punj passes on Eaton, Asher and others. Indrani Chatterjee, Rutgers University, US
I was shocked to see Balbir Punj (thank god, it wasn’t Praveen Togadia!) reviewing Beyond Turk and Hindu. You could have just left the page blank with Punj’s byline, we’d have known what to expect. Can’t you be more discerning choosing your reviewers? S. Amil Bashir, New Delhi
Strange that the man who thinks "Indians are a thieving lot" (Letters from Father to Son, V.S. Naipaul) is seen to be "speaking as one of us". I have little issue to take with Tarun Vijay’s worldview, but it would be nice if he actually familiarised himself with the work of the man he purports to champion. Naipaul’s work is stunning in its exploration of diaspora and ‘otherness’, the lack of ‘home’ and his refusal (voluntary and involuntary) to characterise himself as a native of any one world. Amrita Rajan, New York, US
Writers like Tarun Vijay and Balbir Punj want to have their historical cake and eat it too. Whilst launching ad hominem attacks on William Dalrymple for the ‘heinous’ crime of making positive conclusions about Hindu-Muslim history, they instead wish us to view it through the apparently objective spectacles of Victorian translators a la Briggs. Such an approach begs belief as do their arguments about some nostalgic ‘pure Hindu India’ predating the approach of the ‘Turk’, where no rivalries existed between Hindu brethren. History is supposed to be a dispassionate view of events past, not cherry-picking to suit one’s political agenda. That’s revisionism, practised by extremists of all faiths. M. Kundu, Cambridge, UK
Your article Mr Clean’s New Spring (Apr 5) on Rahul Gandhi was spread over four pages, eight photos, 315 lines, 2,590 words and 15,652 characters. Couldn’t Outlook give at least half the space to his cousin Varun? He was in Mumbai recently and mesmerised audiences with his grasp of politics, policies, country and countrymen. He spoke a polished language, with oratorial skills perhaps better than our PM’s. Raj Bharadwaj, Mumbai
India consigned its maharajas and hereditary monarchs to the scrap heap of history 50 years ago, but the world’s largest democracy still can’t resist the enchantments of a political dynasty. The Congress itself enjoins that two members of one family should not be given tickets to the same election. Yet, the party president herself has given a ticket to her own son. Long live Mother India. Mohan Gupta, on e-mail
Apropos Dipankar Gupta’s essay Death by Dynasty, close relatives of politicians should be banned from holding public office. The US Congress, after the assassination of President Kennedy, had passed a law banning a president from appointing his family member to a public office (jfk had appointed brother Robert to the all-powerful post of attorney-general). With no real issues to fight with, the Congress is treading the only "safe path"—fielding a Nehru-Gandhi. The Congress won’t progress till the time Congressmen stop letting the Nehru-Gandhis treat it as family property. Suren Sukhtankar, Michigan, US
Many years ago, at a certain point of time, I had decided I wanted to share my good fortune with those less fortunate in life. But I really didn’t know how to go about it. Until, by chance, I came across a copy of Outlook and read its regular feature, Making a Difference. It changed my life forever. I believe that the organisations and people featured on this page make a real difference in the lives of the people on this earth. These organisations really are ‘temples of god’. The addresses mentioned below have helped me get in touch with these organisations. Every week now I send a demand draft to the said people or organisations. A relative of mine and myself pool in the money, prepare the draft and send it. I have come to realise that charity is the best form of penance in Kalyug. We search for remedies to improve our lives among yogis, astrologers and tantriks. But my charity efforts have given me and my family the peace we needed. Our families are the better with the blessings of these ngos. PS: It would be nice if you could publish a collection of the Making a Difference pieces that have come out in your magazine. Anonymous
That Delhi Diary (Jan 26) of Mr Mehta is still on my mind. Apparently his dog Ed is by vet’s definition an "indigenous Indian". A dog lover and sometime vet myself, I want to know, are there ‘foren Indian’ and nri dogs as well? ’Coz my dogs are at best mongrels. Rahul Deshpande, Mumbai
In the article Cheap Thrills (Apr 12), the accompanying graphic should have shown washing machine prices slashed by 10-20 per cent, not 200 per cent. The error is regretted.
