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E-mail from readers the world over
Date sent: Fri, 26 Dec 1997 10:22:46 +0530 It was really a wonderful interview, it was eye opening and gave me a greater insight to this great personality. I hope you have special coverage on Hazar Chaurasi Ki Ma. Hats off Rediff, your website differs from all other Indian web sites by sheer good quality. Arup Bhattacharjee Bangalore
Date sent: Wed, 17 Dec 1997 23:04:42 -0500 You should be ashamed of this piece. Colonel Taylor has no idea about the history of Sri Lanka. No wonder, the LTTE beat the crap out of the IPKF. Let me educate you. There are two groups of Tamils in Sri Lanka. One group is the so-called Ceylon Tamils who have lived in Sri Lanka as long as the Sinhalese. They are confined mainly to the north and east. The other group is the so-called Indian Tamils. They came to Sri Lanka as plantation workers during the British period. They are mainly confined to the central hill country. Most of them are still stateless, meaning Sri Lanka didn't give them citizenship. The war for separation is spearheaded by the "Ceylon Tamils" in the north and east. Please tell Colonel Taylor to research his topic before opening his mouth in public. If this is what one can expect from a colonel and Rediff, god save India.
Date sent: Wed, 17 Dec 1997 18:56:40 -0600 The article could have been more detailed though it did throw some light on the IPKF. It looks like Rajiv Gandhi acted in haste. A Sri Lankan Tamil I know says initially the Tamils thought that the IPKF would solve all their problems and received them eagerly. But later, as the relations soured they began to hate the IPKF. He claims that the IPKF killed more Tamils (non-militants) than the Sri Lankan army and that the average Tamil was happy when Rajiv was assassinated. He also says that while the LTTE was fighting the IPKF, they were still being supported by Indian intelligence agencies like RAW. Looks like Rajiv messed it up big time wasting a number of Indian lives. Will the true picture ever come out? The politicians probably will never let it out!
Date sent: Wed, 17 Dec 1997 13:18:53 -0800 I read with amusement the beginning of the article, particularly the first paragraph of the section 'Ethnic Background' caught my attention. >>'The Tamils went to Sri Lanka a few centuries ago as labourers for the rubber plantations and later for the tea gardens.' Nothing can be farther from the truth. There are two kinds of Tamils in Sri Lanka -- three if you want to count the Muslims separately. The Jaffna Tamils live in the northern and eastern parts of the island. And they have been living there for many, many centuries. They didn't go there as labourers. In fact, there are no plantations and little agriculture in the Jaffna area. The Plantation Tamils live in Sinhalese majority areas. These are the descendants of the people who went from India to work in the plantations and tea estates. Overall, these people have tried to maintain cordial relations with the Sinhalese majority -- mostly because they live in Sinhalese majority areas. Almost all the Tamil participation in the Sri Lankan government has been by the Plantation Tamils. The Jaffna Tamils have no kinship with the Plantation Tamils. In fact, after the Sri Lankan independence, the Jaffna Tamils were instrumental in making the Plantation Tamils stateless. Later, various accords between Sri Lanka and India resulted in some of the Plantation Tamils getting citizenship in Sri Lanka while the others returned to India. Srinivasan Serangolam
Date sent: Tue, 16 Dec 1997 12:27:12 -0600 I think you should not allow the kind of articles written by people like Rajeev Srinivasan. His Tamil pride seems to have gone overboard and he has tried to give wrong facts to the readers and also caused anger by writing some provocative statements. Justice Jain has clearly explained his position about the "The Tamil people" by which he meant the Tamil militants. It is sad that educated people like Rajeev Srinivasan do not see the DMK game by raising this point and making some caustic remark about Indians other than Tamils in his article. I think people like him and Saisuresh Sivaswamy should be banned from writing articles on Rediff. Please note: Rajeev Srinivasan is not a Tamil.
Date sent: Thu, 18 Dec 1997 00:43:24 -0800 Thank you for this feature. It was truly fascinating and I thoroughly enjoyed it. What you might want to add is pointers to more information on the subject matter. For instance is there a web site for ISRO? Ram Balaraman
Date: Tuesday, December 16, 1997 1:36 AM PLEASE FORWARD THIS MAIL TO **GOVINDA** IF YOU CAN. Why does he have to worry about an Oscar? We Indians have created too much awe for an award which is only the Filmfare of the USA -- that is, a LOCAL award. The Foreign film award that they have usually goes to so-called ART movies which are usually from Europe that are watched by a dismally low number of pseudo-intellectuals. Let's be realistic and stop craving for an award that is very ordinary and unachievable for a popular movie. Deepak Aggarwal Case Western Reserve University Cleveland Ohio
Date sent: Wed, 17 Dec 1997 01:51:22 -0500 This is amazing. A person like Yameen Farouqi who delays the rightly granted award to Ali Sardar Jafri should speak up and say exactly what is prompting him to take this position. I smell something wrong here. It always happens to Urdu. It is amazing that Urdu haters are running the Urdu Academy. There is no doubt in the value of the tremendous work and patriotism of Ali Sardar Jafri. I would ask the Urdu Academy to dismiss Yameen Farouqi immediately. Azmat Sharif
Date sent: Tue, 16 Dec 1997 14:07:52 PST What a farce? Centuries of oppression of Hindus has gone unnoticed in the eyes of Jafri. In any other country and religion, the Ayodhya incident would have been highly justified as the corrective measure against the barbaric destruction of the Ram temple. In any case, how come Nandy never asked about the destruction of hundreds of temples in India and abroad after the Ayodhya incident ? How come Jafri does not shed any tears for that destruction? One unused structure is brought down, and Nandy hangs on to the pieces for years. The worst thing is they don't talk about all the issues involved in the incident. I will urge Nandy to interview Arun Shourie to give equal importance to all the issues.
Date sent: Fri, 12 Dec 1997 10:46:50 -0800 To the first question, Mr Jafri answers: >> true. In fact, there is no reference to the Babri Masjid in the poem at all. Later, however, he quotes from the poem: >> With the demolition of the domes were also destroyed our ... which is obviously a reference to the Babri Masjid. Although no doubt he is a great writer, at least in his poem, it's not clear what his intentions are. Naresh
Date sent: Fri, 12 Dec 1997 13:25:48 -0500 Keeping up with the times is a pretty difficult task. This has been always been a problem with so many of us. I would definitely love to see at least one Oriya daily on the web for us to read. There have been a number of regionals on the web and it keeps growing every day. But not a single Oriya daily. Susant
Date sent: Mon, 15 Dec 1997 15:29:46 -0500 It is sad to know that actor Soman died an untimely death. During the last six months Malayalam cinema has lost two good actors, Sukumaran and Soman. Both were equally popular for their style of acting and dialogue delivery. Soman started acting in the early 1970s and associated with well known directors like K Balachander, Sethumadhavan, I V Sasi, K G George etc and gave excellent character performances in films such as Itha Ividevare, Rakthamillatha Manushyan, Guruvayoor Kesavan, Avalude Ravukal etc. Soman and Sukumaran entered cinema and rose to stardom with the then well-known action hero Jayan who died in an accident in 1980. These three were some sort of superstars in the late 1970s and changed the traditional Malayalam movies to more character-oriented serious and action pictures. Soman started in mainstream cinema along with Rajnikanth and Kamal Hasan. Balachander had invited Soman to act as the villain in a Tamil movie, which he could not accept because of his schedule. The role was then given to a newcomer named Rajnikanth. Soman also missed the title role in Kanyakumari due to date problems which happened to be Kamal Hasan's first movie as a hero. Kumar
Date: Wed, 10 Dec 1997 10:54:18 -0500 The article, unlike the other train journey articles, was a nice one. But one statement where the author says that Tamilians have a practice of coming in hordes to see off a relative is absolutely weird. I doubt whether the author has travelled to each and every station in the nation and observed Malayalis, Gujaratis, Telugus, Bengalis etc in action, performed a survey and then derived the conclusion. If people come in HORDES (hordes is a term used for animals, not humans; the author better learn to look up a dictionary and the editor learn to edit a submitted article in a professional manner) to see off a relative or friend, it is because they like the person and it is a common practice to see off people until they physically leave the place and not just wave him/her from the door. Amalan
Date sent: Wed, 10 Dec 1997 23:50:08 EST He is my source of inspiration. I heard about him through my brother who has just returned from IIT Kharagpur. Then I moved to the USA. Let him give some light to me.
Date sent: Fri, 19 Dec 1997 23:17:00 +0530 At the outset, congratulations to the Ambani twosome! Their achievements are just unimaginable in these days of inaction all around. It is interesting to see such a passionate feeling for the underdog in the speech. I am gratified to see reference to this subject which has attracted "benign neglect" from the more fortunate among us in this country. I somehow feel that businessmen of vision should direct their thoughts toward the deteriorating quality of life across the country that we see today. Cleaning up of the environment in all our cities, large and small, should find a place in the scheme of things. Could we have dynamic young leaders like the Businessman of the Year to lead from the front in these areas? We did have the concept of Technology Missions during a brief period of time which seem to have been shelved. We need these to be revived. Needless to say, these will have their rewards in the shape of a more positive attitude in the rest of the world, including potential investors towards us. China seems to have impressed most in these aspects! Srinivas
Date: Mon, 22 Dec 1997 15:26:10 -0700 How dare you write such an arrogant article with so much distortion of facts, lies and utter nonsense? Of course, it's with the aid of the very freedom you enjoy in a democratic society that you write such garbage. Because had it been a communist society like you cherish, you probably would been imprisoned and possibly executed for such a damnation of truth. I am so outraged by your article, that I am writing a response for the first in my life, in spite of the obvious bottlenecks in my writing skills. Being a communist, why would you even talk about a "fair vote" in Russia? Because had it been a fair vote or a fair media (unlike a communist propaganda machine) a certain Kim Il Sung, or a certain Ceausescu or a certain Pol Pot could not have deprived the hope, freedom and the lives of hundreds, thousands or millions of people? You talk about the communist regimes's success in providing "jobs, food, education, health measures and comprehensive social welfare." How dare you? What kind of food, education and health measures were they? Of some kind of prehistoric society? The very regime which produces nuclear warheads, fighter planes of most advanced age cannot produce cars, refrigerators or even a safety pin. It's a shame that eighty years of communism can't produce a single success story, with all of them failing miserably in all sectors! You talk about the fall of the South Korean currency.. look at North Korea, where millions of children are suffering from malnutrition, with hundreds dying every day. Even in such a crisis, an average South Korean is hundred times better off than its North Korean counterpart, an average Thai is hundred times better off than a Vietnamese or Cambodian or an average West German was hundred times better off than an East German, even when in crisis. There is just absolutely no comparison between a communist regime with that of a democratic society...there are always hundred times worse. History has proved that. Let's wake up! Read recently published book on historical facts, Le Livre Noir du Communisme (The Black Book of Communism), where they claim that many million innocent people were probably killed by Communist regimes. This is not the liberal media. All are supported by the facts. Even if sceptics like you don't agree with the full facts, take 10%...10 million people..just too many! How dare you guys talk about communism! You talk about China's success and you take credit for its communist regime. But let's be truthful here. China's success didn't come from a real communist regime (that is, from Mao's time). Thanks to Deng Xiaoping who liberated the Chinese economy in the seventies, they are getting the fruits of his genius.Tariffs in China are much much lower than in India and they are way ahead in other parts of the economy in terms of its liberalisation process. The recent downfall in the Indian economy is rightly blamed on its political instability and thanks to politicians like you. Still mind, the growth in the economy is much higher in the nineties than in the eighties, seventies or in any other decade. In closing, I still welcome your article, because in a democratic society everybody is entitled to their opinion. But I find your diagnosis hopelessly flawed for a real ailment. And please no more communist propaganda machine. We know how well you guys are doing in WB, which is falling behind faster than any other states. Ashis Maity Denver, USA
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