rediff.com: Readers react to Dilip D'Souza's last column

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July 26, 2001

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Readers react to Dilip D'Souza's previous column

We Indians have to demand justice, not yiel'

From: Ganesh Sundararajan
It is sad that hacks like you have a medium to write some garbage. It is really unfortunate. How can you relate your car driving experience with Kashmir? I don't get it. Are you implying that, if Pakistan wants to steam roll in Kashmir, we should let them? If they want to steam roll into HP, we should again let them? Your column is really an insult to the memories of the Indian soldiers who die every day in Kashmir defending our borders. They are just doing their jobs, unlike you who gets paid for every word-garbage that you write.

I hope rediff does not provide space for people like you to insult people's sensibilities. Freedom of expression is one thing, but to abuse a forum to write garbage is another. Frankly, I am not a patriot as I left its shores for a better life. But you, sir, just insulted every decent human being by your garbage.

PS: rediff, please stop printing such garbage from this guy.

From: Barkha Herman
It's too bad that Matt did not read Bhagvat Gita -- Arjun was ready to give up land to avoid casualties amongst his family and friends... Getting out of an accident is one thing, but not fighting for one's rights is another.

Do you really believe that giving up a part of Kashmir would end the troubles? We already gave up Pakistan -- we already had partitions. Did it solve anything?

I understand your sentiment of avoiding personal injury due to a road accident -- but giving up on the people of Kashmir is not the same. It's a good thing you don't drive any more -- perhaps you should give up misleading the people as well...

From: Thomas Cherian
I like the article very much.

Recently I have been influenced by Buddhism and have been reading books on that by a Vietnamese monk; he had something very nice to say on ideologies. One of the 14 principles he explained was never be closed on ideas and truths. There is no one truth or principles; the moment you close your mind, you as a human being will not grow. Whether it be nationalism, religion or anything. Therein, he said the story of a son who was kidnapped by thugs and the father had become so heartbroken that he gave him up for dead. One night, when there was a knock on his door and the son had come back, but the father would not take him back or open the door as in his mind the son had died.

So tragic but true -- I wish we could all open our mind a little

From: ssbajwa
How true! An excellent article indeed. But sadly too few in India and Pakistan subscribe to this kind of thinking.

From: Kailash Gubbi
Subject: The F*****g Moron
That's what I think of Dilip 'The F***** Moron' D'Souza. Sometimes, I wish we had a Hindu version of the Taleban law or something... so that we could flog the dog in a public and cut off his limbs and sew his mouth up to spare us of his insipid writings.

From: Nalinikanth Gollagunta
Dilip took the words out of my mouth... very nice article... I think the crux of the matter is, we don't need to hate them to love our country.

From: Sanjay A
Mr Dilip
You truly always manage to speak like an NIR (Non-Indian Resident). First of all, the India-Pak problem over Kashmir is not a "scooter accident." This is about territorial integrity, about international laws, about countries who have bled thousands of times during the last four wars. Today, you are telling us about the blood we shed during Kargil?! It was you who said then to let the Pakistanis have the peaks. And now you have the gall of repeating this stand again.

Don't tell us about the blood we have shed. To let the sacrifices of our soldiers go in vain would be the biggest crime we would commit against our own Indians and those families. Moreover, it is a fact that Pakistan is at FAULT! There is no ifs or buts about this. Though we have shed our blood, it has always been in defence rather than in offence, so don't tell us to forget whose fault it is.

According to you, we should concede our territory, forget about our soldiers, forget about the atrocities committed by these Pakistanis on our lands and our soldiers, those tortures... No way, Mr NIR, no way. We have the benefit of being the non-aggressors, we have the benefit of having a legal stand on Kashmir, we know how Pakistan was created with our land, with our money, with our homes and all our belongings, so don't tell us to forget about the wars as well.

We have forgotten enough already, but to forget about those wars, would be a criminal act. It would be like punishing ourselves for pursuing the right cause. Why don't you go to Pakistan and preach this policy of yours to them? Don't abuse India's democracy, the right you are exercising by indulging in such blatant anti-India postures. You tell them to think about peace and then see what happens to you and your rights.

Eternal peace can only be achieved through justice. No talks, negotiations or summits will yield anything, unless justice is ensured. And we Indians have to demand justice, not yield, Mr NIR. You are at fault!

From: Govind R
If there is a living epitome of hypocrisy anywhere in the world, then it must be this empty-headed, soulless, ill-begotten miscarriage of a human being called Dilip D'Souza. This lowlife has the temerity to lecture us Indians about the ANGER of 'the people of the state!!' And, even according to this crawling reptile, who are these 'people of the state,' a few hundred thousand Muslims instigated if not terrorised to support and advocate the dismemberment of India.

And what has India done to incur this seemingly righteous indignation?
A. Committed genocide against these Muslims?
B. Destroyed tens of thousands of mosques, replacing them with temples?
C. Enforced the Hindu religion on the Muslim populace?
D. Looted the wealth of the Muslims by applying a special tax on the basis of their religion?
E. Invaded Kashmir with hordes of Hindu militias which then settle down and 'marry' the local Muslim women with a view to increasing the Hindu population of the state, maybe even prompting Muslim women, at least those who enjoy the Islamic harem life, to commit mass suicides?
F. Forced to flee Kashmir and become refugees in some Islamic nation that does not give a hoot about them?

What indeed has India done to deserve this ANGER of the Kashmiri Muslim? Can this poor excuse for a human being say that India has done any of these things to Kashmiri Muslims... or for that matter any other Muslims in India? Then what does India have to feel guilty about? Should India feel guilty about the fact that she must sacrifice her soldiers' lives and the lives of her people to maintain her territorial integrity and preserve her sovereignty? This third-class walking piece of excreta wants us Indians to feel guilty for the fact that we are fighting the forces of religious fundamentalism that aim to dismember and destroy India?

This maniac wants us to shoulder the blame for the malicious crimes committed against us by our enemy and would rather have us feel proud for rewarding the aggressor who is solely responsible for the violence and the mayhem in J&K!! If D'Souza had even a little bit of integrity in him, he would acknowledge that the Indian army is not in J&K because India WANTS to drain her own exchequer, it is because Pakistan has been sending in droves of Pakistani regulars and irregulars as part of a sustained campaign to bleed India.

If this parasitical tick embedded in the flesh of India had any kind of comprehension about the difference between right and wrong, he would acknowledge that 'empty legalese' like 'accession' and 'constitution' is the very basis of our political unity as a nation, and that 'endlessly spouting these' can in no way be compared to 'funnelling death by terror across the border.'

Only someone whose moral faculties have been irreparably deadened and desensitised by an absolute and, frankly, immoral moral relativism can blame India along with Pakistan for the Kashmir problem. It is tantamount to blaming both the victim and the aggressor for a crime that the aggressor has been committing against the victim for almost a decade now.

D'Souza if you care so much for the ANGER of a few hundred thousand Kashmiri Muslims, then why do you simultaneously spit in the face of hundreds of millions of your fellow-Indians who have so patiently been suffering the military and terrorist depredations of Pakistan without lobbing a single bomb into Pakistani territory for the last 12 years? What about our ANGER and why do you not feel it you worthless, traitorous, pompous ass? Why do you not write article upon article about it and pontificate to Pakistan and the Kashmiri Muslims about it?

Is it because the overwhelming majority of us are pacifist Hindus who would rather face a lathi charge in a loin-cloth than be caught dead behind a loaded AK-47? You gutless wimp, I hope you feel my anger now, because it is the anger of a billion human beings who silently watch their community and their nation being attacked, raped and bled to death by the Dawood Ibrahims, Pervez Musharrafs and the Masood Azhars without firing a single bullet. It is the anger of tens of generations of my ancestors who have suffered
A. Genocide
B. Destruction of tens of thousands of places of worship which were then replaced with mosques
C. Forcible conversions
D. Looting of wealth through religion-based taxes
E. Invasions by hordes of militias which then settled down and 'married' the local women with a view to increasing their religious population, prompting thousands of native women to commit mass suicides.
F. Ethnic cleansing in the Hindu Kush, Punjab, Sindh, Bengal and now Kashmir with the result that they became refugees in some 'secular' nation that does not give a hoot about them.

But then, D'souza, I am a Hindu and my anger does not seem to deserve your understanding, does it? In fact, when I get angry you get angry too and rather than sympathy you would rather dole out generous helpings of sarcasm and put-downs. In fact, because I am a Hindu, you would even deny me the RIGHT to be ANGRY at my oppressor and FIGHT for my self-preservation. You write articles upon articles against me and cheer the Srikrishna commissions which hound me. You pontificate against me and preach my destruction. You are in fact engaged in a crusade against me and my kind (and 'crusade' is an appropriate term since I am sure you are so proud of your NON-VIOLENT, love thy enemy, turn the other cheek Christian heritage).

But at the same time you want me to understand the anger of the Kashmiri Muslims and prostrate myself before Musharraf? This is really too much. I am sorry. This Hindu /Indian is not going to roll over and play dead. In fact, I am going to indulge my fury and nurse my anger. You anger me D'Souza and I hope that some day I will have the privilege and the pleasure to convey my anger to you in the most unmistakable terms possible. Let us then see if there is real milk of human kindness flowing in your ego-inflated veins or just ordinary human blood that boils at being attacked... even with more than enough provocation.

Hopefully, you will then write a sympathetic article about the anger of the Indian.

A angry Indian/Hindu,
G

From: yashesh shroff
Namaste Dilipji,

It is very heartening to know that there are still a few people in India, such as yourself, who can put behind the atrocities of the past to stake a new future for the country. Come to think about your article, why do we even have these borders? Why draw fake lines that keep humans separate and falsely associated with nationhoods. There is nothing at stake, except for peace and prosperity. Land? The Pakistanis want land? Sure, take it. What does India have to do with Land? To prevent the spilling of another soldier's blood, we shall give what they want. China wants Arunachal Pradesh? Sure! Sikkim? Why not?! After all, they already have Aksai Chin, kindly donated by Pakistan, so they can build a highway to Tibet. Fortify your positions, neighbours! India is for sale, because the blood of our soldiers is dear to us, because asking them to protect the sanctity of Indian territory would be akin to saying that we don't care about them!!

It was very heartening seeing you acknowledge "thousands of Kashmiris" are refugees in India. But while you kindly bestow upon the poor Pandits the banner of a "Kashmiri," you tacitly fail to acknowledge that this is largely a religious war, where the HINDUS have been driven out by Islamic fundamentalists. NO, I am not saying at all that Islam is a bad religion or Muslims are fanatics -- but you would be deluding yourself if you said that the militants have not given the struggle of the masses a religious hue. That Pakistan does not openly help the militant mujahideens, that the "Islamic Republic of Pakistan" does not want to see a Muslim dominated area slip out of its hands.

Unlike others who may harp on you, I recognise that you DO care about the soldiers who died during Kargil. Your articles on the human side of each equation (Narmada, "criminal castes", etc) have not gone unnoticed. What I humbly request you from you is realisation that India does not have any choice but to protect herself. The nation of India does not distinguish between religions (many parties/individuals may) and after murdering and driving out thousands of Kashmiri HINDUS, today you talk about parting with the land. To legitimise the use of gun? Jihad works? Killing/maiming all those who in principle oppose you works?

On a side note, I've never written to an author of an article before -- mostly I read and set it aside as just another opinion. This letter was penned because I was dismayed that you would consider this tragedy imposed upon India by single-point agenda Pakistan as a "car accident." That you would use the spilling of blood of Kargil martyrs to drive an emotional point to justify your stance precisely against which the soldiers valiantly fought -- protection of Matrubhoomi -- which is not just another piece of land, it is ideals, it is OUR way of life.

From: Kohli, Puneet
Congratulations on a very well-written, lucid piece.

I continue to wonder how many more of such articles we'd need to realise the blatant mistakes we have been committing each moment as a nation.

From: Sandeep Shouche

Dilip D'Souza makes a very pertinent point in this article, but does not go far enough. He makes a valuable contribution by pointing out that not all the problems in Jammu and Kashmir can be blamed on Pakistan, but does not put the finger on the faults that India has committed in the state and continues to perpetrate them.

The first and foremost fault is complete failure in protecting the lives and properties of the ethnic minority in the Kashmir valley. Millions of Kashmiri Pandits have been killed, hounded and chased out of their homes and into refugee shelters.

The second failure is the lack of spine in tackling terrorism head-on. While the need of the hour is to attack the root of terrorism, i.e. the terrorist camps in Pak-occupied Kashmir, this government has displayed only reactive impulses in jamming the state with security forces.

The third failure is displaying amazing naivete. To believe that hardened terrorists will be mollified by economic packages, gas pipelines and cricket series. These terrorists know what they want. They want capitulation in Jammu and Kashmir. The Lashkar-e-Toiba leadership is clear-headed enough to state that their battle does not end until it brings secular/Hindu India to its knees. Quite a contrast to the cease-fire declaring, talks-insisting, interlocutor-appointing muddle headed thinking that happens with the Indian policy.

To blame the ISI and Pakistan is to shirk the responsibility of taking them on. Unfortunately, that is all that most of the Indians want. Therefore, they deserve what they are getting in Jammu and Kashmir and elsewhere in terms of living with Jihad.

From: Prasad NM
Dear Mr D'Souza:
Thank you for a masterpiece of an article! You have so eloquently and thoughtfully articulated the futility of the 50+ years of acrimony and bloodshed between the two countries. If only you could somehow implant this critique in the brains of the pig-headed politicians and bureaucrats on both sides of the border... or is it too much to hope for?

Thanks again for echoing my sentiments so beautifully. We can only hope that the leaders can at least make a SINCERE BEGINNING to an honest, meaningful dialogue to end the antagonistic posturing and needless bloodshed ONCE AND FOR ALL TIME TO COME.

Prasad

From: Sanjai Kukreti
In your utterly irretrievable state of depravity, you pathetically tried to compare a traffic convention with the moral response to the Pakistani slaughter of innocents!

Neville Chamberlain would have loved a corrupt skunk like you! "Now, now, my fellow countrymen, let us not engage in a fault-finding exercise against this Hitler fellow. We are much better off letting him seize Czechoslovakia, since after all we shouldn't be petty on finding fault with it."

Next time your vile mouth foams about Graham Staines, I shall be happy to remind you that you are engaging in reflexive fault-finding. After all, when you arrest Dara Singh, are you not "arresting your own" to use your own self-serving words, stated by you in your own article.

You miserable piece of filth. When it's someone you empathise with, like a colonial conquistador conversion-artist, then you will call his glass half-empty. But when Pakistan is murdering innocents in Kashmir, then you will call their glass half-full. And you do it all with a straight face!

On basic moral issues like invasion, aggression, external attack, you pooh-pooh these things and laugh them off. When soldiers shed their lives to defend the principle of national sovereignty and jurisdiction, you are unimpressed. But when Staines comes to convert and to sew discord among rival tribes, then an idiot like you will scream to the heavens to defend him.

You are the kind of man who would stifle speech from a political party that does not conform to your views, but would in the same heartbeat protect a child pornography peddler on the same grounds of free speech. That is your ugly attitude. Be assured that your ugly hypocrisy is so hideously obvious so as to be completely unconcealable.

Your friend Matt rightly pointed out your penchant for nitpicking stupidity. Your friend Matt would not support an attack by a foreign power on the United States, by dismissing the defense of his homeland as mere "fault-finding." That's why Matt is a much better person than you are. A mental midget like yourself would make a menace of yourself on American highways by quixotically charging into cars to defend your sacred "right of way," but you would be the first to drive away quickly and quietly if you saw a motorist being mugged on the side of the very same road.

That is the complete insanity that you represent. No country deserves a citizen like you. No country deserves a simpering twit whose sole purpose in life is to denigrate and cheapen moral values, in a hapless attempt to wrap all of society around his own petty superficial needs. You represent the worst the human race has to offer.

From: Rama Akkiraju
Dilip,
A very thoughtful column. Loved reading it. Thanks to rediff for carrying this column.
Rama

From: Suresh Muthuswami
Dear Dilip:
Please be careful. Your invoking of Boro Todorovic in the context of the India-Pakistan dispute suggests that a parallel can be drawn between the Serbian nationalism of Milosevic and the Indian (or Pakistan) variety. Whatever its faults (and there are plenty), Indian nationalism doesn't deserve this. No Indian national leader has done or said anything remotely comparable to Milosevic. I do not know much about Pakistani nationalism, so I won't comment (In common with many other `educated' Indians, I am far more knowledgeable about the `West' than about our neighbours or indeed, even some parts of our country). But I don't think even they deserve this comparison.

If your point is that our own, official, parroted responses to Kashmir should be questioned by ourselves, then you are right. But it's already happening -- as your own article and many others show. Unfortunately, this is a slow process. I guess till the time when we are able to question ourselves more openly, articles like yours will be needed. My complaint then is not with regard to the point you make, but rather the comparisons you draw. Overdrawn analogies simply weaken the point you are trying to make.

A second point is that there are sometimes harsh dilemmas which don't admit easy solutions. I am sure that most sensitive Indian politicians (they do exist, I think) realise that, if given a choice, the valley Kashmiris would opt to break away from India. Personally, I would like them to have that choice. But I've also asked myself what I would do if I were the prime minister. With the best will in the world, I cannot admit that I would do anything different than what's being done now.

Sometime back, I read a statement attributed to Conor Cruise O'Brien about the Middle East situation. I don't remember the exact quote but it was something to the effect that it was wrong to use the problem-solution terminology to this situation; rather it was a conflict. And conflicts, O'Brien argued, did not have solutions, they had outcomes. The same thing, I suppose, can be said of Kashmir as well. The fact that two of the main parties to this conflict have nuclear weapons leaves one shuddering thinking about the possible outcomes.

Best Regards,
Suresh.

From: Vinay Soman
Dear Dilip,
This article of yours is similar to all other your articles, showing your confusion about some very important points.

Other thing in your article -- You say Indians are taught to hate Pakistan and Pakistanis. And the same way, every Pakistani is taught to hate India and Indians. There are reports pouring in stating how people on both sides want peace and how Pakistanis are really good people. My observation and experience is, a single Muslim individual without his religion is as good or bad as any human being, but when he is with his religion (Islam), he becomes the most hostile race on the surface of Earth for any other non-Muslim. That holds true for every Pakistani. You don't have to teach someone to beware of the snake. Don't touch it. It is very much implicit.
Vinay.

From: maha rushi
Sick of reading your articles. Why don't you stop writing and save us the agony of reading them? And one more suggestion, stop representing India and patriotic Indians, because in no way U belong to them.

From: Moti D Talpada
One of the best pragmatic pieces about India, Pakistan and Kashmir. Wish all the Indians see through the haze created in post Partition era. Most of all our senile politicians, RSS, VHPs and their cadres. Hope they are literate and read! and Give it a thought keeping aside their political aspirations. They can still win the elections by their good and constructive deeds.

From: Laxminarayan Sethuraman (Raj)
Subject: The saying goes like this, "It is better to be wrong and stay alive than be right and dead"

Hi Dilip
Well said and I feel that this is the case not only with our leaders but with Indians in general and Hindus in particular. However, we should carry on the struggle to point out the obvious and hope that things would be normal some time in the future.

Cheers
Raj

From: Sangita Deveshwar
As is to be expected from pseudo-secularists like yourself:it sucks. It is shocking indeed that a******s like yourself (and there are others) abuse the very constitution and nation that guarantees freedom of expression. Your name just about sums it up.

From: Kavita Pandit
Dilip:
Really enjoyed this column. Here, the focus is usually on the Israel-Palestine confrontation, and your sentiments on Kashmir exactly parallel how I feel about the West Bank situation. In my "PC" academic setting, it often seems fashionable to support one side (you can guess which one) over the other based on who is "right." To me, after 50+ years of warring in the Middle East, this issue seems meaningless now.

It will take a really courageous political leader to convince the Indian people that it is not the end of the earth if we concede "territorial integrity" -- we have far far more to gain.
Kavita

Dilip D'Souza