Pakistan’s attempt to conceal truth

MR NAWAZ SHARIF, Prime Minister of Pakistan, has invited India for talks for resolving the Kashmir issue. While doing so, he did not make any mention of the similar talks which were already in progress under the Lahore Declaration and got interrupted due to the intrusions of the Pakistan army into Kargil. This is a clumsy attempt on his part to conceal the reality. Does he expect such intrusions and talks to go on side by side?

India is going to have elections in September. Indian voters would like the Pakistan government to provide a clear answer to several questions, the most serious one being as to whose writ runs in Pakistan. If it is that of Mr Sharif, he must give a satisfactory explanation as to why the sanctity of the LoC as decided under the Simla Agreement was violated by Pakistan. If it is the writ of the army that runs in Pakistan what useful purpose will be served by holding talks with the Nawaz Sharif government.

In any case, I feel that Mr Sharif has got a God-sent opportunity for wooing the Indian voter by placing his cards before him. Just for a change, let him replace his Mujahideen, who are now busy spreading terrorism in India, with those who can provide logical answer to our questions. We may not have any Gandhi left among us, but his teachings still continue to influence the conscience of the average Indian voter, who is liberal and open-minded.

Mr Sharif’s reference to Kashmir being a nuclear flash-point has failed to frighten any Indian voter because he knows that no Pakistani would be foolish enough to sacrifice his Lahore for the sake of Srinagar.

Thus the choice to replace the battle of bullets and threats with that of logic and common sense lies entirely with Mr Sharif. Unless he decides for the latter, his plea for talks is likely to fall on deaf ears for quite some time.

S. P. MALHOTRA
Panchkula

Dilip Kumar’s stand

Pakistan has betrayed India by stabbing in the back when it had been trying to establish peace. Our people and Prime Minister have always preached for peace in this region, but Pakistan has always tried to breach the trust. By sending its army regulars and mercenaries as intruders in the Kargil sector, they have shown that what they believe in is only conflict and not peace.

As such, we must use our might as well as diplomacy to show our resentment and displeasure to Pakistan.

One of our great cricket all-rounders, Kapil Dav, started his career by playing against Pakistan in Pakistan in peace-time. But that doesn’t mean that he has no right to show his resentment when Pakistan indulges in extremism and drags India into a war-like situation. He had rightly appealed to cricketers not to play against Pakistan anywhere in the world until it called back its intruders and respected the sanctity of the LoC.

It is never meant that just to show patriotism, Dilip Kumar should return the Nishan-e-Imtiaz award conferred on him by Pakistan. He is, indeed, as patriotic as anybody else, even if he doesn’t return the award. And he will not be more patriotic than anybody else after returning the award. In fact, returning the award is only one way of showing resentment. Dilip Kumar should have spontaneously done the same much earlier and should not have waited for someone to tell him to do so. After all, it is human nature to show happiness over good things and resentment over bad ones.

V. V. NARAYANAN
Chandigarh

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Sunny Sunday

Fourth of July is the American Independence Day but it turned out to be a red letter day for India, when our brave soldiers made a final assault on Tiger Hill and recaptured it in the face of the most inhospitable terrain in the world and a well-entrenched enemy. The whole nation hailed this victory as the most decisive one in the Kargil conflict. The victory in the battle once again showed the fighting acumen of the Indian soldiers who have been rated as the best in the world, both in terms of courage, initiative and drive. Their supreme sacrifice for the defence of the motherland has won them the admiration and sincere gratitude of a grateful nation which has come out whole-heartedly to help the families of the martyr’s and the general well-being of our soldiers. It has bound the nation together in a firm bond and one does not see any fissures of dissent anywhere.

Far from the snow-capped peaks of Tiger Hill, in the lush green lawns of All England Club, the duo of Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi did India proud by claiming Wimbledon men’s double title making it their second Grand Slam triumph after the French Open. This was the maiden triumph of any Indian duo in the long history of Wimbledon.

A Wimbledon title is considered as the ultimate achievement in the tennis fraternity. The farthest that any Indian has gone in the Wimbledon was the entry of the great Ramnathan Krishnan in the semifinals. The exploits of Paes and Bhupathi have given enough reason to the whole nation to rejoice after hopes were dashed by our cricketers in the recently concluded World Cup in England.

The whole nation led by President K.R. Narayanan and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has hailed it as one of the greatest achievements of the millennium in the field of individual sports. It has come as a welcome relief to the grieving sports fans of the country who had gone into literal mourning after the World Cup debacle. The duo of Mahesh Bhupathi and Leander Paes have also brought into focus the fact that hard work and coordinated effort can bring about a complete turnaround.

These youngsters have many years of tennis still left in them and we should not just be gloating over that success but should use it as a fillip for launching more youngsters into the tennis orbit by concentrating on planned and continuous coaching as well as exposure to international competition. Our past experience has been that we tend to rest on our laurels and that is the reason why there is never a consistent flow of world beaters both in individual and team games.

It is high time our sports organisers and the government made sincere efforts in this regard so that the budding sportsmen of this country in various disciplines could take advantage and become world champions as a matter of habit and not a matter of chance.

SUSHIL KAPOOR
Chandigarh

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PAU: shocking fund shortage

I was sad to read about the crippling financial crisis at my alma mater, Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), Ludhiana. It seems this premier institution is past its best days of glory, and is not properly taken care of by the politicians of Punjab. Basic or applied research requires a heavy infusion of funds to generate any meaningful knowledge. The lack of funds for an agricultural university in a predominantly agrarian state is reprehensible, at least.

The PAU administration must share equal blame for the financial mess. I was shocked to read that more than 80 per cent of the budget goes to pay the salaries of the faculty and the staff, and only a meagre sum is allocated to research. This is an intellectual crime. The primary mandate of the university is to further knowledge and not to act as a source of employment for the people. Moreover, this comically absurd increase in the number of employees over the years has not translated into enhanced scientific productivity. Furthermore, PAU is widely rumoured to be rife with economic and intellectual corruption.

One of the corrective measures, in addition to an increased allocation of funds by the state, can be to reduce the strength of the faculty and the staff by at least 25 per cent. There should be a total freeze on hiring any new faculty member for at least five years, and the minimum requirement for appointment as Assistant Professor should be a Ph.D. The money thus saved can be used to equip the barren laboratories in so many new buildings that have disfigured the campus landscape anyway.

BALJIT SINGH,
Associate Professor of Veterinary Anatomy University of Saskatchewan
Saskatoon (Canada)

(Received in response to the Internet edition.)

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Field of glory

By giving a decent burial to Pakistani soldiers our army is living up to high traditions of our ancient civilisation. Indian soldiers have also had to bury their comrades when the bodies could not be carried home. The readers, therefore, may like to be reminded of words from Charles Wolfe’s poem:

Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note
As his corpse to the rampart we hurried,
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot,
O’er the grave where our hero we buried.
We thought as we hollowed his narrow bed
And smoothed down his lonely pillow’
That the foe and the stranger would tread o’er his head,
And we far away on the billow!
Slowly and sadly we laid him down,
From the field of his fame, flesh and glory’,
We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone,
But we left him alone with his glory.

MUKUND B. KUNTE
New Delhi

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Causes for stressful life

With reference to “Stress in office, stress at home” (July 11) by Mr Kuldip Dhiman, in my opinion fast and busy modern life has been generating tremendous stress and making people mentally and physically sick. Lucky are those who manage to keep themselves free from the clutches of stress and tension.

The root cause of stress in life is our unlimited desires, the materialistic approach and the tendency to earn more by fair or unfair means, etc.

SUKHDEV SINGH MINHAS
Chandigarh