Letters to the WEEK

The letter of the week this time is from R. P. Subramanian of Delhi.

The letter of the week this time is from R. P. Subramanian of Delhi. In his incisive rejoinder to K. Subrahmanyam’s appeal for India’s return to committed non-proliferation, he lays out the pragmatic rationale for India’s nuclear policy, then and now.

•What K. Subrahmanyam advocates — that India should join the call given by Henry Kissinger, George Schulz et al and ‘regain its earlier reputation as a champion of a nuclear weapon-free world’ at the forthcoming Norway conference on non-proliferation — is not only unrealistic; it smacks of deep hypocrisy. ‘When hawks turn moral’, . It is a fact — and there’s nothing to be apologetic about it — that India began its quest for N-weapons soon after China went nuclear in 1964.

So let us shed this tired old argument that India ever sat on high moral ground on the issue of a world free of N-weapons.

Story continues below this ad

Certainly the world would be a wonderful place without N-weapons; but the world is condemned to live for at least 100,000 years with the thousands of tonnes of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium created during the Cold War — ironically, the era when Kissinger and Schulz were the most ardent advocates of the US nuclear weapons programme! There is no ‘morality’ in N-strategy; there is only supreme national interest, something Subrahmanyam himself has advocated with admirable persistence through the decades.

No cricket capitalism

•The Indian Premier League (IPL) has collected Rs 3000 crore in a single stroke through bids to auction the cricket-teams of eight Indian cities. The Board of Cricket Control in India (BCCI) is already the richest member of the International Cricket League (ICL). But all their money is national money, generated out of a public craze for cricket, and this money should be used as public money for welfare schemes rather than being distributing as freebies to cricketers. Our cricketers earn huge money through advertisements anyway, apart from the normal match fees. This accumulation of wealth for cricket is not proper in a country where farmers are committing suicide for want of money. BCCI and IPL should be made autonomous public-sector companies accountable to the Comptroller & Auditor General of India, and answerable to public authority under the Right to Information Act.

— Madhu Agrawal

Delhi

Sympathy for Gaza

•Far from attaining any of its goals, Israel must be severely jolted by the unprecedented wave of global sympathy for Gaza Strip, generated by visuals of the inhumane devastation resulting from the blockade and embargo. The usual band of diehard Israeli loyalists like the Bush administration, some Western European countries and Zionist lobbyists is perhaps the only one faced with the irrational task of defending Israel. President Abbas as well as most Arab states have proved inconsequential, and their appalling helplessness is reflected in their collusion with Israel’s futile efforts to starve Palestinians into submission. The corrupt leaderships of Egypt and Jordan are also major impediments in the freedom struggle waged courageously for so many decades by successive generations of Palestinians. After all this it is incredible that Israel really expects the world to support its military occupation and wilful embargo on fuel, food and medicine supplies. Zionist fascism has reached the end of the road — and the sooner their zealous supporters realise this, the better.

— Sandeep Ghiya Mumbai