• Manish Mishra did not die because of lawlessness (‘If only he wore Grandpa on his sleeve’, IE, January 28). He died because India is inhabited mostly by extremely timid, selfish and cowardly people. Brave heroes like Manish, Satyendra Dubey, and others, are in a hopeless minority. It is not at all surprising that none of the 60 passengers in the train compartment intervened. After all, not very long ago, five people in a Mumbai suburban train compartment remained mute witnesses when a girl was being raped. The majority of us prefer not to protest against injustice, corruption, criminality. We turn a blind eye to wrongdoing as long as it does not affect us personally. If it starts affecting us personally, we bribe somebody or pull some wires and get relief. Again, for ourselves only. — Ravishankar Natarajan On e-mail • Travel by trains in Uttar Pradesh has always been a risk for girls and families, because you invariably come across drunken goons and cops trying to hassle you. The only thing that UP and Delhi policemen know is how to please bureaucrats. I do believe in the land of Rama and Hanumana, we need the final incarnation of Vishnu to get our land rid of such hooligans. — Amrish Chawla On e-mail • Unlike the relatives of most politicians, Vajpayee’s large family has not misused his name and power. Unfortunately, this cannot be said about rest of India’s political leaders. Children constantly misuse the power of their politician-parents. — Harish Bhatt On e-mail Most unreasonable • It is reported that the French government is poised to pass a law banning religious symbols like Muslim veils, Jewish skullcaps, large Christian crosses from public schools and also the Sikh turban. Whereas the Muslim population in France is said to be five million, Jews are 600,000, Sikhs number just 7,000. Some Sikh students living in France say they are hundred per cent French, they speak only French and they were born and bred there. Their families have been living in France for the past many decades. The French also know that Sikh soldiers, with their turbans on, had fought for France in World Wars I and II. If Sikhs in countries like UK, USA and Canada are allowed to work with their turbans on in police departments and in the military too, the proposed ban by France on the Sikh turban in schools and government offices is absolutely unreasonable. — Mahindar Singh New Delhi The other side • First, I would like to acknowledge the well-written editorial, ‘India, as it stands’ (IE, January 26). At the same time, however, I would have liked you to dwell on the other side of the coin — namely the corruption, poverty, social discrimination and, above all, the pernicious role of anti-social elements in society. A case in point is today’s incident where a young man was thrown to his death out of a running train in UP by a bunch of goons. The reason it even figured in the newspaper is because the deceased happened to be the grandnephew of Prime Minister Vajpayee. But we cannot shrug this off as an isolated incident. — Rosy On e-mail
