Salman Khurshid gives "peaceful" chit to China

Salman Khurshid, External Affairs Minister in the UPA govt of Dr Manmohan Singh, seems to have a tendency to be economical with truth; he also acts as colour-blind: If the colour is grey or has a touch of black, he tends to regard it nearly white! His another characteristic is to stick his neck out for the sake of loyalty and sycophancy vis-a-vis the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. He has been castigated and rebuffed by Anna Hazare and the Central Election Commission for his indiscretions and improprieties. Clearly, he seems insensitive and thick-skinned to several aberrations from dignified conduct but he seems to get away with them, perhaps because he is seemingly intellectually smart, foreign-educated, lawyer by profession, a member of the minority community with Congress loyalist father and grand father who occupied the the top-most post.

Khurshid's latest statement made in an interview with the Indian Express, on way back from Burma(Mynamar), takes the cake. He gives a clean chit to China as a "peaceful" neighbour, asserting that "China's rise hasn't created problems for India...There has not been any major specific problem between us and China". He deliberately forgot the 1962 invasion of Mao's China on the North-East Frontier Agency(NEFA), now Arunachal Pradesh, that has been the most disastrous and humiliating defeat of the Indian army under the Congress' first Prime Minister of independent India, Jawaharlal Nehru who had emerged as the self-appointed champion of Communist China. India recently marked the 50th anniversary of that debacle-the most painful chapter of our post-indpendence history.

There have been so many occasions when our big, powerful neighbour has been intimidating us with repeated hostile expansionist claims on Arunachal Pradesh and parts of Ladakh. Also, its denial to visas to Indian citizens resident in Arunchal and J&K. Recently, it stamped visas with a map reiterating the territorial claims. It has also started warning India to keep off the South China Sea. Yet, our new Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid has no hesitation in claiming that China is "peaceful" and its rise poses no problems to us!    

Indian Express editor's views on Babri demolition

I read Ms Seema Chisti's article:"Remains of the day" in the Indian Express of December 5, on the 20th anniversary of the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, with deep dismay. It seems to have been written not by a sensitive, understanding Indian commentator; it was a piece appeared to have been driven by parochialism and one-sidedness of a Muslim communalist. She refused to accept despite the tell-tale evidence that the structure was super-imposed  on a Hindu temple by a foreign Muslim invader to humiliate Hindus. All attempts to persuade the Muslim  leadership to respect the majority Hindu sentiment in regard to the shrine to their epic icon Ram and his wife Sita(Sita ki Rasoi-Sita's kitchen) and make a brotherly gesture to hand over the structure to the Hindu community, failed. Instead, there was a display of aggressive posture of confrontation by its bigoted Islamic leadership.

Even with this background, kar sewaks who assembled at the venue on December 6, 1992, were not expected to take the law into their hands and undertake the demolition. However, a group of kar sewaks' act appalled and deeply saddened the movement leaders like LK Advani who along with his associates were opposed to the unilateral destruction of the disputed structure. But, looking at the dispute in hindsight, one cannot avoid the unhelpful attitude of the minority leadership in the stalemate that unfortunately led to the tragic denounement. With mutual accommodation and understanding, a temple could have been built as also a new mosque some distance away as a symbolic manifestation of inter-community harmony. Even a High Court verdict accommodating both sides' viewpoints was looked down upon.

Ms Chisti's strong plea is not to forget the event of the demolition. Even at the distance of twenty years of the tragic happenings, she does not see the need for the leaders of the two communities to jointly, peacefully come to an agreement to forget the past and built a temple on the iconic spot and a Muslim place of worship nearby. There are several examples of the majority gestures, for instance, Gandhiji's support for the Khilafat movement. Ayodhya was one case when the minority generosity and broadmindedness could have done wonders. Given the right attitude, it can still happen.