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ASSEMBLY POLL '98
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'The BJP lost the election because people found out that it's not a trustworthy party'
E-mail from readers the world over
Date sent: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 09:19:34 -0500 I am tired of reading euphemisms in the Indian press -- "objectionable remark" by the Sena MP. How can we decide when we don't even know what he said? Similarly, a report about killings will say "People of a community were killed." If it's Hindus who were killed, say Hindus. If it is Muslim, say Muslim. We have to let go of the idea that the citizens are children, wards of the state, that must be "protected" from the truth. Satyamev Jayate -- Truth will Triumph. Tell us like it is.
Date sent: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 08:47:58 -0600 What was the remark made by Nirupam? I think the whole article does not make any sense if you do not state the remark as all the other facts are already known! Anabhra
Date sent: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 10:10:39 -0500 Very bad reporting. There is no mention as to what 'the comment' was. What is the use of reporting only half the information??? Parag V Sahasrabudhe, Ph D
Date sent: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 19:15:07 EST There has to be something seriously wrong with a country that shuts its Parliament just because one of its member called someone Pakistani, while a community can pray daily and condemn the majority of its population as kafirs and consign them to the Fires of Hell. Satyam
Date sent: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 23:16:06 EST I would like to ask Bhartiji one question, which I think the interviewer should have asked. Bhartiji says that you can say things as the Opposition, which you can't when you are in power, you have to modify your views. What does she really mean by this? Does it mean that as the Opposition you can say any thing you want whether you believe in it or not, as long as it gets you the vote? If so, is she saying that politicians lie and deceive people to come to power? May be that explains the actions of Bhartiji's party. It came to power on two planks -- Swadeshi and Hindutva. As soon as it got power, it shed both like a snake sheds its skin. The BJP did not only shed swadeshi, it adopted and accelerated the desh becho policies of Manmohan Singh and P Chidambaram. The BJP finance minister claims there is so much international pressure, we have no alternative but to open the insurance sector to MNCs even though it goes against the party's manifesto. Can you imagine what would have happened if Sinhaji was fighting the British for the freedom of India? He would have declared that there was too much international pressure against us and we had no alternative but to continue singing God Save The Queen and serving Her Majesty. The BJP lost the assembly election because people found out that it's not a trustworthy party. It says one thing before an election and does just the opposite after the election. Most importantly it is selling the nation even faster than the Congress and UF. Unless the BJP goes back to its roots -- Swadeshi and Hindutva, my prediction is that in the next Lok Sabha election it will get back to where it started, two seats. Of course, all pressures will be gone then and it can again start singing Swadeshi, Hindutva, Jai Sri Ram and so on hoping people at some time would forget the last deception, and vote it to power again. Amulya Tyagi
Date sent: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 07:43:47 PST
I am surprised at Akshay
Why call Muslims names while Vijay Tendulkar, Yash Chopra, Mahesh Bhat,
Kuldip Nayyar etc are protesting against the hooliganism? If it was such a
noble gesture why is Bal Thackeray ordering restraint? Why blame Shabana
Azmi for criticising the Ghulam Ali show disruption by Shiv Sena goondas
while Atal Bihari Vajpayee himself has condemned the act and has
apologised? Why not smash Khajuraho carvings that depict all form of
homosexuality? Have you forgotten the first ever chairperson of the National
Gays and Lesbian Commission (USA) was an Indian lesbian named Urvashi? Will P
Tewari dare express his views in front of mainstream Americans?
Letter after letter and topic after topic, what I see is blaming Muslims
for all our social, historical, economical, scientific, cultural and
religious maladies. In the beginning I used to read all the letters and
articles on Rediff seriously. Now I clearly see the ulterior motives.
Come on folks, develop a rational insight into problems and pay respect
to humanity. Be humane and let others live likewise. When you point a
finger towards someone else four of your own fingers point towards you.
Let us do some constructive work.
Satya Kumar
Date sent: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 00:48:05 +0500
Such positive and bold news should be published regularly. Our younger
generation needs positive and great news to redevelop self esteem on
'Being an Indian.'
Congratulations! Please keep it up.
Dinesh Jain
Date sent: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 15:44:33 +0530
I think your review was just great. It was entertaining and well written.
Looking forward to reading many more such reviews
Date sent: Wed, 09 Dec 1998 22:53:03 EST
I am writing to protest Deepa Mehta's ridiculous comment about
A R Rahman being the most consummate music director in the world!
Being a South Indian, I am only too aware of the myopic attitude of the
North Indians. You need something to rise up and hit you on the nose
before you acknowledge it. This lady may be a 'great' film director, but
obviously she knows scratch about music.
A R Rahman for all his popularity is known as a music director who scores eminently
forgettable background music (or re-recording as it commonly called).
Back home in Madras there lives a pitiable soul called Ilayaraja, who
has overwhelmed the south with his creativity. I can only shake my head
in disgust at the blind acceptance of the North Indians of A R Rahman's
shallow 'instant' music ignoring true genius like Ilayaraja and
dismissing him as a music director with only local flavour.
Why don't
people take a break from the over-hyped A R Rahman and take another good
look at Ilayaraja's music? Why don't you take the trouble to get an
internationally acclaimed Western classical expert to analyse this man's
music and present it to the rest of India -- phoren stuff always impresses
us desis, I know. Why don't my northie bhaiyon and behanon listen to the
original for a change instead of listening to his work stolen and
corrupted by the Annu Maliks and Anand-Milinds. Ilayaraja is more than
just another music director who is 'popularly' known as 'the Maestro'.
The magic lies in his music...not in what people call him. His
countless number of background scores for Tamil movies are
testimonials to this man's genius. Give him an ear...don't always go by
hype.
I am not sure of the propriety of this -- but I would like to
invite you to visit http://tfmpage.com which is a Tamil film music site
set up by some Tamil film music buffs (No! it's not my site!!). But
before you dismiss it as yet, another song site I would like you to
visit is the Discussion Forum.
The site is largely in
English -- for your convenience, and is entirely populated with engineers
and other professionals from the US and the rest of the world. Believe
me, it might indeed be a revelation. All said and done, please treat
this letter as a protest to the lopsided eulogising going on in the
Indian entertainment industry and it's equally lopsided reporting by the
media.
Srinath
Date sent: Tue, 08 Dec 1998 10:42:20 -0500
I read Shobha Warrier's article as well as several other recent critiques
of Mani Ratnam's Uyire. Most of them almost gleefully pounced on its
debacle to trash his every past movie. In my opinion, it's another of a series of
flawed, superficial analyses. What eludes my understanding is -- are
these criticisms grounded in context? It's easy for anybody to come up and trash the so-called "populist commercial" cinema, but what about the market? Are we looking at films
as fundamentally a pure art form, or as an industry? It's so very easy to eulogise
Adoor or Mani Kaul, but beyond the confines of the cinema literati, what
is the masses perception of their movies? How many Adoor's or Mani Kaul's movies have reached the masses! Have the masses got the message implied in their movies?
Mani Ratnam is essentially a businessman, he never pretends to be
otherwise. As a film-maker vested with enormous responsibility, riding on
multi-million budgets and the inputs of hundreds of crew that make
the film, it's in his logic to see that the movie is treated in a way
that reaches the lowest common denominator (in his view). That could be his perspective
much the same way a Aditya Chopra or Shankar approach it, but with different
aesthetic insights.
Though it's a fashion to say that a good movie is a good movie,
irrespective of whether it's commercial or not, I think it would be fair
to rate movies in the commercial domain based on their particular genre. Trying to
compare a Shankar or Mani Ratnam with Kurosawa or Kubrick is sheer
nonsense, IMHO. I think Shobha Warrier has much in the same way of several other arm-chair critics taken the easy way of trashing all of Mani Ratnam's past work
capitalising on the abject defeat of Uyire at the box office.
Let me also agree that a box-office hit is not a yardstick for
quality, but who determines quality? Is it us or the person who pays
Rs 200 to get a ticket for a Rajni movie? I believe when something is in the public domain,
it is up to the market to determine its intrinsic worth. Uyire flopped
because the market determined it, much the same way it made a success of Bombay or Jeans. It's very well for us to debate the quality of the product, but
trying to wish away a person's achievement just because it doesn't fit the way we perceive
that it should be, speaks of extreme narrow-mindedness.
Mukundh
Date sent: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 23:27:23 -0500
Excellent!
How Readers responded to Arvind Lavkare's earlier columns
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