Your article is a very interesting one considering the situation facing India and its institutions right now. While your arguments were compelling, one has to admit that the points put forth by ibcd were equally valid. However, i find both your view points supporting views which are extreme in nature while turning blind eye to potential pitfalls. Eventhough you have apporpriately used the right to pre-empt to take corrective action it should be remembered that any support to such an act would lead to mass abuse of the powers. The case in point being the situation in Kashmir where the religious fundementalists are cleverly exploiting encounter killings to stoke up anti India sentiments which is nullifying the good work put in by the army in other parts. I would also bring to fore the situation faced in Punjab and Andhra where scores of families lost their loved ones and still resent the heavy handed handling of the situation which brings to fore an important point that are we mistakingly identifying effect as cause and hence championing the case when the need is to set right the cause of this problem which is attitude of Indians towards their society, institutions and their life in general.

While we always crib about the state of our institutions it has to be understood that the reason for their sorry state is none other than we Indians. Whether its rampant corruption in every walk of our life, criminalisation of the our institutions or religious hatred the reason is we Indians. A small check of our everyday life will tell you the reason. How many of us follow the traffic rules, do not resent paying our dues whether taxes or charges, would like to follow rules laid down, go to vote, raise your voice against something wrong going on streets, help a person in distress, voice your opinion and in genral do everything in a way it should be done.

I recently visited to Singapore which I feel is a very heavily regulated society. I was with my friend on that trip and there was stark difference in the way he conducted himself in India and Singapore. There he would avoid spitting and littering the road, breaking traffic rules, crib payin the bills and would be careful in conducting himself and the same person when he touched down in Mumbai was completely transformed person blatantly misusing his new found rights. I guess this is fact of life in India. Unless we educate ourselves to conduct in responsible way we cannot expect our society to be rid of all the problems we have.

Please do think about it before legitimising something as wrong as encounter killings in name of failure of system.

As was said by someone somewhere:

Look in before u look out..

I might not have gotten the line right but i guess u will understand what i meant

I do believe I have the absolute right to use Gandhi or anybody else in any analogy I wish to make. So far as I know, Gandhi is not anybody’s exclusive property.

As for ibcd wringing his hands about the ’suborning’ of India’s institutions, I am hard pressed to find any institution in the country that has not been corrupted to the core already, with the possible exception of the army. This is a consequence of the quota raj and other such wonders of the Nehruvian world-view. India is indeed suffering from endemic corruption. The horse has bolted, and it’s a little late to worry about closing the barn-door. To take the equine analogy further, someone needs to clean the Augean stables.

The entire system is rotten. This is why there *is* vigilante justice in, for instance, the badlands of Bihar. Surely it is nobody’s case that the lawlessness of the most benighted parts of the country — which people are even afraid to traverse by train — should be extended to the rest of India.

KPS Gill argued forcefully that in the existing system where it’s plain as day that any criminal or terrorist can walk away free, it is not possible for the normal, law-abiding citizen to get justice. Blame the Nehruvian State, not law enforcement. And KPS Gill was notably successful in bringing peace back to the Punjab, so I would be inclined to listen to him rather than someone with vague, fine-sounding but ultimately impractical nostrums.

Furthermore, ibcd has no particular right to define *his* alleged brand of Hinduism as the norm and to attack somebody else’s perspective as invalid or inferior. By doing this, he betrays a certain Semitic, holier-than-thou perspective. In fact from his eagerness to censor and his eagerness to impose his definition of right and wrong on others, I would infer that ibcd is no Hindu. Hindus do not go around telling others what to think.

I suspect I have not been clear in my communication.

My point is not that terrorism has to be dealt with. Certainly, if there is forewarning that an individual or a group of individuals are planning to perform a terrorist act, then go ahead and deal with them. However, deal with them within the framework of the law and not with the same lawlessness that terrorists operate.

Mr Riberio and Mr Gill may be great policemen. However, if they were to act like terrorists and gun down innocents, would they continue to be great policemen. I don’t know if you are aware that a few years ago a policeman who was stationed at the Mumbai airport security station decided to use his weapon to take hostages and kill his superior officer, just because he was not sanctioned leave. (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/47617867.cms)

If society were to condone police and personnel of the armed forces unbridled freedom in dealing with terrorism on their own without observing the laws, what is to prevent a neighbour of ours who is in the police or army from killing us and claiming that we were terrorists. The reason terrorists are called outlaws is because they don’t follow the law. Thus, by the same token, if those who are supposed to enforce the law, do not follow the law, they are also outlaws – and it does not matter whether it is Ribiero, Gill, Vajpayee or Indra Gandhi or anyone you care to name. The fact that two wrongs have been committed does not make anything right.

You accuse me of idealism. Far from it. As a person who has lived in India all the years of my life, including in the dreaded Emergency days, I am as aware of you of institutions having been suborned. Equally, I have also seen the people of our country, reacting vigorously to egregious displays of suborning institutions. The very same Emergency is a classic example. And, if you want more recent examples, the drubbing that Mulayam got in the recent elections and the Supreme Court rulings on Reservations are living examples of our nation’s reaction to patent abuse of power.

Lastly a couple of corrections. I have not mentioned that Rajeev has taken the name of Gandhi in mischief. I only said it is a cheap shot – it is cheap, because, by bringing in Gandhi, Rajeev, in my opinion, is trying to lend a fig leaf of reason to his argument.

Second, I presume you are calling me a ‘Hindu non-fanatic’, I am a Hindu, but neither a fanatic or a non-fanatic. I adduced Vivekananda, among others, only to say that he was not a fundamentalist. Mr Shourie may think otherwise. That is Mr Shourie’s opinion. I happen to think differently.

Good luck Ghost Writer and I hope you get rid of your ghosts soon.

You mention Rajeev took the name of Gandhi in mischief; but forget he also mentioned Ahmad Shah Masood in the same sentence – or is he another ‘non-finger lifting pacifist’? And as for your reference of Vivekananda (I love it when ‘Hindu non-fanatics’ invoke his name to make ‘non-Hindu fanatics’ feel guilty) perhaps you would like to read these two articles – Article 1 and Article 2. Would you like us to practice more of Vivekananda’s Hinduism?

You will agree that even a malfunctioning political system, with some vestige of civility has a greater hope for society than a dysfunctional one which has to stoop to resort to the same kind of violence as those who seek to destroy it. See what is happening in Darfur, Iraq, Pakistan, Zimbabwe and the many others who seem to subscribe to views like yours. Remember Rwanda, Cambodia!

You drag Gandhi into your argument – a cheap shot. Gandhi wouldn’t have lifted and did not lift his little finger in retaliation, even when he was being bludgeoned by British lathis. Remember it was he who said, ‘An eye for an eye, makes the whole world go blind’.

Let not your passion for Hindu Nationalism, blind you to the the vileness that goes by the name of Hindutva and Hind Nationalism by some of its practitoners. Theirs is not the Hindu Nationalism of Sankara or Ramakrishna, Vivekananda or Ramana, but the bigotry, hatred and corruption of fundamentalists everywhere.