Opinion
-
Letters to the Editor
Violence begets nothing
Sir, - Atal Behari Vajpayee, responding to the `handshake of friendship' from Pervez Musharraf, said, ``this gesture of friendship needs to be proved by taking concrete action on ground, by stopping all acts of terrorism from the area under your control''.
Mr. Vajpayee could as well have added, ``I shook the hands of the then Prime Minister of Pakistan at Lahore and we were rewarded with Kargil by the then military chief of Pakistan; I shook the hands of that General at Agra and we were rewarded with attacks on the Kashmir Assembly and then on the Parliament House''. The General shook his right hand but perhaps did not know what his left hand was doing at that very moment. It was `shaking' the very foundation of the greatest democracy in the world today.
India is tired of empty shaking of hands and the endless chain of violence by the `shaking' hands. We in India tend to express our friendship by telling `namaste'; we don't even need to touch the other person; we touch their hearts by our actions. Then there is the fine distinction which the General tried to make between the terrorists and the legitimate `freedom fighters'.
This is the rhetoric which the General has been using ad nauseum. He does not seem to realise that all the terrorists keep saying that they are fighting for freedom. We, in India, also fought for our freedom, but not with guns and terror. Pakistan was with us then in that fight, with Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan leading from the front. We won our freedom with no bloodshed; the bloodshed started with partition and it continues today.
We fought with the British but we have continued to shake hands with them; there was and is no enmity with them, because our weapon was non-violence. Violence has achieved no lasting peace anywhere in the world and it is time the General learns this lesson even if at this late hour.
H.N. Phadnis,
Chennai
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Opinion
|
