Dear Sir,
I generally hold the Defense News publication in high regard, both for the quality of the reporting and the quality of the editorial pages. So it came as a shock to see that you published a letter by a certain Sardar Wali Imran (Dec 6, 2004) that contained so many factual errors that I wonder how it ever got to print.
Some gems include India’s attempted annexation of the Maldives, India’s political system where only ‘Hindus (upper class)’ prosper, Pakistan’s refusal to ‘complain’ when India conducted nuclear tests, and this is the beauty — suggesting that the ‘memory of the 11th century conquerer Ghaznavi is deeply imprinted in India’s psyche’. The last one is especially rich coming from a country which named its ballistic missile ‘Ghaznavi’ for exactly the same reason !
While I believe it is only right for you to allow a Pakistani response to an earlier Indian letter-writer, allowing such factual errors to creep into your editorial pages is unfortunate.
It is not my intention to spark off a war of words on your editorial pages, so I would request you not to publish my letter. But I hope you will take the minimum journalistic care before you print whatever rubbish that arrives in your mailbox.
Thank you
Nitin Pai
The inhabitants of Pakistan are violently hung up on the Prithviraj Chauhan-Muhammed Ghori episodes, as well as the exploits of one Ghaznavi. To put things into perspective, Ghaznavi was no more than a big time dacoit – he gathered the people of a tough land with the promise of loot, invaded a far more civilized land, took as much loot as his horses could carry, and went back. In Europe he would have earned himself and his clan the everlasting label of barbarians – like Atilla or rather undeservingly Hannibal of Carthage. Why our historians have failed, I dont want to comment on.
Ghori’s cowardice is too well known to repeat over here.
Kiran,
Elsewhere on this blog I wrote about how the Pakistanis named their missile ‘Ghauri’ after (mistakenly) thinking that India named its missile ‘Prithvi’ after Prithvi Raj Chauhan… really!
Ghaznavi naturally, followed.
After Musharraf was cornered and Khan-worship discredited the missiles are known by their alternative names, Hatf/Shaheen etc.