Defying logic

Defying logic

The Volcker report is a classic case of arriving at the premise from the conclusion, which is a fallacy in logic. The opposition should have waited for the government to gather all the evidence and then pounce on it if the government failed to take action in the case of any wrong doing.

Ramani P. Easwaran, Bangalore.

Good riddance

This refers to the report ‘Uma goes and Natwar is getting pushed’ in DNA (December 6). The BJP Parliamentary Board has taken the right decision in expelling the rabble-rousing and whimsical sanyasin Uma Bharti from the primary membership of the party. She should be well-advised to extend her Ram-Roti padyatra from Ayodhya to West Bengal where she can join the once fiery Mamta Banerjee who too is sailing in the same sinking boat. Had Uma been shown the door in November 2004 for challenging BJP president LK Advani’s authority, thus badly damaging the BJP’s image, the party could have avoided her current temperamental tantrums. By the way, don’t you think the right place for an ascetic is not in Bhopal or Delhi but in a remote cave in the Himalayas?

K P Rajan, Mumbai.

Islamophobia

Dilip Padgaonkar’s column ‘Islamophobia comes to fore’, in DNA (November 30) makes interesting reading. Is it likely, that “rising incidence of anti-Islamic and anti-Muslim ideas, feelings and attitudes” because of “humiliations heaped on Muslims and from the phenomenal success of books spewing venom against Islam and is followers”, might just be a reaction to certain Muslim attitudes? Also, while discussing the proceedings of the Seville conference, he did not say what the Islamic scholar-participants had to say about various forms of demonisation of Islamic and non-Islamic cultures by one another. I feel that the belief of Muslims to the very raison d’être of Islam — that all other religions are false and misleading — cannot justly be viewed as ‘phobia’. And his concluding remark is wonderful news indeed! However, precisely what he implied by the last sentence, “At least not for the public record”, was not immediately clear.

Bhalchandrarao , Mumbai.

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