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Kosla Vepa
May 15,2006
President Bill
Clinton
55 West 125th Street,
New York, New York 10027
(Phone) 212-348-8882 (fax)
212-348-9245.
Dear President Clinton
I am
reproducing verbatim a paragraph in your forward to Madeleine
Albright’s literary endeavor
The Mighty
and the Almighty.
The reason i do
so is you blame unnamed Hindu militants for the murder of the
Sikhs in Chattisinghpura in Kashmir
during the eve of his visit to India in 2000. This has been
reminiscent of a familiar pattern in Indo US relations where the
US has all too often blamed India for being the victim (1971
comes to mind as the most glaring example)
Apart from the
fact that I am shocked at the cavalier and facile manner with
which you make the accusation, I am saddened you offer little
corroborating evidence supporting your assertion which you make
with a great deal of certainty.
If you recall
the incident, there were many indications that these were
Pakistani terrorists, assigned by Pakistani intelligence for
this purpose.
The subsequent
statement that your visit was the triggering mechanism for the
massacre, is largely a well founded inference .The incident was
timed to make a statement knowing it would receive wide
publicity on the eve of your visit, and as a statement warning
America not to get to close to India. But you realize Hindus
have very little motivation to make such a statement, since they
generally did not (nor do them at present) have major
ideological differences of opinion with America. Furthermore it
is not in the ethos of the Hindu (with the fairly rare
exception of riots, in which the total number of Muslims killed
is far less than the Hindus killed in Kashmir, the rest of India
and in Pakistan and Bangladesh over the last 50 years) to go on
terrorist rampages. In fact I would go so far as to say that
occurrences of Hindu terrorist violence, conducted from a
religious motivation are extremely rare, which is quite a
contrast from the ideology of Jihad in the Islamic world. Jihad
as you may or may not be aware is sanctioned in their holy book
In any event,
it suffices to say i am deeply disappointed that you blame
Hindus especially in that region of India and Kashmir, where
Hindus have been ethnically cleansed for all practical purposes
for sometime now and I am requesting that you issue a retraction
that your assertion is false. Once again may I express my deep
disappointment that even in an inadvertent manner you have
chosen to make such a serious allegation?
Kosla Vepa
Quote
During my visit to India in 2000, some
Hindu militants decided to vent their outrage by
murdering thirty-eight Sikhs in cold blood. If I hadn’t made the
trip, the victims would probably still be alive. If I hadn’t
made the trip because I feared what religious extremists might
do, I couldn’t have done my job as president of the United
States. The nature of America is such that many people define
themselves—or a part of themselves—in relation to it, for or
against. This is part of the reality in which our leaders must
operate |
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