— Prasad Malladi

Basivireddypeta (AP)

Expanding HRD

•You have in your timely and lively editorial, ‘Arjun vs autonomy’ hit the nail on the head. It’s really unfortunate that HRD Minister Arjun Singh is bent upon enforcing his “whims and choices” on the IIMs in the country. He is now trying the legislative route to settle his scores with these autonomous B-schools and to totally crush their extant autonomous status. It is tragic that politicians like him are allowed to destroy the world-class reputation of these B-schools. He should be rightly re-designated as the minister for human resource destruction!

— S.K. Gupta

Delhi

War appellation

•The report in your newspaper, “150 yrs on, no place for 1857 British ‘heroes’” has left me confused. The reference to the “1857 British-India war” — which the nation remembers as the First War of Independence — is totally out of sync with the times. The reporter seems to have been influenced by the stories spun by British tourist bureaus. While tourists should indeed be our honoured guests (‘atithi devo bhava’), any attempt to honour the enemies of our nationalist forefathers cannot be condoned. The pastor of a local church was quite correct in refusing to permit a memorial plaque to be installed in it.

... contd.