Pity that what might be an intelligent debate on ways to solve an intractable dispute between two dangerously armed neighbours seems to be turning into a focus group on the glories of war-mongering? Perhaps we should have one on real, not make-believe Indian history and on the consequences of falsifying it. As the Father of Modern Hindu Fundamentalism, Mr Vajpayee will have no less compunction in hurling the might of the Indian army against Pakistan than the most powerful nation on earth would have unleashing its limitless might upon a Lilliputian foe posturing as a giant. Only thoughts of incalculable consequences hold back both. They are the same sort of thoughts that held back Bush the Father when the road to Baghdad lay, ostensibly open before him. He did not wish young Americans to be sucked into the quagmire of street fighting. The very same sort of wisdom would have flashed through the mind of Indira Gandhi when she declined to “finish the job” after the Pakistani army surrendered way back in ’71. And if you want more lessons on the practicality of “driving people into the sea” take a closer look at what the vanquished terrorists are up to in Afghanistan. If you don’t want to go that far, go nearer home. Go to Kashmir and see what war does to people. It is tempting and easy to be a war monger after watching how “easy” it is on television. Real war is very different, T & R! It makes women widows, children orphans, and the able disabled. And in the war you are mongering even those wont be left alive. As for your plan to have Americans shoot down Pakistani atom bombs the moment they are launched – a Star Wars scenario if ever there was one, just consider how easily the suicide bombers of Palestine cut through the rings of steel Israel has wound round itself these past few years. Men driven to desperation always get through. The Americans might shoot down 20 Pakistani atom bombs. Who knows that the 21st will get through strapped to the back of a suicide bomber. Thankfully, Mr Vajpayee has shown himself to be more circumspect in his handling of the situation than India’s growing army of vituperative war mongers. Their strident appeals to the blood-lust of gormless communalism now equals if it does not exceed the frenzy of fundamentalist mullahs across the border they would demolish. The history of Hindus in India is not ‘thousands’ of years old. It is as recent as the Aryan conquest which revisionist Hindu historians put at no more than 2,300 years. Who did India belong to before the Aryans came? For every antecedent that can be found to justify a postulate such as India was always Hindu, someone else will find a precedent to show that it wasn’t. Such a debate can come to no conclusion and is therefore futile and destructive. The Muslims who “took away” a part of India to make Pakistan arrived about 1,300 years ago and contributed as much to the “cultural achievements” Ribbentrof speaks of as any other component of the sub-continent’s multinational population. Today’s Hindu fundamentalist can no more paint out their imprint on India’s magnificent mosaic than the Muslims who tried to paint out Ashoka’s . No one can cover up the past.The truth will always out. But Indians and Pakistanis now have the power to write out, alter even obliterate their future. The peace they will enforce will not be the peace that T & R might want. It will be the peace of the nuclear graveyard. Shanti! Maruf Khwaja