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| 24/07/2001 |
| DEATHLESS END |
ON THE ABORTIVE PAK-INDO TALKS AT AGRA, JULY 1991
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| It was during a public rally in Kolkata to commemorate the centenary of the birth of INA leader Subhas Chandra Bose, when the presiding Minister Pranab Mukherjee thoughtlessly referred to the death of Neta-ji in a fatal plane crash in 1945. Immediately there was a disruptive roar from extremist saffron-clad members of the audience who demanded that he withdraw his remarks. “Neta-ji is not dead,” they screamed. The ugly situation was salvaged by Sugata Bose, Bose’s great-nephew, who placated the angry crowd by explaining that Neta-ji had not died: he had merely suffered a deathless end. |
| To millions of persons who watched the recent summit at Agra and felt their shared hopes rise to a crescendo and then fall, the synchronised statements made the morning after by the Indian and the Pakistani Foreign Ministers, that the talks had in fact not failed, revealed a similar refuge in euphemism. The Agra summit had not crash-landed, they said; it too had suffered a deathless end. [EXTRACT] |
Published in DAWN 24 July 2001, and reprinted in WHEN BUSH COMES TO SHOVE & OTHER WRITINGS (2006) |
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| 24 July 2001 |
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| All Articles |
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