Letters

Hindi howlers
2nd June 2004
It is time journalists started paying more attention to Hindi and other subcontinental languages. Jonathan Power's transliteration (June) of "mute doll" - Kungi Kureya - is a nonsense. What Sonia Gandhi's staff would have said is Goongi Guriya. While I am at it, here is a definitive guide to pronouncing the new prime minister's first name, Manmohan (literally one who charms the heart): Man (say mon, as in Monday); mohan (mo, as in more; and hon, as in honey)
Karan Deep Singh
Colchester, Essex

In praise of the finding
22nd May 2004
Please thank Panos Karnezis for "The finding" (June). When I finished the story I put it down and chuckled. Then I thought about it and chuckled some more. Then I re-read it and was pleased all over again. Such charm and simplicity takes a lot of skill.
Rhoda Partridge
Powys, Wales

Make trade not war
11th June 2004
Les Hiatt (Letters, June) is right to state that native Australians knew trade without agriculture - a fact mentioned in chapter two of my book, The Company of Strangers. As I discuss extensively in the book, the ability to trade instead of fight with strangers must have evolved before the invention of agriculture. But it is likely (in Australia, as elsewhere before Neolithic times) that such trade was infrequent, and based on relations of familiarity built up slowly over time. Not until communities became settled was trade inescapable, and probably not until then could people routinely risk walking into a marketplace full of strangers expecting to be welcomed with an outstretched hand instead of an upraised club.
Paul Seabright
Toulouse, France

Alienating Muslims
7th June 2004
"Progress of a sort" is how Jason Burke (June) described our growing understanding of Islamist terrorists. But Muslims with a stake in moderation are needed to warn the authorities of their militant co-religionists. This would be easier had the west not declared war on Islam as a whole. Moderate Muslims have long lived with a common human inconsistency. The Koran says that Islamic government demands a just emir surrounded by a pious clergy, and that all forms of monetary interest constitute the sin of usury. Meanwhile, modern Muslims get on with their lives telling themselves that such perfection may have existed before and may come again, but for now dreams must wait. Then George W Bush, Condoleezza Rice and others declare that worldwide, America will tolerate no system of government apart from representative democracy. Inadvertently they announce to the Muslim world that America on principle stands between Muslims and their dreams - and so long as there is an America, there will never be true Islamic government.
SJ Masty
London SW1

Oppressed Bin Laden
4th June 2004
I was surprised by Matthew Page's comparison (Letters, June) of Osama bin Laden with Nelson Mandela - "the oppressed are often left with no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor." How had the men, women and children in the 11th September airliners or the twin towers been oppressing Bin Laden?
Stephen Grant
Truro, Cornwall

Voting Europe
4th June 2004
Niall Ferguson (June) mentioned the increase in the UK's voting power under proposed changes in the EU constitution. Prospect readers might be interested in the recent analysis of Polish mathematicians Karol ?Zyczkowski and Wojciech Slomczy´nski. The authors suggest that for each EU citizen to have equal influence, the voting weight of each member state should be proportional to the square root of the population and the decision-making threshold should be 62 per cent of the sum of weights. A specific result within the analysis indicates that moving from the voting rules of the Nice treaty to that of the proposed constitution would increase the combined voting power of the core states (Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg) from 14.9 per cent to 31.2 per cent. Whether one sees this as a positive or negative outcome, it is certainly dramatic. The authors should now turn their attention towards voting systems within the Eurovision song contest.
Mike Towler
University of Plymouth

Paul Broks's atheism
29th May 2004
In August 1900, the veins in 29-year-old Bessie Fenton's arms were slit and she was left to die in Hsui Chou, having been dragged by her heels through the streets. Paul Broks (May), married to Bessie's distant relative, is a scientist and atheist, and believes that nothing remains of Bessie beyond her tragic story. If so, her story is nothing but tragic. Bessie, on the other hand, believed that she would be raised to a better life. If so, her story is not only tragic but also triumphant. In this case, Broks's immersion in the rationalism of clinical neuroscience for 20 years has not only been the backcloth for a great career but also the support for a tragic lack of faith. Bessie would not disapprove of his atheism so much as weep over it.
Norman Geary
Guiyang, China

England unfree
3rd June 2004 How can you possibly say (News & Curiosities, June) that, "The three nations of Britain are increasingly going their own way on public service reform"? While Wales and Scotland can go their own way if they wish, England cannot. Policy for England is decided by British MPs - and recently the votes of MPs from Welsh and Scottish constituencies carried policy in England on foundation hospitals and tuition fees. England is in effect treated as a British colony by the undemocratic, anti-English party ruling at Westminster - except that England as a colony is never to be offered self-government.
Ian Campbell
English Parliament Campaign

House of Lords reform
1st June 2004
I am at a loss to understand why Lords reform (Letters, June) should pose such a problem. Why can the second chamber not be elected on an individual basis? No party sponsorship or funding, no election posters in party colours, only names on the ballot paper. With legislative assemblies, we vote for a legislative programme and perhaps for a general concept of society, and some of us out of tribal loyalty. The quality of the candidate is rarely relevant. But for a non-legislative assembly the need, above all, is for able, critical, and knowledgeable members.
Philip Symmons
Beyries, France

East Asian alliance 1
20th May 2004
As the author of a recent book on Japan-China relations I was taken aback by Eamonn Fingleton's theory (May) of a Japanese-Chinese alliance against the "west," which was based on half-truths and omissions. One may argue that since 1979 Japan has been encouraging China's superpower ambitions (albeit from a very low level), but it is going too far to say that Japan's leaders do so because they prefer a world led by China to one led by the US. Japan's policy of engaging China is based on political and economic incentives, hedged by political and military power balancing, the latter notably based on the bilateral Japan-US security treaty, which has been strengthened since 1996. The Japanese know that an undemocratic Chinese alliance partner will be much harder to stomach than a sometimes overbearing US. A failed policy towards China, Asia and the US would turn Japan into a Chinese alliance partner - a minor moon in a Chinese stellar system.
Reinhard Drifte
Catton, Northumberland

East Asian alliance 2
28th May 2004
In criticising my account of Japan's tacit alliance with China, Stephen Green and his cohorts (Letters, June) make several errors. The most disappointing aspect of their letter was the charge that my theme was racist.
Transparently false charges of this sort have become standard in Japanology in recent decades (as such observers as James Fallows, Pat Choate and Brian McVeigh, among others, can testify). My real crime is of a lesser order: it is merely that, in contrast with my critics, I have lived long enough in east Asia to see through the slanted and often manipulative nonsense printed daily in the local establishment press.
Eamonn Fingleton
Tokyo, Japan

Reply to Schlesinger
14th June 2004
Arthur Schlesinger's remarks (Notes & Curiosities, April) seem to be based on the assumption that the only American historian to have written about Andrew Jackson is Walter Russell Mead. Here is what the leading historian of American populism, Michael Kazin, had to say in 1995 about Jackson and his followers: "The penny press echoed the Jacksonian equation of toughness, maleness and whiteness. For Old Hickory and his disciples, 'manhood' was, above all, a means of self-defence. It signified protection for one's women, family, workmates and nation against 'aristocrats' who conspired with fawning blacks to undermine popular liberty. Territorial expansion into native American lands demonstrated another side of this phenomenon. Jackson's reputation as a foe of the Indians, who scoffed at negotiations and legal formalities, was of immeasurable aid to his political career, especially in the south and west where removal of the 'savages' found overwhelming support."
Jackson's role in the illegal and ruthless deportation of the "civilised tribes" from their ancestral lands is a matter of historical record; and this cult of ruthless action was also applied to foreigners who challenged or disrespected the US.
Nor did Jackson "believe in keeping religion out of politics." On the contrary, his movement was heavily inspired by the evangelical revival then sweeping the south and west. What the Jacksonians objected to was not religion in politics but the domination of wealthy, elitist, traditionalist churches like the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians - a completely different matter.
Hatred of rule by the northeastern elites did lead to a tactical alliance between Jackson's followers in the south and west and the Irish Catholic immigrants, and the Democratic party perpetuated this alliance up to the time of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and beyond. This, however, was an alliance rooted in shared hatred, not mutual affection. Even a hundred years later, in 1928, Al Smith, the Catholic candidate of the Democratic party for president, lost the election largely because he was deserted by the party's southern and western evangelical voters, who refused to vote for a papist.
These points are hardly matters of controversy among serious students of Jackson, his era, and the tradition which he helped to found. Jackson was a great war leader and a remarkable man, but he was also a man of his place and time - the southern frontier of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. This was not a place and time which bred the nice, tolerant, liberal American plaster saints of Schlesinger's national mythology. Anatol Lieven
Washington DC