In her article “A literary interlude” (Afternoon, August 28), Tavleen Singh is in all her communal glory. She writes a thousand-word article, on the occasion of the sad passing of Ahmed Faraz, Urdu’s most loved poet during current time. She cherishes her chance meeting with him at New Delhi airport. She extols him for his ghazals that is the rage of the ghazal lovers all over the world. She mentions the names of Ghalib, Mir, Iqbal, Faiz, Saadat Husain Manto, Munshi Prem Chand. It is a tribute to her journalistic integrity that in full commitment to her brand of communal writing, she succeeds in completely avoiding the word Urdu.
The nearest she comes to acknowledge the existence of Urdu as an Indian language, when she writes: It is sad that these wonderful writers are not translated into other Indian languages and their works are not taught in Indian schools. This is at best a backhanded acknowledgement that Urdu is an Indian language.
It is time Tavleen Singh reflected how much damage she has done to the Hindu-Muslim unity of the nation by her warped line of communal writings. It is time she started rebuilding the bridges that had been torpedoed.
Ghulam Muhammed
Mumbai