Sunday, August 19, 2007

India questions

Today I saw a program India Questions on NDTV in which the studio audience was putting up questions to our ex-President APJ Kalam. Two points were raised which set me thinking.

First one was that whether making a bomb hampers world peace. My answer is it doesn't. What I feel is that today its all about protecting our country. India simply cannot remain emptyhanded while other nations go about arming themselves. We cannot act all naive and foolishly assume that we'll never be attacked. We have to be prepared for any eventuality. If and when the time comes we should be able to defend our country. We know from 100 years of experience how difficult regaining lost freedom is. If giving up weapons amounted to world peace then why haven't countries dissolved their armed forces as well?

Another question that was asked was if he believed in death sentence. Kalam said he didn't think that he had the right to take away someone's life and so was against it. But then what about other forms of punishment? In view of Kalam's philosophy what right does one human (a judge) have to put another human (a criminal) behind bars for 14 years? On the flip side wouldn't crime thrive and terror reign supreme if we didn't have any policing and judicial system? Like Daddy said, when I raised these points before him, these questions have always struck us men and women but in all these years we haven't been able to come up with conclusive answers to them.

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