A letter laced with lies, ignorance

This mail is in response to the ill-ignorant piece of opinion by Kshirasagara Balaji Rao from Hyderabad whose opinion was published in The Hans India on November 24 with the heading ‘Death of US visitor shocking’.

The reader who wrote this to you is ignorant of many facts and truth.

1. First of all, the American was not a tourist to India. He was an evangelist who came to India for converting endangered tribes.

2. The reader does not know that North Sentinel in the Andaman and Nicobar iis not a ‘tourist place’. It is banned by the GoI from being entering into three miles (4.8kms) around the island.

3. No Indian has any permission to enter the Island and it is prohibited by The Andaman and Nicobar (Protection of Aboriginal Tribes) Regulation Act, 1956 with penal provisions if violated.

4. ‘Athiti Devo Bhava’ is applicable only to those who take our State’s permission to enter into our territory and respect Indian Laws. If this man gives no respect to Indian Laws and enters into a restricted territory which is isolated for all good reasons, then he has to pay for it.

5. This reader K Balaji Rao says the American evangelist allegedly entered North Sentinel region, but ready to blame the 55,000+ years old tribes. They don't subscribe to our laws or anything we call civilised, they are independent and they are free to do anything in their own territory as they don't come out of it.

6. The reader says this incident will bring bad reputation to Indian Tourism but as I put in point 2 above it is not any tourist place.

7. About the reader sympathies with the deceased as we lost a precious life: Who is precious to us or even the world? A 55,000+ years old tribe or a man who becomes threat to that tribe?

Don’t we know that these endangered tribes lack ‘genetic immunity’ and gets infected by exposing to us? All over the world, countries protect such endangered tribes by strict laws. They are more important for the mankind as they are not diluted like us.
Vinod Reddy, Hyderabad