Yunus Emre

Sir, It was with particular satisfaction that I noticed the valuable contribution your have made for the success of our recent function on the occasion of the 750th anniversary of the Turkish poet. Yunus Emre (The Dally Star, Dec 5).

I am confident that our cooperation will further develop in the coming days.

Ahmet Ermtsoglu Ambassador of Turkey. Dhaka.

Enfant Terrible

Sir, My sincere thanks to you for publishing " Columbus protestors warm-up for the 500th anniversary." It was Indeed invigorating to hear the American-Indian viewpoint and reactions to the so-called discovery of America. Today we know that earlier to Columbus, Arabs, Vikings and Pheniclans had visited the so-called New World. That the earlier groups namely the Pheniclans, Vikings and Arabs had friendly contacts with the great cultures and civilizations of that land and as traders, sea-farers and colonizers had benefitted both the New World and the Old World.

I was going through the

manuscript of my anthropological treaties "The Forgotten Americans". Here In my first chapter I have summed up Christopher Columbus and the misdeed he committed to humanity while crushing the Caribbean Seas with the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria.

The cannon shot that thundered from the Pinta's deck was not really the boom from a great discoverer's ship. For Its great Impact was something similar to the destruction wrought by unclear war-heads over Nagasaki and Hiroshima, this century.

In that terrible war of negations Euro-Americans finally won. But in the final analysts, the Forgotton Americans, the original inhabitants of the great-continent, have won; for modern man is merely echoing theories and concepts of Americas pre-Columbus past.

History's most diabolic Operation genocide had taken Its final toll in the land of the dispossessed. A whole new world had been discovered, conquered and conveniently forgotton. A whole new world which has given the modern space-age man all the latest conceptions .... from tomatoes, potatoes, cigarettes, morphine. malaria drugs to brain surgery, nuclear energy, the

Republic, the United Nations, Communes and Co-operatives. I

It would not be out of place to mention here that the present American Republic with its Upper and Lower House systems are ideas borrowed from the Iroquiou Indians except that then women controlled the power structure.

It is an irony that modern man’s United Nations Is built on the same site as that of the Iroquloun United Nations of six Indian tribes — the Mohawks. Sencea. Oneida. Quandago. Cayanga and Tuscarora. The League of the Iroquious was created around the time Columbus was cruising among the lush Islands of the Caribbean. When white men came into the Iroquious’ country early in the sixteenth century, the League of the Iroquious was already more than a century old.

I, a great admirer of preColumbus America, am really glad that at long last the great Indigenous people of America are at least protesting against the great 'Enfant Terrible' of history.

Bilciuls Afzal

fhiHer Road. Dhaka.