Kindly permit me some space for a few questions and thoughts in response to one of the letters entitled 'dark shadows over free flow of ideas' which I saw recently in your well informed paper.

While we all have our rights to our opinions and I respect the opinions of the writer, I want to ask him a basic question " If I'm the victim of rape, am I supposed to say thank you to the rapist, and live my life to say well I am now different, so I have to adopt a new position, and make no efforts to reform myself and adhere to my own beliefs and that of my parents or grandparents, or would I be allowed to put that behind me and move on with life in a way I see best conforming to my own beliefs and probably those of my parents, foreparents etc?'

Today the world is getting smaller and there is no homogenous society anymore. It does not mean that we all have to amalgamate and become one and ignore our roots and heritage. Canada is a good example, it is a multicultural country and respects every culture and allows each group the freedom to do so. It is an example of unity in diversity. Canada is much richer today because of its multicultural stance.

Referring to the fact that today we do not speak the language of our foreparents so we should not worship in foreign language is baseless because all our religious prayers are translated in English and if we want we could find the meanings of what we say in 'foreign language'.

One people, one destiny should not mean that we must now have one cook-up rice culture but rather one people with one destiny with unity in diversity.

A Kumar