Pankaj Mishra (Narendra Modi the divisive manipulator, 9 November) betrays his extreme views. Modi is a democratically elected prime minister of the world’s largest democracy. Mishra and many like him have never come to terms with it. He claims that non-resident Indians, denied full dignity in a white man’s world, have hitched their low self-esteem to Modi mania. One wonders what Pankaj is doing in the white man’s land he despises. He should be in India challenging Modi, rather than criticising from the comfort of the UK.
Nitin Mehta
London
More views on Narendra Modi’s visit here
• The nation is now richer by owning a Van Dyck painting (Going public, 10 November). This gift defrays £2.4m of the Duke of Northumberland’s inheritance tax bill. Thanks Duke. Actually, we’d rather have had the money. It would have stretched a long way in struggling NHS hospitals. It could have built loads of new homes. Tax is levied to support the infrastructure of our society, to make it a good place to live; and the most privileged are, reasonably, asked to contribute proportionately more.
Barbara Crowther
Leamington, Warwickshire
• TP Leary (Letters, 7 November) scorns Lewes’s claim to be the biggest 5 November event in the world with the question, how many other countries celebrate Guy Fawkes? The answer is Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the Caribbean. It’s a night whose stand for democracy over terror is seeing it win back adherence over the bland commercialism of Halloween.
Leo Schulz
London
• My Bayko building set in the 1930s gave me hours of enjoyment (Letters, 11 November). But from a safety point of view, the board with holes into which were slotted metal rods was lethal if left on a floor with children running around. It had to evolve into something safer.
Shirley Reed
Stanley, Durham
• Alan Evans (Letters, 9 November) seems to suggest totally terminating the two-word term thread. How about just rowing back instead?
Chris Baker
Minety, Wiltshire
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