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As a student myself of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, what I understood as student politics was to elect student representatives to run the students’ welfare matters of the concerned institutions like colleges and universities.
   These elected student bodies e.g. DUCSU, RUCSU etc. would however not be apolitical to the issues facing the nation.
   As a result, the general students under their own student leaders have had always been in the forefront of all national movements to raise public awareness against false propaganda and the atrocious activities of the state power of the time.
   Whenever the aspirations of the people, the students and political party(s) came in cohesion, the movement became successful and the state powers had to succumb.
   The readers are well aware of many such successful student movements.
   As I understand, there has never been a DUCSU election since 1984, hence, the student politics, in effect, is under a ‘Ban’ of some sort. What is required is to arrange lifting of this ‘Ban’ and motivate political parties not to spread their tentacles of party politics into the student bodies.
   Shahin Wali
   Dhanmondi, Dhaka

The army chief Moyeen U Ahmed gave a significant speech on the occasion of the celebration of the Independence Day last month, in which he mentioned about the trial of the war criminals and traitors of 1971. We congratulate him for that but a bit cautiously. It is a Herculean job.
   The nation will always remember the present caretaker government if they start the process of trying the war criminals as early as possible.
   Mohammad A Karim
   Australia

True, Sri Lankans deserve applause for being able to reach the finals to bravely face the yellow pigeons, the Australians. The Australians continued to fly very high in the sky, whereas the Sri Lankans had to retreat having made good innings (crossing 200 mark in 38-over range was indeed remarkable against the all powerful Australians.). However, the statements by Lankan captain Jayawardene, like ‘the Sri Lankans have won the tournament’ and ‘unless the Australians are out of race, other teams cannot hope to win the world cup’ are not in good taste.
   The Australians played brilliantly right from the beginning and they lost none of the matches in the tournament and have proven to be the masters of world cricket. In fact, the Australians won even the final match in real style when Adam Gilchrist slammed 149 in just 104 balls at supersonic speed and, if not caught while trying for another sixer, he would have set some world record as well.
   Dr Abdul Ruff Colachal
   JNU, New Delhi