I refer to your story headlined Why many Indian Malaysians are backward .

The one-paragraph preview to the story which appeared on the malaysiakini's front-page states, amongst other things that '... the community's inherent cultural attitude' is a factor in the Malaysian Indian community's backwardness.

I take issue with this assertion that inherent cultural attitudes are a factor simply because there is not any evidence to back this assertion, which appears racist, self-defeating, and pandering to the local Malaysian perception of the role of Indians in the Malaysian scheme of things.

That there is not any evidence for the assertion that inherent cultural attitudes are a factor is proven very simply by looking at the success Indians in all parts the world and from every possible racial sub-class have enjoyed.

In fact, there is much evidence to the contrary:

'According to Anna Lee Saxenian - an associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who did a study of Silicon Valley's new immigrant entrepreneurs - of an estimated 2,000 start ups, more than 40 percent are run by Indians.

'Thus, from free e-mail guru Sabeer Bhatia of Hotmail - who sold the company to Microsoft for US$400 million - to the four Indian founders of Junglee, an Internet browser acquired by Amazon.com for US$180 million, the list of Silicon Valley Indians reads like is a Who's Who of the Internet.' ( Economic Times , Feb 13, 2002)

To give you but a few examples, over time and space:

Rabindranath Tagore - Nobel Prize for Literature, early 1900s

S Ramanujam - made member of the Royal Society for contributions to mathematics, early 1900s

S Chandreshaker - Nobel Prize, Physics in the 90s for discovery of black holes in the 20s

The Hinduja brothers - seventh richest in the UK currently

Sabeer Bhatia - founder of Hotmail, now venture capitalist

Kalpana Chowla - NASA astronaut, trained at the Universities of Punjab and Texas

Arundathi Roy - winner, Booker Prize for Literature

Hari Harilehla - Hong Kong-based billionaire with interests in property etc.

Apart from the above, there are at present men and women from India and of Indian descent who hold positions of authority in multinationals around the world. Dr Visu Sinnadurai, formerly of the Malaysian High Court, now senior judicial officer at the World Bank is one example.

Param Cumaraswamy former UN special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers is another. Look at banks like Duetche, Citibank, HSBC and the like and there too, you will find Indians from all parts of the world holding very senior positions.

Therefore, it would appear that backwardness among Indians is a Malaysian phenomenon. Should not then some enquiry be made into whether there are structural or institutional issues that keep Indians trapped in economic circumstances that Indians in any other part of the world would find quite puzzling, especially when attributed to cultural traits.

To put it quite plainly in the language of the my adopted country, it is nonsense to talk of Indians being unable to perform economically like the Chinese, or in other way like the Malays because of 'cultural traits'.