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August 3, 2000, Chandigarh, India   
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Lashkar kills Hizb’s script IN a matter of hours, the swirling waters of the Sutlej have all but crippled Himachal Pradesh. The river has left a trail of destruction over a 200-km course, from Namgya in Kinnaur to Tatapani in Mandi district. A personal setback |
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Autonomy — Pakistan style by G. Parthasarathy ON June 12 last year, Mr Sartaj Aziz, a soft spoken and well-known economist, landed in Delhi with an impossible mission. Aziz, then Foreign Minister in the Nawaz Sharif Cabinet, was sent to Delhi at the height of the Kargil conflict to plead Pakistan’s good intentions. Hiroshima: heart-rending experiences
Face in the mirror
by Amrik Singh I might have strayed into teaching like thousands of others. But what prompted me to stay on in teaching was an experience I had just four months after joining this profession. I had resigned my job in the college where I was first appointed and decided to join another college in another town. Apart from being my old alma mater, it had the advantage of being nearer Lahore. This was something that I valued and cherished.
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Lashkar kills Hizb’s script THE Kashmir problem is essentially a creation of those who want to take credit for solving it. The proliferation of militant groups claiming to represent the voiceless people of the benighted region is actually responsible for complicating an already difficult issue. The attack on the Amarnath-bound pilgrims near Pahalgam on Tuesday would have come as a surprise to only those who mistakenly believed that the declaration of ceasefire by the Hizbul Mujahideen would help solve the Kashmir tangle in double quick time. A day before the Pahalgam incident the Lashkar-e-Toiba activists attacked an Army transit camp near Bandipore and killed seven soldiers. On Wednesday the militants struck again, at six different places, and killed over 80 persons, as if to teach the Hizbul Mujahideen activists a lesson for having betrayed the collective cause of spreading mindless terror in Kashmir. They believe that the reckless killing of even ordinary people, who have no say in deciding the future of Kashmir or influencing official policy on the issue, is necessary for promoting their cause. It is evident that there are one player too many than is necessary for giving peace a chance to strike roots again in the blood spattered valley. Some recent developments should leave no room for doubt that every player wants to hog the limelight, mostly through adopting foul means, rather than selflessly help restore peace in Kashmir. Both Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Home Minister L. K. Advani received deserved praise for taking the initiative of announcing the decision to hold talks with the leaders of the All-Party Hurriyat Conference. They, however, made the tactical blunder of not taking Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah into their confidence before making the announcement. It was like writing Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark. Dr Abdullah forced himself into the frame through having the autonomy resolution passed by the state assembly. The Hurriyat receded into the background. However, the Hizbul Mujahideen's initiative forced even Dr Abdullah to move away from the spotlight. For once the Central leaders' response to the offer of talks without any pre-conditions, by a separatist organisation, for solving the Kashmir tangle was politically correct. They did not indulge in the usual rhetoric of " holding talks within the framework of the Constitution". They also did not lose sight of the fact that getting at least one Pakistan-based militant outfit interested in talking peace was more important than standing on prestige. But the latest incidents of senseless killings have messed up the Kashmir script beyond recognition. Who could have imagined that the commander of a hardcore outfit like the Hizbul Mujahideen, Mr Abdul Majid Dar, would actually condemn the dastardly attack on the yatris. He has been quoted as having said that "those responsible (for the killings) have done an inhuman act... this is condemnable". Nevertheless, the stepping up of the scale of violence in the valley by those opposed to the Hizb's line on Kashmir was entirely expected. The Harkat-ul-Ansar — which has reinvented itself as Harkat-ul-Mujahideen after the USA declared it a terrorist organisation — has yet to sign the post-Hizb ceasefire "Kashmir register" with the blood of innocent people. It may actually decide not to join the action for the time being because the Lashkar on its own seems to have enough fire power for destroying the Hizb's unthinkable dream of solving the Kashmir problem through dialogue with India. The latest turn of events has indeed put a question mark over the proposed talks between the Hizb leaders and the Centre's nominees for evolving a "please-all" Kashmir package. It is evident that unless all the militant outfits agree to speak in one voice, it would be futile to hope for peace to return to the land which was indeed a paradise on earth once upon a time. |
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Flood fury in HP IN a matter of hours, the swirling waters of the Sutlej have all but crippled Himachal Pradesh. The river has left a trail of destruction over a 200-km course, from Namgya in Kinnaur to Tatapani in Mandi district. Over 150 lives are believed to have been lost, while reports from some of the interior areas are yet to come in. Property worth over Rs 1,000 crore has been destroyed. Relief operations are difficult to launch because almost all bridges have been washed away. Several hydroelectric projects have suffered extensive damage. Most subdivisions and blocks of Kinnaur are cut off not only from the rest of the world but also from each other. One can only hope and pray that there is no more rain in the catchment area, otherwise the condition of those who have survived the flood will worsen. There is no certainty even about the cause of the flash flood. Initial reports spoke about a cloudburst in the Kinnaur area. Since the Spiti river is flowing normally and only the Sutlej is on the rampage, it seems that the rain or cloudburst occurred in Tibet. The Dalai Lama has been protesting against a large-scale transfer of human population from China to his home country. Denudation has also been going on there. Any of these factors might have precipitated the flood. The fragile ecology of the Tibetan range is hardly in a position to cope with such flagrant violations. Another theory suggests that the river water might have got blocked in Tibet some time ago and when the blockade lifted, the swirling waters might have entered India with all the fury of the elements, causing untold damage. A similar blockade had developed in the Sutlej a few years ago. Himachal Pradesh has had to suffer flash floods and cloudbursts in the past also. But the casualty figure is exceptionally high this time. With the increasing population pressure, many human settlements have come up precariously close to the riverbed. When the water rises all of a sudden, there is little scope for escape. Many of the rivers in the hills look deceptively harmless when these are flowing serenely. During the rainy season, they turn into roaring demons in a matter of minutes, suddenly expanding to many times their normal size and destroying everything that comes in the way. New power projects and cement plants, etc, add to the problem. The debris indiscriminately thrown into the rivers despite the ban aggravates the problem of siltation. This makes the rivers spread out and inundate large areas during the monsoon. The mindless cutting of trees is another contributory factor. Of late, another alarming development has been noticed. Many of the roads are made very close to the rivers. During the floods, these roads are quickly swallowed, making the task of relief and rescue very difficult. Certain sections of the vital Hindustan-Tibet road are particularly vulnerable. Their realignment may become necessary. But all that is for the future. Right now, what Himachal Pradesh needs in its hour of crisis is moral as well as monetary support from the entire nation. Its financial position, which has been precarious even during the best of times, may worsen further following the Sutlej attack. |
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A personal setback IT is the moment of truth for the ruling Akali Dal and Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal. He has to decide during the next three days whether to stay on in the NDA or walk out. The vote on the Uttaranchal by including Udham Singh Nagar district and the note by the Defence Minister have hurt the Akalis. Mr Badal’s desperate last minute move to stall the introduction of the Bill and his angry reaction to the note recommending the extension of the new state to Udham Singh Nagar are a reflection of the popular mood. The Chief Minister is not comfortable with hawkish thoughts, but will now have no choice but to adopt a hard line. The Tohra-led faction has termed his failure to keep the Sikh landlords-dominated district outside the new state as “ghaddari”, which is merely the opening shot in a bitter war of words. The Congress MPs from Punjab walked out of the Lok Sabha before the voice vote despite the party’s central leadership supporting the creation of the hill state in the present form. They have also come down heavily on the Akali Dal. This will force Mr Badal’s hands; and then there is his old warning to the NDA that he would snap ties with the NDA if the Centre ignored the wishes of the people of the district. The interests of the Sikh landowners in the district are an emotional issue for Punjabis, for whom land is the most coveted form of asset. This is also the reason why the Sikh settlers in Uttar Pradesh enjoy enviable clout with all political parties in the state. It is simply not correct to dismiss their influence as a “purchased commodity”. Seen this way, a tough stand by the Akali Dal at its Sunday meeting is a distinct possibility. It just cannot associate itself with the inclusion of Udham Singh Nagar district in Uttaranchal and the most pointed way to express its opposition is to pull out of the NDA. Mr Badal will not be comfortable with the idea but then he is not comfortable with the boundaries of the new state either. The recommendation of a three-man committee, manufactured by the Union Defence Minister, was a needless provocation. He merely wrote in favour of the U S Nagar district going to the new state and faxed copies to the Chief Ministers of Punjab and UP. He made a mockery of the committee’s visit for an on-the-spot reassessment of the popular feelings. Mr Badal says that an overwhelming majority of the people opposed the inclusion proposal and that seems to be the reality. The committee enabled the Centre twice to postpone the introduction of the Bill and many felt that this time too the same would happen. But the government had set a state-a-day roster and Tuesday was set apart for Uttaranchal. Mr Fernandes obliged with his note the previous evening. Come to think of it, there is no easy solution to the vexed problem unless the BJP leadership is prepared to keep the district in UP. But it cannot since that will antagonise the hills people and rob the party of the near total support there. Electoral politics comes first and specious arguments later. Nor can the Akali Dal abandon the Sikh landowners. The differences between the two parties is structural. What is more, the crisis has erupted at a time when the relation between the two parties is not very happy in Punjab. The full impact of the enlarged hill state is being felt in Punjab. |
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TOUGH REGULATIONS IN HELD KASHMIR ON June 12 last year, Mr Sartaj Aziz, a soft spoken and well-known economist, landed in Delhi with an impossible mission. Aziz, then Foreign Minister in the Nawaz Sharif Cabinet, was sent to Delhi at the height of the Kargil conflict to plead Pakistan’s good intentions. While attempting this, he was required to rigidly adhere to General Musharraf’s brief that with the Pakistan Army occupying the heights of Kargil, no concessions were to be made. Time was to be bought by feigning ignorance about the precise location of the Line of Control and any offer of a ceasefire spurned. Accompanying Mr Aziz’s delegation was a lady journalist from Pakistan known to be close to the Army establishment.The young lady, like her friends in the military establishment, was ecstatic. Talking to her Indian counterparts, she was exultant at the shooting down of two IAF fighters. She claimed that when the Pakistani forces arrived in Kargil an entire Indian brigade had fled. She then went on to proclaim that given the inability of “you Indians” to acclimatise to conditions in the mountains, Kargil was a lost cause for India, which would result in the isolation of our troops in the Siachen and force us out of Kashmir. The young Pakistani lady was like most other Pakistanis, a victim of their own rhetoric, illusions and misinformation. Even as she spoke, armed intruders from the Northern Light Infantry (NLI) were being dislodged from vantage hilltop positions in the Batalik sector. By the end of June, General Musharraf told the US CENTCOM Commander, Gen Anthony Zinni, that he was prepared to pull out of the Kargil heights, having realised that militarily the Kargil adventure had become a disaster. Any second thoughts on this score were effectively scotched, when the Indian Army assaulted and took Tiger Hill on the night of July 3-4, ending the impediments posed to communications along the Srinagar-Leh highway. How has the Pakistan Army survived this disaster and emerged relatively unscathed domestically? The reasons are quite simple. The troops which bravely fought and died in Kargil were not from Punjab but from the remote “Northern Areas” of Pakistan. Most Pakistanis are not aware even today of the casualties or the international humiliation their country suffered. A veil of secrecy has shrouded the entire episode, with the Army adamantly refusing an independent enquiry. The growing resentment in Baltistan and Gilgit, known as the “Northern Areas”, came into focus following the Kargil conflict. Many Indians were shocked when the Pakistan Army refused to accept back the bodies of over 250 soldiers of the Northern Light Infantry, who were from Gilgit and Baltistan. This was in stark contrast to the persistent efforts made by the military leadership to secure the return of the body of Captain Taimur Malik, who was killed on June 27. Malik hailed from an influential family in Punjab. Reports now emerging from Pakistan indicate that apart from such callous behaviour the Pakistan Army High Command surreptitiously sent back the bodies of over 500 of their war dead at night at the height of the conflict in June, 1999, to their homes in the Northern Areas. The bodies were brought back and buried, without any military honours, clad in the same civilian attire that NLI soldiers had been ordered to wear at the heights of Kargil. Punjabi reinforcements deliberately delayed reaching Kargil, as they felt that they were not acclimatised for high altitude warfare. It is, therefore, not surprising that the Punjabi-dominated Pakistani Officer-Corps mistakenly believed that unacclimatised Indian infantry, drawn predominantly from the plains, would not be able to retake the Kargil heights. Demonstrations against the callousness of the Pakistan Army high command were ruthlessly suppressed, with their leaders being jailed for sedition. These independent reports give credence to Mr Nawaz Sharif’s assertion that the Pakistan Army’s ill thought-out adventure in Kargil resulted in more casualties than those the country suffered during the entire 1965 conflict. The behaviour of the Pakistan armed forces towards the non-Punjabi sections of the people has been marked by a sense of arrogance and superiority throughout the country’s history.The reasons for Bengali alienation leading to the emergence of an independent Bangladesh are by now well known. There is now growing recognition that resentment is brewing in Sind, Baluchistan, NWFP and the Seraiki-speaking areas of Punjab against Punjabi domination. Only a few days ago, the Pakistan Oppressed People’s Movement (POONM), comprising 14 non-Punjabi nationalist political parties and groups rejected “attempts to deny and subvert the historic existence of five nations and their homelands that comprise today’s Pakistan”. The POONM demanded that the country should develop a “meaningful defence capability” and cut spending on the Punjabi-dominated armed forces by 50 per cent. While a Provincial Chief Minister in Pakistan does not even have the powers to appoint his own Chief Secretary or Chief of Police, the situation is even worse in PoK, known rather incongruously as “Azad” Kashmir. Just how “Azad” is “Azad Kashmir”? A group of Indian correspondents recently taken on a conducted tour to Muzaffarabad could not help noticing the stifling presence of the Pakistan Army everywhere they went. They even met the so-called “Prime Minister” there — an individual who wields about as much powers as a Zila Parishad Chairman in India. Unlike the Indian Zila Parishad Chairman he does, however, pretend to have an international role as a member of official Pakistani delegations to forums like the OIC. PoK is governed by a 15-member council, with seven non-Kashmiri members. The Administration, in real terms, is in the hands of the Federal Minister for Kashmir Affairs and his bureaucrats. Prior approval of Islamabad is required for all legislation and enactment of statutory rules, appointments, public property, budget, loans, taxes, internal security and civil supplies. No member of the “Legislative Assembly” of PoK is allowed to call for independence for Kashmir, as his oath of office requires him to swear loyalty to the accession of J&K to Pakistan. There are stringent regulations in PoK which debar anyone from criticising the “ideology of Pakistan”, questioning the accession of Kashmir to Pakistan or even voicing criticism of the armed forces of Pakistan and any human rights violations by them. Advocating the reunification of PoK, Gilgit and Baltistan with Jammu and Kashmir to restore the pre-1947 position, or criticism of the partition of India are regarded as grave offences. Is it any surprise then that an organisation like the JKLF, which is broadly secular and popular is shunned by the ISI while funds, arms and logistical support are channelled essentially to fundamentalist outfits dominated by non-Kashmiris like the Lashkar-e-Toyiba or the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen? While there is considerable introspection in India about the alleged strong-arm methods used by the National Conference to secure an unexpectedly large electoral victory in 1987, there are no such qualms of conscience when “elections” are held in PoK. Twelve of the 40 seats in the “Legislative Assembly” are distributed all over Pakistan for “refugees” from J&K. It is widely acknowledged that elections to these seats are regularly rigged and that the electorate for these seats fraudulently includes a large number of non-Kashmiris. The constitutional plight of the people of the Northern Areas is even more pathetic than that of their kin in PoK. While Interim Prime Minister Moeen Qureshi proposed a representative set-up with an elected legislature in 1994, Ms Benazir Bhutto subsequently insisted on retaining all effective powers with the Federal Ministry of Kashmir Affairs through an Islamabad-appointed Chief Secretary. The Northern Areas Council was not given any legislative, financial or administrative powers. A decision by Pakistan’s Supreme Court in March, 1999, directing that legislative and administrative powers should be granted to the Northern Areas Council remains unimplemented. General Musharraf is determined not to allow any erosion in the powers of the Pakistan armed forces even if there is a return to civilian rule. He is indicating that he does plan to devolve more powers to the districts. But anyone with even a modicum of political sense realises that this is a ploy to deny any provincial autonomy and retain effective powers with the military-mullah combine in Punjab. The Kargil conflict resulted in Pakistan being labelled internationally as an irresponsible country. The subsequent military takeover has only confirmed international misgivings about the inherent fragility of that country’s polity. The constant invocation of “Jehad” has reinforced that image. It is now the appropriate time for us to ensure that both the issue of greater devolution of powers to the states and any grievances in the minds of the people of Jammu and Kashmir are imaginatively addressed to. Given the way people in PoK and the Northern Areas have been treated, Pakistan cannot credibly claim to be a champion of Kashmiri causes. |
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Hiroshima: heart-rending experiences ON August 6 the world will observe yet another Hiroshima Day. Repetitive observance of the anniversary of this shattering experience in human history has not deflected man from the path of nuclear insanity. With the passage of time, memory fades and wounds heal, but lessons are seldom learnt. Today we are precariously perched atop a nuclear stockpile whose destructive power is sufficient to blow up the planet Earth 50 times over. And yet there is no genuine move towards nuclear disarmament. Moreover, compounding the craziness are the nuclear threshold States, waiting in the wings to lend further momentum to the lemming-like drive towards self-annihilation. Unless the five recognised nuclear powers announce a time-bound programme to roll back their deadly arsenals, the CTBT will remain an unmitigated farce. Ever since the USA conducted the first nuclear test in Almogarda, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945, the world’s nuclear haves have conducted 2,045 tests to strengthen their arsenals. The breakup: the USA 1,030, the former Soviet Union 715; France 210; Britain 45 and China 45. There exist today about 5,000 nuclear weapons, the combined explosive power of which is estimated to be equivalent to that of more than one million Hiroshima bombs or some 14 billion tonnes of TNT, which represents more than three tonnes for every man, woman and child. What I saw and heard at Hiroshima left a distressing impression that the release of an atom bomb on the city by US bomber Enola Gay at 8.15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, was perhaps the blackest deed in the annals of human conflict. My guide asserted that within seconds of the explosion of the atom bomb 580 metres above the ground 10,000 people died instantaneously and 90 per cent of all the buildings were destroyed, making the city look like a scorched plain. Sceptical, I checked up with the city government officials. They not only supported this assertion but also added that actually the death toll due to the bomb was nearly 14 times higher, rising to approximately 1,40,000 before the end of December, 1945. They also pointed out that the second atom bomb attack on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, caused the death of another 70,000 people. Hiroshima has been rebuilt into a flourishing metropolitan centre. Nonetheless, visits to A-Bomb Hospital and A-Bomb Alley, both in the heart of the city, were heart-rending experiences. Reports say that A-Bomb Hospital still has a number of old survivors, most of them teetering on the brink of demise. The day I visited the Peace Memorial Museum was not Hiroshima Day, but still the portals, corridors and halls were thronged by visitors, both Japanese and foreigners. Among the exhibits on display were horrendous photographs of death and devastation: shadow on a stone-wall of a victim who simply evaporated in the blast, charred household articles, mangled bicycles, molten roof tiles, etc. But what seemed to attract special attention were clocks and timepieces showing their hands stuck at the time 8.15. We were told that these had melted instantaneously because of the heat produced by the atom bomb explosion, recording the fateful moment, as it were, in perpetuity. On emerging from the chamber of horrors, I happened to meet the daughter of the legendary Albert Schweitzer, winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace. Asked what she felt after having seen the result of the monumental folly of man, she conveyed in a heavy Swiss-German accent that she did not speak English and kept mum. Her silence and a forlon, morose look said it all. The Peace-Memorial Museum occupies the centre of a large complex called the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. The other notable part of this peace complex are the Memorial Cenotaph, Flame of Peace, Children’s Peace Monument and the Atom Bomb Dome. Unveiled on August 6, 1952, the Memorial Cenotaph has at its centre a stone coffin which holds a “Register of A-Bomb Victims”. Every year, on August 6, the names of victims reported by their friends and families to have died of A-Bomb-related diseases are added to the register. The Children’s Peace Monument, also known as the Tower of the Paper Cranes, was inspired by Sadako Sasaki, a vivacious young girl struck down by radiation. Two at the time of the bombing, Sadako was one of many children who developed leukemia after a decade. In the hospital, she folded over a thousand paper canes, using medicine wrapping paper, in the hope that doing so would cure her, but in vain. After Sadako died in October, 1955, the monument was built in 1958. On top of the concrete tower stands the bronze statue of a young girl holding over her head a huge paper crane, symbolising the hope of all children for a peaceful future. The Atom Bomb Dome has been preserved as the building nearest to the point exactly over which the atom bomb exploded. Built in 1915, the prestigious building was christened the Hiroshima Industrial Promotion Hall before it ended up being poignantly called the A-Bomb Dome. Because the force of the atomic blast came from almost directly above, the section of the building under the central dome is still standing, a stark reminder of the destructive streak in man. During the US occupation films and photographs of the destroyed city were confiscated by the Americans. But a long-lost secret copy of a film was shown recently. The two-hour footage is filled with blood-curdling scenes: a baby, its body a mass of burns, writhes in agony, a man with melted ears stands in stunned shock. |
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Middle IN a Greek play, the playwright Euripides reminds Dionysus in the underworld that he had sworn by the gods to take him home. Pat comes the reply: “My tongue it was that swore....” Sure enough it is always the tongue that swears but at the same time, it also reveals the state of one’s mind. The street-smart persons never bother to understand the implications of such a devil-may-care attitude to life. They eat their words at the slightest indication of some gain to them. Someone may drift for sometime on the surge of people’s confidence but before long he heads towards the creek of disbelief. When it is repeated. “so your promise is pucca”, it means the other person has already lost his credibility. I think the highest praise is bestowed on someone when it is remarked: “He would do the necessary because he has said so.” On the contrary, it is the greatest slur on the character of a person when someone says: “I have no idea whether he would do what he has promised to do.” For petty gains, people betray each other. They do all this in the blink of an eye with a straight face. No indication of any regret or remorse or apology. These habitual offenders cannot be redeemed from the quicksands of double-talk. Not that duality takes the shape of their second nature, rather it assumes a formidable form that defies the dictates of mother nature. They consider themselves clever persons and they go on hoodwinking others with sleight of hand. A time, however, comes when they vanish from the scene even without a whimper. The erosion of faith, all the more marked in the recent times, is no less than calamity for the mankind. It may be the result of mass culture that aims at experiencing the fleeting sensual pleasures even at the risk of losing the abiding joys of life. Whatever is palatable and attractive is gobbled up, literally or metaphorically. Then the dizzy head is put on a platter and placed at the altar of consumerism. There is no denying the fact. “For tomorrow you die” but the memory of one’s reputation never dies, at least not so easily. The situation becomes funny when a person goes to the mirror in search of his face but finds someone else there. He is bamboozled as to how he has to face a stranger in his own mirror. The stranger, of course, is without any mask and this odd thing poses a problem. Suddenly the realisation comes that the unsuspecting person whom one had left, a long time ago, at the crossroads of time is alive and demanding. Of course, he is not demanding his pound of flesh, nor is he asking for retreat to the precincts of the old self. He is now face to face and the sudden encounter is an invitation for a duel on the outskirts of Kurukshetra. When the times change fast, the humans are swept off their feet. In that state of nothingness, the mind assumes the form of a balloon, ever adrift but settling nowhere. Lack of faith leads to suspicion, not merely of others but also of one’s own self. Doubt and suspicion are perpetually there — ‘still coupled and inseparable’. With the passage of time, the inner self shrinks and the mind refuses to spell out options. The door is shut to the open spaces of correct behaviour, resulting in the mind’s sojourn in the wilderness. The mirror is always there, hung in the corridors of uprightness, but where is the face that has receded to “the back of beyond.” |
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Of Life Sublime I might have strayed into teaching like thousands of others. But what prompted me to stay on in teaching was an experience I had just four months after joining this profession. I had resigned my job in the college where I was first appointed and decided to join another college in another town. Apart from being my old alma mater, it had the advantage of being nearer Lahore. This was something that I valued and cherished. Almost half the strength of that small college — something like 400 students — turned up to give me a farewell at the railway station which was not too far from the college. This moved me deeply. If students, some of whom I had not even taught, showed me such regard and affection as to come and see me off after a contact of only four months, it would be ungrateful of me to break such a lovely link. I have written about this incident in a book entitled 'On Being a Teacher' and do not wish to repeat the story. As I reflect over my continuing contact with students and try to analyse the close bonds that I have developed with scores of them, I come to the conclusion that affection begets affection. More or less instinctively, I have always cared for my students. This, in turn, has prompted them to act accordingly. If any one wanted help, I was always prepared to extend it. If any one was in distress, and this happens more often than quite a number of teachers realise, I was always prepared to do whatever I could. At the root of it lies one simple fact. Students, whether young or old, are to be treated as persons who can think and decide for themselves. To treat them as juniors, as most teachers do, is not right. When students are treated as persons who are independent and autonomous in their own right, this draws the best out of them. It also enables them to function with a sense of responsibility. And that is precisely what ought to happen. In the beginning, when one is young, the gap between the teacher and the students is rather small. As one gets older, the age gap begins to increase. In a few years, one can even look upon them as one's children and that is the manner in which one has to deal with young students. In this connection, I recall an incident which occurred, not too many years ago, when I was travelling in a train. At a railway station, a uniformed Army officer came up to me and asked me if I was Amrik Singh. When I answered in the affirmative, he introduced himself as Col. X. According to him, he had been my student more than 20 years ago. There was nothing surprising in the fact that I could not recall his name. This happens with almost all teachers. But as we talked and he mentioned his name, everything came back to me. He was the goalkeeper in the college hockey team. In the third year, it was his turn to be made the captain. But that did not happen. One day when I found him looking a little lost, I asked him the reason for it and he told me that he was not being given his due. "What do you mean by that"? I asked. His answer was that being the seniormost member of the team, it was his right to be the captain but he was not being given his due status. I undertook to enquire and get back to him. The person in charge of the hockey team happened to be an old student of mine. When I asked him why that particular student was being passed over, he explained along these lines. "Of course, he is the seniormost, and as such should have been made the captain. But there is a problem. He plays as the goalkeeper. This means that he is unable to leave the goal and move forward on the playground. The captain has often to tell the players what to do, or what not to do, when the game is in progress. This function he cannot perform and that is why we have appointed the number two person as the captain." This made sense to me and I put it in so many words to the student but he was not convinced. Evidently he was not ready to accept an argument which went against him. However he appreciated the fact that I had spoken on his behalf. I had forgotten about it till, towards the end of the year, he came to me one day and said, 'Sir, I have been selected for the Military Academy and will be joining the Army shortly." I wished him good luck and that was that. That was the last I had seen of him and now, 20 odd years later, I had run into him again. As we talked, everything came back to me. On his part, he had lived with this feeling of discrimi-nation against him all these years. While he appreciated the fact that I remembered the whole incident, the hurt was still there. He got down at the next railway station and I have not seen him again. But he taught me one lesson which I had taken more than 20 years to learn, somewhat tentatively. If a student, who is invariably in a somewhat disadvantaged position, feels that something unfair is being done to him, he does not always complain. But he does not forget it either. On my part, I have always tried to be fair in my dealings with my students and this student had appreciated this fact. But there was one thing that I had not realised till I interacted with him on this occasion. Any unfair treatment continues to bug the student. Very few of them choose to forgive the teacher who inflicts pain on them. Whether this is right or wrong is another matter, but the fact remains that students do not easily forget any wrong done to them. Though I was dimly aware of it, it was this chance meeting with an old student which reinforced what I had vaguely known: never be unfair to a student. Who says that it is only the teachers who teach? Sometimes, a student also acts as one's teacher. The writer is a former Vice-Chancellor, Punjabi University, Patiala. |
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Spiritual Nuggets Man stands between the visible and the invisible world. Our ordinary level of consciousness is not the highest form or the sole mode of experience possible to man. To get at the inner experience we must abstract from the outer. We must get away from the tumult of sense impressions, the riot of thoughts, the surging of emotions, the throb of desires. —S Radhakrishnan, Religion *** Zeal, happiness, hope, self-reliance, self-respect and large-heartedness are signs of life; lack of interest, sadness, worries, despair, fear and a weak and broken heart — all these point towards death. A man having such negative emotions might breathe like a pair of bellows but his existence in this world is useless .... Contrary to this, there are those who continue living even after their physical departure from this world. — Sudarshan Kumar Biala, *** Man is not only a finite being. He is infinite as well. As the image of God he is potentially divine and inherently pure. He is the combination of the macrocosmic and microcosmic forces. What he needs is self-discovery and self-realisation. — I.C. Sharma, Cayce, Karma and Reincarnation, Chapter 9 *** Why are you frightened of being alone? Because you are faced with yourself as you are and you find that you are empty, dull, stupid, ugly, guilty and anxious — a petty, shoddy, secondhand entity. Face the fact; look at it, do not run away from it. the moment you run away fear begins. —J. Krishnamurti, *** When you send rain upon the earth, — Prashna Upanishad, II, 10 |
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