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Wednesday,
January 16, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
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Time for
better ties with China Digvijay’s
Dalit initiative |
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Low
inflation rate is bad NOT everyone loves a very low inflation rate, now hovering around 2 per cent at the wholesale price level. Government employees are unhappy since it nearly freezes their dearness allowance and this, sociologists say, reduces productivity. Of course, traders hate it as a spoiler of their undeserved profit. The government likes a healthy increase in inflation since it increases its excise revenue, charged as a percentage of the price (ad valoram) and cuts into the repayment of public debt (at 10 per cent inflation today’s Rs 100 will be worth only Rs 90 the next year). Now the RBI has joined the chorus. Its interest is both academic and monetary control, a purely disinterested outlook.
Military
build-up on Indo-Pak border
Rising
above poverty line
‘Spinster’
is just a word Why some
people can’t digest milk
1976, Economics: MILTON FRIEDMAN
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Time for better ties with China CHINESE
Prime Minister Zhu Rongji’s six-day visit to India has a special significance as the world is engaged in a crucial battle against terrorism. The monster has been crushed in Afghanistan and it has begun to feel the heat in Pakistan. If this is all because of the increased American interest in the problem, the Indian diplomatic offensive too has contributed a lot to the on-going anti-terrorism campaign. China will be its indirect beneficiary, and the leadership there realises this. It may now be easier for the communist nation to tame the terrorists in Xianjing province, and no eyebrows would be raised anywhere in the world in the name of human rights. During the recent visit of Pakistan’s military ruler Pervez Musharraf to Beijing the Chinese leadership refused to take sides in the diplomatic war in the subcontinent. The stance is not without meaning. In fact, China has demonstrated that its relations with Pakistan cannot be allowed to hyphenate the ties with India. This point has been stressed again by Mr Zhu, and India has no reason to doubt the Chinese declaration. Media coverage of his visit, unfortunately, does not reflect as much Indian interest in China as it should have been. The dignitary is very much there in this country. He is scheduled to address the captains of Indian industry today. The mistakes made during the past few days can be corrected. Mr Zhu’s visit can be used to prepare the necessary ground for finding an acceptable solution to the border dispute between the two countries. China has shown sympathy with India as a victim of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. There is an ideal setting to settle the differences relating to the Line of Actual Control so that the two regional giants — one communist and the other democratic — are able to give a new direction to the world in economic, diplomatic, strategic and other areas. India’s support for the Tibetan cause has been an irritant in developing relations with China, but gradually it has lost its significance. Business dominates the Chinese agenda today as it is quietly working on a grand plan to grow into an economic super power in the next two decades. In the pursuit of the laudable objective it has fully opened its doors with all kinds of facilities for the foreign investors interested in setting up shop there. All bureaucratic redtapes have been removed. China’s total annual exports stand at $195 billion against India’s mere $44 billion. The size of its economy is much smaller than that of the USA. But by 2020 Beijing expects to have an economy more than double the size of that of America. This is where India has to learn from China. There is no dearth of enterprise in India. Nor is there any shortage of technically qualified manpower in this country. The trouble is that India’s big babus specialise in creating problems for foreign investors, and we have no work culture. Besides this, the state of infrastructure in India is discouraging. The situation in China is altogether different. If the two countries come closer to each other, China can serve as a great source of inspiration for India’s economic advancement. |
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Digvijay’s Dalit initiative POLITICIANS
make promises that they rarely fulfil. They make announcements and take positions on sensitive issues that make the sceptics go to sleep. That is, perhaps, the reason why Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Digvijay Singh did not get the kind of Press that his "new age" agenda for the Dalits deserved. At a two-day conference of Dalit intellectuals and social activists he struck a refreshingly bold note on the issue of Dalit empowerment. Of course, some of the 21-points included in the Bhopal Document have a familiar populist ring to them. However, the Chief Minister and the over 500 participants deserve to be complimented for daring to point out the self-limiting and negative aspects of the policy of reservation. The purpose of the exercise may have been to indirectly influence the outcome of the assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh next month. The Samajwadi Party of Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav in the name of social justice has made populist commitments. The Bahujan Samaj Party led by Ms Mayawati has finetuned its Ambedkarite agenda for bluffing its way to possible victory. Mr Rajnath Singh as Chief Minister of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition gave a new dimension to the exploitation of Dalits by offering reservation within job reservations for the most backward castes. And in the absence of a leader of stature Mr Digvijay Singh has been asked to spearhead Congress campaign in UP. The Dalit conference in Bhopal could have been a clever ploy to offer a new deal to the under-privileged sections of society without inviting the wrath of the Election Commission. Be that as it may, the fact remains that few leaders have had the courage to talk straight on the sensitive issue of reservation of seats for the Dalits. What Mr Digvijay Singh said about the ineffectiveness of the policy of reservation in helping the Dalits break the shackles of economic and social backwardness made a lot of sense. He pointed out that the policy would lose its punch in the near future because the public sector was shrinking. Even if the private sector was made to reserve jobs for the Dalits, it would be able to take care of the economic needs of just 1 per cent of the nearly 17 crore members of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes plus those placed in the backward category by the Mandal Commission. After former Prime Minister V.P. Singh unleashed the Mandal recommendations on the nation few politicians have had the courage to question the element of populism built into the present policy of reservation. In fact, mouthing populist rhetoric in the post-Mandal phase helped the likes of Mr Laloo Prasad Yadav, Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav, Mr Kanshi Ram and others to gain acceptability as the messiahs of the Dalits. Mr Digvijay Singh has taken a huge risk by daring to question the long-term consequences of this policy. It is a different matter that the remedy he has offered too stinks of populism. For instance, providing agriculture land to every Dalit family in the state through a series of impractical measures cannot be expected to make the upper castes lose sleep. However, if the Bhopal Document results in a nationwide meaningful debate on the issue, that in itself would be a major achievement and the credit for which should go to Mr Digvijay Singh. |
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Low inflation rate is bad NOT everyone loves a very low inflation rate, now hovering around 2 per cent at the wholesale price level. Government employees are unhappy since it nearly freezes their dearness allowance and this, sociologists say, reduces productivity. Of course, traders hate it as a spoiler of their undeserved profit. The government likes a healthy increase in inflation since it increases its excise revenue, charged as a percentage of the price (ad valoram) and cuts into the repayment of public debt (at 10 per cent inflation today’s Rs 100 will be worth only Rs 90 the next year). Now the RBI has joined the chorus. Its interest is both academic and monetary control, a purely disinterested outlook. Until now a low inflation rate was considered the best a country can achieve. This was the western mantra to stabilise economic fluctuation. Plus a low unemployment rate. The RBI has shifted its focus to Japan where a very low rate of inflation for a long time has pushed down the interest rate far below the growth rate of the economy, triggering what economists call deflation. Here demand slumps, investment vanishes and bank credit is both unwanted and unprofitable. Banks face potential failure, paying higher interests on deposits and earning much less on loans. This is the lesson that Japan holds for the entire world. The interest rate in that country is nearly zero, fashioned when it was in a break-neck speed to industrialise and export. The inflation rate is less than 1 per cent since rice producers are highly subsidised and other items are virtually banned from other countries. There is also the nationalist feeling at play. The RBI in its annual report on currency and finance has diagnosed the symptoms but its recipe is full of contradictions. It wants the central government to pump in more money into the system to increase demand. But it also says that “pump priming” will have lasting negative effects. Largescale infusion of money may irretrievably upset the present equilibrium and bring back the old regime of high inflation and low growth. In a questionable academic exercise, the RBI says that a 1 per cent decrease in the inflation rate results in two percentage points drop in the economic growth rate. It believes that the ideal inflation rate is 5 per cent and hence the growth rate is dwarfed by 6 per cent. The central bank is not clear how to nudge up the inflation rate. But it is very clear that the present low rate is not something to gloat over. It would like the government to reduce the current account deficit, which is way above the budgeted limit. One report, attributed to official sources, says that the most hopeful estimate is that the fiscal deficit would be 5.7 per cent of the GDP as against the estimate of 4.7 per cent. This is frightening since it will suck in money which ought to go for investment. The RBI did not have time to ponder over this ticklish issue. |
Military build-up on Indo-Pak border WHEN pressed by her
Cabinet to intervene in Scotland, to drive out the French, Queen
Elizabeth I closed the discussion with the simple observation that she
did not like wars; they have an uncertain outcome. The uncertainty can
be all the more likely when there is near parity between the
contestants. Where the technology levels are about the same, and the
shortages are endemic, the outcome of a conflict could be
unpredictable. Speaking to a group of senior army officers and
scientists from the DRDO, General Sundarji dealt at length with the
subject of deterrence in the conventional force environments, and the
concept and practice of coercive and dissuasive policies as they flow
out of military power. He went on to dilate on the arms race in the
region and how Pakistan just would not be able to keep pace with India
and will be left with no option other than to accept the pre-eminence
of Indian military power in the region. He dwelt on the issue of force
structuring and the areas in which military technology must push ahead
to achieve levels unattainable by others in the region. His
calculations for attaining the kind of force structuring and
technological weapons status which would compel Pakistan to simply
give up attempts at matching India in military power involved an
allocation of approximately 3.5 per cent of the GDP for a sustained
period of 10 years. That was in 1988. The RAND Corporation report in
the mid-nineties, which compared India’s military preparedness
unfavourable against Pakistan, needs to be taken seriously. The report
noted that India should be able to maintain a defence expenditure at
least four times that of Pakistan in real terms, for the latter to
abandon the force equaliser effort. This would also put Pakistan’s
power elite out of the agony of having to keep up with their vastly
bigger neighbour. The financial allocations during the last over 10
years have been on an average 2.3 per cent of the GDP. With this kind
of financial allocation, it has not been possible to restructure the
forces, carry out any modernisation or even full range of training. It
created a regime of shortages; acute shortages of every type. When we
entered the Kargil conflict in 1999, shortages of stores, equipment
and ammunition surfaced more glaringly. Pray, there were shortages of
even boots, gloves, ammunition and of course, coffins (though there
was no shortage of dead officers and soldiers!), etc, and there
followed “panic purchases” about which the Controller and
Auditor-General of India has much to say, and made Parliament go into
a tizzy. General Staff reserves are the very lifeblood of an army
during a war. These include stocks of ammunition, war-like stores and
equipment, etc, for the entire army for the expected duration of a war
or upto the time re-supply can commence. Obviously, these were not
adequate even to meet the requirements of a few units that took part
in the Kargil operations. In short, this sustained low level of
financial support for defence, on the one hand, vastly eroded the edge
that Indian defence forces had over Pakistan, and on the other,
lowered their operational capability. Employment of large forces,
including mechanised troops in counter-insurgency operations, too had
debilitated their ability to undertake conventional operations. Mr
George Fernandes in a recent media interview observed that “in
Kargil our men had to die because for seven years we had neglected
defence purchase and procurement of weaponry. Where we had the weapons
we did not have the ammunition.... Take T-90 tanks. When Pakistan
acquired T-80 tanks we had T-72, so we were one age behind....” When
Pakistan bought 320 T-80 tanks from Ukraine a few years ago and the
military pressed for acquiring T-90 tanks, the then Prime Minister, Mr
Deve Gowda, insisted on the purchase of T-72 S tanks (though he may
have had difficulty in telling a tank from a tractor!) and
successfully stalled the purchase of T-90s for many years. Over the
years Pakistan, with the active help of China, has been building a
viable defence industry. It enhanced the anti-tank, anti-aircraft and
night fighting capability of its forces and added a large fleet of
state-of-the-art tanks (320-T80s) while ours has been a cry in the
wilderness of the babudom” of the Indian state. Be that as it may,
we leave the discussion on affordable defence to another
occasion. Military power is an instrument of state policy. That
instrument must always be in a perfectly serviceable state and of
contemporary technological status. Pakistan’s sustained and active
support to cross-border terrorism in J and K for over a decade needs
to be seen as a result of a perception that it could take liberties
with a large neighbour and get away with it. Firm state policy would
have led to the simple conclusion that, if all other means to dissuade
Pakistan from following the course of cross-border terrorism were to
fail, the resource to the application or threat of application of
military power might have to be resorted to, and that would have
certainly led to the sharpening of this weapon of last resort.
Regrettably there had been no long-term policy to deal with
cross-border terrorism except the parrot-like and meaningless rhetoric
of “hot pursuit”, “pro-active policy”, “zero tolerance”,
etc. There has been much talk of targeting terrorist training camps.
The quality of intelligence required for a successful strike is just
not there, nor the wherewithal. Moreover, by the time a strike
materialises there would be no camp at the point of strike except thin
air and some civilian targets. A reputed national weekly put across a
hypothetical situation of a ground attack across the LoC on some of
these camps. While such an operation is completely removed from the
ground realities and totally impracticable, the plant not only taxes
the credendum of the professional but also conveys a false picture of
the possibilities to the general public. It is not a helpless
Afghanistan or Palestine where the USA and Israel can launch punitive
strikes at will. It is a country which has the means to retaliate.
Such strikes may push us up the escalation ladder from where a
climb-down may be embarrassing. The ongoing artillery duels are an
exercise in futility and have merely led to our civil population along
the border being targeted, resulting in an exodus from the border
villages and creating lakhs of refugees. Obviously, the aim and
purpose of a war with Pakistan would be to dissuade it from
cross-border terrorism and interfering with the internal affairs of
India. For that to come about — and if the present diplomatic
pressure does not sufficiently work though the results so far are
encouraging — the Indian offensive must lead to the capture of that
part of real estate of Pakistan whose continued occupation by Indian
troops would be unbearable to that country and a settlement
inevitable. Notwithstanding all else, the Indian defence forces can
meet the challenges and capture such a piece of real estate. Equally,
Pakistan too has the capability of making one or two sallies into
Indian territory of vital importance to us. As the fighting breaks
out, the international pressure to terminate hostilities will mount by
the hour, and if we are to end up merely in pluses and minuses, then
we will be back to square one, with Pakistan emboldened to greater
mischief. Where both contestants are nuclear powers, the transition
from a conventional to nuclear war is not so simple, more so when one
of the antagonists has an overwhelmingly larger stockpile of nuclear
weapons and that, too, of the thermonuclear variety. If the
availability of nuclear weapons and the threat of their use could
dissuade the opponent from taking recourse to aggression, then there
is little logic in having conventional forces and bear the attendant
financial burden. Unexceptionally, the conventional forces can operate
in a wide range of situations across the spectrum of conflict regimes.
Nuclear deterrence works better against those who convince themselves
that the opponent will apply the force it has and is ruthless, fundamentalist, illogical and irrational enough to do so. That is the
raison d’etre of the application of deterrence. We need to take note
of this act. Militancy in J and K started in 1989-90 and around
1994-95 the complexion changed to a mix of insurgency and cross-border
terrorism, gradually shifting to more and more of the latter. In this
period close to 30 thousand civilians have been killed, half a million
rendered homeless and driven to a life of destitution, and a few
thousand officers and men from the security forces have died. The
State Assembly at Srinagar was targeted by suicide bombers resulting
in a great loss of life, but it is only when Parliament and the
country’s political leadership came under attack and the heat got
too close to the political class for comfort that the cup of patience
overflowed, resulting in the mobilisation of the defence forces and
the threat of a full-scale war. That is the public perception. It has
been our sustained refrain that there has been no long-term policy to
deal with the Kashmir problem or cross-border terrorism. So the
present mobilisation has all the making of a knee-jerk
reaction. India has undertaken a full-scale diplomatic offensive
against Pakistan (perhaps a replay of 1971 is being attempted).
Undoubtedly, such measures do work but mainly within a limited
framework. They have their own limitations and are no substitute for a
pressure which only a superior military power can exert, some of which
is discernible in the developing military situation. It appears that
the Indian defence forces are fully mobilised and are in their battle
locations. As per the Pakistan media, Indian military formations from
the North-East too have been moved to the Western sector. Undeniably,
the full force of Indian conventional force deterrence is being
applied. Pakistan too must have moved its formations from the Western
front to the Indian border, providing it an alibi that under these
circumstances it cannot prevent the entry of Taliban and Al-Qaeda
cadres into Pakistan, and eventually into PoK. The writer, a
retired Lieut-General, was a Deputy Chief of Army Staff. |
Rising above poverty line
ROSY Mattu, an 18-year-old black belt holder in karate, a national champion and at present working as a karate coach in various schools, dreams of playing at the international level. Sounds normal to anyone but not if one knows that her father is a daily wager and her mother works as a house maid. Dr Dharam Singh, an orthopedic specialist in the Civil Hospital at Lopoke village in Amritsar district, too hails from a similar background. His father was a daily wage labourer and mother a house maid. Rashmi Moghe is now a computer teacher and stenographer in Delhi. Her father used to work at a tea stall and mother as a house maid. There are innumerable examples of people who belonged to the lower strata of society and have risen
high. But one thing common in all is that they all studied in BBK DAV Yaseen Road Free School, Amritsar, meant for under-privileged children. The locality where the school is situated has houses of quite well-off and business families as also some four-star hotels and restaurants. Also living in the locality are poor residents who serve the elite families and work in hotels and houses to earn their livelihood. Started on November 11, 1980, with aid from the DAV managing committee, it is the brainchild of Mrs V. Puri, Principal of DAV Public School, Lawrence Road, Amritsar. This school provides "man, money and material" to the free school, according to the Principal, Mrs Mallik. Besides, money also comes from donors and volunteers. The school provides everything free to the students — books, uniform, bags, shoes etc. And the kind of facilities they have managed with their limited resources are worth praise. There are around 350 students from poor families. They are given education till Class 8. Earlier, this school was till Class 8, but because of the problem of funds, the higher classes have been discontinued. The school provides facilities like library books (there is no proper library because of the space problem) and a music room. Students participate in drawing and painting competitions, and have even won awards. Every student's favourite activity is karate, taught free by an ex-student of this school, Rosy Mattu. Interestingly, the two most distinct facilities which are not available in many private schools also are: (a) Counselling by a psychiatrist, Mr Bhatia, a retired Air Force officer, who visits this school to solve various personal problems of these students. According to him, students usually suffer behavioral problems because of the environment they live in. (b) Introduction to computers. An eminent doctor of the city, Dr Lakhanpal, has donated a computer to this school. Computer can't be introduced as a subject here as finances don't allow it. Half of the students already work after school hours. Anil Kumar, a Class II student, proudly disclosed that he works with a scooter mechanic to mould dents in vehicles. His father asked him to do this work as it can help him earn 10 to 20 rupees a week. His father works as a swimming pool cleaner in a hotel. Similar is the case of Mandeep, a Class V student, whose father is a gardener. He supplies ice to a factory after school hours and earns some money to support his large family. He dreams of becoming a "fauji". Nisha of Class VI, whose father is a sweeper, helps her mother, a house maid, in the evening. When asked if she likes the work she does, the reply was negative as she said she works to collect money for the marriage of her four elder sisters. Mrs Mallik, the Principal, said: "The major problem we face is lack of awareness. The parents are least bothered about family planning. More children mean more working hands to them. Most parents don't give importance to education of their children and send them to our free school so that they can get rid of them for at least four to five hours. But when the students come here, they find the environment totally different and friendly and have many aspirations. Quite a number of students drop out in Class VIII to work. “And it's a blissful moment when they give us the feedback that they have settled well in life. Some of them even turn donors like Mr Joshi, our ex-student, who is now a bank employee. He hailed from a very poor family. We often encourage them to work as we know that this is the demand of their families. But our main stress is to make them understand the importance of education in their lives and show them what difference it can make to their lives if they study." |
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‘Spinster’ is just a word YOU know you’re getting old when the spinsters start looking young. These days, it can mean an unmarried woman of 35, but I remember `spinsters of the parish’ from when I was a child. They were old ladies, and to my youthful eyes they seemed to share a character — sort of benign busy-bodies, scurrying around the village. Invariably, it transpired that these women had been thrillingly `let down’ by some scoundrel in their youth, or `lost out’ when a beau got killed in battle. It all sounded terribly romantic and tragic, all these little old ladies getting just the one chance with the one man, and having to live forever with the consequences. One exception was a woman on our road. She wore men’s suits, smoked cigars, and always reeked of brandy. This was a woman who did `spinster’ with style. I suppose she must have been a lesbian. Unmarried women are invariably viewed as women who have `malfunctioned,’ failed dramatically as women, in some terribly important, gratuitously pejorative way. I do wish women wouldn’t fall for this baloney, but a lot of them do. Even worse, some of them try to `save themselves’, clambering over the bodies of other women like rats leaving some kind of sisterhood Titanic. You can see this most clearly with the issue of divorce. Call me thick, but to my eyes divorced women look just as single as women who have never been married at all. However, that doesn’t seem to compute in the present climate. The argument seems to run that because divorcees were once `chosen’ (by some dork) because they pulled off the holy state of matrimony (to some dork), even for a short time, they are somehow `superior’ to women who have never been married at all. Are they serious? It must be one of the few examples of female failure being perceived as something rather snazzy and desirable. Moreover, where will it end? Already, women are going ostensibly for holidays, but really to get face lifts on the sly. Will we get to the point where women go on holidays where they can pretend to get hitched? Will we see the day when male escorts are hired, not for sex, but to pretend to be husbands for a few months? A kind of Spouse-U-Like service for those who’d rather undergo any kind of ritual humiliation than be labelled anything as sinister as a spinster. It’s not that ludicrous a thought, considering the amount of women who marry simply to get married, to prove some neurotic point about being `chosen’. What is really odd is that this is still going on when
'spinsters' are out-numbering their married counterparts several zillion to one. Surely, going by the law of demographics, this makes
'spinsterhood’ a pretty hot ticket. We should be swaggering about, dictating the future mindset of the advertising and marketing industries. We should be scaring society, not letting it pity us. Pushing to the front, not whingeing on the shelf. To this end, I would like to implore all women (married or not) to reclaim the word spinster. Refer to yourself as a spinster all the time looking smug and superior. Wear a sparkly T-shirt with the word `spinster’ across your bosom. Get married if you must (nice party and that), but don’t tell anybody. If you must mention it, look ashamed and embarrassed, like you’ve done something really boring and unfashionable. Above all, remember what is truer now than it was in 1660. `Spinster’ is just a word and it only has as much power as the women who flinch from it.
The Observer |
Why some people can’t digest milk A single genetic mutation allows people to tolerate milk after they leave babyhood, and is virtually the same in people of Asian, European and African descent. Finding the tiny change in the genetic code should allow scientists an easy test for lactose intolerance, a painful digestive condition, and also offers insights into how some groups of people evolved a milk-drinking culture, a team of US and Finnish researchers have said. People who have lactose intolerance — most of the people in the world — cannot digest large amounts of lactose, the main sugar found in dairy products. If they take milk, cheese or other dairy products, they develop nausea, cramps, bloating, gas and diarrhea. Between 30 million and 50 million North Americans are lactose intolerant — 75 per cent of African-Americans and 90 per cent of Asian-Americans. Lactose intolerance was known to be genetic, caused by a recessive gene, meaning that a person has to inherit a “faulty” copy from each parent to be lactose intolerant. “This is the first time this mutation, the DNA change, is actually identified,” said Dr Leena Peltonen, a geneticist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who led the study. Many people may fear they have a more serious disease when they develop nausea, bloating and other symptoms, and would be relieved to learn it was simply lactose intolerance, Peltonen said. They can then simply avoid dairy, using soya, rice, or almond substitutes instead, or lactose-free milk.
Reuters New Parliament library to be futuristic The Capital will soon have a new land mark — a Rs 191 crore 46,000 sq m library complex — in the Parliament House precincts. The new “futuristic and intelligent” Parliament library, requiring to stack three million publications expected in the next four decades, is likely to be inaugurated shortly. The new library, positioned between Parliament House and the Annexe, has the ethos of planning ideals from the temples of Raunakpur and Datia and Taj Mahal. Work on the library is more or less complete and only finishing touches are to be given. Speaker GMC Balayogi is expected to finalise shortly the date of inauguration of the building, the design of which was approved in 1991 by the then Speaker Shivraj Patil and Urban Development Minister Sheila Kaul. Conceptualised by leading Indian architect Raj Rewal, who aimed at a low-key architectural expression signifying sagacity and spiritual elegance, it was constructed by the Central Public Works Department (CPWD).
PTI |
Prisoner attacked
In Rangoon Central Jail last evening one prisoner attacked another prisoner in jail worship with a chisel inflicting wounds on the head and face. The latter was removed to hospital but he died there this morning. It is reported the deceased was attacked out of grudge the prisoner had for being assaulted by the former a few days before. |
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Religion is a matter of man’s inner consciousness. This inner consciousness can be aroused in two ways: by man’s contact with external phenomena through scriptures, association with good and saintly people and masters, and secondly, by man’s individual quest for something that can satisfy his soul. Religion is a matter of the heart. When the heart is awakened, the desire to know the secrets of the universe and probe into the problems of life become keener and keener. It is difficult for man to be satisfied with bread alone. He needs divine nectar and that is supplied by religion which can take him to God and the world beyond the precincts of the earth plane. Religion binds man to God. It gives him a philosophy which both satisfied the hunger of the heart as well as gives him strength and vitality to fight the battle of life bravely and successfully. No man can live without religion. It is the fulcrum of life, the soul’s prop, and the searchlight in the dim, dismal horizon of man’s creation. — From Yogi M.K. Spencer (1888-1958), How I found God discourse no 18 *** Remorse is impotence; it will sin again. Only repentance is strong; it can end everything. — Henry Miller,
The Wisdom of the Heart *** The repentance of man is accepted by God as virtue. — Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary *** The seeds of repentance are sown in youth by pleasure, but the harvest is reaped in age by pain. — Charles Calob Colton. Lacon *** It you have behaved badly repent.... On no account brood over your wrongdoing. — Aldous Huxley,
Brave New World (Foreword) |
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