E D I T O R I A L   P A G E

EDITORIALS

USA as shy mediator
US Secretary of State Colin Powell never tires of denying a mediatory role for his country in the ongoing Indo-Pakistan stand-off. But his and his country’s actions tell a different story. During his brief visit to the region he has leaned on Pakistan to extradite non-Pakistanis wanted by India in connection with terrorist crimes, including the Mumbai underworld gang members and five Sikh militants.

Playing with reforms
The Pakistan President is a former commando and knows quite a bit about diversionary tactics. He has shifted to civilian ways after grabbing power through the barrel of the gun, but is always ready to apply the army techniques to the diplomatic tasks at hand.

All for power
By including the promise of continuing free power to Punjab farmers in its manifesto, the Congress has revealed its double standards. The party says one thing at the national level and does the opposite at the state level, specially during election time.

OPINION

From General Zia to Musharraf
Consequences of misusing madarsas
Syed Nooruzzaman
General Musharraf’s address to the people of Pakistan last Saturday was not merely an expose of the misuse of madarsas ( religious schools). It was also the admission of a wrong and dangerous policy pursued since the days of Gen Zia-ul-Haq. Such institutions elsewhere in the world once produced scholars of eminence in different branches of knowledge. 

MIDDLE

When Japan lived without sugar
Trilochan Singh Trewn
During the armistice ceremony in Japan conducted under Geneal Mcaurthur it was declared that all warships and heavy defence equipment, including tanks and military aircraft, were to be destroyed by the representative armed contingents of various countries who constituted the allied forces.

ON THE SPOT

Tehelka: a Kafkaesque case
Tavleen Singh
Few things have sickened me more in recent times than the vicious persecution of Tehelka.com’s main investor, Shankar Sharma and his wife, Devina Mehra. In my view they are among the finest professionals I have met, the sort of Indians we should be proud of, and the manner in which the Vajpayee government has destroyed their lives since the Tehelka expose is, in the words of Ram Jethmalani, ‘worse than anything that Mrs Gandhi did during the Emergency’.

A CENTURY OF NOBELS

1979, Peace: MOTHER TERESA

Sex may shield off fatal strokes: study
Middle-aged men face no extra risk of a heart attack by having sex frequently, and having intercourse several times a week may even help to protect them against a fatal stroke, a study says.

• After salt and flour, now fortified sugar

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

EDITORIALS

USA as shy mediator

US Secretary of State Colin Powell never tires of denying a mediatory role for his country in the ongoing Indo-Pakistan stand-off. But his and his country’s actions tell a different story. During his brief visit to the region he has leaned on Pakistan to extradite non-Pakistanis wanted by India in connection with terrorist crimes, including the Mumbai underworld gang members and five Sikh militants. In one interview to a US television channel he ventured to hope that President Pervez Musharraf would deport them if he received more evidence. Here comes the clinching part. In New Delhi on Thursday he told the media that this country would send across additional information to help Islamabad to take prompt action. This is a climbdown on the part of India which had all along emphasised that Pakistan has had enough evidence and all that it has to do is to send back the 20 terrorists. Obviously, Mr Powell has successfully worked on both Islamabad and New Delhi to bridge the gap on this issue. At a late evening press conference on Thursday, he clearly hinted that this issue is as good as resolved, paving the way for easing the high-voltage border tension.

Gen Powell wants India to end the diplomatic and economic offensive measures like thinning down the High Commission staff, denial of air space and the suspension of rail and bus traffic. This, he says, can be a painless first step in the long haul of the de-escalation of border tension. He bases his hope on the fact that heavy artillery has fallen silent during the past six days, banishing alarming reports of largescale death of soldiers and destruction of bunkers. Now there is only an exchange of small arm fire with low or no casualty. The USA is also taking other steps to make the two neighbours fall in line. It is reopening the USAID (US Aid for International Development, a low-interest, long-term grant for Third World countries) which was closed down in 1990. This is a very meaningful gesture and Pakistan is now more vulnerable to American pressure. It is not all that crude and Gen Powell found it necessary to laud and applaud Gen Musharraf’s January 12 speech. As far as India is concerned, the USA has asked this country to escort its naval ships carrying valuable war material through the Malacca Straits, separating Malaysia and Indonesia. Until now this job was done by Japanese and South Korean vessels. For India this is a unsolicited honour and hopefully it will soften the present stand against Pakistan. The USA does not want to mediate but has positioned itself to influence events in the immediate future. Gen Powell said it all when he declared that the USA is firmly against a skirmish in South Asia at this time.

Playing with reforms

The Pakistan President is a former commando and knows quite a bit about diversionary tactics. He has shifted to civilian ways after grabbing power through the barrel of the gun, but is always ready to apply the army techniques to the diplomatic tasks at hand. At a time when India and the rest of the world want him to get separated from his Siamese twin called terrorism, he is attempting to divert everyone's attention away from the real task by pretending to do exactly that, and yet doing exactly nothing. In Kathmandu, he used the camouflage of the stage(managed) handshake. Back in his country he is taking recourse to internal reforms which should earn him brownie points in the West. He has avowedly scrapped the separate electoral system, in deference to the long-standing demand of minorities. Religious minorities will now be allowed to vote and contest elections along with the Muslim majority. What needs to be noticed is that all this has been done while the international press corps is there in full strength in connection with the Colin Powell visit. Everyone is supposed to stand up and exclaim what a good chap this General is. Or is he? A reading of the fine print reveals that the veneer of the "sweeping" reform is micron thin. There is an overriding stipulation that only graduates would be permitted to contest elections. Nothing objectionable in that, provided Pakistan were a highly educated country. It is not. More than 67 per cent of its population is illiterate.

The decision would ensure that a large number of grassroots leaders are automatically disqualified from elections. That is why mainstream parties like the Pakistan People's Party, the National Democratic Party and factions of the Pakistan Muslim League have described it as the "worst snobbery of sorts". The stratagem is thus one of a piece with General Musharraf's thundering address to the nation vowing to eradicate the scourge of terrorism. Gas is there aplenty; the balloon is a showpiece. Coming back to the so-called reform, it would not only deprive a large number of people of the privilege of contesting an election, but would also be particularly harsh on the people in the rural areas. The obnoxious system in operation till now was a legacy of former military ruler Zia-ul-Haq who in the eighties had created separate electorates for Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Parsis and Ahmadiyas, allotting them four seats each. The General in the top seat for now has undone that mischief and has introduced one of his own. History does repeat itself!

All for power

By including the promise of continuing free power to Punjab farmers in its manifesto, the Congress has revealed its double standards. The party says one thing at the national level and does the opposite at the state level, specially during election time. When in power at the Centre, the party had initiated path-breaking economic reforms. However, years of being in the opposition seems to have mellowed the penchant for reforms and taught the party leadership to be more pragmatic. Brushing aside opposition from Dr Manmohan Singh, the Congress leadership has cleared the party manifesto for Punjab which includes the populist promise of free power to farmers. Many had expected Capt Amarinder Singh, the state Congress President and obvious candidate for the post of Chief Minister in case the party is swept to power, to break from the populist path adopted by the Akali government and give a positive thrust to reforms to rescue the economy from a state of near bankruptcy. But he has shown clear priority for winning power by whatever means over any commitment to reforms. Both the major contesting parties, unfortunately for the state, play the same kind of power game and the voters have little choice.

That the Punjab State Electricity Board cannot afford to continue supplying electricity free of cost to any section is evident from its precarious financial state. Lack of funds has hampered the replacement of outdated equipment and wornout transmission network, hence there is hardly any regular supply of quality power to the domestic and industrial consumers. Transmission losses and power pilferage are mind-boggling. Political interference in appointments has crippled the functioning of the board, currently run by part-timers. Its previous technocrat Chairman lost his post because he did not fall in line with the desires of his political boss. More than the board, it is the people of Punjab who suffer because of free power supply, and not just financially. With free and unlimited electricity supply, farmers overuse their tubewells. This hits the already alarming decline in the watertable. The people in general and the farmers in particular cannot get uninterrupted supply of quality power unless the PSEB is “re-engineered”, made financially viable and managed efficiently by a team of committed professionals without political interference. That politicians will not allow to happen. 

OPINION

From General Zia to Musharraf
Consequences of misusing madarsas
Syed Nooruzzaman

General Musharraf’s address to the people of Pakistan last Saturday was not merely an expose of the misuse of madarsas ( religious schools). It was also the admission of a wrong and dangerous policy pursued since the days of Gen Zia-ul-Haq. Such institutions elsewhere in the world once produced scholars of eminence in different branches of knowledge. But in Pakistan, as a Washington-based Brookings Institution study says, at least 15 per cent of them were engaged in producing trigger-happy jehadis. What a great decline, indeed!

The tradition of running madarsas for catering to the educational needs of society is over 1000 years old. However, they gave primacy to religious studies. This was so perhaps because most of them were run by religious organisations or mosque managements. But they evoked respect in society owing to three basic reasons. One, they contributed to the spread of education in society — which meant human resource development. Two, since religious studies were their primary concern, they came to be treated as part of the system of strengthening the faith. Three, they had cost-free board and lodging facilities funded through donations and hence preferred by the poor. They, however, always promoted peace in society.

Madarsas have been very closely related to the tradition of learning among Muslims. Their future in Pakistan became uncertain the day former President Gen Zia-ul-Haq formulated a dangerous doctrine based on these institutions. The shrewd General’s idea was that madarsa students could help in bringing Afghanistan under the influence of Pakistan with little efforts and minimum expenditure. The socio-political chaos in Afghanistan in the eighties provided an ideal situation for the trial of the policy. It succeeded in establishing the infamous Taliban rule, giving what Pakistan experts describe as the strategic depth it lacked. Since the policy had inbuilt weaknesses, its sideeffects led to a cancerous growth in Pakistani society — the Kalashnikov culture. A number of militant sectarian outfits came into being with ready recruits from madarsas. These groups had only one business — killing or maiming those not belonging to their school of thought.

Despite all this, the Pakistan establishment continued to pursue the Zia policy . The short-term encouraging results in Afghanistan emboldened Islamabad to experiment the policy in the case of Jammu and Kashmir too. This is how the proxy war began. The terrorist outfits, prospering in the name of jehad, had no problem in getting volunteers and funds for their “cause”. The mushrooming of madarsas during this period — today their number is at least 45,000 — fulfilled their needs. Religion was not the only factor misused for destructive purposes. Poverty among the madarsa students too was exploited to promote the jehad industry under the patronage of the Pakistan establishment.

Came September 11 and everything turned topsy-turvy. The jehad industry, which was earning a bad name for Islam and Muslims, first came under attack in Afghanistan. Though the bombing by the forces of the US-led anti-terrorism coalition claimed the lives of thousands of innocent civilians, it exposed religious extremists as being people with little vision. These elements in Pakistan resorted to street protests, particularly on Fridays when they got a captive audience to convert people to their line of thinking. They opposed the Musharraf regime’s tactical U-turn in its Afghan policy but in vain. They relied on the student strength of the madarsas, but that too did not work.

The Pakistan government was forced to issue a madarsa regulation ordinance. There was enough indication for the extremists to shun the path of violence and spend their mental and physical energies on promoting peace and tolerance in accordance with the true teachings of Islam. But the people who had raised their own lashkars refused to listen to any talk of reason. Despite the growing American pressure on Pakistan and the war in Afghanistan, they went about their business unperturbed. Soon came the attack on the Parliament complex in New Delhi. India was bound to react as forcefully as it did. The US leadership felt compelled to tighten the screw on the Musharraf regime. The Pakistan President had no alternative but to put the people promoting the gun culture where they should have been long ago — in jail. He came out with historic decisions on January 12, bringing madarsa activities on the government’s radar screen and sending a clear message across his country that no one would henceforth be allowed to indulge in violence on any pretext.

Now comes the question of implementation of the Musharraf regime’s decisions. A large number of arrests have been made and the offices of the affected organisations sealed with their bank accounts frozen. Even the militant outfits’ efforts to resurface in a new garb have been thwarted. But does this mean that religious militancy has died its death? The success of the task undertaken by General Musharraf depends mainly on four factors. The capability of the police, the support from political opposition, the reaction of the people in general and the followup action.

Since madarsas and Islam are inseparable in Pakistan, the job of the police is very tricky. Harassment of an innocent madarsa management or a non-militant religious figure may spark off a wave of protests threatening to wipe out all the gains made by the regime. This may encourage the ISI cadres with a madarsa background (there is no dearth of such elements in the notorious intelligence outfit) to sabotage the entire scheme of the General. And if there is no cooperation from non-militant religious and political groups, the General may be ousted by some of his disgruntled subordinates. In that case there will be nothing to stop a revival of the jehad industry in a more virulent form, putting at stake the very future of South Asia since Pakistan is a nuclear country.

More important than all this is the seriousness in taking the followup action. Religious militancy has become part of the mindset of a vast section of the Pakistanis. Religious parties, both militant and non-militant, have the capacity to bring life to a standstill. The followup action should involve changing the very mindset of the people.

The problem with General Musharraf is that he easily succumbs to pressure. Immediately after coming to power through a military coup he indicated that the founder of modern Turkey, Kemal Ataturk, was his role model. This evoked loud criticism from religious parties. He felt scared and immediately clarified his position. Before overthrowing Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif he had authored the Kargil misadventure in collaboration with the militant jehadis. Like General Zia he could not realise that religious militancy was a two-edged weapon. His declaration that as a matter of policy, nobody will be allowed to resort to violence camouflaging it as jehad is too late in the day. It is good to point out that Islam stands for peace and tolerance and wants its followers to engage themselves in growth-oriented activities. But why did this not occur to him before September 11 or December 13?

It is not easy to offer a convincing answer to any such question, which will be repeated during the coming elections. Though it seems the General has entered into a clandestine deal with former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto to ensure the poll results in accordance with his plan, there is the possibility of things going out of hand unless his Kashmir card proves too effective to silence his opponents. His constituency of educated classes is too small, and the PPP has suffered an erosion in its following for the past few years.

A few days ago six prominent religious groups formed an alliance called the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, with the objective of bringing like-minded political parties to this platform. They will try to exploit the strong anti-American and anti-Indian feelings in Pakistan to uphold their viewpoint in the court of the masses. At this stage it is difficult to say that they can pose a formidable challenge to General Musharraf and his allies. A peace lover would wish him a success. But going by the popularity of the jehadi culture, one can say that the General’s move may boomerang, turning his entire scheme into smithereens. 

MIDDLE

When Japan lived without sugar
Trilochan Singh Trewn

During the armistice ceremony in Japan conducted under Geneal Mcaurthur it was declared that all warships and heavy defence equipment, including tanks and military aircraft, were to be destroyed by the representative armed contingents of various countries who constituted the allied forces.

It was decided by the American occupation command in Japanese theatre that systematic destruction and sinking of the Japanese warships would be carried out by the participating allied navies during October-November, 1945, in open seas close to Okinawa. HMIS Sutlej sailed for Japan for this purpose with a select crew of about 250 officers and lower deck crew members.

There was considerable excitement among the ship’s company as this was an opportunity to carry out a new challenging task.

As per daily routine a submarine or a battleship, earmarked to be sunk in open seas, was first stripped of its most valuable portable equipment. Then the ship was towed by powerful Japanese tugs away from the shipping lanes. It was a pity to see mighty battleships and submarines which were once a terror to allied navies being sunk one by one by guns of small naval frigates like ours.

During evenings off duty officers and crew were free to proceed on shore leave till midnight. The participating naval ships canteens were well stocked, with items like cigarette, chocolates, cosmetics etc. On the first day the Indian officers party went ashore and surveyed the area for possible social openings. The township was a furlong away from the sea shore and had an art college. There was a general revulsion towards all those associated with the foreign occupation forces. Initially the Japanese families were reluctant to talk freely with the parties of various contingents from the participating ships but slowly they showed a discerning liking towards Indians. This was more so because of rude behaviour of the American sailors and utter disregard for a decent approach towards the members of the Japanese families. One professor Kagawa from history department of the local college was invited on board for tea the next day, Sunday.

Professor Kagawa, his wife and teenage daughter Mishi were looked after well on board and served with Indian food, including fresh fish, samber curry, basmati rice and tinned rasgullas. No liquor was served. The return dinner was in the Japanese single storey home which was all wood compact with a community bathroom just outside. All rooms were thickly carpeted and no furniture. Only Professor Kagawa could converse in English. He was a Buddhist. The dinner constituted boiled misoshiru (soup), tempura (seafood), tofu (bean curd and soba spaghetti pieces but no sweet dish.

The Indian group presented them with a packet of assorted chocolates and a carton of cigarettes for which they thanked immensely. They also presented a sophisticated Japanese zoom lens camera.

During post dinner conversations the Indian sensitivity towards well being of the people of Japan was highlighted. The Indian ship was there in the port for a week more during which thrice again the Japanese home was visited. Miss Mishi Kagawa once displayed the IKEBANA method of flower decoration in all its varieties.

During these visits Indian guests were treated with sukiyaki and Japanese tea in their traditional way. During all these visits and exchanges of gifts it was subtly noted that the Japanese family had never offered any sweet dish or any soft drink with sugar in any form while they continued to relish sweet chocolates and candy items.

Prof Kagawa when asked to solve the mystery smiled, looked around and spoke out loud and clear thus: “Gentleman, this million dollar question can be answered in one small sentence — Japan has not seen sugar during last two years, due to constant bombardments, closure of sugar mills and disruption of shipping.” The same evening the captain of the Indian ship arranged to hand over four pounds of sugar to the Japanese home. The ship sailed from the port next day.

ON THE SPOT

Tehelka: a Kafkaesque case
Tavleen Singh

Few things have sickened me more in recent times than the vicious persecution of Tehelka.com’s main investor, Shankar Sharma and his wife, Devina Mehra. In my view they are among the finest professionals I have met, the sort of Indians we should be proud of, and the manner in which the Vajpayee government has destroyed their lives since the Tehelka expose is, in the words of Ram Jethmalani, ‘worse than anything that Mrs Gandhi did during the Emergency’.

I have written about their problems before in this column but for those who may not recall the earlier pieces may I remind you that the Sharmas have been prevented from working, travelling abroad or living a normal life ever since last March when Tehelka broke its story. They have faced 25 raids by the income tax and enforcement departments, they have been dragged off an aeroplane when they tried to go abroad, their properties have been attached and Shankar is now in Tihar jail on charges that do not usually warrant the denial of bail.

The Sharmas are not criminals. The raids have not turned up a single rupee of undisclosed money. They were among the country’s highest taxpayers and in the 10 years that they built their company, First Global, into one of India’s finest financial firms there was never a case against them so we can safely conclude that were it not for their investment in Tehelka.com they would never have faced the horrific persecution that they have suffered in the past ten months.

During a recent meeting with our Minister for Law and Justice, Arun Jaitley, I tried to find out why the government was behaving in a fashion more worthy of fascism than democracy and he said it was because they believed that Shankar Sharma had an ulterior motive behind his investment in Tehelka.com. The government’s case is that the expose was not bona fide journalism but a plot to destroy the Vajpayee government.

The villain of the story, according to Arun Jaitley, is Shankar Sharma, which is why the government has relentlessly hounded him since March last year, which is why he is currently in Tihar jail.

The government believes that there was something shady about Sharma’s investment in Tehelka.com and that he made this investment only to aid him in bringing the stock market down when he needed to. This is the sort of bizarre conspiracy theory that usually gets believed in Delhi’s corridors of power because the men and women who inhabit these corridors are totally isolated from the real world. But, in order to give the government the benefit of the doubt I decided to investigate Sharma’s investment in Tehelka.com. I called Tarun Tejpal and asked if we could meet and talk about the government’s charges. He said he was more than willing and that to settle any doubts I might have about how the initial investment in Tehelka.com happened he would bring me the affidavit Suhel Seth had given to the Venkataswamy Commission.

Seth, an advertising man and one of Delhi’s movers and shakers, also happens to be a close friend of our Law Minister. He was one of the first people Tarun approached when he decided to leave print journalism and explore the possibilities of setting up a website. Seth was, according to Tarun, very enthusiastic about the idea and accompanied them to Mumbai to seek investment. There, he introduced them first to a corporate financer called Ashok Wadhwa. According to Seth’s affidavit, ‘Mr. Ashok Wadhwa felt that a fair evaluation of Tehelka.com should be approximately $8 million (Rs 35 crore). That on the basis of the indication of valuation done by Mr Ashok Wadhwa, First Global, later funded the venture. The allegation levelled against Tehelka.com and Mr Shankar Sharma of First Global in the affidavit of Devinder Gupta that a Rs 10 share was brought by Shankar Sharma for Rs 6,000 (approximate) as some fraud, shows the ignorance of market price for the venture such as Tehelka.com and, as such, is a malicious exercise to discredit Tehelka.com and its investigative stories.’

If Suhel Seth was prepared to say all this in a sworn affidavit, I asked Tarun, then why was it so hard for him to convince his friend, the Law Minister, that the government was wrong to read motives into Sharma’s investment. Tarun answered by shaking his head gloomily and saying that the government was so “venal” that it could not care less what it did. It has not attacked him directly, he said, but by using its whole range of heavy artillery against the Sharmas it had ensured that nobody was prepared to invest a single rupee in Tehelka.com. Tarun said that despite the recognition and awards he had received for one of the best investigative story we have ever seen in India he had been unable to raise the funds needed to keep his website going.

He was flat broke, he said, and this month things were so bad that for the first time they had been unable to pay salaries on time. He was living on the largesse of friends and was, to make things worse, unable to spend much time on journalism since his entire staff was forced to spend every morning at the Venkataswamy Commission. The irony is that instead of corrupt officials and army officers being in the dock it is the journalists who exposed the story who are now having to explain their motives for doing so.

It is the sort of Kafkaesque turn of events that India is brilliant at producing. If we can live in an economic climate in which we accept that the easiest and quickest way to make money is by becoming a politician or a public servant of some other kind then why should it surprise us that the whistle-blowers can get punished and the crooks go free.

Only the most naïve or dishonest members of the Vajpayee government would deny that there is huge corruption in defence deals and that corrupt army officers and officials control the market. Yet, instead, of punishing the guilty as the Prime Minister initially promised he would we now find his government punishing one of the country’s most brilliant young businessmen for daring to invest in Tehelka.com

The charges against Sharma are so flimsy and absurd that he will, in all likelihood, go free in the end but in our fair and wondrous land you usually need to wait 20 years to see ‘the end’ come about. Meanwhile, unless the government falls, the Sharmas will find their lives not worth living.

As for you who read this in the comfort of your homes, over cups of steaming tea or coffee, remember that if this can happen to Shankar and Devina it could happen just as easily to you and I. Also remember that if we have this kind of Kafkaesque justice system it is because you and I have given it sanction by never raising our voice when we see someone unjustly punished. As for the Vajpayee government it may as well openly declare that corruption is a good thing and exposing it evil. It has already demonstrated this by its actions.

TRENDS & POINTERS

Sex may shield off fatal strokes: study

Middle-aged men face no extra risk of a heart attack by having sex frequently, and having intercourse several times a week may even help to protect them against a fatal stroke, a study says.

Researchers at the University of Bristol in western England monitored cardiac health and sexual activity over 20 years in 914 male volunteers in a former Welsh mining village.

The men were aged 45-59 when they were first recruited between 1979 and 1983.

About a fifth of the volunteers reported they had sex once a month or less; about a quarter had intercourse twice or more a week; and the frequency for the remainder (53 per cent) was somewhere between the two.

During the monitoring period, 65 men had a stroke, and for 26 this was fatal. But there was no clear link between higher frequency of intercourse and a heart attack. In addition, men who reported low to moderate levels of sexual activity were more at risk from suffering a fatal stroke.

“Assuming a sexually active adult life of 50 years, and a lifetime average frequency of sexual intercourse of once a week, only one out of 580 men might suffer a sudden death attributed to sexual intercourse,” the authors say.

“Middle-aged men should be heartened to know that frequent sexual intercourse is not likely to result in a substantial increase in risk of strokes, and that some protection from fatal coronary events may be an added bonus.”

The research is published in the Journal of Epidemioloy and Community Health, a publication of the British Medical Association (BMA). AFP

After salt and flour, now fortified sugar

After salt and flour, it’s now for the “indispensable” sugar to be fortified with essential micronutrients to supplement the intake of Vitamin A and reduce its deficiency in the population.

Faced with a huge Vitamin A deficient population — especially children — the government has given a go-ahead for fortification of sugar with Vitamin A and trials are already going on at the National Institute of Nutrition, Hyderabad, to prove its efficacy for children.

Nearly 5 to 7 per cent of the Indian children suffer from varying degrees of eye disorders associated with Vitamin A deficiency.

“A pilot plant to manufacture fortified sugar was commissioned in Shirpur in Maharashtra last year and the sugar is now ready for sale in the open market.

The cost too is very affordable — just an extra Rs 1.54 for fortification of one kg of sugar,” says Shivajirao G. Patil, Chairman, Shirpur sugar factory, which is producing the fortified sugar under a government project. PTI

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

Thou Who art within and without,

above and below and all around.

Thou Who art interpenetrating

the very cells of our beings,

Thou Who art the Eyes of our eyes,

the Ear of our ears,

the Heart of our hearts,

the Mind of our minds,

the Breath of our breaths,

the Life of our lives and

the soul of our souls.

Bless us dear God

To be aware of Thy presence,

now and here.

This is all that we ask of Thee.

May all of us be aware of Thy presence in the East and the West, in the North and the South.

May peace and goodwill abide among individuals, communities and nations.

This is our earnest prayer.

May peace be unto all.

— (Late) Swami Omkar of Shanti Ashram (A.P.), Prayer for World Peace cited in God Realisation: What and How (editor S.P. Ruhela)

***

....What is man in nature? A Nothing in comparison with the Infinite, an All in comparison with Nothing, a mean between nothing and everything.

— Pascal, Pensees

***

We are all of us guinea pigs in the laboratory of God.

— Tennessee Williams, Camino Real

***

Mankind are earthen jugs with spirits in them.

— Nathaniel Hawthorne, American Notebooks

***

There are three classes of men — lovers of wisdom, lovers of honour and lovers of gain.

— Plato, The Republic

***

To the heavens be peace,

to the sky and the earth,

To the waters be peace,

to plants and all trees,

To the Gods be peace,

to Brahman be peace,

To all men be peace,

again and again.

— peace also to me.

— Yajurveda, XXXVI.17

***

Peace is liberty in tranquality.

— Cicero, Philippcs