E D I T O R I A L   P A G E

EDITORIALS

The SOG controversy
Jammu and Kashmir’s Special Operations Group, SOG for short, has been at the centre of one controversy or another ever since its formation in 1994. Personnel of this 1000-strong force, composed of men from the J and K Police and former militants — those who surrendered in the course of anti-terrorism operations — have been accused of their involvement in custodial killings and extortion cases.

Shanta camp bounces back
For the past four and a half years, it was the Dhumal camp which had been occupying the centre-stage, all the while elbowing out the Shanta Kumar followers wherever possible — and in none-too-subtle a manner. This had even led to an angry outburst by the former Chief Minister on the delimitation issue.

Railways on the mat
The sickening regularity with which train accidents have been taking place in the last few months, claiming a heavy toll of lives of innocent passengers, is a cause for serious concern. Nowadays the very idea of undertaking a train journey has become a nightmare.

OPINION

Response to Vajpayee’s ‘musings’
The BJP strategy to capture power
S. Nihal Singh
India’s election season has begun, and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee is discovering that his second exercise in sharing his “musings” with the people from a holiday resort has met with a strikingly different response.

MIDDLE

A nirvana of words
Darshan Singh Maini
Though my urge for writing is nearly as old as the urge for romance and love that surfaces so strongly when a boy turns into a man, it’s not till lately that it became for me not only an expression of my deepest thoughts, dreams, and disputations, but also a distinctive form of nirvana.

FOCUS

Al-Qaida empire flourishes in Pakistan
B.Raman
Pakistan-based pan-Islamic terrorist organisations, which are allied with Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaida in his International Islamic Front(IIF), have been consistent in the pursuit of their long-term strategy directed against India. They look upon Jammu & Kashmir as the gateway to India and repeatedly underline that the “liberation” of J&K would be only the first stage of their jihad against India.

Cash flow continues
It has reportedly been estimated by the experts of the Monitoring Committee of the UN Security Council, which oversees the implementation of the UNSC Resolution No. 1373, that despite the freezing/seizure of terrorist funds and other assets worth US $ 112 million since 9/11, Al-Qaida and its allies in the International Islamic Front still have at their disposal about US $ 300 million. Replenishments continue to flow into their funds.

TRENDS & POINTERS

Yelling at work places doesn’t work
A new US research has showed that employees who are shouted at or humiliated by their managers at work are less likely to work for the betterment of their company though they may meet their deadlines.

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

EDITORIALS

The SOG controversy

Jammu and Kashmir’s Special Operations Group, SOG for short, has been at the centre of one controversy or another ever since its formation in 1994. Personnel of this 1000-strong force, composed of men from the J and K Police and former militants — those who surrendered in the course of anti-terrorism operations — have been accused of their involvement in custodial killings and extortion cases. As a result, they have occasionally got a bad Press. People’s Democratic Party leader Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, now Chief Minister, included the issue relating to the SOG’s role in his party’s election manifesto and succeeded in winning a majority of the seats in the valley in the recent Assembly polls. His party exploited the local population’s disenchantment with the SOG, and hence his plan to disband it by accommodating its employees in the regular police force. This is, however, only one side of the story. The other side of the SOG’s picture is, in fact, more significant. The special police force has played a key role in immobilising most militant outfits operating in the state and elsewhere at the instance of their masters across the border. But for the heroic deeds of the SOG men, the security forces would not have achieved the success they can boast of today. The former militants in the SOG, who have joined the mainstream, are not only well-acquainted with the terrain in the valley but also have sufficient understanding of the terrorists’ mindset, their modus operandi, style of operations, etc. They have helped the security forces in creating a feeling of demoralisation in the ranks of terrorists. Certain aberrations are possible in the functioning of such a useful organisation. But this can be taken care of without doing way with the very existence of the SOG. The Central Government appears to be justified in sending a clear signal to the Mufti Sayeed government that the SOG cannot be disbanded simply because some of its men and officers have been accused of functioning irresponsibly. The special force has its unquestionable utility in the ongoing campaign against terrorism. The SOG should remain there at least till militancy is eliminated root and branch.

There is a political side to the SOG issue. It was mainly this factor that delayed the installation of the PDP-Congress coalition government. The PDP leadership insisted on the inclusion of the SOG disbandment plan in the Common Minimum Programme finalised by the two sides, whereas the Congress was opposed to it. Agreeing to the PDP idea would have put the Congress in a difficult position so far as its vote banks in the Jammu region and the rest of the country were concerned. It ultimately succeeded in getting primacy for its viewpoint. Today the SOG card is a major weapon in the armoury of the Congress to fight the BJP, which has been accusing the opposition party at the Centre of being soft on the issue of terrorism. The BJP-led Union Government must have realised that it is only echoing the Congress stand on the SOG. But it suits the leading NDA coalition partner too. The BJP leadership may be thinking of blunting the Congress weapon by taking a categorical stand on the SOG question. The PDP now wants to rechristen the controversial force as part of its “healing touch” policy — which means to take care of the sentiments of its followers. It remains to be seen whether the Centre agrees to this small matter. It all depends on whether the cosmetic move of the state government fits in with the scheme of things of the principal ruling party at the Centre.

Shanta camp bounces back

For the past four and a half years, it was the Dhumal camp which had been occupying the centre-stage, all the while elbowing out the Shanta Kumar followers wherever possible — and in none-too-subtle a manner. This had even led to an angry outburst by the former Chief Minister on the delimitation issue. But in a surprise development almost on the eve of Assembly elections, his camp has bounced back into reckoning and has been given the charge of the election campaign committee. Since the election committee is not in the pink of health, it is the campaign committee which will spearhead the elections and even play a key role in the distribution of tickets. If the followers of Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal see the development from a narrow perspective they will feel disheartened, considering that they had been lobbying hard for the chairmanship of the panel. But if they look at it from the angle of the interest of the party, they will perhaps realise that the decision is positive considering that it provides them an opportunity to put every shoulder to the wheel. Fissures are a grim reality and if the BJP is to win the election beating the anti-incumbency factor, it must learn to swim together.

That is not difficult. All that they have to do is to put their ego hassles aside and smoke the peace pipe. The two together can make a formidable combination, considering the caste equation in the state. Fortunately for the party, the Congress too is a house divided, balancing out the problems in the BJP to a great extent. Mr Dhumal has not annoyed any section of the electorate badly. Not only that, his list of achievements is also satisfactory. The Shanta Kumar camp must religiously desist from settling scores. Two vital issues are going to be decided soon. One is whether to take Mr Sukh Ram’s party on board or not. The BJP had decided to go it alone but considering that shunning him might put him in the Congress lap, a rethinking is reported to be on. Since Mr Sukh Ram himself won’t be contesting, an arrangement might work out with his supporters. The second event being watched with interest is the role of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. It has been given out that he will be the party’s star campaigner. Ironically, Mr Modi and Mr Shanta Kumar were at daggers drawn when the former was in charge of the party’s Himachal affairs. The outcome of the elections will depend on the joint performance of the Modi-Shanta-Dhumal trio.

Railways on the mat

The sickening regularity with which train accidents have been taking place in the last few months, claiming a heavy toll of lives of innocent passengers, is a cause for serious concern. Nowadays the very idea of undertaking a train journey has become a nightmare. People seem to be scared of boarding a train, not knowing what is in store for them. What else would explain two successive train accidents in the South Central Railway just in a span of two weeks? In both accidents, as many as 38 precious lives were lost and 135 passengers injured. Yet, Railway Minister Nitish Kumar seems to act as if nothing has happened and it was business as usual in New Delhi’s Rail Bhavan. The General Manager of the South Central Railway, Mr S.C.Singla, is apparently firm in his saddle, and no action has been taken against him to fix accountability. What would the railways achieve if small fish like the Assistant Station Master, the Pointsman or the Traffic Inspector are suspended, even though they are equally responsible for the malady? In recent times, there has been a steady decline in the safety standards of the Indian Railways mainly due to complacency in the upper echelons of the administration. There is professional jealousy and mistrust among the top brass and the Railway Board seems to lack direction because of the lopsided policies of Mr Nitish Kumar. He was prompt in launching a safety fund, but figures are not available as to how Rs 17,000 crore is being spent on improving the railway safety. Questions are also being raised on the usefulness of this fund in the context of frequent accidents.

Clearly, there is no use of passing the buck on to the junior staff for the accidents. Consider the recent collision of the Secunderabad-Manmad Express with a stationary goods train at the Ghatnandur station on the Andhra Pradesh-Maharashtra border. How was the Express train given the green signal to cross the station on the main line when a goods train was stranded on the same track? General Manager Singla’s observation that the goods train was held up on the main line for as long as three hours because of its driver’s insistence on a reliever is unconvincing and does not stand the test of scrutiny. Three questions arise in this context. One, what were the top officials of the mechanical and operating departments at Secunderabad’s Rail Nilayam doing when the driver was pressing for a reliever? Two, did the divisional (and zonal) officials make an objective assessment of the authorised hours of work the driver had put in? And three, why did the power controller (from the mechanical department) fail to arrange a reliever well in advance, if the driver has already put in his required hours of work? Surely, there is a lack of coordination between the personnel of the operating and mechanical departments. They do not seem to work in unison and this will prove costly for the railways if things do not improve for the better. Mr Nitish Kumar may have hinted at “human error” as a possible cause for the latest accident. But such errors could be avoided if the fatigue factor was taken into consideration and the railway drivers, guards and other staff were not forced to overwork.

OPINION

Response to Vajpayee’s ‘musings’
The BJP strategy to capture power
S. Nihal Singh

India’s election season has begun, and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee is discovering that his second exercise in sharing his “musings” with the people from a holiday resort has met with a strikingly different response. This time around, he was attempting to lend a patina of dignity and respectability to the concept of Hindutva as part of a two-pronged approach to win power in the states and retain it at the Centre.

This essentially political exercise has had a political response from his adversaries and even some of his allies. There is little doubt that, whatever pronouncements the Prime Minister makes, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s intention is to test the Narendra Modi way in the states to find out if it will fly. A core constituency of the BJP apparently believes that, much like Mr L.K. Advani’s rath yatra of 1990 which set the stage for the demolition of the Babri Masjid two years later and propelled the party to power in New Delhi, Hindutva is a second golden key to the future.

The BJP, therefore, will play the Hindutva card for all it is worth unless it discovers that the Modi magic does not play in other parts of the country. The party is, in any event, much more confident of retaining the constituents of the National Democratic Alliance because they have nowhere else to go. In a striking demonstration of the pull of power, both AIADMK leader Ms Jayalalithaa and Mr Chandrababu Naidu of Telugu Desam were conspicuous by their presence at the swearing-in ceremony in Ahmedabad after they had been critical of Mr Modi’s conduct.

The baleful influence of Mr Modi’s election campaign in Gujarat is still on display, with continuing bouts of communal incidents, typically triggered by minor fracas. The BJP’s exploitation of the communal divide, diligently stoked by the party’s Gujarat vanguard, has left its trail of woe. It is a cost the state must continue to pay for its dearly won victory. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal, for their part, played a stellar role.

In a sense, the arguments between the BJP and the other elements of the Sangh Parivar are a charade because the party and its more aggressive family members have been allotted different tasks. These tasks tended to merge in Gujarat, but it is likely that in the forthcoming state elections the VHP and the Bajrang Dal will talk the language of hate leaving the BJP room for plausible deniability. There is little reason to doubt that the BJP’s mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, coordinates the activities of the family, and the name-calling is as much for effect as it is reflective of different opinions in the Parivar.

At the national level, there is obviously a division of labour between Mr Vajpayee and such strident votaries of the Parivar ideology as Mr V.K. Malhotra. Mr Vajpayee must perforce wear the mask of tolerance and liberalism of Mr Govindacharya’a famous description because he is the Prime Minister of the whole country, in the words of a party spokesman. His “musings” have failed to ignite or inspire the country because he has gone to the brink far too often, only to withdraw from the precipice at the last minute.

In his attempt to redefine Hindutva, Mr Vajpayee is seeking to give the concept an elasticity which would enable the party to employ it in its innocent or mischievous modes, as the occasion demands. Hindutva in the hands of Mr Modi or the VHP or the Bajrang Dal would signify one thing while other leaders of the BJP can sing a different tune from the same sheet of music. And, as the VHP is already demonstrating, it is reigning the Ayodhya controversy in what would appear to be an overkill in terms of polarising society.

After the Gujarat election, the BJP is having a field day because of its adroitness in building alliances and the demoralisation that seems to have set in in the ranks of the opposition parties. It is strange that the Congress party, which has such a dominating presence in the states, is suffering from a case of nerves. It is desperately seeking to retain power in the states it rules, with elections almost knocking on the door, while its central problem of projecting Ms Sonia Gandhi as a future Prime Minister remains unresolved.

There is also another uncomfortable fact the Congress and other opposition parties have to contend with. The appeal of secularism has not percolated down, with the Congress starved at the roots, thanks of Indira Gandhi’s centralisation of power and reliance on wheeler-dealers in her two stints as Prime Minister. The appeal of Hindutva, tied up with popular folklore and rituals, on the other hand, is gaining ground, especially because it is often aligned with simple welfare programmes for the poor and the adivasis.

The prospect of a Hindutva hurricane hitting one state after another as the election season proceeds apace can have fearful consequences. Irrespective of whether the BJP can repeat Gujarat elsewhere, it would have spread the venom of communalism far and wide, with the result that communal disturbances will pockmark the country markedly to weaken the fabric of India’s secular credentials. And in a multi-ethnic and multi-religious country, secularism is a necessity, not a luxury.

The BJP seems not to be aware of the danger it is courting and is single-mindedly set to revise distant and more recent history. We are aware of the party’s revisionism in rewriting history textbooks to bring them in line with the mythology of the Vedic period, but an even more daring party enterprise is to try to expropriate Mahatma Gandhi to do service for Hindutva, blatantly disregarding how and by whom he was assassinated. Indeed, the audaciousness of this exercise is breathtaking. It is as if we were witnessing Goebbels in a new avatar. No wonder Hitler has an appeal for some members of the Sangh Parivar.

What are the limits of the NDA constituents’ tolerance? Obviously, opportunism reigns supreme but there could come a point when the very stridency of the BJP’s Hindutva campaign can lose parties such as Telugu Desam the bulk of minority votes. Doubtless, caste factors also come into play and the mix varies from state to state. To an extent, Mr Vajpayee’s drumbeat of Hindutva as a tolerant creed could provide some cover, but voters are unlikely to be misled by such transparent ploys, and Mr Naidu might discover that his calculations can go awry.

Indeed, the country is destined to see many battles fought in the name of Hindutva.

MIDDLE

A nirvana of words
Darshan Singh Maini

Though my urge for writing is nearly as old as the urge for romance and love that surfaces so strongly when a boy turns into a man, it’s not till lately that it became for me not only an expression of my deepest thoughts, dreams, and disputations, but also a distinctive form of nirvana.

In a writing career spread over nearly 50 years, I had to brook many an awkward and distressing moment in the early stages, and I didn’t quite know the direction my muses sought. What’s more, I wasn’t quite sure of the spiritual potential of such an exercise. All I needed then, or perhaps cared for, was a romance with words, an extension of the self in lexical fields, a kind of “game”, if you like. That writing indeed is such a romance, such an extension and such a game even at the highest level I was destined to learn years later when problems of language, form and style turned out to be also questions of epistemology, values and vision in the wider sense.

The point I’m trying to make is that in this long period of writing I have been moving from one plane to another even as, basically, little changed enroute. Still, different streams of thought, flowing chiefly from the Western founts appeared to have gathered into the basin of my mind, and given an edge, a focus and a direction to whatever I was attempting to put across. And though a certain kind of ideological monism did colour my perceptions for a long time, I started moving towards some kind of pluralism in thought later. And the writing in obedience to such a sum of ideas began to assume its new form, and its own signature.

Thus writing as a cognitive process, and as a life of the imagination has survived in its various avtaras. However, writing as spiritual therapy and, finally, as nirvana, seldom entered my mind consciously till I fell critically ill over nine years ago. At one time, during this ordeal, the fatigue of the mind, of a consequence of long labour in writing too was suggested by doctors and friends as a possible source of my neurological disorder, but I have steadily moved away from such thoughts, and come to believe that it has now become in these twilight years of pain perhaps the only form of nirvana available in sight.

Even as I submit ever more to the call of prayers, and to the sweetness of the hymns from the Gurbani, I continue to drag my feet on the threshold of faith. And I return again and again to the discipline of writing as a mode of finding peace in the midst of my ambiguities and anxieties. The poems, in particular, help work off my fevers and ease my mutinous nerves. Basically, art is that kind of medicine, being cathartic in nature. But I’m truly seeking some kind of physical relief as well. Which reminds me of John Steinbeck’s remark that “poetry is also the best therapy because sometimes the troubles come tumbling out”.

Thus, writing, in general, helps meet the assault of suffering, and keeps adrenalin flowing in my spirit. And if it does anything, it, at least, keeps a maverick mind from straying into all manner of phantom fears. It ties me down to a certain discipline. And it acts as a palliative for a while. And even if peace comes in such small doses and fleeting interludes, it has its own place in the scheme of things. Clearly, I’m not talking of nirvana in the religious sense, but of an earthly moksha within the constraints of my situation. A truly religious personality is, I think, a gift of God, and since I do not possess those traits, I have had to work out my own kind of nirvana.

FOCUS

Al-Qaida empire flourishes in Pakistan
B.Raman

Pakistan-based pan-Islamic terrorist organisations, which are allied with Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaida in his International Islamic Front(IIF), have been consistent in the pursuit of their long-term strategy directed against India. They look upon Jammu & Kashmir as the gateway to India and repeatedly underline that the “liberation” of J&K would be only the first stage of their jihad against India.

According to them, the second stage would be the “liberation” of Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh and Junagadh in Gujarat, which they look upon as rightly belonging to Pakistan, and the third and final stage would be the “liberation” of the Muslims in the rest of India as a prelude to the formation of an Islamic Caliphate in South Asia.

All these organisations project their jihad as directed not only against the Indian State, but also against the Hindu religion and against what they describe as the corrupting influence of Hinduism on Islam not only in India, but also in the Sindh and Balochistan provinces of Pakistan and in Bali in Indonesia. It is as part of their jihad against Hinduism that they have been attacking Hindu places of worship and Hindu pilgrims not only in J&K as one saw again in Jammu; on November 24, 2002, in Hyderabad; and in Gandhinagar in Gujarat in the last week of September, 2002.

The most virulent and the most active of these organisations is the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), previously based at Muridke, near Lahore, in Pakistan. It has been responsible for most of the suicide attacks in India since it joined Bin Laden’s IIF shortly after its formation in 1998.

After the attack on the Indian Parliament House on December 13, 2001, the USA, which had designated the LET and the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM), another pan-Islamic terrorist organisation allied with Al-Qaida in the IIF, as Foreign Terrorist Organisations under a 1996 law, exercised pressure on the military regime in Pakistan to act against the Pakistani pan-Islamic organisations allied with Al-Qaida in the IIF.

In response to this pressure, Gen Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s military dictator, ostensibly banned on January 15, 2002,the LET, the JEM and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ), arrested many of their leaders and administrative cadres and imposed restrictions on their open fund collection drive in Pakistani territory. However, he did not ban the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), which was declared by the USA as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation as early as October,1997, and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI), both of which have a large number of trained cadres operating not only in J&K, but also in Bangladesh, in the Arakan area of Myanmar, southern Philippines, the Central Asian Republics (CARs) and Chechnya in Russia.

The Pakistani authorities, while briefing the media at that time, had said that another order banning the HUM and the HUJI would follow. This has not happened so far. This reluctance to ban these organisations is attributable to the large following they have in the lower and middle ranks of the Pakistani Army.

Many of the arrested cadres of the LET and the JEM were subsequently released on the ground that there was no evidence of their involvement in terrorism. Maulana Azhar was released from jail, but placed under house arrest. Prof Sayeed was released, re-arrested and has recently been released again, ostensibly on the orders of a court.

Pakistani Government spokesmen had indicated in January, 2002, that a separate order banning their activities not only in the POK and the NA, but also in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) bordering Afghanistan would follow. This too has not happened so far.

Drawing attention to the spread of Al-Qaida cadres to different parts of Pakistan, with the complicity of the Pakistani pan-Islamic organisations without the State acting against it, Khaled Ahmed, the highly respected Pakistani analyst, wrote in the “Daily Times” (July19, 2002): “While our religious leaders deny that there is such a thing as Al-Qaida existing on the face of the earth and say that the Americans had created it to be able to attack Muslim sovereign States, the empire of Al-Qa-da keeps unfolding in Pakistan. The government troops are fighting Al-Qaida foreigners and the local warriors aligned with them in the tribal areas and the major cities of the country. What is coming to light is the astounding depth of Al-Qaida’s penetration of Pakistan. One is compelled to realise that the State itself was co-operating with the elements that planned to take over Pakistan on behalf of Al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden.”

After the elections in Pakistan, what was described as a jihad conference was held at the initiative of the MUD. The intensification of terrorist attacks in J&K and elsewhere has come in the wake of this conference. The overtures made by the new Government of J&K to the indigenous Kashmiri organisations will not have any impact on these Pakistani pan-Islamic organisations whose agenda is totally different from that of the indigenous organisations. They have to be ruthlessly eliminated, if necessary, by taking our counter-terrorism operations into Pakistani territory through appropriate covert actions. Unless and until we do so, our innocent civilians will continue to bleed. ADNI

Cash flow continues

It has reportedly been estimated by the experts of the Monitoring Committee of the UN Security Council, which oversees the implementation of the UNSC Resolution No. 1373, that despite the freezing/seizure of terrorist funds and other assets worth US $ 112 million since 9/11, Al-Qaida and its allies in the International Islamic Front still have at their disposal about US $ 300 million. Replenishments continue to flow into their funds.

All these organisations, which are members of Bin Laden’s International Islamic Front, have been using part of this increased flow in India and diverting part to fund the activities of the Front in other parts of the world. The pan-Islamic and pro-Wahabi members of the Pakistani religious coalition had promised in their election manifesto that if they came to power they would step up assistance to the jihadis in Kashmir, Palestine, Chechnya, the Arakan area of Myanmar and the southern Philippines. This flow is, therefore, likely to increase in the coming months. ADNI

TRENDS & POINTERS

Yelling at work places doesn’t work

A new US research has showed that employees who are shouted at or humiliated by their managers at work are less likely to work for the betterment of their company though they may meet their deadlines.

“People get very caught up in that [pressure] and they forget some of the basic human elements to a relationship,” Ms Jackson said. “They don’t think] ‘I might get this deadline met this month but what I might do in the meantime is destroy my relationships with all my co-workers, tread on top of them’.” ANI

New machine for peaceful death

Australia’s leading euthanasia advocate, Dr Philip Nitschke, who has helped several terminally ill people end their lives, will fly to the USA on Wednesday to unveil his latest death machine.

Nitschke will present his device, which allows a person to breath in pure carbon monoxide to hasten death, at the national euthanasia conference of The Hemlock Society of the USA in San Diego starting on Wednesday.

“It produces pure carbon monoxide for a person who is suffering and decides it is time to end the suffering. It will produce a peaceful death,” Nitschke told Reuters on Tuesday.

Nitschke said the unique aspect of the simple machine was that it could be used for therapeutic purposes, as it can also produce oxygen, and therefore could not be declared illegal.

“That was one of the design requirements,” said Nitschke, who took a year to design and make the prototype machine with research funding from the American Hemlock Society.

“It will have a strong warning that if you put in different chemicals it will produce a peaceful death. So it just becomes a strategy, somewhat cynical, but a strategy nevertheless to frustrate any attempts at legislative control.”

Nitschke gained international attention in 1997 when he assisted four ill patients to die in Australia’s outback Northern Territory under the world’s first voluntary euthanasia laws.

The four used a death machine invented by Nitschke that allowed them to administer a lethal injection via a computer.

Using a computer programme called “Deliverance” the patient hooked up an intravenous drip linked to a computer that asked three questions. The final question informed the patient they would die if they answered “yes”.

His latest euthanasia equipment is what he calls an “Exit Bag”, a plastic bag with a drawstring which a person places over the head to suffocate. Nitschke said his new death machine, of which there is currently only a prototype, could be built for as little as A$100 (US$57), but would not be sold to terminally ill patients.

“We are not going to sell the machine. It will be made available to our members, Exit Australia, once they have been members for one year,” he said. Reuters

Children suffer if parents smoke

Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have recently found that hospitalisation of kids, who suffer from respiratory problems due to second-hand smoke, is the right time to ask their parents to quit smoking.

Children often suffer respiratory illnesses due to parental smoking. In the study, published in Pediatrics, researchers were able to help many parents stop smoking and gain a better awareness of the harm passive smoke can inflict on their children. ANI

Satellite-based system to trace stolen cars

Car thieves are getting smarter by the day. Forced to come up with innovative ways of catching them, the police in the USA has armed itself with satellite tracking technology and remote-control devices. This way, no matter how smart the thief is, he just cannot drive away with a booby-trapped car.

The police can also activate special beacons or infrared lights, and many bait cars are equipped with video cameras and audio recorders. This is especially handy when one or more passengers are on board, said Wayne Johnson, a car theft specialist with the Minneapolis Police Department, which has used bait cars to convict thieves in 111 cases. ANI

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

Forgive us, O Lord,

If immersed in our own affairs,

We have committed sins against Divine powers,

Forgive us

For our sins

Against men, sins against elders,

And sins against our own conscience.

And for all sins that we have committed knowingly,

And those which we might have committed unawares.

— Yajurveda, 8.13

***

The melody plays at your door,

In the region of the forehead,

Beyond the bounds of the three gunas (attributes)

— Sri Guru Granth Sahib, Kabir Ram Kali, page 970

***

All pervading God!

Whatever heinous sin

we may have committed,

Be it one of downright jeering at God—

Or scorn of Him—by tongue, mind or action,

We pray for pardon

For that haughty and perverse God-hater

Who is ever busy tempting us to evil paths.

— Rigveda, 4.54.3

***

He who is born will die,

if not today then tomorrow.

— Sri Guru Granth Sahib, M9, slok, page 1429

***

The world is like a dream;

The play is over in a moment;

people come together by chance

And go away in separation.

— Sri Guru Granth Sahib, M1, Sri Rag page 18

***

Just as a bubble appears and disappers;

O Nanak! the created world does the same.

— Sri Guru Granth Sahib, M9, page 1427

***

The Lord's Kirtan is a secret of the saints.

Believe in the Word of the

Master And he will reveal it to you.

— Sri Guru Granth Saib, M4, Kalyan, page 1326

***

We have sung His praises for many ages.

In songs that please the ear and move the heart,

But uninspired by Nam,

it is all delusion.

— Sri Guru Granth Sahib, M1, Rag Asa page 414