Pressing on with peace

INDIA has posed a cruel dilemma before the Pakistani rulers by extending the cease-combat operation order in the Kashmir valley for one more month. Islamabad is already under pressure from the new dispensation in Washington to go slow in aiding and abetting the Islamist jehadis and now New Delhi has added to its problems by persisting with the peace process. Its initial reaction exposes its narrowing options. The empty rhetoric about lack of sincerity on India’s part will not do if terrorist violence continues in the valley and the civilian casualty mounts. That way people will demonstrably disown the gun-toting men, mostly trained and armed by Pakistan. The next step will be denunciation of that country as well. But the biggest threat lies in the domestic realm. The Pakistan economy is in the grip of a severe crisis and a frown from the USA will sink the whole edifice. In recent weeks two senior US officials, Ambassador Milam and Centcom commander General Franks have personally delivered a warning from their country; saying that promoting religious fanaticism would destabilise the whole region. Islamabad is also worried over the new-found warmth in Sino-Indian ties. These are not closely related but are still worrisome. And India seems to have convinced even the isolationist European Union of the crucial role of Pakistan in keeping alive cross-border terrorism and tension along LoC. With political parties in disarray, it has fallen to the lot of journalists and academics to voice concern over the increasing dominance of fundamentalist factions in the domestic policy realm. The Indian decision to go ahead with the peace process sharply underlines this internal danger.

The Hurriyat too has a hard choice to make. At one point of time it insisted on travel documents to all the five members of the delegation. But when the Union Home Ministry vaguely indicated its unease with the nomination of Syed Ali Shah Geelani in the team, it dropped hints that he was in need of constant medical attention and his ill-health could be a cover to strike his name off. Mr Abdul Gani Butt even went to the extent of expressing the Hurriyat’s readiness to go ahead with the Pakistan visit without the hawkish executive member. This brings out the confusion among the top leaders and also the desire of most of them to go to Pakistan and talk to the militants based there. It is the last chance for the conglomerate to remain relevant in the political process of the valley. And one misstep will banish it into oblivion. New Delhi should convert this desire for a meaningful role into a desire for capturing political power by helping in the peace process. There are elements in the Hurriyat which will oppose it but they will be outmanoeuvred by others. Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah is not fully supportive of this. He rightly fears that if the talks succeed, he will be asked to go into voluntary retirement which does not appeal to him. Of course there are hardliners in New Delhi, particularly among the top layer of the BJP leadership. The government has overcome their opposition this time and it can do it again. What next? One, it should send passports to those who do not possess one. Even to Syed Geelani. He will only shrink in stature by mouthing angry views. There is a groundswell of support for peace and any open declaration of sympathy for the jehadis will be seen as anti-people. Two, three militant groups are hell-bent on killing people and the government has decided not to extend the courtesy of cease-combat operations to them; it is a wise move and will be welcomed by the ordinary Kashmiri. Three, the government should stay its course of peace and hold fire as long as there is a glimmer of hope for an eventual solution. Peace is an eccentric and whimsical force and perseverance wins it. So far the Centre has shown abundance of perseverance.

Antyodaya sounds good

PUNJAB and Haryana are reported to be putting pressure on the Centre to bear the cost of implementing the ambitious Antyodaya Anna Yojna. Haryana has promised to start providing 25 kg of rice or wheat per “poorest of the poor” family at highly subsidised rates from March 1. However, if the issue raised by the two states is not resolved antyodaya like so many welfare schemes launched by the Centre and the state governments may never see the light. On the face of it the demand is patently unfair. The objective of banishing poverty from the country cannot be treated as the sole responsibility of the Centre. It must be remembered that the subsidy burden on the Centre for implementing the scheme would increase by Rs 2,300 crore. If it were to shoulder the additional responsibility of transportation and distribution of foodgrains, the cost of implementing the scheme may hit the ceiling. Of course, the Centre has introduced the scheme with the basic objective of killing two birds with one stone. The antyodaya scheme is meant to help it find suitable outlets for getting rid of the huge surplus in its granaries. Against a buffer stock of 181 lakh tonnes on October 1, last year, it had built up a stock of 400 lakh tonnes. For want of adequate storage facilities much of the surplus stock was allowed to rot in the open. Against this background, the antyodaya scheme, if implemented honestly, should prove to be a blessing for the poor as also the Central agencies unable to cope with the mountain of foodgrains they are having to procure for keeping the farmers on the right side of the government.

According to one calculation the scheme will benefit nearly five lakh people in the region. There are about 70,000 antyodaya families in Punjab, 1.20 lakh in Haryana, nearly 80,000 in Himachal Pradesh, 1.12 lakh in Jammu and Kashmir and 3,500 in the Union Territory of Chandigarh. A unique feature of the scheme is the distribution of 10 kg of free foodgrains per person above the age of 65 in the antyodaya category. However, doubts about the fair implementation of antyodaya are being expressed by those who have seen the foodgrains and other items released to PDS outlets ending up in the godowns of hoarders and blackmarketers. Besides, the freedom to each state to evolve its own parameters for identifying the antyodaya families from those below the poverty line too may defeat the purpose for which the Centre has agreed to add to its subsidy burden. Since Union Consumer Affairs and Public Distribution Minister Shanta Kumar is the moving spirit behind the scheme only he can explain why similar schemes during Janata Party rule in the country in 1977 and BJP rule in Himachal Pradesh in 1990, when he was Chief Minister, failed to take off. The Himachal scheme became a source of rampant corruption, thus negating the purpose for which it was introduced. Hopefully, the new antyodaya scheme will not suffer the same fate. 

Sanctions against Afghans?

FOR some time the USA has been frequently manipulating the UN, reducing it to an extension of its State Department, for imposing sanctions against “rogue states”. The Iraqi rulers, to be more specific, the proud people of this West Asian country, have been suffering because of the sanctions regime for nearly a decade. Afghanistan is the latest target. This is the first week when the Taliban regime has begun facing the heat of the UN Security Council. Afghanistan can save itself from getting ruined by the punitive measure if it agrees to comply with the major demand of the UN: surrender wealthy Saudi fugitive Osama bin Laden, indicted by a US federal court for masterminding the bombing of the American missions in Kenya and Tanzania, resulting in the death of over 200 persons. Osama has also been running camps for training terrorists to indulge in destructive activities in Jammu and Kashmir and elsewhere in India. But that is not a matter of as serious concern for the world’s policeman as the threat to American interests. Hence the sanctions, which means the UN member-governments should not enter into any kind of deal to supply arms, ammunition and related material to the Taliban regime. This is what it should be to force the regime to listen to reason and end its involvement in terrorist activity. It is good that the organisations engaged in humanitarian projects have been exempted.

There is, however, a serious complication. The UN action is also going to affect international trade-related activities involving Afghanistan, as the governments having diplomatic relations with the Kabul have been asked to drastically reduce the number of their representatives there and close down the missions of that country in their territory. This is ultimately going to bring untold hardship to the people of Afghanistan, who cannot be held responsible for the establishment of the Taliban regime or its policies. They are already dying of hunger or malnutrition owing to the most crippling drought, being experienced for the first time after at least 30 years. The natural disaster has put at risk the lives of a vast number of Afghans, mainly in the country’s western region. According to an estimate by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), in the absence of an urgent and adequate aid from the world community, over a million people can lose their lives because of hunger or disease. Thousands of families have taken shelter in camps in Pakistan and Iran. The international aid reaching them is too little to help them survive, as UNHCR officials admit. Thus the sanctions have come at a wrong time. The UN measure, coming at the instance of the USA, may only strengthen the position of the Taliban regime in the eyes of its people. Did the USA or any other country wishing to punish the Taliban for the regime’s irresponsible activities want this? 

What ails India-Nepal relations
A study of psychological and other factors
by T. V. Rajeswar

THE serious disturbances witnessed in Kathmandu and a few other towns over the alleged anti-Napali remarks of actor Hrithik Roshan came almost exactly a year after the hijacking of Indian Airlines aircraft IC 814. It was more than a mere coincidence, particularly since the rumours were deliberately set afloat and the riots instigated by organised groups of young activists. Who inspired them, funded them, and motivated them, remain to be investigated. Whether the official enquiry ordered by the Nepal government will be able to get to the bottom of the sordid episode is doubtful.

Prima facie, it was half a dozen Leftist organisations, with students playing an active role, which were at the forefront of the disturbances. Some of them have links with the communists of China and some are linked with the PWG in Bihar. The Maoists are becoming a powerful disruptive force in Nepal and its influence is growing by default. However, there was no apparent motive for the Maoist forces from either country to promote this sort of rioting against India and Indian interests in Nepal at this particular juncture. The needle of suspicion should, therefore, necessarily point to the ISI of Pakistan which remains active in Nepal.

Nepalese politicians and student bodies do not like to hear about the ISI’s role in their country, in spite of the fact that its activities have been steadily growing over the years. Pakistan’s main emphasis is on promoting Islamic fundamentalism and supporting Muslim organisations in Nepal. A prominent Muslim politician of Nepal became the conduit for slush funds from Dawood Ibrahim, and, more seriously, he was also assisting the passage of ISI-backed militants across to India. In the murky gang warfare this politician was shot dead by Chhota Rajan’s gang.

The hijacking of IC 814 in December, 1999, was at the instance of militants based in Pakistan and closely coordinated by the ISI. The Pakistani militants and the hijackers made their way to Pakistan after the hostages were exchanged for hardcore militants held in India at Kandahar. Since then the Interpol has issued look-out notices and arrest warrants for these wanted criminals. Pakistan has been clearly identified, at the international level, as a country which promotes terrorism. It would not be, therefore, farfetched to believe that Pakistan and its ISI sought their revenge by engineering anti-Indian riots in Nepal on the anniversary of the hijacking.

It would be a superficial analysis if we merely leave the whole episode at that. Surely, something more fundamental lurks behind the Nepali psyche which makes such serious disturbances possible over a palpably unbelievable and unaccounted rumour. Many people, starting from actress Manisha Koirala to some veteran analysts in the field of Indo-Nepal relations, have since made their comments. They are all agreed upon one basic point: the riots were an expression of a people dominated practically in every field, and more specially in the field of trade and commerce, by a section of people from a larger country. Since some rationale has to be found for the riots, this explanation is a possible answer, though not necessarily correct. Since the riots first erupted in Prime Minister Koirala’s constituency of Morang and later spread to Kathmandu and elsewhere, politics was involved. Since the anti-Koirala politicians within the Nepali Congress itself seized the riots issue for bringing about a no-confidence motion against him, and also combined many other accusations like corruption, it was clear that the game was much bigger.

An analysis of Indo-Nepal relations over the years would be in order. After the second Treaty of Sugauli of 1923 between the British and the Nepalese conceded the recognition of Nepal’s independence. Kathmandu became a close ally of British and provided over two lakh Gorkha soldiers who served the British during World War II. After Independence India and Nepal signed the Treaties of Peace and Friendship and Trade and Commerce in 1950. The unrest in Nepal against the Rana regime resulted in King Tribhuwan seeking asylum in the Indian Embassy at Kathmandu on November 6, 1950. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru ensured King Tribhuwan’s assumption of power as a sovereign ruler followed by a popular government headed by Mr B.P. Koirala of the Nepali Congress. King Tribhuwan was succeeded by King Mahendra in 1955 who moved close to China and entered into a treaty with that country in 1956, followed by increasing collaboration between the two countries. King Mahendra dismissed the Koirala Ministry in 1960 and also arrested Koirala and several other Nepalese Congress leaders on the implied accusation that they were acting as Indian stooges. King Mahendra also promoted close ties with Pakistan after his visit there in 1961. All these steps were clearly meant to distance Nepal’s links with India.

King Mehendra was succeeded by Birendra, whose regime witnessed further worsening of relations between India and Nepal. Birendra ordered a huge consignment of arms and ammunition which were delivered in about 400 trucks from China and these included some anti-aircraft guns also. This was contrary to the Indo-Nepal treaty of 1950. As Prof Leo E. Rose commented, “astonishingly and equally amazing was that soon after the arms were imported the Nepali Prime Minister, for the first time, talked of India’s air-intrusion in the eastern districts of Nepal”.

King Birendra also promoted the concept of Zone of Peace which was meant to maintain equi-distance with India and China and a clear dilution of Indo-Nepal Treaty of 1950. Professor Rose, who was a friend of Nepal and was conferred with the medal of Gorkha Dakshin Bahu, commented that it was naive on the part of Nepal to assume that India would docilely “permit Nepal, a dagger aimed at the heartland of Northern India, to come under China’s domination.”

Nepal is no doubt landlocked and not “India-locked” as the erstwhile Nepal Prime Minister Adhikari stated during his visit to Delhi in April, 1995, clearly forgetting that Nepal shared the northern border with China. The Chinese proximity was, however, misused in a manner which hurt India’s interests. The dumping of goods imported from China, Hong Kong, Thailand etc, by Nepal and smuggled into India posed a serious economic problem to this country in the mid-1980s.

Items like stainless steel sheets, polyester fibre etc, which were not utilised in Nepal were clearly meant for smuggling into India.

Several meetings held by Indian ministers and officials with their counterparts in Nepal conceded that Nepal’s economy considerably depended upon this “unregulated trade and commerce”. Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi temporarily suspended trade and transit with Nepal which brought home the lesson to the Nepalese people because of the huge shortage of essential items like petrol and kerosene, resulting in great distress. The trade and commerce resumed later after the Nepalese government promised to ensure that no smuggling and dumping of unwanted items into India would be permitted.

Nepal has a population of about 25 million while the Nepalis all over India are about 10-12 million. Assam, which has been swamped by mass migration from every direction, primarily from Bangladesh, is also having a large number of Nepali population. There is no state in India which does not have Nepali people. Nepal also contributes considerably to the Indian army. At present about 40,000 Gorkha soldiers serve in the Indian Army. Many of them fought bravely in the Kargil war. Indeed, the construction of roads all along the Sino-Indian border by the Border Roads Organisation would not have been possible but for the hardy Sherpas of Nepal who happily serve in those high altitudes.

Amity between the two Hindu-majority countries of the world, India and Nepal, would endure, notwithstanding the games of politicians from either country or the machinations of hostile neighbours. Every now and then there may be an occasional outburst of the under-privileged against a dominant well-to-do neighbour, even as we see periodic riots against Indian merchants in Nairobi. Eventually, the common ethos and identity of interests will ensure the continuation of good relations between India and Nepal.

The writer is a former Governor of West Bengal and Sikkim.

Sahara’s woman of destiny

IT is surprising to meet a woman, minus all those high flying and cultivated upmarket trappings, who has been specially entrusted the task of restructuring a private airline. At first glance, Ms Vandana Bhargava easily passes off as a quintessential housewife with the odd interest in civil aviation and the NDA government’s open sky policy. As the conversation veers round to brasstacks, Ms Bhargava displays a steely grit and an insatiable capacity to work and turn around things which appear to have taken a nosedive. That she has been handpicked by the Sahara Parivar chief to revamp Sahara Airlines and put the fledgling and struggling carrier on a reliable and high footing is a feather in her cap. New to the civil aviation sector, Ms Bhargava assumed charge of Sahara Airlines in January last year and has displayed her resoluteness to meet the competition head long. Unfazed by the none-too-palatable realities of the civil aviation sector, Ms Bhargava has decided to bash on regardless of keeping for herself a gruelling seven-day work schedule. She has gone round all the 14 odd stations of Sahara Airlines in the country and is constantly striving to improve the carrier’s performance by focusing on product improvement and the upgradation of services both in the air and on the ground. She has also set in motion information technology applications in various aspects of airline operations. In a shade over a year after assuming charge of Sahara Airlines, the carrier’s not so healthy performance has shown an upward graph along with an increase in occupancy levels. Laying great stress on safety measures, Ms Bhargava has outlined plans to augment Sahara Airlines’ present fleet by the end of this year besides operating to new destinations and increasing the frequency on trunk routes. Ms Bhargava has served the parent company in various capacities and has overseen parabanking, audit and insurance. Educated at Benaras Hindu University, she did her management from Lucknow University. Sahara Airlines wants to increase its share in the civil aviation sector to a highly ambitious 15 per cent by the end of this year, and Ms Bhargava is gung ho in giving all that it takes in achieving that goal.

J&K’s money spinner

Jammu and Kashmir Bank Ltd is amazingly flush with funds despite the economy being a shambles in the militancy prone border state. How is it that the bank has grown phenomenally in the last four years, and what is the secret of the trust reposed by the people of J and K in it? Extremely sure of his ground, the Chairman of J and K Bank, Mr M.Y. Khan, lists the steps taken to shore up the performance of the institution. It includes, among other things, tapping the private corporate and public sectors like Reliance, Hindujas, Kalyanis, SAIL, GNFC, the Power Finance Corporation of India and Indian Airlines, ensuring that merit is the primary criterion for moving up the ladder and making available financial resources for the critical social sector activities. “When we announced this policy of going strictly by merit, union leaders threatened that there will be bloodshed. Over a period of time the merit criterion has come to be accepted because of the transparency involved. We have promoted a person as low as 73 in the list of seniority without raising eyebrows,” Mr Khan says with a tinge of pride. Acutely aware of the trauma faced by the people for over a decade in the wake of cross-border terrorism, Mr Khan emphasises that the bank has reached out to the underprivileged sections and genuinely enjoys the confidence of the people. The bank’s profit is expected to touch Rs 150 crore in 2001 compared to Rs 19 crore in 1996, and its non-performing assets have been brought down to a manageable single digit level. Despite the low market sentiment in 1998, the banks maiden public issue was heavily oversubscribed.

As the nature of his work entails frequent travel, Mr Khan resides in Srinagar despite having been kidnapped by terrorists. Recalling the incident, he says his kidnappers were young, misguided people. Though they treated him well, they had no qualms in repeatedly telling him that he would be killed if their demands were not met. A firm believer “in everything being His will”, Mr Khan mentally prepared himself for the worst. He, however, managed to escape from his captors late at night in the cold and reached an electricity generating and distribution system guarded by security forces. But that nerve-tingling incident has not egged Mr Khan in looking for greener pastures outside violence-ridden J and K. Mr Khan joined the J and K government as District Industries Officer in September, 1970, and handled several important assignments. His innovativeness and contribution as Managing Director of the J and K Tourism Development Corporation has found few peers.

Jesse, et tu?

It has been a sad week for those who took their first political and journalistic lessons in the sixties of last century. Their one time hero, the Rev Jesse Jackson, is mired in a sex scandal and it looks that the blacks in the USA are one leader less. Not an ordinary leader but a high profile and articulate one. Until he came to be recognised, it appeared that black leaders are a militant lot, dangerously stoking the anti-white feelings of their followers. But the Rev Jackson changed all that.

He had to. He was an ardent follower of Martin Luther King, who himself was an ardent follower of Mahatma Gandhi in that land of unabashed materialism and gun culture. So Mr Jackson inherited the legacy of the Selma march to demand racial equality, patterned on the Dandi march of the Mahatma. Every conscious Indian joined the march in his mind and when segregation laws lost out in the Supreme Court, it was celebration time in youthful liberal India.

Now he has gone and fathered a love child. And a magazine has come out with all those private details that make a public scandal. He has had an illegitimate liaison, to use prim British prose, with a black assistant in his political outfit, Rainbow Coalition. Not much is known about her but the focus has been on the Rev Jackson for obvious reasons. Anyway, she is 39 and lives in Chicago but until the pregnancy used to work in Washington. Unlike some others (no names, please) he has not used fancy language to half-admit and half-deny his dalliance. Not that he has only admitted it, he has also apologised to his wife and five children, and is financially supporting his child from Karin Stanford, his girl-friend.

The Rev Jackson captured global leadership attention one April day in 1968. He was standing next to Martin Luther King when a gunman got him. From that blinding moment, his was the most easily recognisable face among hundreds of humdrum black leaders. He was then just 27 and highly idealistic.

He inherited the mantle of King, despite the best efforts of and popular support to Coretta King, the widow. In due course of time she lapsed into being his widow and the Rev Jackson emerged as his political and black heir.

He grew in his new role and shaped his political approach on the King model. He is a tireless organiser and lends a distinct intellectual touch to black politics.

He has often been to Africa trying to sort of intractable tangles or just to show his solidarity. His country’s considerable clout has helped him.

Very recently he was camping in Florida demanding the counting of all votes. He is a Democrat and instinctively knew that black voters had overwhelmingly supported Mr Al Gore. He did not go there on an invitation from Mr Gore but on his own. That was typical of him.

An eminently forgettable deed was his campaign to win Democratic presidential nomination. It was a flop show but he managed to mobilise the blacks and his panics under the Rainblow banner.

It is sad that he has shot himself in the foot. What is profoundly shocking is that he has gifted the leadership of the millions of blacks to rabble rousers and careerists. And at an inopportune time.

Jessie, how could you do this? How, indeed?

IMMUNE SYSTEM AND HEART DISEASE

THE chronic heart muscle disorder known as dilated cardiomyopathy is thought to be brought on by a variety of factors—from heredity to chronic, heavy drinking. Now, new research in mice suggests that in some cases, the body’s own immune system may be behind the life-threatening condition.

Dilated cardiomyopathy is marked by diseased heart muscle fibers that result in abnormal enlargement of one or more of the heart’s chambers. This weakens the heart’s ability to pump efficiently and can trigger heart failure. Although in some cases clear genetic or environmental causes can be determined, in other cases the cause may remain unknown.

But one explanation may rest in the body’s immune system, according to study findings published in the January 12 issue of Science. Japanese researchers report that in some cases, a misguided immune system assault may inflict the damage seen in dilated cardiomyopathy.

Dr Tasuku Honjo of Kyoto University in Japan led the study. Honjo told Reuters Health that researchers have speculated the disease may involve an abnormal immune response because some patients have been shown to have antibodies to their own muscle protein and to certain chemical receptors.

However, Honjo noted, it has been unclear whether these so-called “autoantibodies” are the cause or a result of dilated cardiomyopathy.

In the current study, the investigators found that a strain of mice lacking an immune system regulator known as PD-1 developed a form of dilated cardiomyopathy. All of the affected mice showed autoantibodies to a protein on the surface of heart muscle cells.

Honjo’s team also found that a second strain of mice without PD-1 did not develop the heart disease. This, they report, suggests that other genetic factors are also involved.

If these findings are confirmed in humans, it may be possible to treat some cases of dilated cardiomyopathy with drugs that suppress the immune system or possibly with gene therapy, Honjo said. (Reuters)

Taste for arsenic 

Start with a 10mg mouthful and every two or three days you can up the dose to 300-400g. You do it to ease your breathing in the mountains, to protect against infectious diseases, and to increase your courage, according to 17th century peasants of Styria, in Austria.

They also believed it had positively Viagran properties. And they consumed it with a side order of bread and bacon. They were, of course, eating arsenic. This strange taste for a toxin, according to the latest chemistry. In Britain, has a long history: the Chinese used it for scrofula in 200BC. It is there in 50 Chinese drugs today. It also formed the basis of Salvarsan, the first syphilis treatment. Arsenic is, for the record, a notorious poison. (Guardian)

No lightning on Venus

Lightning strikes somewhere on earth 100 times a second. Each bolt delivers about a trillion watts of electricity in a microsecond or so, heating the air it passes through to more than 15,000 degrees C, which is nearly three times the surface temperature of the sun. Venus, with a terrible climate — boiling clouds of sulphuric acid, ground temperatures which would melt lead — is firework-free, according to Nature today.

A team looking at data from a Cassini flyby found no electrifying evidence. “If lightning exists in a venusian atmosphere, it is either extremely rare, or very different from terrestrial lightning,” they report. (Guardian)

Australia dedicates memorial to Staines
From Paritosh Parasher

VARIOUS organisations in the Australian state of Queensland have also commemorated Graham Staines, the Australian missionary in India murdered in January, 1999, along with his two young sons.

Hundreds of people attended the dedication of a memorial to his life. The missionary hailed from a place near Brisbane in Queensland.

At the ceremony, Staines’ brother John said the memorial celebrates the missionary’s life and his work with the poor and destitute in India, “I think it all helps to put it behind you and also to remember it maybe in a different way to what it was when it was so hard to take in the beginning.”

The Leprosy Mission of Australia is among the organisations that have pledged their support for the Rs 100 million project.

Graham Staines and his two sons, Philip and Timothy, were burnt alive by a mob while they were sleeping inside a jeep at Manoharpur village in Keonjhar district of Orissa on January 22 two years ago. The Australian missionary had been working among leprosy patients in the backward and largely inaccessible Mayurbhanj region of Orissa for more than three decades.

The murders had made international headlines and led to a sense of widespread outrage in India. Subsequently the CBI and police inquiries concluded one Rabindra Pal Singh alias Dara Singh was the “main perpetrator and conspirator” in the killings.

Gladys Staines, the slain missionary’s wife, decided to stay back in India with daughter Esther in spite of the killings. She is overlooking construction of a 40-bed hospital within the premises of Leprosy Home to fulfil her husband’s unfinished dreams. Of these, 30 beds would be for leprosy patients while the rest would be general. IANS, Sydney

Polity fouled by materialism
By H. K. Manmohan Singh

"It is man-making religion we want. It is man-making theories we want. It is man-making education all around that we want."

There is a meaning in what B. F. Skinner, one of the most influential psychologists and educationists of our time, once said: "Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten." For the education system to serve the needs of the fast changing Indian society well, the componential element of moral education needs to be reclaimed and made an integral part of the system. That at present is the main challenge before the teaching community that has too readily become a part of the conspiracy of silence and does not seem to be easily shocked or shamed.

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

It was 1891. Swami Vivekananda was staying at Mount Abu as a guest of a Muslim lawyer. One day... the private secretary of the Raja of Khetri came to the lawyer's bungalow... and said: "Well, Swamiji, you are a Hindu monk. How is it that you are living with a Muslim?"

Swamiji... replied in a stern voice: "Sir, what do you mean? I am a sannyasin. I am above all your social conventions. I can dine even with sweepers, the so-called outcastes. I am not afraid of scriptures, for they allow it; but I am afraid of you people and your society. You know nothing of God and the scriptures: I see Brahman (the supreme soul) everywhere, manifested even in the meanest creature. For me there is nothing high or low, Shiva, Shiva!"

— J. B. Goyal, Swami Vivekananda: His Human Bonds, Chapter 9

*****

The Atma is neither born

Nor does It die.

Coming into being

and ceasing to be

do not take place in it.

Unborn, eternal, constant and ancient,

It is not killed

when the body is slain.

*****

As a man casting off

worn-out garments

puts on new ones,

so the embodied,

casting off worn-out bodies

enters into others

that are new.

*****

Weapons do not cleave

the Atman;

Fire burns It not;

Water wets It not;

Wind drives It not;

*****

This Self is

Uncleanable, incombustible and

neither wetted nor dried.

It is eternal, all-pervading,

stable, immovable and everlasting.

*****

Death is certain of that

which is born;

Birth is certain of that

which is dead.

You should not therefore

lament over the inevitable.

— The Bhagavad Gita, II, 20, 22, 23, 24, 27, 29