The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Crisis time for Congress

REMEMBER the old jingle, “Any time is tea time”? To parody it, it can be said that for the Congress any time is crisis time. As it is now. It has a revolt on its hands in West Bengal. Nearly 20 MLAs have served an ultimatum to the high command: surrender to the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress (TMC) within a week or face a clean wipeout. In Tamil Nadu local leaders want a clean break with the Jayalalitha-led “security alliance” as they are annoyed with the hush-hush entry of the LTTE-loving PMK. In Punjab it has to contend with an open slanging match between the PPCC president and a high profile and energetic dissident. The central leadership hopes that this state-level problem will somehow melt away once the Majitha byelection is won. Won? That is the hope. The West Bengal crisis is the severest. The old “mahajot” spectre has come back to haunt the party unit. Leaders, even those originally opposed to the idea, now realise that anti-Left Front votes will entirely go the Trinamool Congress-BJP alliance leaving it stranded in an electoral no-man’s land. That is the same thing as committing collective political suicide and politicians, Congressmen at least, are not yet ready for it. So they have found a ignominous way out: to join forces with a going and growing alliance so that the party can keep itself afloat. What is alarming is that the deadline was set after a meeting of the three party heavyweights, two of whom were at one time opposed to the idea of holding hands with the TMC. Both state unit president Pranab Mukherjee and former acting president Priyaranjan Dasmunshi seem to favour the mahajot proposal after rejecting it earlier since it involves playing the poll game on the same side as the BJP. That is not being secularist and will pave the way for the sunset of the oldest political party in the state. Harsh reality seems to have changed their thinking or at least forcing them to rethink their opposition and option.

In Tamil Nadu it is a perfect mess with no light at the end of the long, dark tunnel. Mrs Sonia Gandhi is angry that the “Madras Madam” did not consult her before allowing the PMK to enter the alliance. So she has cancelled a trip to Tamil Nadu which included a cosy private meeting with Ms Jayalalitha. Those who know the AIADMK leader and her obsession with heightened self-importance know that it is finis to an electoral alliance. This is what the state leaders, strutting about with imaginary mass following, are advising her. They are follower-less and now clueless. They are pinning their hope on a favourable decision of Tamil Maanila Congress leader G.K. Moopanar to bale them out. If he keeps himself and his party out of both the DMK- and AIADMK-led fronts, he is available to lead a third front. The third front is dead elsewhere but the Congress wants to resurrect it in the southern state. It may or may not succeed but a confused political party clings on to mirages. By its utterances and actions the Congress has paraded itself as a party without a mass base and without a clear vision. The problem is the burden of its past. It still believes that it is the only national party with a following in all states. Yes, it indeed is but the strength is not enough to give it control over the administration. It can get it through the route the BJP took by aligning itself with all and sundry or it can plan its and the country’s future in precise and policy terms and renew its struggle to achieve them. The aged and tired leaders are not upto the task and Mrs Gandhi has to repair this. It can be done.

CAT and Raghavan

THURSDAY's order of the Bangalore Bench of the Central Administrative Tribunal quashing the appointment of Mr R. K. Raghavan as director of the CBI is not going to materially affect any of the dramatis personae. Mr Raghavan is due to retire in two months (the tribunal’s direction to the Union Cabinet Secretary is to take appropriate action for the selection and appointment of a new CBI Director within a period of two months). The order is not going to benefit Karnataka Director-General of Police C. Dinakar, who had challenged Mr Raghavan’s appointment made by a Union Government order dated December 31, 1998, either because he is due to retire in the next few days. All that it will do is to initiate a frenzied rethinking on the alleged infirmities in the guidelines laid down by the Supreme Court for appointment to sensitive posts such as CVC, the Enforcement Director and the CBI director. These were issued during the hearing of the Jain hawala case in 1997. The court had observed that the “recommendations for the appointment of the CBI director shall be made by a committee headed by the Central Vigilance Commissioner with the Home Secretary and the Secretary (Personnel) as members. The views of the incumbent director shall be considered by the committee for making the best choice. The committee shall draw up a panel of IPS officers on the basis of their seniority, integrity, experience in investigation and anti-corruption work. The final selection shall be made as recommended by the committee.”

Mr Dinakar had stated that the appointment of Mr Raghavan was “illegal, unjust and improper” on the ground that the Central Government had overlooked his “superior merit”. Mr Dinakar and Mr Raghavan belong to the same batch of the IPS. The former’s contention was that despite his (Mr Dinakar’s) superior merit, Mr Raghavan was appointed under “political pressure”. The CAT Bench stated in its judgement: “We conclude that the CBI selection board did not even have administrative convenience as a possible ground for their action of not considering the case of the applicant (Mr Dinakar) amongst others.” Interestingly, a three-Judge Bench of the Supreme Court had dismissed a public interest litigation in August, 1999, challenging the appointment of Mr Raghavan and observed: “The appointment was done after complying with required procedures.” Mr Dinakar has reasons to feel elated after the CAT judgement that his stand has been vindicated, but an interesting legal battle lies ahead. Present indications are that the government is going to challenge the CAT order.

Enough of ceasefire in Kashmir
Focus needs to be shifted to the people
By P. C. Dogra

WE are going through the third month of ceasefire. It has been a very bold step. It sent the right signal to the people of Kashmir and the rest of the world about the sincerity of the Indian nation on finding an amicable solution to the Kashmir problem. When the first ceasefire was announced to coincide with Ramzan festival, the Kashmiris became ecstatic. It marked a sea change in their daily life style. There was no physical checking. There were no cordon and search operations. It generated hope of some kind of solution. People in the valley celebrated Ramzan with great gusto.

However, the peace was shortlived and the hopes were belied by the escalation in violence. Militants took advantage from day one. Hizbul Mujahideen militants came to the Hazratbal shrine at the time of Friday prayers, fired a few shots in full public view and later held a press conference. The various jehadi outfits simply refused to reciprocate positively. They grabbed this opportunity to do the necessary regrouping of their outfits, strategically locate their units and the dumps of arms and ammunition. They stepped up their violent actions, started attacking the security installations. In the first two months of ceasefire, there were 342 killings, including a large number of civilians.

My own assessment is that the security forces have a very grim situation ahead. Gen Pervez Musharraf reciprocated the Indian gesture of ceasefire by a token thinning of the Pak troops on the line of control. Terrorist actions by the jehadi outfits continued unabated. Obviously, he has no control over these organisations. It is jehad in Kashmir, a call for a total Islamisation of the state. It is no more indigenous movement of the so-called liberation of Kashmir. It is a pan-Islamic movement, liberation of Kashmir from the “infidels”, setting up the “rule of Allah” first in Kashmir, then in India and the rest of the world. One thing we must understand and assimilate is that jehad has come to stay in the valley because of the presence of the mercenary terrorists. Our future course of action should be worked out accordingly.

Syed Ali Shah Geelani, a hardcore Jamaat-e-Islami fanatic and one of the top leaders of the All-Party Hurriyat Conference who stands for the merger of Kashmir with Pakistan, has said: “Struggle is not for the restoration of Kashmiriat or national identity. Muslims though equal citizens of India like Hindus, Sikhs and Budhists, are also part of MILAT, an extended Muslim Nation. Nobody will be allowed to disintegrate MILAT”.

No one can utter a discordant note in the valley. Abdul Gani Lone, a Hurriyat leader, said on his return from Pakistan: “Foreign militants came to Kashmir for fighting a jehad voluntarily. Let them fight for jehad but not make the political choices for the Kashmiris”. Now observe the rejoinder from Ayesha Andrabi, Chief of Dukhtaran-e-Milat, a pro-Pak militant outfit of Kashmiri women. She said: “Kashmiri movement did not belong only to Kashmiris but to foreign militants also who are laying down their lives” and warned Abdul Gani Lone of dire consquences if he speaks anything against foreign militants.

These jehadi outfits have the required wherewithal and infrastructure to sustain and fight a long-drawn battle for the “glory of Islam.” The J&K police is reported to have seized some documents from the bank where the Lashkar-e-Toiba had an amount of Rs 1 crore in their account. It was also reported in the media that the Lashkar-e-Toiba had so much money of its own that it could start a bank. By now it is well known that the proceeds from the vast illegal trade in narcotics is used by the Pakistani Generals and the ISI to finance the Islamic terrorist outfits worldwide.

Leaders of the All Party Hurriyat Conference, a conglomeration of disparate factions who had lost all credibility as the people of Kashmir held them responsible for the killing of their kith and kin, have come to the centrestage and are going to Pakistan to talk to the jehadi organisations purportedly to request them to give peace a chance. The Lashkar-e-Toiba, the Jaishe-a-Mohammed and the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen have already made their intention clear that there is no way they will stop their jehad. They want the Government of India to talk directly to the Mujahideen. They have claimed that Bharat is loosing ground in the valley and that is why Indians are panicky for the initiation of talks. In their bravado, they have promised a safe passage to the Indian forces in case they withdraw from the valley. It is rather strange that Pakistan is insisting on the Government of India to give passports to all the Hurriyat leaders. There is some game plan. It will definitely unfold during the visit of these Hurriyat leaders. It is very likely that Pakistan will force these leaders to accept Pakistan as the third party to the dispute and insist on the Government of India for starting a tri-partite dialogue.

On the other hand the top leaders of the Jamat-e-Islami and the Let have ruled out any kind of compromise on the premise that the Muslim clerics will declare it unIslamic. In that situation, will General Musharraf be able to go against the stated position of the jehadi chiefs and take along all the Corps Commanders of his army. Lieut-General Hamid Gul, former chief of the ISI, has observed that Pakistan feels much more secure with the Indian army having been fully trapped in the valley. Everyone in Pakistan is aware that if Kashmiris are to choose between merger with Pakistan and the independence of Kashmir, about 90% will opt for independence. Pakistan will never allow the consolidation of pro-independence forces in the valley.

Kashmiris feel much more insecure than ever before. They again close their establishments by five in the evening and rush back to their homes. With the security forces not undertaking any combat operations, militants have the field day. In such a situation, Kashmiris find themselves at the mercy of armed terrorists. Time is not far when the jehadi terrorists will have a complete sway over the people of Kashmir. One goes with the mighty. It is a fact of life and it will be evident in the valley in the not too distant future.

So as to showcase it as an indigenous secessionist movement, the Jaishe-e-Mohammed is making local recruitment on a larger scale than ever before. They have also started espousing the pro-people causes in the valley. The recent ultimatum to the Government of J&K to ensure regular supply of electricity to the people in the valley or face dire consequences is an indicator to that effect. After an unsuccessful attack on the Srinagar airport by the Lashkar-e-Toiba, about 1000 people had collected in front of the police station to claim the bodies of the slain militants. It is quite ominous. We may drift back to the situation of 1990 when thousands of Kashmiris would come out in procession in the streets of Srinagar and demonstrate before the office of the UN observers demanding withdrawal of the Indian security forces and the independence of Kashmir.

Not everything is lost in Kashmir. People want peace. Kashmiris are a progressive society. They are worried about the future of their children. Young children are taken away by the jehadis at gunpoint. All those who can afford it have sent their children outside the state to other parts of India. Kashmiris want this problem to be solved through negotiations and dialogue but not with guns. Kashmiriat is a synthesis of Hinduism, Buddhism and the Muslim religion. It should also be understood that Kashmiris whether Muslims or Pandits have been suffering from the psyche of Riyasti (separate sovereign state). Even after its merger with India, it remained aloof from the national mainstream.

Holding of the panchayat elections is another bold step by Dr Farooq Abdullah. It is a shot in the arm for the nationalist forces. In the first phase nearly 85 per cent exercised their franchise. It is a big achievement. Let us build on it. It indicates that the people of J&K respect the democratic traditions of the country. It is sheer bravery that people in such a large number went to the polling booths despite threats to their lives by the terrorists and the boycott call by the Hurriyat.

If we analyse the events in Kashmir since 1947, the Government of India has never allowed the people of Kashmir to decide their fate on their own. Chief Ministers and the governments have been foisted on them. They have never been allowed to elect their Government on their own except, of course, once when the late Mr Morarji Desai was the Prime Minister. One can safely say that elections to the State Assembly of J&K in the year 1987 gave birth to an organised secessionism in the state. All the anti-India and fundamentalist organisations decided to contest the elections to the State Assembly under an umbrella organisation of the Muslim United Front. The present Chief of Hizbul Mujahideen, Syed Salahudin, was the candidate and his Commander in the valley, Majid Dhar, who declared the ceasefire earlier, was his election agent. It is widely alleged that there was large-scale rigging and the candidates who were sureshot winners were declared to have lost. These are the people who then spearheaded the movement for the separation of Kashmir from the Indian Union.

It is time to win back the trust of the Kashmiris. I have a few suggestions to make.

Create a conducive environment for the forthcoming elections to the State Assembly in 2002. If the people of J&K could exercise their franchise in such a large number in the panchayat elections, why should it not be repeated for elections to the State Assembly? Leaders of all political parties should tour the countryside in the remaining phases of the panchayat elections. The State Government must provide full security. The recent grenade attack on Dr Farooq Abdullah when he was addressing a public rally and his courage in not leaving the ground and continuing with speech exhorting people to remain calm is an example worth emulating by all.

We should get into some understanding with the Kashmir valley faction of the Hizbul Mujahideen and moderate leadership of the Hurriyat before the coming Assembly elections.

The Government of India should immediately undertake a massive reconstuction of the damaged roads, bridges, school buildings etc. The newly elected members of the panchayats should be entrusted with the responsibility of supervising the development works. It will be a manifestation of the Lokshakti at the grassroots level.

More army units should be deployed on the LoC to effectively check any further infiltration. Operations in the valley should be conducted jointly by the local police and the paramilitary forces with the army at the back to provide additional firepower if need be. People must feel secure.

Protection of the human rights must be ensured effectively. The institution of judicial enquiry into the Pathribal killings and Chittisingh Pura massacre must be taken to the logical conclusion. It will be a litmus test for the Dr Farooq Abdullah government. If we are transparent and honest about it, it will bring about a positive change in the thinking of the Kashmiris. The recent protest demonstrations over the alleged custodial killings are indicative of the prevailing resentment.

Like Chief Minister of Punjab, Sangat Darshans (meeting the people) should be organised in a big way where all the senior officers concerned should be present and the grievances addressed on the spot. Sheikh Abdullah used to hold such development meetings when he was the Chief Minister of the State. He even used to sit on the ground along with the people.

Educate the Kashmiris about the assault on their Kashmiri heritage and the impending talibanisation of their composite culture by these jehadi outfits.

Invest in the people of Kashmir. It will yield rather positive dividends.

— The author has been an Inspector General of B.S.F. of Jammu, Srinagar and Additional Director General, B.S.F. J&K.

Two staple topics for discussion
By Raj Chatterjee

PEOPLE have been heard to remark that the art of conversation is dead. Pessimists with a profound, if erroneous, historical sense maintain that there has been a gradual decline since the time of Dr Samuel Johnson.

To my mind, what has changed is the substance of our conversation, not its volume. We articulate more forcefully than did our soft-spoken forefathers. But while they talked of art, literature, music and all the other things that enriched their lives, we seem to have only two topics for discussion.

One, understandably, is the runaway cost of living. I am not thinking of the smooth operator in the country’s No 2 economy or the senior business executive with an unlimited expense account. I have in mind the poor fellow who tries to make both ends meet on a fixed income and who finds himself, month by month, delving into his small savings on which he had hoped to retire and live, modestly, for the rest of his days.

One can’t blame him, or his wife, for comparing their grocery bills and their cost of transport with those of the couple next door. Nor can one attempt to change the subject when, on one’s evening stroll, one’s friend goes on and on about the corruption that has turned our public servants into executioners. The man has only half completed his house in a new development area by paying out most of his provident fund to a money-grabbing contractor for whom a deadline has no meaning. He has yet to grease the palms of petty officials and clerks whose job is to give him a completion certificate and permanent connections for electricity, water and sewage disposal.

Our other preoccupation is the unstable political setup. Ministers, governors, senior bureaucrats, heads of PSUs have one thing in common, a feeling of insecurity in regard to their tenures. It is a case of being here today and gone tomorrow. So, while you are here, why not make as much as you can on the side to see you through a rainy day? On whom will the axe fall next? Will he move to the luxury of a Raj Bhavan or to some unimportant post in one of the Central ministries? Or will he ask for leave preparatory to retirement?

In the present scenario, can you think of a more titillating subject for conversation in restaurants and dhabas, public buses and railway carriages, at cocktail parties and milady’s drawing room?

Seeing India through new eyes
By Tavleen Singh

RETURNING to India after a sojourn abroad is always a shock. Even if you are Indian born and bred all it takes is a few days in some developed or half-developed foreign country to see our own Bharatmata through suddenly new eyes. You know, for instance, that Mumbai airport is a disaster, worse than mofussil airports in even countries like Thailand and Indonesia, but it just looks so much worse when you return, as I did, from Zurich. Not only is everything about it makeshift and crumbling but money and effort has been spent on all the wrong things.

Why do you need marble pillars if you do not have the money to spend on modern flooring? Why do you need ludicrous efforts at interior decoration when the necessities are missing like a decent arrival lounge and sufficient parking space? Sahar, now renamed Chhatrapati Shivaji, is one of our newer airports so it is inexplicable that the architect did not realise the importance of having a lounge in which visitors can wait for arriving passengers. In its absence they huddle, often in the rain, outside the exit and passengers have to fight their way through what seems like an angry mob.

If this is not enough to shock first-time visitors to our ancient land they then get a real taste of Indian antiquity when they get into their first taxi. Cars like this simply do not exist anywhere else in the world. Modern cars are now built in India but for the usual inexplicable reasons only. Ambassadors and ancient Fiats are permitted to ply as taxis. When you return from Zurich the shock of a rattling, battered Indian taxi is greater because in that city a taxi can often mean the latest Mercedez.

This time as I drove through the squalid, hopelessly inadequate streets of Mumbai I became acutely aware of the bizarre nature of government spending. The municipality of Mumbai does not appear to have enough money to keep its roads in good shape or to dispose of the city’s waste but has more than enough money to spend on mad schemes. Successive Municipal Commissioners have, for instance, had garbage bin mania. Not because they want to keep the city clean but because of some curious creative urge.

So, a few years ago Mumbai’s streets were dotted with garbage bins in the from of black, plastic penguins. The idea being that you throw your empty cans and plastic bags into the penguin’s beak. The beaks were too narrow and the penguins irresistible so many disappeared quickly, possibly to be used as toys by Mumbai’s slum children.

Undeterred, the municipality came up with another scheme. Where penguins once stood we now have tiny, yellow garbage bins with long legs embedded deep into the pavements so nobody can carry them off. The problem is that the bins are no bigger than the waste paper basket in your house so their main contribution to the city’s garbage disposal system is that they have become eyesores and obstacles for joggers on Marine Drive.

With time their bottoms have rusted and fallen out so they cannot be used anyway. The interesting thing is that all over the world there is an accepted size and design for roadside garbage bins. They are made of wire mesh and stand about four feet high. They have a wide, open mouth and so easy to use. Why did our municipal officials never notice this on their many travels to foreign cities?

Why did New Delhi follow the Mumbai example? It missed out on the penguin scheme but has green bins identical to Mumbai’s yellow ones and equally useless.

The story of wasted taxpayers money, though, goes beyond garbage bins. The bulk of our money, as is frequently pointed out, is spent on millions of officials whose jobs appear to have been designed to waste our time. When you come back to Bharatmata you notice the first superfluous officials when you stand in the immigration queue. There is almost no country left in the world where returning citizens need their passports stamped but we insist on this.

And, speaking of passports, they should be the right of every citizen about in India — possibly to keep government jobs going — they are not. Even to apply for one you need to know a senior government servant and after he has signed on your application form you need to be vetted by a police inquiry and the whole process can take months. Why?

If you speak to Ministry of External Affairs officials they tell you that they do not want to hand out passports to non-Indians and criminals. This is the stupidest of reasons since, in these computerised days, you can cancel a passport in seconds. Many ministers have tried to make the process of getting a passport easier and failed because babudom comes in the way.

Not many Indians travel abroad though, so a passport is not such a problem. But, the same sort of delays and officials get in the way of getting a driving licence as I discovered for myself recently. My licence needed only to be renewed so I filled in the forms, obtained the necessary medical certificate and sent them to Delhi’s transport authorities. It took me more than a month, though, to get my licence because the head honcho in the transport office had an attitude problem.

It is a common disease in babudom so getting a ration card, a gas connection, a telephone line, almost anything that requires official intervention is a long, hard process. Your “file” passes through many, many hands most of whom we could do well without.

The real horror of all this wasted government effort is that when officials are really needed — like in Gujarat after the earthquake — there are somehow never enough of them. In Gujarat the tragedy is greater because even the ones that did become involved in the relief effort appear to have wasted their energy on obstruction rather than on saving lives. From all accounts, including in the foreign press, it was non-governmental organisations and private citizens who did the real work while all that the officials did was cause procedural delays.

Government offices in Delhi and Mumbai are bursting at the seams with babus who appear to have either no work or hardly any judging by the time they spend wasting other people’s time. But somehow they are never around to build schools and hospitals in villages or to run free kitchens in drought-hit Orissa.

When you return from a sojourn abroad, as I said at the beginning of this piece, you see India through new eyes, and one of the things I have seen more clearly than ever this time is that we are a poor country because our governments spend too much time doing the wrong things and too little doing the right ones.

Benazir’s fresh dreams and deals
By Syed Nooruzzaman

PAKISTAN’s former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto perhaps feels that the time is ripe for her to return home. A general election seems certain next year under a Supreme Court directive, and in the absence of Mr Nawaz Sharif, another former Prime Minister, from the political arena, there is no one who can pose a serious challenge to her. She has begun clearing the roadblocks erected by military ruler Gen Pervez Musharraf with the help of the judiciary. She has appealed the Supreme Court against her conviction by the Lahore High Court in 1998 in a corruption case, sentencing her to five years imprisonment and disqualifying her to any public office for seven years.

Her latest dreams are not a secret. Recent interviews she has given to mediapersons provide clear hints about her uneasiness of being away from the political arena for over two years. As was the case with her illustrious father, she always aspires to remain in or close to the corridors of power. Like a fish out of water, she cannot remain away from politics for too long. But Ms Bhutto desires a “1986-style welcome” when she lands in Pakistan, most probably after the summer, as noted columnist Anwer Sindhu says. He interviewed her for The Nation a few days back. Besides the interview, he did a piece in an interview form with both questions and answers coming from him.

Going through the write-up, one gathers the impression that Ms Bhutto may do everything possible to recapture power irrespective of any deal that she might be trying to strike with the military establishment to get her jailed husband, Mr Asif Ali Zardari, freed. Referring to a question relating to the Zardari case, Mr Sindhu says: “She does want to strike a deal, but I doubt that it would be so limited in scope. She seems confident that she will be able to manoeuvre a PPP-led government into office, probably after the next general election. Her declaration that she is not interested in becoming Prime Minister again if the military is still involved in politics sounds like a ploy...So, it seems Benazir is attempting to play the carrot and stick with the army, i. e. she will stay out of the country if the Generals do business with her loyal followers and release Asif on whatever grounds. If they don’t, she will do everything possible to ‘upset the military’s applecart’. And whether you like her or not, there is no denying that she can cause GHQ several major migraines....She does not want to fly straight into a prison cell unless there are enough people clamouring for her release.”

Though publicly she has been striking a strong anti-military posture, she has been sending feelers to the rulers of the day that there is no question of her pursuing a confrontationist policy once a PPP-led government is formed. In this context PPP leader Makhdoom Amin Fahim’s recent interview, carried in The Nation, is being widely quoted, as it is also referred to by Mr Sindhu. Mr Fahim has declared that he does not believe in his party waging a war against the army leadership, and he is one of the most trusted loyalists of Ms Bhutto.

Leaving aside the Zardari issue, she appears to have begun working on a strategy to expose the hollowness of the claims of the military regime with regard to the general health of the economy and its so-called anti-corruption drive. At the moment she has got two platforms: her own party and the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy (ARD), of which the PPP is a major constituent. General Musharraf’s regime has already earned a bad name because of its failures on different fronts during the 17 months of its existence. Any party seen strongly opposed to the present rulers has a greater chance of being favoured by the electorate. Hence her frontal attack on the present government: “Military dictatorship has bred alienation in the smaller provinces and the economy is dead. The crisis can only be overcome by recognising the right of the Pakistani people in choosing a leader they want and support.”

Mr Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League has suffered a serious loss of following after his exile deal. In such a situation, Ms Bhutto’s PPP remains the most powerful political force despite the disclosure by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) that she and her husband made billions of dollars by misusing their official position. Even if she is unable to fight an election herself, as General Musharraf is bent on ensuring, she can allow one of her loyalists to take up the reins of a PPP-led government in case it is formed after the expected poll. Once this comes about, she can take care of the rest of her problems, including the NAB campaign and the court cases. If she is unable to return now, she can obviously do so then.

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

Of a woman are we conceived,

Of a woman we are born,

To a woman are we betrothed and married,

It is a woman who is friend and partner of life,

It is woman which keeps the race going,

Another companion is sought when the life-partner dies,

Through women are established social ties.

Why should we consider woman cursed and condemned

When from woman are born leaders and rulers.

From woman alone is born a woman,

Without woman there can be no human birth.

Without woman, O Nanak, Only the True One exists.

Be it men or be it woman,

Only those who sing His glory

Are blessed and radiant with His beauty,

In His Presence and with His grace

They appear with a radiant face.

— Sri Guru Nanak Dev, Asa di var,

*****

In the body God is present

The body is His temple.

In the body is the place of pilgrimage

Of which I am the pilgrim,

In the body is the incense and candles,

In the body is the wholly offering,

In the body the oblation.

After searching in many regions

It is only in the body

I have found the nine treasures.

For me there is no going away,

For me there is no coming back,

Since I have appealed to God.

He who pervades the universe

Also dwells in the body:

Who seeks shall find Him there.

Saith Pipa:

God is the Primal Being.

The True Guru Shall reveal Him.

— Sri Guru Granth Sahib, Rag Dhanasari, page 695