E D I T O R I A L   P A G E

EDITORIALS

Mercurial Mamata again
WEST Bengal will after all have a mahajot (grand alliance) but not the way Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee wanted it. The Congress is in but the BJP is out; she has cleverly outmanoeuvred it. In all the 294 seats there is likely to be direct fight between the emerging mahajot and the Left Front, ignore the token BJP presence.

Defence after Fernandes
IT is de rigueur for a country’s government to maintain business-as-usual nonchalance amidst a crisis, but the ashen faces in the NDA Government betray the tehelka stress. Mr George Fernandes is out and the crucial Defence Ministry is now with Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh as an additional charge. That is an unusual arrangement, to say the least.

OPINION

After the tehelka bombshell
NDA government already a lame duck
Inder Malhotra
IT is immaterial whether the BJP-led NDA government, headed by Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, goes or survives the mother of all scandals nicknamed “Georgegate”. In all probability it will drag on, if only because the other side cannot muster the numbers to replace it and is unlikely to want to face another general election. But, for all practical purposes, the Vajpayee government’s effective existence is already over. Its plight is no better than that of the Rajiv Gandhi dispensation after April 16, 1987, when the Bofors bribery scam had first burst into the open though there are clear differences between the two situations.

IN THE NEWS

Website expose: Chandigarh connection
CHANDIGARH figures prominently in the “tehelka” caused by the exposure of the role of money in defence deals by the Internet portal of the same name. It is not because of any deal to settle the dispute over the city between Punjab and Haryana. The City Beautiful’s claim to fame, for wrong reasons in this case, rests on the fact that tehelka.com’s CEO and Editor-in-Chief Tarun J. Tejpal and RSS man (as he claims) R.K. Gupta — who says that Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had stayed in his house for the past 17 years whenever he was in Chandigarh — belong to the capital of the two states.

• Cutout culture
  

75 YEARS AGO

Smuggler convicted

ON RECORD

‘Unitary Constitution unsuitable for J & K’
NO lasting solution can be found for the Kashmir problem until political, economic and cultural aspirations of the people of the three regions of the diverse state are met, says Balraj Puri, a keen observer of the political scene in J and K for the last five decades. Mr Puri, 72, who was acting chairman of the Jammu and Kashmir government’s Regional Autonomy Committee but was unceremoniously removed later, had submitted his own report in 1998 which is different in its approach from the one finally adopted by Farooq Abdullah’s National Conference government.

ANALYSIS

An appeal to forgive Leo Tolstoy
V.N. Datta
COUNT Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), a great Russian novelist, religious teacher and social reformer who has influenced generations of people the world over was excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1901, about 100 years ago for denying the divinity of Christ as the son of God.

OF LIFESUBLIME

Coping with tumults of the mind
V. K. Kapoor
LIFE has lawless frontiers. There are personal problems in every life. There are secret tragedies in every heart. The sufferings of the mind are more severe than the pains of the body. There is no going back in life. The game of life does not permit a replay, substitution or a second chance. The modern man is troubled and anxious. His mind remains agitated by uncertainties, anxieties and fear. He is constantly expecting disaster. Fear haunts him, anxiety lurks in his every thought.

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

Mercurial Mamata again

WEST Bengal will after all have a mahajot (grand alliance) but not the way Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee wanted it. The Congress is in but the BJP is out; she has cleverly outmanoeuvred it. In all the 294 seats there is likely to be direct fight between the emerging mahajot and the Left Front, ignore the token BJP presence. If the Congress pulls in nearly 40 per cent of the votes as it did in last Assembly election and her party nibbles away 10 per cent of the Left Front’s strength, there will be a keen battle with the mahajot having an edge. That is her hope and the Front’s fear. That is also the reason why she did a somersault after curtly spurning the Congress offer of support. Ms Banerjee wanted the Congress to agree to the presence of the BJP in the alliance but it refused not wanting to have anything with it. However it relented as an exodus of MLAs threatened to paralyse it. However it struck a brave note and wanted to put up candidates against the BJP to prove its secular credentials. Ms Banerjee refused but indirectly conceded the demand by allotting 39 seats to the Hindutva party which could realistically win only two seats. Now the mahajot will comprise the two Congress parties and several small ones, including a breakaway CPM faction. Opposing it will be the Left Front, which has been in power for an uninterrupted 25 years.

One factor behind this mood swings of Ms Banerjee is the changing political equation in the state. The BJP is an ultra lightweight party. In the two past Lok Sabha elections she gambled with the NDA to project her anti-Congress (it is the B team of the CPM, she said) and anti-Left Front policy and also to gain from Mr Vajpayee’s popularity. The Vajpayee factor will not work in the Assembly election and the tehelka.com tapes have not helped either. She realises that the Congress is not a memory and the refusal of many MLAs to switch over to her party is a powerful reminder. Above all, she is in a hurry to become West Bengal Chief Minister. So she has noisily and angrily snapped ties with the NDA. She has offered a greater number of seats (45) to the Congress than she did to the BJP and chances are that this number will go up during talks. The Congress, which seemed to be riding to its sunset, is actually entering a rest room for recuperation. For the NDA the omens are bad; if she succeeds in the election, other regional parties will rethink their options. 

Defence after Fernandes

IT is de rigueur for a country’s government to maintain business-as-usual nonchalance amidst a crisis, but the ashen faces in the NDA Government betray the tehelka stress. Mr George Fernandes is out and the crucial Defence Ministry is now with Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh as an additional charge. That is an unusual arrangement, to say the least. Defence, External Affairs and Home are the three heaviest and most crucial portfolios, and handing over charge of two of them to one man will create complications in the day-to-day functioning of both ministries, even though it indicates that the Prime Minister has exceptional faith in the capabilities of Mr Jaswant Singh. The confidence reposed in the man from Rajasthan also underlines Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee’s limited options. It is no secret that the coalition he heads is not exactly bubbling with talent. Handing over less crucial portfolios to faceless people is one thing. Defence calls for special treatment. There just are not very many people who fit the bill. Two names have been doing the rounds. One is that of Mr Murli Manohar Joshi and the other that of Mr Jagmohan. Mr Jagmohan is capable but does not have too many supporters within the government itself. The former is believed to have been rather keen on becoming Raksha Mantri. But the Prime Minister knows that such a switchover could not have been ordered on a temporary basis. Handing it over to Mr Joshi would have meant a permanent arrangement, which is not what Mr Vajpayee can afford at this stage. Mr Fernandes may be out on a limb for the time being but his clout in the NDA continues. That much is clear from his remaining the convener. He has apparently made it clear that he would like to come back to his old job once his name is cleared, or the tehelka controversy dies down, whichever is earlier. So, given the ground realities, Mr Jaswant Singh will be keeping the seat warm for a considerable time to come.

What it means for the ministry remains to be seen. Being a former defence man himself, he should use the opportunity to wield the broom and clear the reputation of the Defence Ministry, which is in mud after the ugly exposures. Sometimes, a temporary boss can be more effective in the hatchet job than a man well entrenched. For public consumption, the Prime Minister can continue to proclaim that everything is squeaky clean in the corridors of the crucial Defence Ministry. But for the sake of the morale of the poor jawan sitting on hills of Kargil, a thorough clean-up is imperative. 

Safety begins at home

RAHIL and Charandeep must have been planning what they would do during the end-of-term break when their Kinetic Honda collided with a tractor-trolley in Sector 38 in Chandigarh on Tuesday. Rahil was killed on the spot and Charandeep was declared brought dead by doctors at the PGI. The two class IX students of Stepping Stones School, Sector 38, may not have met such a tragic end had the system in which most Indians are brought up recognised the importance of safety. India is a country where a million accidents are waiting to happen. Unfortunately, most of us wake up and raise our voice after a shamiana fire at Dabwali in Haryana claims the lives of nearly 400 school children or the Uphaar tragedy exposes the lack of fire safety features in most cinema halls and high-rise buildings in Delhi. Unless we learn to see a small incident in a larger frame, we shall never learn the importance of making safety begin at home. In the present case, just about everyone was at fault for the accident which snuffed out two young lives. The school authorities were at fault. They should not have allowed under-aged children to come to school riding anything other than bicycles.

The police was at fault. Tractors, with or without trolleys, are among the vehicles which are not allowed within the city limits. They are not registered with any transport authority and, therefore, they do not carry a number plate which comes in handy in tracking down a vehicle involved in an accident. But no effort is ever made to stop them from entering the city limits, perhaps, because of the clout the farmers enjoy. Above all, parents as a class are usually at fault for the kind of accident which killed Rahil and Charandeep. Children should be made to wait till they reach the prescribed legal age for driving. A few years ago parents of a five-year-old girl attracted media attention by displaying her driving skills on city roads. The show was called off only after the Delhi Police booked them for endangering public safety. Chandigarh SSP Parag Jain has blamed the parents for Tuesday’s accident. He is only half right. He should also direct the police not to allow tractor-trolleys within the city. They are a source of danger on the busy national highways. Their potential to cause fatal accidents increases when they enter the city limits. 

After the tehelka bombshell
NDA government already a lame duck
Inder Malhotra

IT is immaterial whether the BJP-led NDA government, headed by Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, goes or survives the mother of all scandals nicknamed “Georgegate”. In all probability it will drag on, if only because the other side cannot muster the numbers to replace it and is unlikely to want to face another general election. But, for all practical purposes, the Vajpayee government’s effective existence is already over. Its plight is no better than that of the Rajiv Gandhi dispensation after April 16, 1987, when the Bofors bribery scam had first burst into the open though there are clear differences between the two situations.

Rajiv’s overwhelming, four-fifths majority in the Lok Sabha (410 seats) had remained largely intact. The NDA’s collective strength of 303 — with the BJP commanding only 182 and the 23 parties (13 of them with only one seat each) providing the rest — has already dwindled to well below 300. It could erode further, especially if the three Samata Party ministers insist on the acceptance of their resignations. On the issue of continued support to the BJP there are rumblings also within the Biju Janata Dal. Even so, Mr Vajpayee could possibly win a vote of confidence. But to what avail?

For, diminution of numbers is the least of the ruling coalition’s multiple and mounting woes. It is the shattering blow to its prestige, to its self-image as a “party with a difference” commanding the “moral high ground”, and to its capacity to govern, such as it was, that has reduced it to a virtual lame duck.

Mrs Sonia Gandhi’s unusually sharp and strident rhetoric at the party’s plenary session at Bangalore has been followed by the Congress’s decision to start a countrywide movement for the NDA government’s removal. For this purpose, the party, reversing its Pachmarhi doctrine, has even agreed to join a coalition to form an alternative government. Other Opposition parties have welcomed this. All omens are that this situation may remain unchanged during the five days for which the two Houses are to meet before the customary month-long recess.

It is in this context that the Finance Minister, Mr Yashwant Sinha, has voiced his agonised apprehension that a vote on account may not be possible before the deadline of March 31, creating a constitutional crisis the like of which the conflict-ridden and polarised Indian polity has never seen before. And even assuming that a vote on account is somehow made possible, where is the guarantee that the Opposition, determined to seek Mr Vajpayee’s resignation, would allow the all but forgotten Budget to be passed after the recess.

A no-holds-barred onslaught on the Vajpayee government by the Opposition, for once united, is only to be expected. The Prime Minister’s bigger worry must be the discord and dissension within his own ranks at a time when his government is fighting with its back to the wall. The problem is multi-layered. There is trouble between the BJP and several of its allies, within the BJP itself and, above all, between Mr Vajpayee and the RSS, the karta of the saffron parivar. Some members of the Samata Party are not the only ones demanding the resignations of the Prime Minister’s Principal Secretary and National Security Adviser, Mr Brajesh Mishra, as well as of Mr N.K. Singh, former Secretary now Officer on Special Duty who is chief adviser on economic policy.

Even after the Prime Minister had made it clear that there was absolutely no question of this demand being countenanced, the RSS supremo, Mr K. Sudershan, chose publicly to insist that these officials be asked to go. Though he later realised from his description of them as an “extra-constitutional authority” — a sobriquet first used for Sanjay Gandhi during the Emergency in the mid-seventies — Mr Sudarshan reiterated his complaint that the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) was headed by “incompetent” people. It is also remarkable that while several BJP leaders have sprung to Mr Fernandes’s defence — one of them even predicting his return as Defence Minister within a few months — none of them has stood up in support of Mr Mishra and the PMO.

There is no doubt whatsoever that the recurring practice of Parliament being blocked time and again for whatever reason is the negation of democracy and indeed reprehensible. But the trouble is that those hell-bent on disrupting Parliament’s work today say, accurately enough, the BJP and its cohorts had resorted to exactly this murky method all too often in the past, usually under Mr Vajpayee’s stewardship. In short, what was sauce for, say, the post-Bofors or post-Sukh Ram goose should be sauce also for the post-Tehelka gander.

Furthermore, the BJP has only itself to blame for its utterly amateurish exertions at damage limitation after the scandal had totally tarnished the image of the NDA government in general and of the BJP, its Samata ally and the then Defence Minister, Mr George Fernandes, in particular. Had Mr Fernandes resigned immediately he would have gone with grace and Mr Vajpayee would have been saved massive embarrassment. His self-righteous rhetoric since his exit has done the ruling combination no good at all; more damaging has been the elaborately cloy brazenness of his “companion” and former party president, Ms Jaya Jaitly.

The strategy to fight back that the Prime Minister and his men have adopted is badly flawed. They have chosen to denounce the expose by tehelka.com as a maligning and motivated conspiracy, backed by the proverbial foreign hand out to “destabilise India”. (Mr Fernandes has even hinted at the “ISI connection”, forgetting that the ISI agents could have easily used the sleazeballs who brought the under-cover Tehelka reporters to his drawing room to meet Ms Jaitly.) By inveighing against a foreign-backed conspiracy, the BJP is only flattering Rajiv Gandhi by imitation, not convincing the country about its bona fides in wanting to curb corruption that has spread in the entire system like galloping cancer. Please read Rajiv’s statement on the Bofors charges — a statement that was roundly condemned by the BJP then — and you will find how laughable the reversal of roles has become.

Whichever way the chips fall now, a few things, all very depressing, are clear enough. One, the much-needed push to economic reforms, requiring some unpopular decisions, has become practically impossible. As the BALCO affair has underscored, disinvestment in public sector undertakings (PSUs) has once again become a distant dream, now that the Congress, together with all other Opposition parties, has declared war on the NDA. Parliament will not permit the sale of profit-making concerns. There are unlikely to be buyers for loss-making, overstaffed undertakings. Where and how will Mr Sinha find the Rs 12,000 crore of which he has taken credit in his Budget?

Nor should it be forgotten that a vigorous fight on behalf of the farmers, already in great distress and threatened with worse after April 1 because of the end of all quota restrictions on agricultural imports from that date, is a major plank of the oncoming confrontation.

Secondly, the brownie points this country had got from the international community for its initiatives to resolve the Kashmir issue and other differences with Pakistan and its resolve to go ahead with economic reforms cannot endure. Under these circumstances, to expect any meaningful increase in foreign direct investment would be a classic case of the triumph of hope over reality. As it is, FDI in India in recent years has never exceeded $3 billion a year, as against $40 billion in China, $30 billion in Brazil and $18 billion in Poland annually.

Thirdly, as had happened after the eruption of the Bofors scandal, so now decision-making in the Defence Ministry, especially on the acquisition of weapons and equipment, could grind to a halt. The consequent impact on the modernisation of the defence forces, painfully slow in the first place, cannot but be disastrous. Whether Mr Jaswant Singh, given temporary charge of the Defence Ministry in addition to his onerous responsibilities as Minister for External Affairs, can prevent the disaster remains to be seen.

The writer is a well-known political commentator.

Website expose: Chandigarh connection

CHANDIGARH figures prominently in the “tehelka” caused by the exposure of the role of money in defence deals by the Internet portal of the same name. It is not because of any deal to settle the dispute over the city between Punjab and Haryana. The City Beautiful’s claim to fame, for wrong reasons in this case, rests on the fact that tehelka.com’s CEO and Editor-in-Chief Tarun J. Tejpal and RSS man (as he claims) R.K. Gupta — who says that Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had stayed in his house for the past 17 years whenever he was in Chandigarh — belong to the capital of the two states.

A college dropout, as he confesses, Tarun has been associated with various publications during his journalistic career spanning over 20 years. Website tehelka.com is the third venture, after Outlook and IndiaInk, which he floated a few years ago.

In his forties, Tarun began his career with the Chandigarh edition of the Indian Express. In the eighties he left the city to join India Today as one of its editors. After some time he shifted to The Financial Express and then to Outlook magazine as its senior Editor. He co-founded IndiaInk which first brought out Arundhati Roy’s “The God of Small Things”. Known as an enterprising media personality, he has also had a stint at The Telegraph of Kolkata besides contributing articles to The Paris Review, The Guardian, The Financial Times and Prospect.

A couple of years ago he opted out of mainstream journalism to launch the now famous portal tehelka.com, owned by Buffalo Networks Private Limited, registered in New Delhi. The website has earned Tejpal a celebrity status not only because of the latest expose but also owing to his investigative efforts which brought to light the practice of cricket match fixing.

Married to Geeten Batra, Tarun has two daughters. Besides being a journalist and a book publisher, he has been a keen sportsman. He was often seen at Chandigarh’s Press Club before he settled in Delhi. Here is the list of his tehelka.com’s shareholders and directors:

Share-holders:

• 41.75 per cent— Tarun Tejpal, Managing Director and Editor-in-Chief
• 10 per cent— Mauritius-based First Global Stockbroking (P) Ltd
• 4.5 per cent— Mauritius-based First Global (Mauritius) Ltd
• 17.22 per cent— Kanwar Jit Tejpal, Director and Editor (Minty, his brother)
• 0.90 per cent— Kapil Pareenja (Tejpal’s uncle)
• 6 per cent— Singapore-based Mahim Mehra.
• 2.7 per cent— Neena Tejpal Sharma (Tejpal’s sister) Directors:

“I have been a great sufferer since Gopala Towers caught fire in 1983. Thereafter, I was made to face many enquiries, including those connected with FERA, income tax, customs and excise problems. My whole business has been ruined,” he said in a written statement after tehelka.com’s Operation Westend exposure.

Cutout culture

Tamil filmdom has presented two lasting traditions to politics. One, it has groomed a large number of leaders. And it also invented the effectiveness of monstrous cut-outs. Let us begin at the beginning.

Way back in the late forties, an ideological battle, if it can be called that, broke out in the world of writing, theatre and films. The Dravidian strand was fiercely competing for space in creative and performing arts with traditional forms. C. Annadurai’s (Anna) “Kambar Rahasyam” provoked as many twitters as angry protests. He merely went through the Tamil translation of the Ramayana by poet Kambar and found several erotic references. More, he linked these with the ingrained decadent culture of North India and by comparison, the higher moral quotient of the Dravidians. The purpose was not very elevating but the prose was captivating. And Anna scored a perfect 10.

Close on the heels came plays by M.R.Radha. Contrary to the impression the name may create, he was a man and an improviser par excellence even if he was deficient in acting talent with subtlety. His “Ramayanam Kimayanam” was a first rate spoof and forced a self-proclaimed liberal like K.Kamaraj to ban it. Incidentally, it was the first play to be proscribed in free India.

It was in this atmosphere of being caged in that a Dravidian film trend of sorts was born. ”Parasakthi”, scripted by a young Dravida Kazhagam worker named M.Karunanidhi, hit the screen. It was as remarkable for its social reformist theme as for the powerful acting by Shivaji Ganesan. His mouthing of the incendiary dialogues penned by Mr Karunanidhi, who is Chief Minister now, won him acclaim and set the trend of didactic films – loud and intensely propagandist.

The producer of the film realised that he had a highly saleable and money-spinning product in his hands. He wanted to share this confidence with film-goers. So he gave up the old practice of sticking small mono-colour posters on walls and took to stringing large cloth hoarding across key roads. It worked and “Parasakthi” proved its sakti and firmly ensconced Karunanidhi as a winning film writer.

It was only a matter of time before this successful filmi method jumped to politics in a state which does not make any difference between the two. In popular mind the height of a cut-out, not necessarily its artistic merit, and its location are equated with the party’s popularity. Woe unto anyone who tries to delink this, as the Election Commission is trying to do. This is as much Tamilian as gopurams and sambar and choru (cooked rice). The advice is: do not mess around with cut-outs!

75 YEARS AGO

Smuggler convicted

As it is not generally known that the importation of kuth into the Punjab is prohibited, it will be well to give out the following facts. On 8th January two Excise sub-inspectors, L. Jai Gopal Bali and L. Behari Lal, employed on railway duty searched on suspicion at Rawalpindi Station one Abdullah of Buffa, Hazara District, and found in was prosecuted under the roles and sentenced to three months' rigorous imprisonment. The Deputy Conservator of Forests, Kashmir, engaged in the detection of 'kuth' smuggling has recommended the two Sub-Inspectors for rewards by the Darbar.

‘Unitary Constitution unsuitable for J & K’

NO lasting solution can be found for the Kashmir problem until political, economic and cultural aspirations of the people of the three regions of the diverse state are met, says Balraj Puri, a keen observer of the political scene in J and K for the last five decades. Mr Puri, 72, who was acting chairman of the Jammu and Kashmir government’s Regional Autonomy Committee but was unceremoniously removed later, had submitted his own report in 1998 which is different in its approach from the one finally adopted by Farooq Abdullah’s National Conference government. Mr Puri says while recognising the immense diversity of the state, his report draws from relevant examples in the Western democracies to prepare a model which promises equitable growth for various regions coupled with a sense of participation of the people. Views of Mr Puri, who had favoured the idea regional autonomy even in 1952 when the Nehru-Sheikh accord was signed, had been sought by the late Sheikh Abdullah from time to time. In a free wheeling interview with PRASHANT SOOD, Mr Puri shares his perception about the prevailing situation in J and K.

Following are the excerpts from the interview:

Q. How do you see the peace process in Jammu and Kashmir moving forward now that the ceasefire stands extended for three months?

A. Some more groundwork should have been done before the start of peace moves and even during the ceasefire period. A constituency for peace should have been built. There have been some innocent killings. Sikhs and political workers were killed and there were some custodial deaths too. The state government seemed to lose its restraint for a while and there were massive protests. Expectation of the people from the peace process was very high. But the gap between expectation in the Kashmir valley and fears in Jammu seems to have increased. Inquiries should be held into complaints of custodial deaths. Maybe, some judicial authority could be appointed to oversee the peace process. It is important that internal trilateral dialogue between the three regions begins and the apprehension of various communities are removed. The government should also talk to the Kashmiri people and with Pakistan at different stages. The ceasefire is a bold initiative but some other things should have been done and you have to understand the basic aspirations of various groups and communities.

Q. How would regional autonomy help ease tension in J and K?

A. I have been campaigning for regional autonomy for more than 50 years. I think most complications in Kashmir are due to internal tensions. Much of the problems in the state can be traced to unitary constitution imposed on this state. A unitary form of constitution has never succeed in the world in reconciling diversities. Our state has maximum diversity in India. Reconciling diversities can be a great source of strength. In the unitary form of Constitution, there is an inbuilt provision for concentration of powers which leads to regional and communal tensions. Former Chief Minister Sheikh Abdullah was committed to regional identity and the issue was discussed in the 1968 convention. In that convention, some of the leaders who are now in the Hurriyat Conference were also present along with the leaders of all major political parties in the valley. I was asked to draft the outline of an internal constitution of the state which was unanimously accepted by all the political parties.

I was part of the 1975 accord also and Sheikh Abdullah had publicly declared that he will give regional autonomy. On that basis, I was asked to build the National Conference in Jammu and took over as its provincial president. And then when Farooq Abdullah came to power, he set up two committees on the autonomy issue. His election manifesto also had promises of regional autonomy. I submitted my report on regional autonomy after discussions with every community of the state, consulting top scholars of the country and studying various experiments about regional autonomy made in different parts of the world. I have tried to satisfy claims of every region.

Basically, the report contains political and economic recommendations and cultural safeguards for every ethnic community. On the political side, I have suggested division of subjects between the state and regions on the pattern of Centre-State relations. On regional subjects, the three regions should have the same authority as the State has on state subjects. I have suggested a devolution formula to be worked by an independent finance commission based on factors like area, population, share of regions in government service, technical institutions, level of health, road mileage and contribution to the state exchequer. Powers to districts, block and village can be devolved on the basis of Panchayati Raj structure.

An appeal to forgive Leo Tolstoy
V.N. Datta

COUNT Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), a great Russian novelist, religious teacher and social reformer who has influenced generations of people the world over was excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1901, about 100 years ago for denying the divinity of Christ as the son of God.

Now the writers’ great great-grandson, Vladimir Tolstoy, has appealed to Aleksiy II, the Church’s Patriarch to revoke the excommunication as a sign of tolerance towards religious dissent and in recognition of Leo Tolstoy’s status, as “the pride and glory of the Fatherlands’ Culture”.

Tolstoy was deeply religious without being superstitious. He retranslated the Gospels into Russian, and repudiated the Old Testament and much of the New. He admired the Gospels which he thought was the essence of true religion. In his adolescence he carried the portrait of Jean-Jacques Rousseau round his neck like a sculptor, and wrote, “Rousseau has been my teacher since the age of 15. Rousseau and the Gospels have been the two great influences for good in my life”. He rejected the idea of Jesus as part of a Holy Trinity and referred to him as ‘the man Jesus’, a sage who happened to have lived and died for truth.

Tolstoy’s marriage was a disaster, and he experienced great suffering throughout his life. He began search for the sense and meaning of life. Philosophy and science gave him no comfort and he at last turned to religion. He proclaimed the utter bankruptcy of science and philosophy and progress. He came to the conclusion that only faith could give him happiness. He confessed his sins and turned Christian, but he turned himself from the established Church, and worked out his own ideas of Christianity.

Tolstoy’s social ideas are based on complete renunciation and non-violence. He wrote, “Still our social institutions which are based on a state of war and violence must be resisted not by means of revolutions but by passive resistance”. Tolstoy was a prophet of passive anarchy preaching religion of labour and love. Mahatma Gandhi acknowledged his gratitude to Tolstoy in adopting his ideas of non-violence, passive resistance, and sexual abstinence.

Vladimir Tolstoy, the grandson writes, “New mankind has reached a new level of tolerance and he is entitled to hope for a new interpretation of the role of my grandfather in history”. He urged the Patriarch to think over what happened and look for reconciliation in our society. One really cannot anticipate the outcome of this plea. The younger Tolstoy has also written to President Putin to remind him of another anniversary years ago when his grandfather went to Chechnya as an army ensign where he lived for three years and wrote his brilliant narrative of Russian presence in the region (Hadji Murat) published in 1904, and came away convinced that Moscow could never subdue it by force. This is a hint for Putin for the present.

Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Anna Karenina are classics remarkable for their brilliant analysis of human nature, wide sweep and grandeur.

It may be mentioned that Galileo (1564-1642) too had challenged the scriptural authority by his law of motion which brought him into conflict with the Church. Pope Urban VIII banished him. Galileo recanted. Last year the Church exonerated him from his sins. 

Coping with tumults of the mind
V. K. Kapoor

LIFE has lawless frontiers. There are personal problems in every life. There are secret tragedies in every heart. The sufferings of the mind are more severe than the pains of the body. There is no going back in life. The game of life does not permit a replay, substitution or a second chance. The modern man is troubled and anxious. His mind remains agitated by uncertainties, anxieties and fear. He is constantly expecting disaster. Fear haunts him, anxiety lurks in his every thought.

We do not control our lives the way a chess player controls his pieces. Mechanisms beyond our control, sometimes beyond our understanding, determine our fate. Our common problem is the sense of helplessness, the fear and the conviction of being unable to cope with things. The radical acceleration of change, the chaotic tumble of life and progress, and the simultaneity of events have unleashed forces which have contributed to the unstable dynamism of modern life. We have to cope more quickly than ever with problems that are much bigger and more complex than ever before. The velocity of the change and our inability to adapt ourselves to it create uncertainty, stress and anxiety. The present gets replaced by an unfamiliar future. The modern man suffers from the disease of accelerated change.

Giving up fears and anxieties and bringing calm and order to the tumult of the mind is far from easy. Arjuna speaks for all of us when he complains that curbing the mind seems as futile and formidable as saddling the wind. Arjuna is the eternal man, the warrior and doer, facing the human dilemma of a split personality with a divided mind at the crucial moment. He is the classic symbol of mankind’s insufficiency to face life’s storms and crises with detached equanimity, confidence and success. He projects the nightmare of negative thinking that is the curse of modern civilisation. Krishna prescribes the “Krishna-cure” of a mind raised to a higher awareness balanced and equipoised in all conditions of life to face difficulties and diversities calmly and thereby transform liabilities into assets.

The Gita’s gospel is essentially a synthesis — a triune path reconciling the three approaches of Jnana, Bhakti and Karma which alone can lead to contented living. If you use all available outward means, as well as your natural abilities, to overcome every obstacle in your path, you will then develop the power that God gave you — the unlimited power that flows from your innermost being. It is not so much your passing inspiration or brilliant ideas as your everyday mental habits that control your life. Habits are like a cable. We wear a strand of it every day and soon it cannot be broken. In a fog of uncertainty it make sense to drive slowly – but it also helps to clean the windscreen.

Moses saw goodness as justice, Plato wisdom and Jesus as love. Yet they all agreed that virtue, however, understood, was consistently undermined by something in human nature which was at war with something else. Changez Khan had remarked that to be open and frank is a noble and generous thing, but often harmful.

Each person has to decide for himself or herself the life values and life style that he or she wants. There is a lot of anxiety and uncertainty in passivity. You are at the mercy of everyone, including yourself. You can choose to go with the flow of events or to design your own future. If you do not design your own life then someone else will. That ‘someone’ might be a person, a group or circumstances. Choice of values and choice of direction depends on you. You have the power to hurt yourself or benefit yourself. It is we who make life what it is.

You must think for yourself and be yourself. Man can achieve nothing unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself. We have no destinies other than the ones we forge ourselves. A man is not so much slave to his fellow men, as he is to his consciousness his own inferiority. We spin our own fate, good or bad, never to be undone. The consequences of our good or bad actions silently pursue us through the darkness of our ignorance. Be honest with yourself. The world is not honest with you. The world loves hypocrisy. When you are honest with yourself, you find the road to inner peace.

Vedanta advises a path, a simple but effective exercise “Be Quiet” — the art of relaxation. Obey God’s hygienic laws. The mental hygiene of keeping the mind pure is superior to physical hygiene but the latter is important and should not be neglected. Mind is the chief factor governing the body. One should always avoid suggesting to the mind thoughts of human limitations such as sickness, old age and death. Avoid a negative approach to life. Why gaze down at the sewers when there is loveliness all around us. Mines of power lie unexplored within you. You use this power unconsciously in all things you do and you achieve certain results, but if you learn how to consciously control and use the power within you, you can accomplish much more.

No human being has made a success of trying to be somebody else, even if that person has been a success. Success cannot be copied, cannot be successfully imitated. It is an original force, an individual creation. Every man will be a failure to the extent he tries to be somebody else and express somebody else instead of himself. Power comes from within or from nowhere. Be yourself. The real cycle you are working on is a cycle called yourself. We all boil at different degrees. Life is worth nothing, if it is not a continuous overcoming of problems.

There are three words, which determine the modern man’s quality of life — hope, courage, and fear. Hope and courage make life wonderful. Fear blights human existence. And all three of these are mental attitudes that result from the kind of thoughts we think. The shift is needed from the concept that we are fundamentally in a stable world in which things need adjustment now and then, to the concept that we are in a fast changing world and that the design of ideas and actions should be appropriate to that. Time is life. Cultivate a do-it-now habit. Never delay. Unhappiness is nurtured by the habit of putting off living until some fictional future day.

Life is a gift of nature but happiness is a gift of courage, wisdom and action. Happiness is a function of personal and internal, not impersonal and external. Heavens never help the man who will not act. Happiness is in action. Every power is intended for action. Action may not always bring happiness but there is no happiness without action. The firefly only shines when on its wings. So it is with the mind. When we rest we darken. Trust in God, destroy fear and act.

Aata Hai Toofan Aane Do, Kashti Ka Khuda Khud Hafiz Hai

The writer is a Senior IPS officer of Haryana.

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

Sri Ramakrishna once said to Keshab Chandra Sen who was a great iconoclast in his days:

"Why do these images rouse the idea of mud and clay, stone and straw, in your mind? Why can you not realise the presence of the Eternal, Blissful, All-Conscious Mother even in these forms."

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As a man begins to learn writing by drawing big scrawls before he tries to write a smaller hand, so a person must acquire the power of concentrating his thoughts by fixing the mind first upon forms, and then after succeeding therein, by fixing it upon the formless.

— Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna

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Toleration is the only thing that will enable persons belonging to different religions to live as good neighbours and friends.

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The sword is no emblem of Islam. But Islam was born in an environment where the sword was, and still remains the Supreme Law.... The sword is yet too much in evidence among the Mussalmans. It must be sheathed if Islam is to be what it means — peace.

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Islam's distinctive contribution... is its unadulterated belief in the oneness of God and a practical application of the truth of the brotherhood of man for those who are nominally within its fold.

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To revile one another's religion, to make reckless statements, to utter untuth, to break the heads of innocent men, to desecrate temples or mosques is a denial of God.

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The key to the solution of the (communal) tangle lies in every one following the best in his own religion and entertaining equal regard for the other religions and their followers.

— Mahatma Gandhi