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| Monday, April 16, 2001, Chandigarh, India    |
Peace or pandemonium? In diplomat’s garb |
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June elections in the states
Awards and His will
Anupam Gupta
Domestication
of plants
Congress Committee’s Differences
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Peace or pandemonium? OMENS are not very good for peaceful and purposeful conduct of Parliament which meets today for its second phase of the budget session. The Congress is ambivalent although it has promised to get the general and railway budgets passed. That will mean that the functioning of the government will not come to a grinding halt but the same cannot be said of the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha. The Rashtriya Janata Dal of Mr Laloo Prasad Yadav has threatened to stick to the old stand that the government has not initiated any action on the Tehelka expose. And its floor leader, Mr Raghuvansh Prasad Singh can single-handedly disrupt the proceedings given his extraordinarily powerful lungs. But Left parties and the Samajwadi Party are eager for smooth working, wanting to highlight several crucial problems the people face in the run-up to the Assembly elections in five states. That turns the spotlight on the Congress. It will be reluctant to let the government off the hook on the tapes issue. It needs to keep it alive until May 10, the polling day. The party’s successful Jaipur rally on Saturday points to the possibility that it can wage its “war” outside Parliament while raising tough questions inside it. This strategy should suggest itself given the risk of losing popular sympathy by obstructing the working of the two Houses of Parliament. That would depend on the reaction of the Congress to the government’s statement that it has not referred the charges against Mrs Sonia Gandhi to the CBI. A categorical and crisp denial would have helped the party get over its shock and anger. But the government has taken conflicting stands. It has underplayed the seriousness of involving the CBI by saying that it was a routine affair, no formal inquiry was on and the Prime Minister was not in the picture. Within minutes all this was contradicted by the Prime Minister himself and two official spokesmen. How the Congress responds to the latest zig-zag will be known today. Incidentally, these charges have been around for long and the complainant, Mr Subramaniam Swamy, has skills to fling corruption charges at top political personalities, not always with success. His accusation are exporting antiques to her parents in Italy, taking money from the erstwhile KGB and having links with the LTTE. Normally the Congress would have reacted with composure but the filing of an FIR against Mrs Sonia Gandhi’s private secretary has created a suspicion that the government was personally targeting her. Even so, it does not behove an old party to paralyse the House proceedings on mere suspicion. No leader, however tall within the party, should take precedence over Parliament. As it is, there are only 16 working days and even an hour of disruption will upset the tight schedule. It is not the trend the Congress should set for others. |
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In diplomat’s garb THE detention and the subsequent expulsion of a Pakistani diplomat from Kathmandu following the recovery of 16 kg of explosives from his possession confirms how deep the penetration of Pakistani intelligence in Nepal is and how the country is being used to mount terrorist operations in India. Mohammad Arshad Cheema, First Secretary at the Pakistani Embassy in Kathmandu, was caught with deadly RDX on Thursday in a bungalow in Baneshwor near downtown Kathmandu after the police raided the house. His role is believed to go far beyond just storing and distributing explosives. Indian security agencies suspect Cheema to be closely linked to five militants who hijacked the Indian Airlines Airbus from Kathmandu to Kandahar in December, 1999. Actually, he is a hardcore Pakistani intelligence operative and the post of First Secretary is only a cover. On the day of the hijack, he was spotted driving into Tribhuvan airport in a car with a Pakistani mission registration number plate. He was later seen entering the complex with a bag. Indian security agencies believe that the bag contained the initial cache of weapons that might have been passed on to the hijackers. He misused his diplomatic status to access an area within the airport, which was otherwise well-guarded. Not only that, he might have provided backup support to the hijackers who had crossed over from India long before the hijack. His expulsion does not matter much to the Pakistani mischief-makers because he had already completed his tenure and had moved into the Baneshwor bungalow belonging to a relative of his. He was planning to fly back to Pakistan soon. But the blowing of the lid off his schemes shows what India is up against. It remains to be ascertained from where he procured the explosive material and what it was to be used for. But it is clear that the porous border between India and Nepal is being used by Pakistan to foment trouble. The Pakistani ISI has several safe houses not only in Kathmandu but also along the border. Unfortunately, the task of maintaining a vigil on the long border is so gigantic that the Indian response has been far less than adequate. The Cheema expose should make the Indian security agencies pull up their socks. One saving grace is that after the hijack, Kathmandu has begun to cooperate with Delhi in preventing terrorist operations directed against India. |
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June elections in the states THE elections due in early June in the states of Assam, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Pondicherry are likely to produce results which may hold out big surprises and upset the NDA government at the Centre. This is not directly related to the Tehelka revelations or the Bombay Stock Exchange scam and many other related controversies. The electoral outcome in these states should be taken as the expression of large sections of people, distributed over different regions of the country, on the major issues facing the country and how the Centre and the state governments are handling them. The most important are the assembly elections in West Bengal and Kerala where there is a distinct possibility of the ruling CPM governments being defeated. If the Timespoll conducted by K. Balakrishnan and G.V.L. Narasimha Rao is to be believed, the defeat of these two state governments is a certainty. In West Bengal the Trinamool Congress and the Indian National Congress alliance has taken shape against many odds and this Mahajot is expected to score a clear victory. Mamata Banerjee’s quitting the NDA and giving up the Railway Ministry, after the Tehelka scam broke out, was well-timed. In fact, the Tehelka revelations came as a godsend to her as she was thereby able to assert her secular identity. This alone would secure a minimum of 40 seats where the Muslims, including those of Bangladesh origin, are in a position to decisively influence the outcome in those constituencies. If the Mahajot is able to dethrone the CPM in West Bengal, it will mark a major political event in the country. The CPM has been in power in West Bengal since 1977 and except for the agricultural reforms introduced by the CPM government in the first term of its rule, there was nothing much to show during the past 10 years. Industrialists had quit West Bengal and sought their fortunes elsewhere and there had been no inflow of foreign investment either. The middle class and the poor also apparently want a change in West Bengal. The impending defeat of the CPM government led by E.K. Nayanar in Kerala, taken in conjunction with the expected defeat of the CPM government in West Bengal, would mark the end of the CPM as a major force in Indian politics. In Kerala, the administration of Nayanar was shockingly inefficient as scandals after scandals broke out rocking the government during the past three years. A state with the highest literacy percentage, both among men and women, and with an extremely diversified composition of population cannot obviously put up with such utter inefficiency and maladministration. The Timespoll survey is interesting since it foretells the defeat of the CPM governments by a huge margin of about 5 per cent swing of vote in favour of the United Democratic Front led by the Congress. Traditionally the electoral outcome in Kerala had been decided by a difference of 1 or 2 per cent votes between the LDF and the UDF and such a big difference in the vote percentage, as forecast now, had not been seen in the last two decades. The CPM Politbureau has denied tickets to the incumbent Chief Minister and several CPM veterans which is a big surprise. It is believed that Nayanar led the opposition to Jyoti Basu from entering the leadership stakes when the opportunity arose three years ago. “The historic blunder”, as Jyoti Basu called it, perhaps has its revenge now. In Assam, the Asom Gana Parishad led by Prafulla Mohanta is facing humiliating defeat. Surprisingly, the BJP leadership, which had earlier decided to disassociate itself from the AGP in the assembly elections, seems to have changed its mind, and there is an AGP-BJP alliance facing the poll. The unfortunate result of this alliance is that both the parties are likely to get lesser number of seats than what they would get if they contested separately. Assam, with a large percentage of Muslim population, most of them of Bangladesh origin, and Bengali-speaking people, are all against the AGP as well as the BJP. Among the middle class and students the AGP is very unpopular now because of its suspected links with the militants, particularly the ULFA. The AGP came to power by championing the cause of the original Asomias and the demand for tightening the legal provisions governing the immigrants. The ruling party has since abandoned all these for the sake of retaining the support of Muslim MLAs in the state assembly and this has disillusioned large sections of the people. The AGP government is even more unpopular among the tribals who constitute a sizeable percentage of voters. It is, therefore, no surprise that the Timespoll predicts a 13 per cent swing in favour of the Congress with more than two-thirds majority in the assembly. Of the assembly polls, the most interesting and also important one is that of Tamil Nadu. Jayalalitha, “the Revolutionary Leader”, is all set to romp home with a clear victory, unseating her arch rival and enemy M. Karunanidhi, the DMK chief and the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu. All the scams and scandals, all the corruption and revelations of accumulation of wealth, all the display of her vast amount of jewellery and even the couple of convictions by the courts have not made a difference to her electoral hold on sizeable sections of the people of the state. It would be interesting to make a sociological as well as a psychological analysis in respect of the voters of Tamil Nadu regarding their perception of Jayalalitha. The cinema craze and the blind adulation many of them have for the late M.G. Ramachandran seem to have been now transferred to his friend, companion and follower, Jayalalitha. This explains why quite a percentage of women and men refuse to believe that the corruption cases against her are true or a blot on her character. The sad fact is that during the last five years the DMK MLAs and party men down to the village level, have been no less corrupt than Jayalalitha and her ministers and party men during her administration. However, even the factor of corruption would not have been so important in deciding the outcome of the elections if only Karunanidhi had exhibited a certain amount of political wisdom and farsightedness. Karunanidhi seems to be determined to hand over his mantle to his favourite son, Stalin, who is at present the Mayor of Chennai. Stalin has recently emerged as an important political force in the DMK, but even earlier the party hierarchy was under instructions to hail him as the next chief. Whenever Stalin went out to participate in a party function in the district, a hundred cars went with him and there were cutouts, banners and arches. It is believed that Stalin is responsible for the calculated exclusion of the PMK party led by Dr Ramadas since he openly and repeatedly asserted that his aim was to capture the chief ministership of Tamil Nadu by 2006. The calculated pushing out of V. Gopalaswamy, popularly known as Vaiko, and his MDMK party from the DMK alliance was again due to the long-standing threat of Vaiko being chosen by large sections of the DMK cadres as their leader as and when Karunanidhi is no more. Again, V. Ramamurthy of the Rajiv Gandhi Congress, who was always backing Karunanidhi, has been denied a minimum number of seats and he is also out of the alliance. The Tamil Maanila Congress (TMC) led by G.K. Moopanar had severed its alliance from the DMK long ago on ideological grounds. The DMK now stands alone supported by a few odd stragglers constituting certain caste-based outfits. The loss of the DMK is the gain of AIADMK-led alliance of Jayalalitha. The AIADMK-PMK-TMC-Congress alliance is formidable and heading for victory. Even if Jayalalitha is not able to contest the elections because of her conviction in court cases, the AIADMK alliance seems to be assured of its victory. Pondicherry is a small state with 30 assembly seats and one Lok Sabha seat. The elections there will be a replica of the elections in Tamil Nadu as the party configurations are almost the same. The outcome of the state assembly election does not make much difference either way. BJP’s stake in these state elections is minimal. In Kerala, the BJP does not have a single assembly seat and it may not get one even now. The defeat of the DMK in Tamil Nadu will have its impact on the NDA government at the Centre. The DMK MPs may continue to support the NDA government but their clout is bound to suffer. The loss of BJP’s allies in the NDA such as the DMK and the AGP in Assam and Tamil Nadu is bound to affect the NDA in general and the BJP in particular in the days to come. The writer is a former Governor of West Bengal and
Sikkim. |
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Awards and His will COFFEE sessions are the occasions when everybody gets the right to speak against each other, vomit out their jealousies and criticise any one. Moreover, this is the time when one can discuss the peon and the Prime Minister in one go. This time again the issue was the Highest Civilian Awards. Though announced on January 26th, every year, they are given in the month of March. We personally have got no interest or liking for such awards. Rather we don’t have even an iota of knowledge. But one of our friends who is very keen for this honour always gives us some knowledge and interest. “Look”, I said to my friend, “These awards and honours are only for one’s ego satisfaction. The memory of people is very short. Later on you will have to shout hard to tell people that you are a state awardee or a national awardee. Moreover, even the District or State administration does not send you the card or congratulatory greeting letter for your achievements. You don’t enter the list of VIPs with your awards the definition of a VIP is the person who can scare the administration”. My friend who was waiting for the chance to speak, immediately said. Honours and awards are something which everybody wants internally though externally one may pretend to care two hoots. Do you know that striving for these honours is a thankless job. Nobody understands that these honours bring glory to the state. One’s efforts in trying to find a source of help, right connection, travelling day and night, sleeplessness, tensions and phases of depression are not appreciated rather people make a mockery”. I consoled him and said: “Awards and recognition are the gifts of God. You must have faith in God. It is not that those people who get the awards are most intelligent and topmost.” He laughed and said: “I agree with you. There are many persons who are very intelligent and better than me, but one has to run the race to win it. Since I had run the race I would like to win it.” I wanted to change the topic. Look, I said, how difficult it is to get the admissions in the convent schools. All children are very intelligent and are better than one another. Very few lucky people get it. “Yes, you are right. Principal Helima at least consoles the parents by writing a letter. Whenever she meets the parents she would always say, ‘Your child was very intelligent. I wish I could admit the child. But I have got my own compulsions and restrictions’. But you never receive such consolation from the selection committee or the Home Ministry,” said my friend. The atmosphere was tense. Luckily, one of my doctor friends who is also an astrologer entered. He earns more from astrology than from his medical practice. I call him “Swamiji”. Swamiji could see tension and grief on our faces. He laughed and said. “Lagta hai rahu, ketu & mangal sub ikathe ho gaye hain”. When one is in problems one always seeks solace from astrology.
“Swamiji, is ka kuchh keejeeye,” I requested. Swamiji held my friend’s hand, laughed and said: “Very soft hand.” Yes, I said, “he is a ladies doctor”. Everybody laughed. “This is one of the rarest hands I have ever seen. He will have name, fame and will be known in the world. I interrupted: “Swamiji, the question is award.” He signalled me to stop and made a few astrological charts on the paper and got lost in serious thinking. “Time at present is not very favourable for doctors. The tilt of awards is towards artists, whether film or musical artist. The highest honour will be given to film artists and poets. As far as doctors are concerned, there will be lot of rivalry. They will cut each other’s throat and send false complaints against each other. The medical profession will decline in its dignity. By the way have you ever operated upon a leader of national stature or his close relative I am sure you will get an award later on. Your sun line is very good, but supporting line is missing” he said. “Your friend is an Istri Rog Specialist. So his sun will shine when a lady will rule the country,” he added. We all laughed. My friend, who was looking quite depressed, said: “It is not that I am dying for an award. Once you run a race you want to win it. I also know, the best award for a doctor is the recognition by the patients. The recognition brought by the awards is a temporary phenomenon. Swamiji consoled my friend: “Have faith in God and everything will be fine. “Swamiji,” said my friend.’ “I have full faith in God. The problem is, He does not say,
‘Tathastu’. God has raised His hands and says: “Meri Prime Minister Office mein nahin chalti..Tehelka dot com ko contact karo”. |
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Anandgarh: a project
Corbusier would not have liked “I have welcomed very greatly one experiment in India: Chandigarh,” Jawaharlal Nehru said in 1959, speaking at a seminar and exhibition of architecture. “It is the biggest example in India of experimental architecture. It hits you on the head and makes you think. You may squirm at the impact but it has made you think and imbibe new ideas, and the one thing which India requires in many fields is being hit on the head so that it may think.” Voicing his appreciation of the general conception of Chandigarh — “not being tied down to what has been done by our forefathers but thinking in new terms, of light and air and ground and water and human beings” — Nehru described its founder, Le Corbusier, as a man with a powerful and creative mind. “For the same reason,” said Nehru, “he may produce extravagances occasionally, but it is better to be extravagant than be a person with no mind at all.” The Anandgarh project, a Punjab government extravaganza for setting up the new town of Anandgarh on Chandigarh’s periphery, quashed by the Punjab and Haryana High Court on March 28, also hits you on the head but for totally opposite reasons. Rarely before in the history of town planning has a new town or city been conceived with such little expenditure of the intellect and such great expenditure of political and bureaucratic energy. Having received no formal training in architecture, Le Corbusier was nonetheless — as Lewis Mumford grudgingly acknowledges in his epic work “The City in History” published in 1961 — “the most powerful single influence over architecture and city planning in every part of the world” during his time. Codified in 1933 at the International Congress of Modern Architecture in the Athens Charter written by Le Corbusier (vide Nan Ellin in her 1996 book “Postmodern Urbanism”), the principles of modern architecture and planning were intended to resolve — in the words of James Holston — “the urban and social crises attributed to the unbridled domination of private interests in the public realm of the city, in the accumulation of wealth, and in the development of industry”. For all its “deadly uniformity, visual bleakness and bureaucratic regimentation” — Mumford’s searing critique of Le Corbusier’s architecture — Chandigarh represents an entrenched architectural opposition to the domination of private interests in the public realm and to the accumulation of wealth and industry. Forwarding an album on Chandigarh to the Prime Minister and pointing out that the city assumes the form of the “CIAM Town Planning Grid” (CIAM being the acronym resulting from the France equivalent of the term “International Congress of Modern Architecture”), Le Corbusier wrote to Nehru on November 11, 1952: “I hope this album will..let you feel that a valuable work is being undertaken which will perhaps astonish wealthier and more powerful nations.” Mark now the reasons why the Punjab government proposes to set up the new town of Anandgarh on Chandigarh’s periphery, as set out by the government in its written reply to the writ petition filed in the High Court. “The process of liberalisation and reforms,” It says, “has thrown open vast opportunities for (the) private sector including NRIs to invest in India. With the integration of Indian economy into the global economy and increasing demand due to burgeoning middle class population, India will be a favoured destination for global investment. The existing towns/cities of Punjab would however fail miserably in providing the quality of life NRIs would be looking for. We can however plan the new town generally with international standards and particularly develop sectors to cater to NRI needs.” Referring further to the need to develop convention centres, universities and educational campuses and health infrastructure in the region, the government’s reply adds: “With liberalisation, these components offer maximum possibility for attracting private investment. (The) affluent Punjabi population in the United States, Canada, Western Europe and Australia can be expected to contribute handsomely. A new city designed specifically with the prime objective of founding itself on these components will definitely be more attractive to investors and users than piecemeal solutions by way of software technology parks, isolated educational institutes and convention centres in existing cities.” Capping it all is a boast which is truly candid. “This is the only site (says the reply), which is capable of being developed without any assistance from the state budget.” It is evident, is it not, from this official statement of intent that, though Anandgarh shall stand just on the periphery of Chandigarh, the “vision” underlying its foundation and its driving force will be precisely that which Le Corbusier was so fundamentally and resolutely opposed to — town planning as a symbol of accumulation of wealth and as an index of the dominion of private interest in civic and public life. “A city is an idea of life created out of life itself: a philosophy in four dimensions,” said the British architect Maxwell Fry. “If it does not offer a philosophy; if it is not in itself an end, it will perish.” Along with his wife, Jane Drew, and Le Corbusier’s cousin Pierre Jeanneret, Maxwell Fry is the co-founder or co-constructor of Chandigarh. A town or a city which stands on the periphery of Chandigarh, but whose philosophy is at odds or at war with the philosophy of Chandigarh, will be either a still-born child (which Anandgarh presently is, thanks to the High Court) or a monster which will, in due course, swallow up Chandigarh and destroy all that it represents. Conceived amid the crisis and confusion accompanying the birth of the new Indian republic, Chandigarh “represents a generous investment of courage and hope, of talent and devoted effort, and it will continue to require such investments,” says Norma Evenson, concluding her book on the making of Chandigarh. A book as brilliant in insight and as picturesque in expression as Granville Austin’s book on the making of India’s Constitution though the analogy is otherwise far-fetched. Anandgarh represents, on the contrary and going by the Punjab government’s reply in the High Court, an entirely non-intellectual investment, a financial investment of private emigre (NRI) affluence. However much in its worldly wisdom the bureaucratic and political class governing Punjab today may scoff at such distinctions, the distinction between the two kinds of investment is enormous indeed. The other point made in Punjab’s reply before the High Court, a point of “principle” from the government’s point of view, is even more disturbing. “(A)lmost all the urbanisation in India (it reads) is becoming possible only through the expansion of existing cities. Such growth of cities has to be only at the fringes and the periphery of the existing cities. Even where new towns are being established successfully — like Gurgaon, Faridabad, Noida, Mohali, Panchkula — it is right at the fringe of the existing cities.” The experience of all large cities in India has shown, it says, that: “(a) It is neither possible nor desirable to stop the growth of cities; and (b) with regard to periphery of cities, the choice is never between urbanising it or not. It will necessarily be urbanised. Thus, the real choice invariably is between developing it in an orderly, planned manner or in a haphazard, chaotic manner. The planning and development of the new town of Anandgarh has to be seen in this context.” Even if the territorial sweep of the argument and its all-India implications are ignored, there can be no manner of doubt that so far as Chandigarh is concerned, it sounds the death knell of the whole concept of periphery control which embargoes all urbanisation in the city’s periphery. A less formal way of repealing the 1952 Punjab New Capital (Periphery) Control Act, the adoption of which Le Corbusier had hailed as “a happy event” and which he had stressed “must be carried out at all costs” could not perhaps be found. As New York historian Ravi Kalia has shown in his “Chandigarh: The Making of an Indian City”, first published in 1987, Le Corbusier considered even the construction of the Chandimandir cantonment a clear violation of the Periphery Act. Calling the decision to set up the cantonment on land carved out of seven villages in Chandigarh’s environs “a true crime”, and having failed to dissuade the local authorities, he appealed personally to Jawaharlal Nehru in December, 1962, against the decision which, he said, “would ruin the town planning principles of Chandigarh.” It is well that Le Corbusier was overruled on Chandimandir and the cantonment now stands to fortify India’s security. A city meant for NRIs, Anandgarh is no Chandimandir however. Or is it, the new cantonment of India’s economy and freedom? |
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Domestication of plants THE first domestic vegetable was probably a pumpkin. New research from the US has pinned down exactly where many of our most important crops came from and when they were domesticated. Radio-carbon dating of archaeological remains and genetic evidence has shown that people started cultivating maize much earlier than thought, about 6,500 years ago, squash 10,000 years ago and beans 2,300 years ago. Squash, beans and maize are what paleobotanists refer to as the “holy trinity’’. All the archaeological remains of plants have been discovered in just five caves in Mexico and it is on this slender evidence that the story of plant domestication has rested. Now, using new techniques, including genetic analysis of the original wild-type populations, a different and more accurate picture is emerging. Dr Bruce Smith, from the Smithsonian Institute, Washington DC, has reanalysed the fossil remains from these Mexican caves using a direct accelerator mass spectrometer (AMS), a type of radiocarbon dating technique. He discovered that squash — Cucurbita pepo — is the earliest non-grain to have been domesticated anywhere in the world. Rye, barley and wheat could have been domesticated in the Near East up to 2,000 years earlier. The type of squashes around at the time became our pumpkin varieties. Smith believes the local people had not become farmers but were still relatively mobile and lived in seasonal camps. “You could think of them as hunter gatherers but they had a few domesticated plants,’’ he says.
(Guardian) Officer survives 90ft plunge An Arizona police officer has survived his car falling 90 feet off a motorway bridge. Phoenix police officer Joe Twyford’s car jumped over a wall and landed on its nose. He suffered a broken jaw, a broken foot and he badly cut his knee. Twyford was on his way to see a mugging victim when the car flew from the eastbound Interstate 10 bridge and landed in the northbound lanes of Interstate 17 below. Witness Robert Whetstein said: “I thought it was an optical illusion from the oncoming traffic.” Phoenix police and Department of Public Safety officials are investigating the accident, The Arizona Republic reports. Twyford is in a stable condition in hospital. No other injuries are reported. |
Congress Committee’s Differences IN view of the resignation of Lala Lajpat Rai and others from the Executive Council of the Punjab Provincial Congress Committee, great importance was attached to the meeting of that body which was to be held this afternoon and in which it was expected the question of resignation would be considered. The meeting of the Executive Council, however, did not consider that question today and postponed its consideration till tomorrow. Lala Lajpat Rai and other members who have resigned did not attend the meeting. It is understood that Pandit Moti Lal is still holding informal consultation with the leaders. It is stated in certain quarters that differences are not so serious as they are considered to be by some. Pandit Moti Lal’s presence in Lahore is regarded as a good omen to the amicable settlement of all differences. |
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SPIRITUAL NUGGETS You are helpless when you are a baby — you are helpless when you are seriously ailing. You are helpless when you become old also. Why then do you boast of your ability, capacity, independence and freedom? Why are you proud and egoistic? Transcend the body and mind and realise the Immortal Self. Rise above delusion and illusion through discrimination or self-analysis and enquiry of who am I? *** This world is a play of colours and sounds. This sense universe is a play of nerves. It is a false show kept up by the jugglery of maya, mind and senses.... What is this despicable, jarring, monotonous sensual life when compared with the eternal and peaceful life in the immortal self within. *** Seek deep abiding joy, eternal happiness and uninterrupted bliss in your own self within through constant unbroken meditation. Rise up! Stand up! Wake up! Exert! Reach the Goal right now. —Sri Swami Shivananda, Vairagya-Mala *** Find the eternal object of your quest within your soul. Enough have you wandered during the long period of your quest! Dark and weary must have been the ages of your searching in ignorance and groping in helplessness; At last when you turn your gaze inward, suddenly you realise that the bright light of faith and lasting truth was shining around you. With rapturous joy, you find the soul of the universe, the eternal object of your quest. Your searching mind at last finds the object of the search within your own heart. Your inner vision is illuminated by this new
realisation. —Yajurveda, 32.11 |
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