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| Monday,
July 30, 2001, Chandigarh, India   
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PM’s plain-speaking Another policy U-turn
Dealing with a military ruler |
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Delhi, the pride of India!
Anupam Gupta
Obesity linked to watching TV
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PM’s plain-speaking ON
Tuesday Prime Minister Vajpayee was brief and diplomatically restrained when he made his statement in Parliament on the abortive Agra summit. He broadly listed the sore and sticking points between the two countries without showing any emotion or anger. On Saturday he shed this tentative approach, preferring to do some plain-speaking at the BJP national executive meeting. The change is understandable. He was speaking before an audience which adopts a hard line on Pakistan and Kashmir compared to the MPs belonging to different parties. He also had to respond to the mood at the meeting. Many speakers had pointedly criticised External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh for his perceived soft line which had emboldened Pakistan to stay rigidly focused on the Kashmir issue. That was actually an attack on the government and Mr Vajpayee had to blunt it and his speech seems to have succeeded in this. At the same time he was telling Pakistan that his Lok Sabha statement shows determination and not weakness. Cross-border terrorism is real and it is an attack not only on civilians but on secularism as well, which will have unthinkable and unacceptable consequences in this country, and India will not tolerate it. Old-time diplomats brought up in a gentler environ may feel uncomfortable with the Prime Minister’s descriptions of the guest General, but his rejection of the jehadi approach is wholly welcome. Some political leaders will read into Mr Vajpayee’s Saturday speech a hardening of his position. But that would be somewhat superficial. The collapse of the summit has frustrated and embittered no one more than Mr Vajpayee. It was his initiative and he had high stakes in its success. But it has failed and he is taking the nation into confidence in measured doses and not in one lump as the Pakistan General did through his televised press conference. This way the Indian people, the intelligentsia in the first place, are coming to grips with the real story of Agra, even in an edited form. The Pakistan public is also becoming privy to this country’s position and the logic behind it in calculated morsels. This is highly important since the liberals there are fed up with the mullahs’ hold on government decisions and the international disgust at the export of terrorism. As the Prime Minister pointed out, the General was grim and demoralised at the failure of the Agra summit since he had to return empty-handed. India used the opportunity to reveal its hand and has thus reserved its right to continue the dialogue. The only expectation is that Pakistan will be more serious in negotiating peace the next time around, maybe in 2002. |
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Another policy U-turn A few years ago, Mr Yashwant Sinha had earned the derisive title of being a "rollback" Finance Minister. Now it seems the entire Union Cabinet has earned the epithet collectively. What Mr Sinha did in the case of Budget proposals has been replicated in far more vital national issues by the Central Government. The latest U-turn has come about in the case of the revocation of the ceasefire agreement with the NSCN (I-M) beyond Nagaland. Following pressure from the North-East states, it has deleted the words "without territorial limits" from the agreement signed with Mr Thuingaleng Muivah on June 14. Government spin-doctors are bound to justify the action as being responsive to the public's aspirations and wishes, but the fact remains that it is a loss of face. There is certain legitimacy and authority attached to a decision taken by the government, which has been compromised. Only recently, when the Home Minister, Mr L.K. Advani, was asked whether the government was going to review the agreement signed with the NSCN in the light of violent protests in Manipur, he had countered that the decisions of the Central Government were taken after extensive deliberations and there was no question of revising them. A few days later, he has had to eat his words. Since such unedifying feasts are taking place far too often, these are bound to lead to indigestion. Apparently, the sensitivities of the people of the North-East were not taken into consideration while inking the agreement, and the ferocity of the public reaction came as a surprise to the government. The consequences of the ill-advised move are going to haunt the region for long, if not for all times to come. The area of discord has been unnecessarily spread to Manipur. In fact, the state is now the most troubled place after Kashmir. The way all politicians have been targeted is an ominous sign. Worse, a message has gone out that the government succumbs to pressure. This can lead to equally ugly agitations in other parts of the country, at times even for unworthy or wrong causes. In any case, the Nagaland trouble is nowhere near ending. New Delhi has given out that the NSCN leadership is amenable to the deletion of the offending words from the agreement and the restoration of the "status quo" as on June 14, 2001. But independent reports indicate otherwise. The clarity of thought that should go into the handling of such sensitive issues is not on display. That shortcoming is least expected from the Union Cabinet. |
Dealing with a military ruler THE most important outcome of the Agra summit was in General Pervez Musharraf revealing himself what he really is. At his press conference on July 15 he justified his Kargil aggression since India moved into Siachen and asserted that Pakistan’s support to terrorists in Kashmir was like India’s arming the Mukthi Bahinis in the erstwhile East Pakistan. Add to these General Musharraf’s previous pronouncements that jehad was not terrorism and that his support to them would be reviewed if Kashmir negotiations made real progress. Faced with these realities, where was the scope for any meaningful discussion? Yet we made a lot of sentimental hype. Are we such sentimental weaklings that we cannot view these events in proper perspective? At the political level some important wrong steps were taken. India had rightly taken a tough stand after the Kargil architect seized power after a coup. Most countries condemned or disapproved of it. India was not willing to accept General Musharraf as the de jure head of Pakistan while the General went on asking for a meeting with our Prime Minister. Then suddenly we decided to invite him for a conference. But after having invited him, was it really necessary for our Prime Minister to congratulate the General in advance on his imminent self-elevation as President of Pakistan, without knowing that most Western democracies, with the USA in the lead, took an adverse view? More importantly, was it necessary to invite him to Delhi and lay down the red carpet with an inter-services guard of honour and the President of India receiving him? And why Agra, the Mughal empire’s capital for three centuries? A place like Jodhpur or even Shimla would have been appropriate for a business-like visit and discussion. There would have been no red-carpet welcome and all the protocol formalities. An army general who seized power in a coup was no better than a defeated Prime Minister, Bhutto, and Indira Gandhi’s choice of Shimla was a sensible precedent, which was unfortunately ignored. General Musharraf has now declared that he will discuss with India only the Kashmir “dispute or issue” and nothing else. On the Kashmir question itself his stand is clear: Kashmir is a “disputed territory” and “cannot be accepted as part of India”; the Simla Agreement and the Lahore Declaration are not relevant; the Hurriyat Conference is “the only representative body of Kashmiris” and should be associated with the discussion at some stage; the views and options of the people of Kashmir should be ascertained; jehad is not terrorism and the jehadis will continue with their “holy war”; Pakistan will continue to extend its “moral and political support” (read arming them and infiltrating them); and criminals involved in the Bombay explosions like Dawood Ibrahim and the hijacking of IC-814 will not be handed over to India. These obvious facts staring in the face of India have to be understood and their implications analysed. Mercifully, India refused to compromise and fall in the trap of Pakistan’s overtures at Agra. Let not history repeat itself. At Tashkent in 1966, despite General Kumaramangalam being in the Indian delegation, India agreed to return the captured Haji Pir Pass to Pakistan without realising its strategic importance. In Shimla in 1972 even Indira Gandhi fell for the wily Bhutto’s entreaties and failed to clinch the issue of converting the Line of Control into an international border despite India holding 96,000 Pakistani prisoners of war and some captured territory. P.N. Haksar’s deathbed regrets for having misled Indira Gandhi are of no avail now. Perhaps if Indira Gandhi had taken the ministers constituting the CCPA to Shimla, someone would have put in a word of caution? All the Kashmiri big thinkers — D.P. Dhar, P.N. Haksar, T.N. Kaul and P.N. Dhar — were there and yet the outcome was disastrous. Fortunately, this time Mr L.K. Advani and Mr Jaswant Singh were at Agra to constantly monitor the proceedings, as otherwise there was no knowing what fatal slip our well-meaning poet-philosopher Prime Minister have committed. Where do we go from here? Further talks in September during the UN session in New York or even later in Islamabad will not be productive at all. Meanwhile, the ISI, the jehadis and numerous other militant groups will play havoc, as they have already started, not only in Kashmir but also in other parts of India. Human rights and track-II activists will continue to harp on their favourite propositions. Most of them are funded by the USA and most of their proposals have one central, core idea — to give special status to the Kashmir valley with international monitoring and eventually giving the Kashmiris the option to decide their own future. Pakistan’s overall plan itself is aimed at bringing about international intervention in some form or other even if it does not bring about American mediation. India will resist all such moves. The impression is growing, however, that with all the bleeding that India is undergoing in Kashmir and the serious situation in the North-East threatening to become worse, India would be hard put to withstand the pressure. And on top of all this, if the VHP and the Bajrang Dal go ahead with the Ram temple project, it would give Pakistani perpetrators the perfect excuse and provocation. It is entirely possible that the ISI and its nodules all over India may provoke Hindu-Muslim riots on an extensive scale leading to an international outcry and demand for a UN fact-finding mission, etc. The escalating scale of adverse possibilities is too serious to spell out. Fortunately, there is one silver lining amidst the gloomy scenario. If think-tanks are interested in facilitating the US presence in an autonomous Kashmir, that is taken care of by India’s recent warming up to the USA and its welcome to the National Missile Defence scheme. It was an act of statesmanship and strategic thinking on the part of External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh. India was able to sustain the Kashmir issue at the UN for four decades with the USSR veto and that old Russia is no more there. One has to study the Russian survey in the Economist of July 21 to understand what Russia is today. India has to warm up to the only dominant power, and fortunately this process that began during the Clinton regime is continuing. With US interests taken care of by India in this part of Asia, there is no reason for the USA to take an unfriendly attitude on any major issue affecting this country’s integrity. Michael Krepon of the Stimson Centre and Stephen Cohen of the Brookings Institution had always emphasised the fact of India and Pakistan being nuclear states which called for the USA taking “a more activist role in the region”. It was left to the veteran observer of the subcontinent, Selig Harrison, to come out with some sensible suggestions: General Musharraf should take steps to reduce tension followed by India pursuing serious negotiations with representative Kashmir leaders on greater autonomy. Eventually, the ceasefire line has to be converted into an international border, possibly with some alterations. Direct American intervention would be unwise, but it could make a critical contribution by designating the Lashkar-e-Toiba as a terrorist group and “stopping short of the more fateful step of putting Pakistan on the US list of terrorist states”. And, lastly, the USA should use its leverage to promote a settlement “with implicit and explicit threats to withhold the desperately needed bilateral and multilateral economic assistance. Until now Washington has been unwilling to use this leverage, but if it is serious about furthering the peace process, this will ultimately become unavoidable.” Hopefully, the US State Department and the National Security Adviser will take note. Military dictators have no sense of history and General Musharraf is no exception. But let him at least heed a fellow Pakistani, Khaled Ahmed of The Friday Times, Lahore: “What Musharraf or anyone after him will not be able to handle is the rolling back of jehad after the Kashmir dispute is solved and restoring the writ of the state. Jehadis sit on top of Pakistan’s beleaguered civil society and they will not be disarmed”. Which means that India would have to deal with a Talibanised Pakistan in the foreseeable future. But New Delhi need not despair since the whole civilised world would be against the Taliban spectre, both in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The writer is a former Governor of West Bengal and Sikkim. |
Delhi, the pride of India! DELHI-ites have become stuffed shirts and they are walking with their noses in the air and why not? You see, fulsome encomiums are being showered on their city like manna from heaven and that has naturally gone to their swollen heads. The prestigious Scientific American magazine has hailed Delhi as India’s “brain”, handsomely lauding the diverse research activities being conducted by institutions in the city. Exigency of space, however, revented the Scientific American from highlighting other areas of research for which Delhi is renowned. In Janakpuri in the trans-Yamuna colony on the northern outskirts of Delhi, a distinguished emeritus Hooch Queen, aided and abetted by a dedicated band of bootleggers and moonshine whisky purveyors, is directing an outstanding research effort into fermentation technology and alcohol chemistry — research which has put Delhi firmly on the liquor map of the country. Several new processes have been developed for distilling potent country liquor using locally available raw materials like chicken droppings and discarded footwear — a shining example of appropriate technology. Thanks to its lead in fermentation technology, Delhi is in a position to provide proven and field-tested knowhow for the manufacture of illicit country liquor. Training can also be provided in ways to hoodwink the excise development and flying squads. While the electrical engineering department of the Indian Institute of Technology is known for its research in high voltage engineering, the Delhi Vidyut Board concentrates on research in low voltage technology. Every morning, between 6 and 9 and again in the evenings, it lowers the voltage to 90 so that flourescent lamps won’t burn and mixies, refrigerators, TVs and washing machines won’t work and a vaunted all-electric home is reduced to gloomy darkness. This pathbreaking research has provided DVB with valuable insight into the working of complex urban power grids. The Delhi Water Supply and Sewerage Board (DWSSB) has, as its main area of research interest the highly esoteric fields of hydrodynamics and mechanics and pressure flow studies. Through a complex series of synchronised manual operations in the clogged valve chambers, its researchers reduce the pressure in the mains so that the water flow becomes a mere trickle and fisticuffs break out around public taps and simultaneously, it jacks up the rates and withdraws the free allowance. The board is also engaged in studying the characteristics of the flow of sewage contaminated waters through broken and corroded iron pipes laid over a century ago. This research is expected to yield real time data which will enable the DWSSB to postpone taking a decision on laying new pipes by another 100 years. The Delhi Police leads the rest of the world in the application of science and technology for crime control and prevention. It has distributed cheap plastic whistles costing 50 paise to terrified people living in outlying suburbs and isolated farm houses and when heavily armed and dangerous inter-state dacoit gangs strike after midnight, these whistles need only be blown and the marauding nocturnal miscreants will take to their heels. Interpol, FBI and Scotland Yard have deputed their top sleuths on attachment to the Delhi Police to study this novel crime control measure which is appropriately called “Whistling in the Dark”. Delhi has a pride of place in weedicide research, too. Extensive tracts of land in exclusive residential areas are set apart for the uncontrolled growth of Congress grass and other noxious weeds and research into control measures are then initiated. |
Kashmir dispute: digging deep into 50 years of history “IT
seems to be our function to go on agreeing and Pakistan’s to go on refusing and rejecting, although we happen to be the victims of Pakistan’s aggression,” Jawaharlal Nehru wrote to Sir Stafford Cripps on December 17, 1948, with reference to Kashmir, complaining bitterly of a syndrome that persists even today. “(I)f we have been in error,” he said, “we shall gladly suffer the consequences of that error. I have no doubt that we have (generally) made many mistakes. But in regard to Kashmir I am dead certain that we have made no major mistakes except to hold our hands repeatedly in the face of provocation. We are continually being told not to do this or that as if we are the aggressors or the guilty party. Meanwhile a set of barbarians are let loose on parts of Kashmir territory, bringing up havoc in their train.” Barbarians or “cross-border terrorists” in modern parlance, the problem as well as the projection of Kashmir remains much the same 50 years later. From the UN Security Council in 1948 to Agra in 2001, courtesy President Pervez Musharraf, is one long story of the aggressor dressed up as a victim and pontificating on freedom, the will of the people and self-determination, all those great virtues so effortlessly trampled back home (in Pakistan). A story that never ceases to disgust, not the least for the “soft and meaningless talk” that goes on between India and Pakistan in the name of a dialogue on the issue of Kashmir. That expression, mind you, is not mine but Nehru’s, whose reference of the issue to the United Nations is rightly perceived as something in the nature of a cardinal sin. “I must say that prepared as I was for untoward happenings,” he wrote to his sister, Vijayalakshmi Pandit, at the United Nations on February 16, 1948, less than two months after the reference on January 1, “I could not imagine that the Security Council could possibly behave in the trivial and partisan manner in which it functioned.” “These people (in the Security Council),” he said, unable to control himself, “are supposed to keep the world in order. It is not surprising that the world is going to pieces. The United States and Britain have played a dirty role, Britain probably being the chief actor behind the scenes. I have expressed myself strongly to Attlee about it and I propose to make it perfectly clear to the British Government what we think about it. The time for soft and meaningless talk has passed.” Just three days earlier, on February 13, as his biographer Prof S. Gopal tells us, overcome by a sense of guilt for having made the reference, he wrote sternly to Mountbatten (the man who had induced him to make it), threatening to resign: “I think I should tell you that, subject to developments, I might have to consider my position in Government. I have made statements and have given pledges to the people of Kashmir and I do not propose to go against them.” In one of history’s great ironies, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, leading a party which has always furiously opposed Nehru’s “softness” on the Kashmir issue, faced a near-similar crisis this month for having invited the Pakistan President to a summit that blew up in India’s face. Unlike Nehru, however, who never indulged in histrionics, whether publicly or in private, and whose position among the people was too secure to demand it, Mr Vajpayee finally let his hair down at the BJP’s national executive meeting in Delhi on July 28, after almost a fortnight of studied restraint. “You didn’t see Musharraf’s face when he was leaving (Agra), I did,” Mr Vajpayee told his party, as reported by The Indian Express. “Muh latkaye hue the (he had a long face). He didn’t want to leave because he was returning empty-handed. If I had asked him to stay, he would have. But I didn’t. I didn’t even give him a photo opportunity.” Thank you, Mr Prime Minister, for that unplanned last-minute assertion of national honour, but what about the overly hospitable manner in which the summit was conducted by the Government of India and all that soft and meaningless talk about Kashmir? Even that ill-fated reference to the United Nations in 1948 was more sharply worded. “There now existed a situation,” India told the Security Council, “whose continuance was likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security, owing to the aid which invaders, consisting of nationals of Pakistan and of tribesmen from the territory immediately enjoining Pakistan on the North-West, are drawing from Pakistan for operations against Kashmir, a state which has acceded to the Dominion of India and is part of India.... “The Government of India request the Security Council to call upon Pakistan to put an end immediately to the giving of such assistance, which is an act of aggression against India. If Pakistan does not do so, the Government of India may be compelled, in self-defence, to enter Pakistan territory, in order to take military action against the invaders.” Kashmir as an integral part of India and the invasion of Kashmir as an act of aggression against India — these are the expressly stated postulates of India’s reference to the United Nations five decades ago. As for the Security Council’s resolution of August 13, 1948, the most important of its resolutions on the Kashmir issue, Part III of which provided that “the future status of the State of Jammu and Kashmir shall be determined in accordance with the will of the people”, suffice it to say that while India accepted the resolution a week later on August 20 in order to “uphold the principles and prestige of the UN”, the same — contrary to popular impression — was not true of Pakistan. After more than two weeks of discussions with the United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan (UNCIP), Pakistan accepted the resolution but with “so many reservations, qualifications and assumptions that the Commission”, as later recorded by its Chairman, Joseph Korbel, in his well-known book on Kashmir, “had to consider the answer as tantamount to rejection.” Noting that many of the points raised by Pakistan were not pertinent, the UNCIP concluded: “The Commission observes with regret that the Government of Pakistan has been unable to accept the resolution without attaching certain conditions beyond the compass of this resolution, thereby making impossible an immediate cease-fire and beginning of fruitful negotiations between the two Governments and the Commission to bring about a peaceful and final settlement of the situation.” That was Nehru’s impression as well. Tabling the relevant UNCIP papers in the Constituent Assembly (Legislative) on September 7, 1948, he said: “Now, the Commission told us that these proposals stood as a whole and while they were prepared to discuss any matter gladly, it was difficult, in fact it was not possible for them to accept conditional acceptance, because if we made some conditions and Pakistan naturally made some other conditions, what exactly was accepted and by whom? “So they said (Nehru continued) that these proposals were to be accepted as they were, and if there were conditions attached to them, it was not acceptance but a rejection. Now, therefore, what the Pakistan Government have done is tantamount to rejection.” Acceptance by India but rejection by Pakistan. That is the truth about that famous UN resolution of 1948 which spoke of the “will of the people” of Kashmir, a formula that President Pervez Musharraf repeated ad nauseam at his press conference in Islamabad, back home from Agra. Without acknowledging its source, of course, for that is the camouflage practised by the wily General which I wrote about in my last article. And not once did India dare to tell the General that, apart from the fact that a series of subsequent developments have rendered the resolution practically defunct, Pakistan has no right to call upon India to implement it today, having rejected it itself 50 years ago when the resolution was passed. One of those developments was the Simla Agreement of 1972 which President Musharraf, brazenly heedless of the past, has now verbally repudiated. “The basic issues and causes of conflict which have bedevilled the relations between the two countries for the past 25 years”, says the Agreement, “shall be resolved by peaceful means”. “Pending the final settlement of any of the problems between the two countries (it says), neither side shall unilaterally alter the situation and both shall prevent the organisation, assistance or encouragement of any acts detrimental to the maintenance of peaceful and harmonious relations.” In Jammu and Kashmir, it continues, “the line of control resulting from the cease-fire of December 17, 1971, shall be respected by both sides without prejudice to the recognised position of either side. Neither side shall seek to alter it unilaterally, irrespective of mutual differences and legal interpretations. Both sides further undertake to refrain from the threat or the use of force in violation of this line.” The line of control as the permanent border, the status quo as the permanent solution to the Kashmir problem, this and only this — whether India admits it or not and whether Pakistan likes it or not — can form the basis of an Indo-Pak dialogue on the Vale of Kashmir. |
Bombay  |
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Obesity linked to watching TV THE longer children watch television, the more weight they are expected to gain, according to a survey conducted recently by a Chinese hospital specialising in treating obesity. During a random survey of 2,000 children, Aimin hospital in the north China city of Tianjin, found that 31.2 per cent of them who watch television for more than three hours everyday are excessively overweight for their age, and each additional hour was found to lead to a 1.8 per cent rise in the rate of obesity. Zhou, a 12-year-old girl, saw a surprising increase of 12 kg in her weight within two weeks of the summer vacation beginning this month. She watched TV for seven to eight hours a day, and ate a lot of chocolates and fried potato chips. Children’s indulgence in watching television results in a sharp reduction in their movement, which makes their redundant energy turn into fat, experts explained. In addition, the food that children eat when watching television is usually of low nutritional value but high in calories, which will be more easily turned into fat. Parents should take measures to stop children from watching television for too long for the sake of their health, experts suggested. In China, most couples have only one child and parents tend to feed him/her excessively, leading to obesity, which has become a health hazard in the world’s most populated nation.
PTI
Margarine worse than butter THE type of fat in margarine and vegetable oil reduces the function of blood vessels and drives down levels of good cholesterol more than saturated fats such as those found in butter and meat, according to a study published. Researchers from The Netherlands sought to determine whether different diets play a role in the blood vessels’ ability to dilate or expand. This function is impaired in patients with cardiovascular disease. They gave diets high in trans fatty acids such as those in margarine to one group of subjects and diets high in saturated fats such as those found in animal products and coconut and palm oil to other subjects. They found that the ability of the blood vessels to dilate was nearly a third lower in people who ate the diet high in trans fatty acids compared those on the saturated fat diet. In addition, blood levels to high-density lipoproteins (HDL) — the so-called good cholesterol — were about one-fifth lower in the trans fatty acids group compared to the saturated fat group. “This might be part of the explanation of why a high intake of trans fats increases the risk of coronary heart disease,” Nicole De Roos, an expert in human nutrition and epidemiology at Wageningen University in The Netherlands and lead author of the study, said in a statement. The scientists randomly assigned 29 healthy people to a diet high in trans fat or a high saturated fat diet in which the trans fats were replaced by saturated fats. After four weeks on one diet, the subjects were crossed over to the other diet. The study was published in the Journal Atherosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology, of the American Heart Association. Trans fats are created when hydrogen atoms are forced into liquid oils, such as corn or soyabean oil, to make them solid at room temperature. The terms “hydrogenated” or “partially hydrogenated” oils on nutrition labels refer to this process.
Reuters
Parents scarier than dinosaurs CHILDREN in Britain say their mothers and fathers are scarier than dinosaurs and aliens, according to a published report. But the report in the Daily Express on Thursday, citing a new survey, also found that the one-eyed monster Cyclops is even scarier than their parents. The survey of children aged between 4 and 10 found they were also terrified by dragons, Dracula and Frankenstein. Researchers found parents were scarier than dinosaurs, Voldemort from the Harry Potter books, aliens, King Kong and witches. A touring exhibition from London’s Natural History Museum wanted to find out what scares children the most.
DPA |
Work to sustain yourself And share with the needy. — Sri Guru Granth Sahib, Shlik M.I. ***** The followers of the path of God are not supposed to demonstrate their way by outward apparel. — From Shibli Numani, Bayan-i- Khusrau ***** Trees promote life.... These patient soldiers posted everywhere by God cool the mind and heart and bring peace. ***** You see very little selfishness in trees: a little water, air, sunlight and there the demand ends.... The tree takes very little from nature and gives enormously in return. ***** Trees are saints. There is no record of how many people trees have killed in this world. But there is some idea of how many forests human beings have destroyed and are destroying. ***** How to reach the Atman? Trees teach us two simple methods: One is sacrifice and the other is service. ***** Let us plant trees. Let trees grow everywhere. They will not only help us materially, but will also help us mentally and spiritually.... We are not rivals but friends. — Swami Sunirmalananda, Trees and us (Editorial). Prabuddha Bharata, July 2001 ***** Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky. We fell them down and turn them into paper that we may record our emptiness. — Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam, page 20; The Wanderer, page 58 |
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