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| Monday,
August 6, 2001, Chandigarh, India    |
Death dance in Doda VRS for govt employees |
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How to
deal with natural disasters
The phoren
trained
Anupam Gupta
New treatment for juvenile diabetes
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Death dance in Doda REPORTS from Jammu and Kashmir are deeply disturbing. Militants have stepped up their heartless attack as in Doda district on Friday night snuffing out the life of 17 persons. Now they are killing people in the southern parts of the state. Obviously the security forces have succeeded in subduing them in the valley proper by their energetic counter-insurgency operations. They claim to have killed more than 210 militants since the Ramzan ceasefire ended. That is a big number and should have demoralised the gangs of militants. Most factions operate with a dozen or so members since the main groups are breaking up and splinter factions are emerging. For instance, Majid Dar of the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen is distancing himself from the supreme commander Salahuddin based in Pakistan. This process has its plus and minus points for the security forces. They can infiltrate into the ranks by just buying recruits or, to be blunt, outbidding the aspiring leaders. On the other hand, it is difficult to gather intelligence on them because of their compact size. This is particularly true of southern districts where security cover is spread thinly. It is not possible to induct more troops and BSF jawans in this region with a good section of Hindus who are irreconcilably opposed to the militants. The topography too rules this out. The central government, the paramilitary forces and the state police should have expected this. The failed Agra summit and the strident claims of Gen Pervez Musharraf that Kashmir is witnessing a freedom struggle were powerful signals to the jehadis to go full throttle ahead. And they are doing precisely that. The aim of the militants is to prove that the government of India is either unpopular in the valley or is inefficient in curbing the so-called struggle for azadi. Of late they have added a new element. They accuse the police and paramilitary forces of indulging in civilian killing without offering a reasoned explanation. The Pakistan government and Pakistan-based militant organisations routinely condemn such murder of civilians, and their motive is easy to see through. Such acts evoke international revulsion and that country wants to divert that attack. So, not much importance should be given to criticism of the killings or the demand by the valley-based pro-Pakistani outfits for an independent outside investigation as by Asia Watch or Amnesty International. But the failure of the intelligence network and the inability of the security forces to inspire fear in the militants are glaring and need a close look and early rectification. |
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VRS for govt employees IF what the Union Minister of State for Personnel, Mr Arun Shourie, announced in the Rajya Sabha last Thursday is to be believed, the Central Government employees will be offered a voluntary retirement scheme (VRS) sooner than expected. The VRS has been so much talked about that no one knows when it would actually take off. In his Budget speech last year Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha had promised the formulation of a VRS and also redeployment of surplus staff. This year he set July 31 as the deadline for downsizing at least six departments/ministries without much success, however. Although full details of the VRS are yet be made public, it seems the scheme will not be offered to all employees, but confined to the surplus staff wherever identified. Mr Shourie clarified that 10 per cent of the total staff of the Central Government would be reduced by 2005. At present the Centre is reported to have 40 lakh employees. Since 1992 when the process of downsizing, now better known as rightsizing, began, the Centre has abolished about 1.82 lakh posts. These include seven posts of Secretary and 135 posts of Joint Secretary. Wiser after the VRS experience with certain public sector banks, the government proposes to provide the outgoing employees counselling on how best to invest their money as also to help them find alternative employment after retirement. Endorsed by the Fifth Pay Commission, the VRS is expected to put a severe burden, at least in the short run, on the state exchequer, already under strain due to the increased salaries of the employees and shrinking revenue with the economic slowdown. In the long run, however, benefits of a slim administration will be realised. That is if everything works out as planned. Employees are likely to do fault-finding over the identification of surplus staff. While they may find many IAS officers redundant, the latter are more likely to target the junior employees. And it is obvious whose writ will run in such a situation. With the process of liberalisation under way, the role of government is changing. It is no longer seen as a mai-baap, a provider. From being a single major source of employment, its role has changed to being a facilitator in the creation of job opportunities. It is now widely believed that whatever a private enterprise can do, the government should allow it, within the rules, of course. Roadblocks to self-employment need to be removed. If Indians can shine abroad, they can do so here too if the right kind of work environment is created. Jobs will be aplenty then. Besides, it is realised that it is none of the government’s business to be in business. Experience has shown that ministers and bureaucrats cannot run hotels or buses or aeroplanes as efficiently as private parties do. With controls going and rules of the game changing, many government departments and their employees have become redundant. The message, however, is yet to reach the states, many of which are spending a large part of their revenue on their employees, leaving very little for development. A government does not exist for its employees only. There are other tax payers who expect basic services like healthcare, education and infrastructure from the government. It is time the overweight state governments too start a fat-sheding exercise seriously. |
How to deal with natural disasters FLOODS in Orissa, Poland and Pakistan, volcanic eruption in Sicily and the continuing plight of victims of the Gujarat earthquake are reminders that the only way of saving a world that is hostage to act of God — and a cruel God it must be — lies in a social equivalent of economic globalisation to tackle natural disasters. The international inter-dependence of which we hear so much demands a streamlined organisation that can combine early warning with effective rescue, relief, and, perhaps, even rehabilitation, and is not hamstrung by national prejudice, financial stringency, political chicanery and bureaucratic indolence. In the absence of such a system, 1,31,000 people perished in the cyclone that hit Bangladesh in 1991. The United Nations estimates that about 20 major natural disasters kill an average of 83,000 people annually, and destroy property and crops worth some $ 4 billion. Earthquakes, of which there are at least 50,000 every year, account for half the fatalities. Tropical storms took half a million lives between the seventies and nineties. India, China, Hong Kong and the Philippines head the list of countries that are vulnerable to natural disaster. Nine of the 10 most affected nations are in Asia. About 85 per cent of deaths from natural hazards occur in the Asia-Pacific region, and earthquakes, typhoons and floods cause 95 per cent. Contrary to the message of Gujarat, even earthquakes can be anticipated, as the Chinese proved in February, 1975, when they suddenly ordered the evacuation of Haicheng town in Liaoning province. Ten hours later a mighty rumble heralded Hiacheng’s destruction. Water management is another desperate need, especially in India where the endless cycle of drought and flood causes intense misery, and where one part of the country can be parched while another is inundated. All such disasters are predictable. Yet, people are caught by surprise each time. Even when they were not, local precautions are inadequate for the magnitude of devastation that we witness every year. The idea of a global mission is not new. The office of the United Nations Disasters Relief Coordinator (UNDRO) was set up nearly three decades ago, supposedly to mobilise, direct and coordinate the activities of various UN organisations “in response to a request for disaster assistance from a stricken state”. But UNDRO’s budget reveals that rich governments do not think there is much dividend in disaster. At the same time, poorer nations are strangely reluctant to seek international help. The catastrophic Maharashtra earthquake eight years ago marked a watershed for India, for it was the first time that New Delhi looked abroad for assistance in the wake of natural disaster. The late Morarji Desai exemplified traditional reserve. The recently-published memoirs of a British member of the UN Development Programme describe how he and his colleagues spent many hours in New Delhi arguing with Indian officials who made out a strong and convincing case for the money required for India’s development plans. Then the UNDP team paid a courtesy call on the Janata Party Prime Minister who welcomed members with the bald declaration, “First, I should make it clear that India does not need foreign aid.” To be fair to Desai, at one time that was a fairly common response. Flood-ravaged Bangladesh once sent back Indian relief helicopters. Rejecting the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s offer of emergency aid during the 1976 earthquake — when Chinese air force jets also shot down Taiwanese balloons loaded with relief material — Mao Zedong urged his people to “dauntlessly plunge into the struggle to fight the effects of the earthquake and carry out relief work.” The earthquake levelled Tangshan city and wiped out a quarter of a million people. Moscow could be even more xenophobic. So strict was Stalin’s secrecy that the outside world did not hear even a whisper in 1948 when an earthquake killed 100,000 people and almost wiped out Ashkabad town near the Iran border. Forty years on, a laconic official statement claimed that the Armenian earthquake, with 80,000 dead, was not the Soviet Union’s worst. That tragedy also exposed the danger of uncoordinated amateur benevolence. Foreign rescue teams were stranded without interpreters, relief planes crashed in the unfamiliar mountains, massive inflows of unsolicited material clogged pipelines. “There is always a great spontaneous response worldwide to a startling disaster,” warned UNDRO. “The danger is that the impulsive generosity of governments, organisations and individuals alike can cause as much chaos and confusion as the disaster itself.” The International Red Cross, too, cautioned that new groups would only contribute to “a second disaster”, a phrase that has passed into the language of social service, indicating that the solution can itself sometimes be the problem. The misuse of relief supplies is another headache, from Maxico to Somalia. But malpractices are only peripheral to tragedies that no government can solve on its own. In the absence of a meaningful and concerted global thrust, we now have Western agencies that are undoubtedly manned by dedicated workers but whose labours rekindle Third World suspicions captured in the old gag about American missionaries going to Hawaii to do good and staying on to do well. Militant Hindu groups are especially hostile nowadays to Christian welfare organisations. In any case, no Asian or African likes to think of himself as being always at the receiving end of European or American charity. UNDRO can be the answer if it demonstrates a greater concern for the needy. I have not seen recent statistics, but 10 years ago the UN allocated more than $ 16 million for human rights, America’s fashionable fixation, while UNDRO’s budget was only $ 6.4 million. In 1993 UNDRO merited $ 7.8 million while spending on human rights spiralled to $ 23.4 million. The first need is an effective monitoring service like the listening posts operated by the US earthquake centre in Colorado, Sweden’s Hagfors Observatory and the World Meteorological Organisation. The tidal wave warning systems in Alaska and Hawaii perform a similar service, both helping to mitigate to some extent the savagery of El Nino, Christ Child, as the warm water current that causes such havoc is called. Sophisticated storm tracking, modern communications, and timely evacuation ensured that only 14 deaths occurred in 1985 when Hurricane Kate swept Cuba, Jamaica and the nearby American coast. India used to have grandiose plans to store excess rainwater and divert it through canals and lock-gates to areas of shortage. Nothing came of them. Nothing is done in advance to prevent the misery even when it is clear that flood or drought lies just ahead. What is attempted afterwards is often pathetic. I remember Gujarati villagers building mud embankments in Panchmahals district one sizzling summer, knowing full well that the first showers would wash away what they were laboriously creating. But the work was in lieu of a soup kitchen: it entitled the authorities to claim that the pitiful pile of grain and few rupees that they gave the famished villagers were wages and not dole. Obviously, death and destruction caused by acts of God can never be eliminated altogether. But the loss can be controlled. UNDRO could be the nucleus of a major permanent agency to tackle natural hazards, with offices in every disaster-prone country. It could give a new and more acceptable thrust to the concept of globalisation. The writer is a former Editor of The Statesman. |
The phoren trained A
trip to a foreign land for a bureaucrat is like going to Shangri-La or Johnson’s Happy Valley or Milton’s Estotilandia. He, like Jonty Rhodes, would lie flat (on the feet of the powers that are), dive to the right or left, fly in the air but would not let the ball go away from his grip. A phoren jaunt combined with training there leading to a degree attached to it is like the present gold star attached to Lux soap scheme. He would radiantly take a dip whenever possible. One of my colleagues has returned from a foreign country with a degree in Business Administration and believes strongly that the Japanese method of TQM (total quality management) can set the pace for the snail-speed Indian bureaucracy. I wonder how good would be the results if TQM were applied here. Commonly narrated story about TQM is that a Japanese and an American were to be executed by the firing squad. The executioner offered them the traditional last request. “I wish,” responded the Japanese “to give a lecture on TQM one last time.” “Granted,” replied the executioner. He then looked at the American. He implored: “Please shoot me first so I won’t have to listen to any more lectures on TQM.” That is that, my brethren. A story making rounds in the Secretariat galleries is that a Cabinet Secretary from India was sent to the USA to get a sort of training on how the decisions are taken quickly. He met his counterpart there who told him that if the decisions were not to be delayed the officials should always be kept on their toes. The American ordered his second in command to report to him and before he could properly enter, shot the question at him: “Who is your father’s son but not your brother?” “It is I, Sir,” he replied. “Correct, you may go, Peterson” he said with a meaningful look at the visitor. The Cabinet Secretary was highly impressed. He came back to India and called the Secretary of one of the Ministers and asked the same question from him. The Secretary stood there dumbfounded and then said: “Please give it to me in writing, sir. I will treat it as PUC (paper under consideration) and get the file sent to you, sir.” “Nothing doing. I want the reply just now,” he growled. “As the question concerns home and family, let me consult the Home Secretary, at least, sir,” was his request. It was acceded to with, “O.K. not more than five minutes.” The so-thought harassed Secretary telephoned to Mr Shingloo who had pretty long experience of working in the Ministry of Home Affairs. Shingloo told him that the reply was simple, “It is I.” Happy, the 2 i/c went to the Cabinet Secretary and said that it was Mr Shingloo, sir. “You are a bloody fool. It is Peterson of the USA.” was the ultimate and final decision of the highest chair in the babudom. No, I am not anti-training. I myself went to the University of Sussex, Brighton to undergo a training course on rural development. See we have means to undergo training in foreign lands on the subjects with which we can be better acquainted on the Indian soil. It is different that on my return I was shifted to the Department of Culture. Perhaps the all wise government thought that rural development is all agriculture and agriculture is the mother of all cultures. I feel like revering Mark Twain who once said: “Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage after training.” How did he know that we in the bureaucracy become “aaroo” (peach) after training and are just cabbage before training? |
Not nibbling at, but chewing away states’ powers “THE Union will go,” said a grim Sardar Patel, warning the Constituent Assembly on October 10, 1949, “You will not have a united India, if you have not a good all-India service which has the independence to speak out its mind, which has a sense of security that you will stand by your word and that ... their rights and privileges are secure.” “If you do not adopt this course (he continued), then do not follow the present Constitution. Substitute something else. Put in a Congress Constitution or some other Constitution or put in a R.S.S. Constitution — whatever you like — but not this Constitution. This Constitution is meant to be worked by a ring of Service which will keep the country intact.” One of the strongest speeches of the Sardar in the Constituent Assembly, with the Iron Man even threatening to quit if any other view of the matter was taken — “If you have done with it and decide not to have this service at all, even inspite of my pledged word, I will take the Services with me and go” — it embodies in words that defy improvement the constitutional indispensability of the all-India services as envisioned by the founding fathers. The economy of words practised by the founding fathers, however, while providing for the all-India services has led to what can only be described as an insufficient grasp of that vision by most people in India, including the government. If not less than two-thirds of the members of the Rajya Sabha so resolve, says Article 312, “Parliament may by law provide for the creation of one or more all-India services... common to the Union and the States”. The services, it goes on to say, known at the commencement of the Constitution as the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and the Indian Police Service (IPS) shall be deemed to be services created by Parliament under the Article. So succinct and sparing is the phraseology employed that it tends almost to be forgotten that an all-India service is, by definition, not a central service but a service “common to the Union and the States”. Only such constitutional amnesia, wilful or inadvertent, could have led the Government of India to act the way it did last fortnight, recalling by diktat three IPS officers of Tamil Nadu — Chennai Police Commissioner K. Muthukaruppan, Joint Commissioner S. George and Deputy Commissioner Christopher Nelson — to the Centre, almost as if they belonged to a central service and not an all-India service common to the Union and Tamil Nadu. All the three officers were involved in the arrest and alleged manhandling of former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Mr M. Karunanidhi and Union Ministers Murasoli Maran and T.R. Baalu on June 30, and have been recalled by way of punishment at the instance of the DMK which, having lost at the hustings in Tamil Nadu, now seeks desperately to remote-control the state through the Centre. On the evening of July 27, Deputy Editor Harish Khare revealed in The Hindu of August 4, the “top brass” had gathered at the Prime Minister’s residence. Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee and his advisers were raking their brains on how to accommodate the DMK’s demand that an “example be made of those police officers” who were involved in the unsavoury incident of June 30. Though the bureaucrats, says Khare, had advised caution in giving in to the DMK’s demand and the political leaders were not too eager to override their advice, Minister of State for Home Mr I.D. Swamy finally “blurt(ed) out what the senior ministers had been unwilling to articulate: that a decision has to be taken before the DMK’s general council meets (on July 29).” With the political calculation so crudely stated (says Khare), the decision was virtually made. The services of the three IPS officers must be “requisitioned” by the Centre. And so it was, that very night at 8.30 p.m. when the Centre’s directive was faxed to the State government, as reported by The Indian Express on July 29. “However condemnable Jayalalitha’s raid on Karunanidhi might be,” writes India Today in its latest issue, “the Centre’s reaction in recalling the officers is odd as it touches on the delicate issue of division of power with the states.” States generally do not like to surrender their IPS officers to the Centre, it says, as is evident from the large number of IPS vacancies in the establishments of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). As many as 65 such vacancies were reported by the Intelligence Bureau last year. “The Tamil Nadu case obviously sets a precedent that states may not welcome.” Prakash Patra in The Hindustan Times was even more forthright. And trenchant. An act like this where the Centre is trying to forcibly summon the officers working in a state has never happened before (he wrote on August 2), not even during the heyday of single-party rule of the Congress. “It is high time (he said) the protagonists of federal politics — N. Chandrababu Naidu, Parkash Singh Badal, Navin Patnaik, Farooq Abdullah and Co — stand up and state publicly as to whether or not they approve of the ‘decisive’ step of the Union government vis-a-vis an opposition-ruled state.” What has happened to Jayalalitha’s Tamil Nadu today can happen to their states as well if they are on the wrong side of the Centre tomorrow, he warned. Confident (or over-confident) as ever, Union Law Minister Mr Arun Jaitley would have nothing of this, however. “We expect the State government to give concurrence,” he said, speaking to the electronic media as he stepped out of Parliament on August 2. “If the State does not give it, then the Centre has overriding powers.” If anybody has any other idea, he said dismissively, he should look at the cadre rules. Here they are, lying before me: the Indian Police Service (Cadre) Rules, 1954, framed under Section 3(1) of the All-India Services Act, 1951. The Central government may, after consultation with the governments of the States concerned (reads Section 3), and by notification in the official gazette, make rules for the regulation of recruitment, and the conditions of service of persons appointed, to an All-India Service. Rule 5 of the 1954 Rules deals with allocation of cadres and Rule 6 — the bone of contention in the Tamil Nadu case — with deputation of cadre officers. The allocation of cadre officers to the various cadres, says Rule 5(1), shall be made by the Central government in consultation with the State government(s) concerned. The Central government may, adds Clause (2), with the concurrence of the State governments concerned, “transfer” a cadre officer from one cadre to another cadre. So both “consultation” and “concurrence” are mentioned here: consultation for allocation, and concurrence for transfer (of the cadre), as a condition precedent. Rule 6 uses the term “concurrence” instead of “consultation”, though it is followed by a proviso that empowers the Central government to decide in case of disagreement. It is the proviso that Mr Arun Jaitley is obviously referring to, as the repository of the Centre’s “overriding powers”, and referring to it almost as if it were the main rule itself and nothing else in Rule 6 existed. A cadre officer may, says Rule 6 (1), with the concurrence of the concerned State government(s) and the Central government, be deputed for service under the Central government or another State government. Or under any company owned or controlled by the Central government or by another State government. Provided that in case of any “disagreement” the matter shall be decided by the Central government, and the State government(s) concerned shall give effect to the decision of the Central government. Read as a whole, the meaning and intent of Rule 6 is as plain as it can be. The main part of Rule 6 (1), minus the proviso, aims at concurrence or agreement between the Centre and the State(s). The proviso addresses a situation where no agreement can be arrived at. And leaves it to the Centre to decide in such a situation. And in such a situation alone. To jump to the proviso straight away, without as much as a look at the main rule and without even a pretence or semblance of seeking concurrence or arriving at an agreement, as the Centre has done in the case of Tamil Nadu, is what lawyers would call — and would be fully justified in calling — a blatantly “colourable exercise of power”. Especially when the main rule speaks not only of “consultation”, as in the preceding Rule 5 (1), but of “concurrence”, being fully alive to the distinction between the two. A leading lawyer-turned-politician, Mr Jaitley is fully entitled to defend his government, even when the government is in error. But one expects the Law Minister, a servant of the people, to be slightly less partisan than a professional lawyer arguing a client’s case at the Bar. |
AT a recent meeting of the members of the High Court Bar Association, Lahore, the following resolution was passed: The High Court Bar Association respectfully enters its emphatic protest against the recent appointment of two military gentlemen as Subordinate Judges. The system of recruiting judiciary from the military department had been condemned and finally abandoned. Its revival is highly undesirable under the Chartered High Court, especially when there is no lack of trained, competent and legally qualified persons of all communities. |
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New treatment for juvenile diabetes ISRAELI researchers said today that they had succeeded in coaxing human embryonic stem cells into producing the hormone insulin in a key step toward creating a revolutionary treatment for juvenile diabetes. Stem cells — primitive master cells — that were derived from a human embryo days after fertilisation transformed with chemical prodding in a petri dish into an abundant mass of cells possessing important qualities of the cells of the pancreas that secrete insulin, the researchers said. Those cells are called islet cells, or beta cells. The findings represent a major stride toward using embryonic stem cells to treat type 1 diabetes, also known as juvenile diabetes. The appearance of the study in the journal Diabetes, published by the American Diabetes Association, comes as President George W. Bush considers whether to allow federal funding for research involving human embryonic stem cells. The findings were a necessary prerequisite for therapeutic strategies for type 1 diabetes using stem cells, the researchers wrote. They came from the Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology and the Rambam Medical Centre in Haifa, and were led by Suheir Assady. Dr Christopher Saudek, president of the American Diabetes Association and a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, called the findings exciting. “Up until this point, people have talked about the possibility that human stem cells can be made to produce insulin. But, here it is being demonstrated,’’ Dr Saudek said in a telephone interview. Type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune disease, results when the pancreas, an organ located near the stomach, produces inadequate amounts of insulin to meet the body’s needs. Insulin is a hormone necessary for cells to be able to use blood sugar (glucose), the basic fuel for the cells in the body. More than 1 million Americans have type 1 diabetes, which strikes children and some adults suddenly, making them dependant on daily insulin injections to stay alive. People with the disease face complications such as heart disease, stroke, amputation, blindness and kidney
failure. The American Diabetes Association said the only way to cure type 1 diabetes is by pancreas transplantation, but there is an insufficient supply of organs. Researchers are exploring alternative sources of the insulin-producing islet cells.
Reuters
An apple a day Doctors in the UK are prescribing an apple a day, or least some form of fruit and veg, to help keep patients away from life threatening conditions. Up to 200 potential victims of heart disease are being given vouchers to exchange for produce as part of a programme designed to kickstart changes in their diets and lifestyles. The experiment on the Wirral, north-west England, is also helping adults learn new shopping and cooking habits and introducing fitness regimes from gentle walking to state aided workouts in the gym. The fruit and veg element costs less than US dollars 1.40 a day for 10 weeks, and is thought to be the first in the UK to target adults at risk of ill health, although the British government is already financing free fruit for primary school children in deprived areas. It is seeking to promote the value of eating five portions of fruit and vegetables a day. The initiative is run by Health Links, a specialist service funded by local government and health authorities in a health action zone. It involves vouchers worth just under US dollars 9 a week being redeemed in local Co-op stores for fresh, tinned, frozen and dried food. There is increasing evidence that eating five portions of fruit and veg a day could cut deaths from heart disease, cancer and strokes by about a fifth, but recent surveys have indicated that one in five children in the UK eat none in a week and those that do only eat an average of two portions a day.
The Guardian
Shock tactics for children Children as young as 10 caught in possession of knives are being shown photographs of stab victims and corpses on mortuary slabs, in a London police campaign to try to stop young people carrying potentially lethal weapons. The hour long presentation has had a huge impact, reducing the number of those who have seen it going on to reoffend to 2 per cent, compared to the normal 20 per cent figure for reoffending. One child who saw the photos fainted, while another was sick. So far no parents have objected to the scheme, which was devised by officers in Newham in east London, to persuade children aged 10 to 17 they are ``dicing with death” if they carry knives. During the presentation at a police station in Newham, children are shown pictures of the wounds that can be caused by a range of knives, even a stiletto. If the project continues to be a success, it is likely to be used in boroughs across the rest of London.
The Guardian |
Said trees to a man: "My roots are in the deep red earth, and I shall give you of my fruit." And the man said to the tree: "How alike we are. My roots are also deep in the red earth gives you power to bestow upon me of your fruit, and the red earth teaches me to receive from you with thanksgiving". — Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam, page 20; The Wanderer, page 58 ***** In your honour I will light a bonfire Of all my merit and sin Let me fall into your waters, Drown there and unite with you. May I be transformed Into your waters, banks and winds. Let me support in this river of Truth, Or otherwise, let me not bear the name Rama. Swami Ramatirtha. From A.J. Alston, Yoga and the Supreme Bliss ***** God' light illumines your court; And those who find no peace elsewhere find it in your holy presence, O Guru.... — Guru Angad Dev. Sri Guru Granth Sahib, page 967 ***** That was the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. — The Gospel According to St. John, 1:9 |
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