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Saturday,
September 15, 2001, Chandigarh, India   |
Hobson’s choice The fear of growing old Vittal’s guide against graft |
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Musharraf’s crocodile tears for Kashmiris
Sign of the ram
It’s part of same
jehad
How do you tell the
kids?
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Hobson’s choice PAKISTAN, to be precise General Musharraf, has an optionless option. This is the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attack on two symbols of American might — the heart of global financial market in World Trade Center and the military might in Pentagon. The USA is leaning on Pakistan to do two impossible tasks. One, to pressurise the Taliban regime in Afghanistan to hand over its "honoured guest" Osama bin Laden to the US authorities to stand trial in the dollar kingdom for crimes yet to be proved. In the meantime, America insists on Pakistan closing its border with Afghanistan, permitting the use of its airspace for a quick rocket attack and handing over all information on bin Laden and the Taliban. The consequences of bowing to these demands will be horrendous for the military regime. Pakistan will like to maintain the present stand on Afghanistan. It is a core issue of its foreign policy and it is a guarantee of domestic peace as well. The Taliban-ruled Afghanistan is not just another country. It is a creation of religious bodies and a pivot of its regional strategy. The Taliban emerged out of a madrasa experiment launched by Maulana Fazlur Rehman, the supreme leader of the Jamait-e-Islami, the most powerful religious organisation in the country. Recently he demonstrated his clout by attracting half a million people to a convention near Peshawar. This city is in Pathan heartland and an extended ethnic region of Pathans, who dominate the population of Afghanistan. If General Musharraf were to disown the Taliban, the Jamait and other religious-fundamentalist organisations will rise in revolt. And the military rule does not have the legitimacy or authority to quell the rebellion. In that case Pakistan will face an armed civil unrest in its northern part as India is facing for the past one decade. It will be poetic justice. Further, there are other dilemmas. One, although Pakistan enjoys enormous influence with the Afghan regime, it cannot succeed in ensuring the extradition of bin Laden, particularly to the USA. The Taliban is an unconventional force and will not take the safe route but will like to go down fighting. Harbouring bin Laden is the loudest claim of its adherence to the ideals propounded by the Caliphs of Turkey, a kind of pure Islamic order. Two, even some Pakistan Generals, who have turned into religious hardliners, will oppose the country's attempt to surrender the top terrorist. That may threaten General Musharraf's leadership. Three, the major danger is the certain reaction of sundry jehadi groups inside Pakistan which rever bin Laden as a modern-day crusader. If they take to the streets and deploy their rifles, the already voilence-prone society will literally explode. Pakistan is faced with a Hobson's choice. It can carry out US orders and sink into internal combustion or resist the US pressure and invite global isolation. As far as India is concerned the crux of the problem boils down to Pakistan's action on the ground. It should block cross-border terrorism, freeze funding of mercenaries, shut down training camps and stop calling plain terrorists as freedom fighters. With India taking the lead in supporting the US fight against terrorism, it has strengthened its hands to press these demands. |
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The fear of growing old MANY
will feel a sense of unease and discomfort in responding to the reported grant of presidential nod to the country’s first-ever Bill requiring the children to look after their aged parents, grand-parents and other dependents. Family values in the East in general and in India in particular enjoin on children to respect and take good care of their elders in their sunset years. It reflects poorly on our society that a need has been felt to bind children legally to do something which has always been their familial duty. Himachal has achieved the (dubious?) distinction of being the first state to have such legislation. Five years ago, former Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh pushed the HP Parents Maintenance Bill after reading in a magazine about such legislation being in force in Singapore. He had been getting representations from aged persons complaining of neglect by their sons, some even holding high positions. The Bill had to be redrafted after the Centre raised certain objections. The new Bill excluded the Muslims from its purview and abolished the minimum age of 60 fixed earlier to claim maintenance allowance. It covers unmarried and widowed daughters too and the maximum maintenance allowance limit has been fixed at Rs 5,000. While the intentions behind such legislation are laudable, laws alone are not enough to tackle social security issues. A civilised society is supposed to take particular care of the children and aged population. In Singapore tax incentives are given to those who look after their aged parents and grand-parents in their home. Spending one’s declining years in a homely environment in the company of grandchildren is a much better option than the western practice of passing days in homes for the aged. Slowly urbanised India is adopting the western ways of having homes for the elderly without providing for similar medicare and financial security. Joint families, which ideally provide economic and emotional security to elderly members, are under increasing pressure to split as jobs and ambition take their young members to distant places, giving rise to nuclear families. The elderly parents left behind in villages by sons and daughters doing jobs in cities need more than a few crumbs handed over as maintenance allowance by courts. Fortunately, community life is still throbbing in rural India and parents left to starve by ungrateful children are taken care of by neighbours and socio-religious organisations. The Himachal Bill is a legal response to a felt need. More important, however, is to wake up to the need to have an effective social security system. Sweden has such a system under which the citizens pay an income tax of 52 per cent and in return get free education for children, subsidised housing, healthcare and financial security for the aged and dole for the unemployed. If India stops wasteful expenditure and makes a productive use of its resources, which is quite a tall order, we too can move towards a dependable social securty network and banish starvation deaths, as also the fear of growing old. The HP Bill partly allays this fear. |
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Vittal’s guide against graft THOSE
who believe that nothing can be done to pull India out of the morass of corruption need to be placed in the care of Chief Vigilance Commissioner N. Vittal. In his uncluttered world fighting corruption is as simple as washing a dirty plate. Don't leave it in the sink for some one else to do the job. Do it yourself and you will never complain about the kitchen being filthy. Remember the CVC is an honest and well-meaning administrator. There is never any lack of passion in his public speeches against corruption. He believes that passion can make up for the lack of logic for making India a spotlessly clean society. Among the many virtues that Mr Vittal has is his commitment to personal integrity. And it is this element of personal honesty, missing in most corrupt individuals, that has prompted him to come clean on the subject. He has admitted that the battle against corruption cannot be fought by the CVC and the Central Bureau of Investigation alone. The honest citizens of India should chip in to make the two agencies, set up at considerable cost to the exchequer, achieve the goal of having the country struck of the list of the most corruption nations. He has come up with the simplest of simple mantras after his "trial and terror" tactics failed to make honest men out of corrupt officer. The tactics included putting the names of corrupt officers on the CVC's website. All that the citizens need for joining the battle is commitment to the laudable objective of rooting out corruption. They need not worry about how to go about doing it. Mr Vittal has prepared a citizens guide in which the time tested step-by-step approach has been used to explain in as simple a language as he is known to use for attacking corruption and attracting attention. For instance, the CVC through the citizens guide has tried to educate all those who would care to be educated that "behind every corrupt man there is a greedy family". The corrupt man has the option to either banish the element of greed from the family or the family from the realm of greed. Of course, the best option is to throw through out the baby with the bath water for the officer to lead a life of impeccable honesty. Among the great discoveries he has made is the link between red tapism and corruption. If he had his way, he would instead use blue ribbon for causing tehelka in the fortified world of corruption in high places. Another important discovery he has made is the importance of integrity in the life of an officer. If an officer lacks integrity, he is bound to be corrupt. Of course, the entire nation cannot join him in his crusade, but most people, honest and dishonest, can at least say "amen" after each chapter of Mr Vittal's version of the holy book against corruption. |
Musharraf’s crocodile tears for Kashmiris EVERY Pakistani leader has made so much song and dance about the Kashmir question that the world at large has come to believe that the disputed area is what is under Indian control. The irony is that the Indian Government itself has not focused comprehensively on Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK), which is the actual focal point. If India at all raises the issue of this area under illegal occupation of Pakistan, it does so in such feeble tones that it appears that it is reconciled to its accession by Pakistan and is raising the question only for form’s sake. This, despite the fact a parliamentary resolution exists recognising it as a part and parcel of India and the only unfinished agenda. Ironically, Pakistan calls it Azad Kashmir. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Seekers of genuine autonomy have been harassed and hounded systematically there. Severe oppression is the order of the day with the Kashmiris enjoying no freedom of speech. No printing presses are allowed. A Kashmiri needs prior permission of the Pakistani government to print even his business card. Popular discontent against Islamabad has been growing. There are a large number of people who want accession to India. When Khalid Perwaize, Secretary (Foreign Affairs) of a PoK-based political party, the United Kashmir People’s National Party (UKPNP), visited Delhi during the Agra summit to research a book that he is writing, he said the people in PoK were angry with the Indian Government for not having fought Pakistan when they occupied Kashmir. “If India really wanted Kashmir, why on earth did it give back Pakistan the territories it had won in PoK? The prevailing feeling among Kashmiris is that India does not consider Kashmiris Indian,” he lamented. To hoodwink the world, PoK has been given all the trappings of a country with a President, a Prime Minister and a legislature. But leave alone a country, it is not even a province. The so-called President and Prime Minister enjoy only titular power. The right of self-determination demanded for Kashmiris in India is not even recognised for PoK. As per the Karachi agreement of April 28, 1949, Pakistan retains control of defence, “foreign policy”, rehabilitation of refugees and control over all affairs of Gilgit and Ladakh. The PoK government is saddled with overseeing policy with regard to administration, general supervision of administration and publicity of its own activities. The territory has all along been administered by the Azad Jammu and Kashmir Council based in Islamabad. The Prime Minister of Pakistan heads the council, which also includes the so-called President and Prime Minister of PoK. The de facto ruler is a Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Kashmir Affairs. It is he who gives PoK its annual budget. So powerful is this hand-picked man that he can even dismiss the government if he so wants. His powers have increased all the more since the advent of General Musharraf. Even the fig leaf of its autonomy has now been shed. The Vice-Chief of the Pakistan Army, Major-Gen Mohammad Anwar Khan, put in his papers in July-end and the ruling Muslim Conference immediately fielded him as its candidate for the Presidentship of PoK during the recently held election. Predictably, the General won securing 30 of the 55 votes of the electoral college. Earlier, the military establishment went out of its way to ensure that Sardar Sikandar Hayat Khan could take over as the Prime Minister of PoK. He is a known lackey of the Army and the ISI. The military establishment rode roughshod over the Muslim Conference which wanted the former Prime Minister and President, Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan, for the job. Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan also was actively involved in Pakistan’s proxy war against India in Jammu and Kashmir but his recent statements point to his disillusionment with the Pakistani establishment. He had openly welcomed the Ramzan initiative of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and also called him the “tallest statesman of the subcontinent”. But what particularly annoyed the Generals in Islamabad was his proximity to the exiled Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. In interviews to several newspapers, he has said that he would not like to occupy either of the two top posts since the military establishment was not comfortable with him. In any case, most elections in PoK have been eyewash. To contest the election a candidate has to pledge his loyalty to Pakistan. This time, this farce went to extreme lengths. A large number of candidates opposed to Kashmir’s annexation to Pakistan were not only kept out of the electoral arena but were also arrested. Among them were more than 100 senior leaders of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front headed by Amanullah Khan and their supporters. They had apparently taken General Musharraf’s demand to allow Kashmiris to be consulted as the third party in the bilateral India-Pakistan engagement on the Kashmir issue at face value and paid a heavy price for this miscalculation. The obnoxious repression that began on June 7 continued till the eve of the election in July. During this period, a virtual censorship was imposed on PoK. The result was that very little news about the repression against the opposition and total exclusion from the electoral arena of these leaders appeared in the Pakistani media. The manipulation did not stop there. The military manoeuvred the election of 12 members of the 40-member Assembly representing “Kashmiris” scattered and settled in Pakistan and living outside the occupied area. Eight other members were directly nominated. All this was done to ensure that the People’s Party headed by Mr Sultan Mahmood, which owes allegiance to Ms Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party, could not win a majority. PoK does have a High Court, but it dare not adjudicate in the state contrary to the policy of the federal government. In any case, all appeals against its judgements are made in the Supreme Court of Pakistan. Initially, the High Court did try to take an independent stance but was soon cut down to size. In 1949, Pakistan had delinked the Gilgit-Baltistan territory from PoK to call it the Northern Areas and incorporate it into Pakistan. The Northern Areas were five times the size of the area designated as “Azad Kashmir”. Some of this territory was later ceded to China. Several cases were filed in the “Azad Kashmir” High Court challenging the authority of the federal government in this regard. The court ordered that Gilgit-Baltistan should be returned to “Azad Kashmir” since it was legally a part of it. Islamabad appealed before the Supreme Court and took the fantastic plea that the case was not based on legality but politics. The Supreme Court dutifully overturned the judgement without going into the substantive details of the case. Ever since, the area spread over 28,000 square miles and home to two million people has been under virtual martial law. Every resident of the area has to report to the local police station once a month and all movements from one village to another have to be reported to the police station. The colonised people have no right to vote or exercise their democratic option in any way. “The Indian Government has given people (of J and K) all their fundamental rights and in spite of that they are in a state of confrontation against the government. But the people of Northern Area are far behind the rest of the world in matters of fundamental rights, justice and economic development, and yet nobody bothers about their plight,” says community leader Amir Humza Qureshi. There is no university and no professional colleges. There are only 12 high schools and no postgraduate facilities. There are no daily newspapers and no radio or TV stations. Even basic facilities like electricity, drinking water and health care are non-existent. One avenue of subsistence is joining the Northern Light Infantry but the recruitment has now been curtailed sharply. Then there is government service, but the natives are paid 25 per cent less than the personnel from Punjab province. Since the area has been kept out of the jurisdiction of courts, there is no hope of redress. As a result, a powerful Free Balawaristan Movement has erupted in Gilgit, Astor, Skardu, Hanza, Azara, Nagar and Chitral. People come out on the streets frequently to protest against discrimination and unemployment. The people of Northern Areas have also petitioned UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to stop Pakistan from trying to overwhelm the Shia population by bringing in Pathans from the NWFP. Its Shia population has been brutalised by the Deobandi assault. Shia-Sunni marriages were stopped and the Aga Khan Foundation projects in Gilgit attacked. Perhaps the best way to counter Pakistani propaganda about Kashmir is to highlight the atrocities that it has committed on the Kashmiris in the area under its illegal occupation. The people who are suffering there look up to the world in general and India in particular to come to their rescue. It is India’s moral duty to come to their aid because legally and constitutionally the area does belong to India. Or has Deeally given up its claim? Then why does it go wild when any foreign publication shows the area to be not belonging to India? |
Sign of the ram I
was born in the month of March. So were countless other people some of whom became famous, others notorious. I fall in neither category. Among the famous was Cardinal Newman who defected from the Church of England to that of Rome but, unlike some other defectors I could name, he is still honoured as the founder of the Oxford Movement. Others born under the zodiacal sign of Aries include Michelangelo who spent a good deal of his time lying flat on his back while painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who also spent most of her youth lying on her back because of a childhood injury, but achieved a marvellous recovery after her runaway marriage to the poet, Robert Browning; Comrade Molotov, for a long time the Russian Foreign Minister not at all popular with his western counterparts; David Livingstone, an explorer who got lost in the wilds of Africa and was “presumed” to have been found by another explorer, called Stanley, after which meeting the two went happily exploring together; Henry Ibsan, whose play, “The Doll’s House” still sends some people into raptures and me to sleep; William Lecky, an Irishman who, for some strange reason, wrote a history of the English people, something he could not have done today without the risk of receiving a letter-bomb from IRA. There are said to be certain marked characteristics shared by people born under Aries. They are gifted with a “natural understanding” that does not come from books, which is just as well for me or I would have been a moron. They are supposed to be generous by nature, though they tend to be careful with their money but only because they are in constant fear of losing it and becoming dependent on others. This trait is apt to be misunderstood for miserliness, as it is, frequently by my wife who seems to be over-generous by nature. They are prone to doing or saying things on the spur of the moment, like asking half-a-dozen people to dinner when the cook is on leave, or promising their wives a second honeymoon and the calling it off, pleading pressure of work in the office. There are other traits, not so likeable, in Ariens. They are said to be ambitious, but only mentally, lacking the ability and stamina to give practical shape to their castles in the air. This is because they are afraid of failures and of being derided. They are unsure of themselves which makes them moody or melancholic, as I often am after receiving a succession of rejection slips from newspaper editors. They are highly emotional and are easily influenced by others. They have a mystical side to their nature and are inclined to be superstitious. Their “party” symbol is the ram which the OED describes as an “uncastrated male sheep”, a fearsome looking animal but useful in propagating its species without which we would have no winter woollies. |
It’s part of same
jehad IN the week of the worst terrorist act in history it is quite simply not possible to write about anything else. The images of those aeroplanes exploding into huge walls of fire after hitting the World Trade Center’s twin towers, the attack on the Pentagon by another aircraft shortly afterwards and the terror on the faces of ordinary people in New York and Washington are hard to forget. Most Indians who saw them on their television screens had an unusually unanimous reaction: if this can happen to America, what can happen here? Much, much worse. If America’s intelligence agencies, with their access to unlimited resources and modern technology, failed to detect the possibilities of the most serious attack on America since Pearl Harbour then our intelligence agencies, with their limited resources and unskilled spies, could certainly do no better. Their record in Kashmir has been very bad. Not only have major terrorist acts occurred without anyone coming up with prior information but in most cases the killers have been able to escape afterwards to continue perpetrating their evil deeds. Now that the war against terrorism has become a global one, we can only hope that shared information will produce better results. Ironically, India has been urging America for many years now to pay attention to the support international terrorism receives from countries in our neighbourhood like Afghanistan and Pakistan. We have gone hoarse trying to explain that what we are facing in the Kashmir valley is not so much a freedom struggle any more but a proxy war in which even the warriors are no longer Kashmiri. The American government has been ambiguous in its stand. It has listened to us with a measure of sympathy but refused so far to take stern measures against its former client state, Pakistan, whence stems much of the support for the terrorists who attacked in New York and Washington last week. On my last trip to Pakistan, a few weeks ago, I discovered through chance conversations that Lashkar-e-Tayabba, one of the most dreaded terrorist groups in Kashmir, was mainly a Punjabi outfit. I also met, during the course of my travels, many young Punjabi men who admitted openly that their aim was to go and fight in the Kashmir jehad. They did not see this as terrorism but as a holy war, an honourable cause, in much the same way that the pilots who gave up their lives to attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon must have felt. I also discovered that Osama bin Laden was — as he is to many Indian Muslims — something of a hero in Pakistan. Before moving headquarters to Afghanistan it was Pakistan that had been his base and those who met him said he came across as a man who was very sincere and committed when it came to the jehad he believed he was fighting. In this jehad the main enemy has always been America. Not long ago, some Indian television channels, showed clips from a propaganda film he released in which he made it absolutely clear that he believed any attack on America was a good thing. He has not hesitated to repeat this comment last week although he denies that he had anything to do with the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. In Pakistan there are many sensible Pakistanis who believe that the reason why terrorism has taken root in this region is because the Americans have not had a clear policy here since the cold war ended. There are analysts in both India and Pakistan who believe that the Taliban would not exist without Pakistani support. Yet, whenever we have urged America to get tough with Pakistan over terrorism there has been hesitation and equivocation. They have hesitated to declare Pakistan a terrorist on the ground that if it went beyond the pale like Libya and Iraq there would be even less chances of controlling what it was up to. If America paid a heavy price for this in New York and Washington last week, we too have paid a price in Kashmir. There is no question that we would, by now, have been able to control the violence in that state if we had not had to deal with foreign terrorist groups with direct links to Pakistan. Now, the jehad has spilled beyond the boundaries of Kashmir into states with large Muslim populations like Uttar Pradesh and signs of it can even be seen in far off Tamil Nadu. This is evident from the number of acts of Islamic terrorism we have seen in recent times outside the Kashmir valley. Support to the men who hijacked the Indian Airlines plane from Kathmandu two years ago came from Muslims in Mumbai. And, the men who tried to kill L.K. Advani in Coimbatore during the 1998 general election were Muslim militants. It was also Islamic terrorists who earlier this year attempted to attack the Red Fort. The attack on America last week is very much part of the same jehad we have been fighting. Initial statements by President Bush indicate that America plans to involve other countries in its fight against global terrorism but the countries mentioned on CNN and BBC were China, Russia and the West. Strange, when you consider that both the terrorists and the jehad are being exported from South Asia. |
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How do you tell the
kids? HOW you tell your children seems a very small piece of an enormous event. And so it is. But it is also a part of the global cultural translation happening in virtually every home, every office all over the world. We are all fumbling towards what this means; we are struggling to adapt our perception of the world, our safety in it and our understanding of human nature — to incorporate a new dimension of evil, formerly the preserve only of fantasists. If adults are so adrift, what can they offer their children? If parents’ primary role is to offer loving security to their children, how do you guide them through this? There simply are no clear answers. This is an event that cannot but permeate the smallest child’s imagination and shake their confidence in the world. I was on my way with my four-year-old and six-year-old to the supermarket yesterday when our way was blocked by a large silent crowd in front of the television shop in the shopping centre. It must be some football match, I thought, as we threaded through the passers-by, glued to the images of the imploding World Trade Centre. When I realised what was happening, I knew immediately that this was an event I could not protect the children from - it was too big. I crouched down and explained to them words such as ``hijack’’. Immediately, they worried for their New York relatives and I reassured them that they were in offices and at school at the other end of Manhattan. After that, they didn’t want to know any more. But they had little choice. Children’s television seemed to have disappeared, replaced by a continuous replay of the crumpling towers. The kids demanded a video to give them something else to think about. The distractions worked up to a point, but intermittently comments and questions emerged: our relatives are sensible so they would jump out of the tower, wouldn’t they? ``When the lines are back up, can you phone them, Mum?’’ asked my four year-old. What was hardest to judge was how the children shifted unpredictably from anxiety to indifference to a sense of unreality. At times, it seemed they saw this little differently from a disaster movie: both were celluloid images of devastation - my four-year-old became fascinated by the idea of people jumping from the blazing tower. Also mixed in with these emotions, there is likely to be an element of excitement at the drama, at the disruption of routines and at the possibility of special concessions. Listening carefully to these shifts is not easy; it requires a careful balance to pick up on real fears without reinforcing them. How much do you tell them? How much do you let them watch? You can’t shield them from it: they pick up the newspapers, they flick channels and accidentally catch the news. Yesterday they arrived at school, exposed to all the rumours and exaggerations of the playground. So judging the balance of what to tell and what not is difficult — do they really need to see images of people jumping from windows hundreds of feet up? If you don’t explain things to them, what kind of distorted version will they get elsewhere? So, you answer small children truthfully and simply but without any detail. You try to keep cheerful and confident, even if you feel awful, and you try to reassure even as you know how empty such reassurances sound. You keep up a facade and the children know you’re doing it but are glad of it anyway. Even then, over the past couple of nights, millions of children will have needed comforting after nightmares, as both mine did. In US papers, child psychologists warned that children under seven will be more clingy, anxiously following parents around the house, nervous of separations. Their advice to parents was not to expect children to tough it out — forget stoicism. Relent on rules, such as the children not sleeping with you, and make a point of a lot of family time, such as meals together and plenty of cuddles. Teenagers will express their anxiety differently, says Stuart Goldman of Children’s Hospital and Harvard University. Don’t be deceived by the seeming indifference or the cynical humour; they will be watching your responses carefully and will listen to your remonstrations. Older children might want more explanations - how could America be so hated? And by whom? An event of this magnitude exposes our own most fundamental attitudes and beliefs — not just our views on American foreign policy and Islamic fundamentalism, but on the kind of hatred that can commit this atrocity, as well as the inescapable fragility and insecurity of human life, and the terrible suffering that brings. These are the toughest bits of raising children: how you help them come to terms with those aspects of life that you yourself have not fully accepted. Adult life is shot through with illusions and children have an astonishingly sharp ability to see through them, sometimes winding you with the clarity of their questions. In a time of faith, there were rituals, prayers and a framework of good and evil; there were biblical analogies — armageddon, the apocalypse — which placed this experience in a religious imagination. Still frightening but not so terrifyingly abitrary and random. Many of us have none of that now, and without prayer, there is no way to express solidarity with those suffering in the horror of Manhattan. All we are left to share is the thirst for knowledge, the compulsive viewing on television and the grabbing of new awful details. The only form of solidarity is the exchanging of details that we all know already. That leaves little for our children - all we have to offer them is uncertainty and helplessness. By arrangement with The Guardian, London |
A
special account of the opening of the Canadian National Exhibition by Sir J. Vijaya Raghava Acharya of Madras on the 28th August at Toronto is published in the “Indian Daily Mail”. It says the President of the exhibition read an address to Mr Acharya whom he called an Ambassador of the Empire. In requesting him to open the exhibition he expressed the hope that Mr Acharya’s presence in Canada would bring about a better understanding and greater sympathy between India and Canada. In reply Mr Acharya urged the creation of an atmosphere of mutual regard and goodwill in which differences and difficult problems could be discussed and settled. |
All nations have attained greatness by paying respect to the women. That country and the nation which do not respect the women have never become great, nor will ever be in future. The principal reason why your race has so much degenerated is that you had no respect for these living images of shakti. — Swami Vivekananda, on India and Her Problems *** Men have shackled the hands and the feet of women. They have pierced their noses and their ears. If God had so willed could he not have created women with holes in her nose and ears? But this has been the work of man. These fetters are of gold; therefore, they are not called fetters. If they were of iron, they would be called fetters.... From childhood they are turned into decorated dolls so that they may become cowards.... Women have been stifled with jewels. They should abandon all these shackles and become fearless. — Vinoba, Women’s Power, chapter 6 *** Women welfare ought to be viewed in a wider perspective. It must relate to the total or all-round development of women in all spheres of human activity. The feeling that they are ‘economically a parasite, intellectually an effect and physically insipid; must be rooted out from the subconscious of our society. Age-old fear psychosis need to be removed from their minds. Besides, they must be made aware of their rights and duties, associated with the tasks of nation building and made to feel that they too are important. — Usha Kapoor, Women and Welfare *** O Lord, liberate our souls From the shadows of birth and death, Not from our aspirations of existence i.e. immortality. — Yajurveda, 3.60 |
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