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Saturday,
September 29, 2001, Chandigarh, India   |
India on the sidelines Crackdown on SIMI Bell tolls for all in Bihar |
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Efficacy of public audit system
Leading the fight against
terrorism
Musharraf and media caught in a
pincer
What makes women live longer
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India on the sidelines IT
suits India to be an interested bystander in the developing war between a super power – the USA — and a puny and war-ravaged country — Afghanistan. However, this was not evident in the days immediately after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the USA. This country then showed excessive enthusiasm to join the USA in its declared war against international terrorism. New Delhi had two goals. It wanted to emerge as a prominent partner in the global campaign against senseless violence as a political weapon and directed at guiltless civilians. It also wanted to skilfully turn the present spotlight on cross-border terrorism in Kashmir and divert the US energies to put an end to this. This came out loudly from the remarks of External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh a few hours after the attack. Asked if India would side with the injured USA, he said firmly that it would offer the use of its air space, refueling facilities and even airbases. There was a mild flutter of opposition and everything was forgotten after a few hours. But the embarrassment came later. There was no request from the USA since it has locked in an agreement with Pakistan for all kinds of logistic support. As a commentator has perceptively noted, the USA would mess up its anti-Afghan campaign by taking on board India, which is not a favourite of the Muslim world at this hour of crisis. During Operation Dust Storm against Iraq in 1991, the USA kept its most reliable regional ally, Israel, out of the coalition just to retain the Muslim Arab countries on its side. . Prime Minister Vajpayee took the first opportunity, the all-party meeting, to take stock of the situation, to clarify that India had not made any promise to the USA. This is true as the wording goes but this country was keen to be an active and equal partner in the worldwide drive against terrorism. The satisfying part of the all-party meeting was the supportive attitude of the opposition parties. They, even the Congress and the Left, did not raise any inconvenient question and did not use the occasion to embarrass the government. Instead, they quickly endorsed the policy and restricted themselves to two innocuous suggestions. They wanted the Government to mobilise the opinion of the defunct nonaligned movement and persuade the USA to involve the UN in this problem. There is an important lesson in this. The BJP-led alliance government should seek the advice and consent of the opposition parties all the time and on all issues and gradually build a consensus. Actually this should be left to Parliament but there sectarian politics rather than urgent national issues condition the thinking and behaviour of the members. The nation would like to see more such all-party meetings on all thorny problems. |
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Crackdown on SIMI THE
nationwide crackdown on the offices of the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) was entirely expected. Union Home Minister L. K. Advani had hinted in August at the possibility of slapping a ban on the activities of the organisation. The ban would be effective for a period of two years after the validity or otherwise of the decision itself is examined by a special tribunal under the provisions of the relevant Act. The timing of the crackdown, that resulted in the death of at least four SIMI activists in police firing in Lucknow, is significant. The names Taliban and Lashkar-e-Toiba were upgraded to a higher demonic level by the USA following the September 11 attacks on its symbols of economic and military power. Both the reviled organisations claim to represent the aspirations of Muslim
Taliban, Toiba and tayyaba - in English all the three names would mean students. But in the popular mind they are now firmly associated with most acts of terrorism. While the global coalition against terrorism is after the Taliban, the National Democratic Alliance in the country was evidently sold the line that it was as good a time as any to go after SIMI. For reasons that have not been explained, the Indian version of the organisation chose to give itself an easily understood name of Students Islamic Movement of India. Perhaps, it did not want to be linked with the unpopular toiba and the
Taliban. However, according to Mr Advani, intelligence agencies had collected evidence of SIMI's links with international Islamic fundamentalist and terrorist outfits. The mysterious appearance of posters on the walls of old Delhi, Lucknow, Bhopal and elsewhere in support of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban may have helped the authorities to go for SIMI activists. It goes without saying that any individual or organisation found indulging in anti-national activities should receive the harshest punishment possible. The fact that the Chief Ministers of Congress-controlled Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh have welcomed the nationwide action against SIMI suggests that the BJP may escape the charge of trying to consolidate its Hindutva vote bank with an eye on the assembly elections in UP. However, it does take political advantage of the violence in Lucknow by blaming the Samata Party that relies heavily on Muslim support in UP. Interestingly, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Digvijay Singh has supported the crackdown on SIMI though he has blamed the Bajrang Dal “for creating institutions like SIMI by instilling fear among the minorities”. Mr Singh may have his own political compulsions. All the same, his
observations need to be examined honestly and objectively in the larger context of the rise of fundamentalism, secession and terrorism. We will have to look for a long-term solution to correct the distortions in the polity. Banning an organisation may at best provide temporary relief, but not a permanent solution. In this context, Mr Advani would do well to come out with a factsheet about the activities of SIMI which have prompted the NDA government to take this drastic step of banning it. |
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Bell tolls for all in Bihar PERPETUALLY benighted Bihar now differentiates night from day mostly by the sight of a blaze and the sound emanating from furious mobs. Truck tyres burn on potholed roads of Saraiyaganj and suburban Mithanpura, for example, and there is noon amidst the darkness of fumes. Policemen are being chased daily for the past six days by traumatised people. Bullets are fired at random not at clay pigeons but at shouting and wailing men and women. At least eight bodies were counted until Thursday night. The number does not include the most miserable child whose killing was one of the causes of the latest social outrage. Who says the dead tell no tale? Gautam Kumar or Golu, the only son of a bank employee and barely five years old, was kidnapped a few days ago. His body was found in a rather remote village. His limbs were chopped off. His eyes were gouged and his face was mutilated beyond recognition. The police claimed that the corpse was that of an unidentified 25-year-old man. But the father identified his son after seeing body marks and the build. Golu's grief brought shocked people out of their houses. School children organised demonstrations. Nothing doing, said the police. There were long spells of ineffective curfew. Protesters fell to bullets. The State Assembly was in turmoil but all that was demanded (even by the Opposition) was the suspension of the Police Superintendent. Fire has been made more pervasively consuming. Buses and trucks, along with rolling stock, have been set ablaze. Nobody seems to see anything in light in Muzaffarpur. There is need to look back at a few preceding days. On Tuesday two doctors were kidnapped. They returned home after huge amounts were paid to the kidnappers. No one need ask from where such kidnappings are reported — Nalanda Medical College, Darbhanga Medical College, Patna, Muzaffarpur..... In one case, the sum of Rs 70 lakh was demanded as ransom. Businessmen have been paying the "safe-return fee" for a long time. Doctors are leaving hospitals, nursing homes and towns. Gautams are cremated in bizarre formlessness. The police continue to cover up and kill. The Army has been called. The Union Health Minister, Dr C.P. Thakur, who comes from Bihar and was a physician of repute at Patna before becoming a politician, has this to say: "The doctors working in Bihar should get income tax exemption. They cannot be paying extortion money for their safety and also income tax". Mr Laloo Yadav, the chief ministerial proxy voice, announces a high-level inquiry. The Samata Party says it is shedding tears! There is not enough water in the Ganga at Patna to wash away the rulers' sins. If this is understood in New Delhi, President's rule with another Governor in Raj Bhavan is the time's mandatory prescription. The bell is tolling for all Biharis all the time. |
Efficacy of public audit system MY previous article (July 18) had been addressed to the issue posed by the Constitution Review Commission of vesting quasijudicial powers in the Indian Audit Department to surcharge government officers found responsible for causing loss to the public exchequer. Another issue posed in the Commission’s Consultation Paper is whether there should be independent Auditors-General for each State with a constitutional status and autonomy. Under the Indian Constitution the subject “audit of the accounts of the Union and the States” features in the Union List in the Seventh Schedule and the Constitution prescribes the Comptroller and Auditor-General of India (CAG) as the single, sole and unified authority responsible for the audit of the accounts of the Central and the State Governments. CAG’s headquarters office located in New Delhi is broadly responsible for policy formulation, direction, superintendence, control and
coordination. The field arms are the offices of the Director General/Principal Director and Accountant General which are the operational offices tasked for the audit of the accounts of the Central and the State Governments, respectively. The audit reports are generally initiated, processed and prepared by these field offices, thoroughly checked, examined and scrutinised at the headquarters office at different levels up to the Deputy CAG (equivalent to Union Government Secretary) or Additional Deputy CAG (above the Additional Secretary) and finally approved by the CAG. The audit reports are ordinarily signed by the heads of the field offices and countersigned by the CAG. The Constitution prescribes that the reports of the CAG on the accounts of the Union and the State Governments shall be submitted to the President and the State Governors, respectively, who shall cause them to be laid before the appropriate legislature whereafter further action is taken by the Public Accounts Committee concerned. According to the Review Commission Consultation Paper most of the problems of the Indian Audit and Accounts Department relating to the quality of audit arise from the fact that the organisational structure of CAG is not in consonance with the federal arrangement as envisaged in the Constitution and while there are separate legislatures, Governors and High Courts for each of the States there is no separate Auditor-General. The existing structure, says the Consultation Paper, is highly centralised with all the powers centralised with the CAG in person or in his headquarters office with very little delegation to the field formations which tells upon the efficiency and affects the morale of the State Accountants General. The CAG is neither able to do justice to the huge volume of audit reports nor can his services be available to the State Public Accounts Committees. The Consultation Paper, therefore, poses the issue: Should constitutional status and autonomy be given to the State Accountant General and his status made equivalent to a High Court Judge so that he can effectively discharge his responsibility to the State Legislature? It is mentioned that several countries having federal structures such as the USA, Germany, Canada, Australia and now the UK have separate Auditors-General for the provinces. The original draft of the Indian Constitution had also envisaged a separate Auditor-General (to be called Auditor-in-Chief) for each State with the status of High Court Judge retaining nevertheless the power with the CAG to give appropriate directions in respect of the accounts of the States. It appears that while posing the aforesaid issue, little thought has been given to the sui generis quasifederal nature of the country’s polity as finally written down by the founding fathers. This is best encapsulated in the textbook adage that India is a federation of States with a unitary bias. An inevitable consequence of this is the existence of a large number of Central Government offices and entities all over the country. Nowhere is this more evident than in the matter of Central Government revenues whereby a very large number of offices are located all over the country which are responsible for the administration of the tax laws and the assessment, collection and accounting of tax revenues. Except in the States of Maharashtra, West Bengal and the National Capital Territory of Delhi, the audit of these revenues is the responsibility of the State Accountants General. Nearly 40 per cent of the direct tax receipts, 65 per cent of the central excise receipt and 50 per cent of the customs revenues together estimated at more than Rs 1 lakh crore for the current financial year are collected in States other than West Bengal, Maharashtra and the National Capital Territory of Delhi. These are audited by the respective State Accountants General and the results of audit are included in the CAG’s Central Reports on Union receipts. On the expenditure side, the State Accountants General are responsible for the audit of Central Government offices located in their States as well as the Central Government transactions like pension payments occurring at the public sector banks. Also, there are a large number of Central Sector schemes which are exclusively funded and executed by the Union Government offices all over the country. A conservative estimate places the number of these schemes at over 1500 and of the gross budgetary support of Rs 55000 crore for the Central Ministries in the current fiscal year, the Central Sector schemes would account for over Rs 18000 crore outlay. The expenditure which is budgeted and incurred from Central Government funds is to be audited by the State Accountants General. In addition, despite sustained efforts at reduction through elimination, convergence and transfer to the States, there still exist 117 Centrally sponsored schemes which are funded partly or wholly by the Central Government but are executed by the State Governments. The budget outlay on these schemes has been placed at close to Rs 8000 crore for the current year. Central assistance of Rs 16000 crore is also budgeted for grants to the States under Article 275(1) of the Constitution for various purposes, including promotion of the welfare of the Scheduled Tribes. The amounts are initially included in the Central Government budget and subsequently passed on to the State Governments for being merged with their own resources for incurring expenditure. Although the actual incurrence of the expenditure takes place from the State funds, the Central legislature as the ultimate provider of the funds, partly or wholly, has a vital stake in their proper utilisation. It is in response to an express desire of the Central Legislature that the CAG has evolved a unique system of preparing all-India appraisals of the economic, efficient and effective implementation of such Centrally funded programmes and schemes. Such appraisals are conducted by the State AGs in accordance with a Central Audit Plan of the CAG, and the results of appraisals reported by the State AGs are collated and consolidated in the form of all-India appraisals which are then included in the Central Government Audit Reports presented to Parliament. In sum, the State Accountants General are responsible not merely for the audit of State Governments but they also conduct sizeable audits of the Central Government receipts and expenditure, the results of the latter being included in the Central Government Audit Reports. The audit of Central Government expenditure and receipts is ordinarily conducted by separate wings provided in the State Accountants General’s offices. Central Government audit and the State Government audit are inextricably intertwined and the issue of creation of independent State Auditors-General needs to be viewed in the context of the requirements of audit of Central Government revenues collected and expenditure incurred through or in the States. Establishment of separate offices or sub offices for audit of Central Government receipts and expenditure in each State may not be financially cost effective, while a common office for more than one State may not be administratively viable because of distances involved. In the case of expenditure on Centrally sponsored schemes and expenditure out of Central grants under Article 275(1) of the Constitution, there is no escape from the State Accountant General being the sole agency for the audit of the said expenditure. With the allied proposal for continuation of the existing structure of the Indian Audit and Accounts Service (which provides officers up to the rank of the Deputy Comptroller and Auditor General of India) as a Central Service, the proposal for vesting the State level functionaries with constitutional status and autonomy has immense potential for conflict while no amount of safeguards can proof against. The State Auditors-General vested with the status of High Court Judge may be in no mood to yield to the wishes of the CAG. On the other hand, the position will be totally unenviable if the CAG has the over-riding powers but no responsibility for the audit of State Governments. There will also be the question of inter-State mobility of the State Auditors-General. Also with the creation of independent State Auditors’-General’s offices, the Central Government shall be under no obligation to bear the burden of their expenditure, which should be logically met from the State Government budgets. A less than fully enlightened State Government may virtually render the State Auditor-General ineffective by putting a tight squeeze on his budget. That this is no doomsday scenario is borne out by a recent episode of a wholly unconstitutional resolution being passed by a State legislature for holding an inquiry into the working of the Accountant General whom the State Government found a bit too inconvenient for its comfort. The problems of the Indian Audit and Accounts Department are neither inherent in nor inevitably due to its present structure. The needs of the State Accountant General for enhanced financial and administrative powers and functional autonomy can be met through appropriate administrative orders and do not call for intervention of constitutional amendment. The solution envisaged in the Consultation Paper can itself become a problem. It is better to leave the well alone; or as it is said, if something ain’t broke, don’t try to fix it. The writer is a former Deputy Comptroller and Auditor-General of India. |
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Leading the fight against
terrorism WHAT do ordinary Indian Muslims think of Osama bin Laden’s call for jehad I asked Salim, my friendly neighbourhood furniture-maker. Normally eager to express views on any subject he remained silent for several moments before saying he had no opinion on this at all. I explained that I was eager to find out what the community thought about the subject and he said he would consult a few people and let me know. When he never came back to me I called him. He became mysteriously unavailable. He was either saying his namaz or taking a bath or out. When I persisted with my telephone calls he finally called back and said, in slightly sheepish tones, that nobody wanted to talk about it. ‘One man I know said he would write something down for you. When he does I’ll come and drop it by’. So, where should I go, I asked, if I wanted Muslim views on Osama bin Laden. He suggested that the mosque behind the Suleiman Mithaiwallah on Mumbai’s Mohammed Ali Road might be a good place. This is the sweet shop where Mumbai policemen are alleged to have brutally gunned down nine people during the riots of 1993 and, nearly ten years on, senior police officers have been named by a commission of inquiry as having been guilty of using excessive force. The Suleiman Sweet Shop is in the heart of Muslim Mumbai. It is surrounded by shops with names like Caravan-e-Mohammed Travels, Alisons and an Attarwallah (scent shop) with an Arabic name so foreign I wrote it down wrong in my notebook. Everywhere you look you see Muslim men in white skull caps and almost no women at all. If I could not get Muslim opinions here, I thought, I was unlikely to get them anywhere else. My first stop was the Suleiman Sweet Shop. It is not so much a shop as a wayside stall and I was directed to the owner’s son, a man in his early twenties. I started by asking him about the incident in 1993 and he said, ‘Only my father can tell you about this. I was too young at the time. My father will only be back on Sunday’. He then lapsed into a sullen sort of silence. When I changed the subject and asked what he thought about Osama bin Laden and what had happened to the World Trade Center and the Pentagon he said that the killing of innocent people in Washington and New York was terrible. Nobody can support such acts. What about Osama bin Laden’s call to jehad for all Muslims, did he support that? He said it was hard for him to comment on that but some people supported the call and thought bin Laden was fighting on the side of Islam but there were others who did not think this. It was this kind of prevarication I met whenever I asked the question. Nobody I talked to was prepared to give me a straight answer. Everyone condemned the acts of terrorism but most said that they did not accept that there was sufficient proof against bin Laden. “Even Star News is saying there is no evidence” said a young man who looked like a maulvi “so how can we condemn Osama just like that. Especially since from an Islamic point of view he would be considered a good Muslim and a good man”. That was the straightest answer I got in the course of my inquiries. The general response to my questions was either sullen silence or monosyllabic answers. Even when I asked how Indian Muslim would react if America attacked Afghanistan I was told only that this had nothing to do with them. The atmosphere I encountered was very different to the tensions and anger that prevailed when I came to this very area in the immediate wake of the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Then, everyone was ready to express their views and in a mosque I met young men who told me that registers had been opened at most mosques for those who wanted to sacrifice their lives in the cause of Islam. I remember writing a piece in this very column in which I hinted that Muslim anger ran so deep over the demolition of the mosque and the riots that followed that it should not surprise anyone if we saw Islamic terrorism in Mumbai. Months later came the bomb blasts in Mumbai that killed more than 200 people and I found myself proved horribly right. So, do I have any horrible predictions to make this time? No, but what I will say is that ordinary Muslims — even those who condemn the terrorist acts that killed more than 6000 people in Washington and New York — appear to have a sneaking sympathy with Osama bin Laden. They see him as a deeply religious Muslim rather than a terrorist. This is worrying because even if there is no direct evidence linking bin Laden to the attacks of September 11 there is more than enough evidence that he has incited Muslims to kill Americans, Christians and Jews. There is also evidence that the three countries he considers the biggest enemies of Islam are India, Israel and America. There is also sufficient evidence that he would like his own repressive version of Islam imposed on the world. India is also an enemy because of
Kashmir. What started out as a movement for azaadi has now been transformed into a wider Islamic war and many of the ‘mujahideen’ in Kashmir have bin Laden’s support. many train in his terrorist camps in Afghanistan and there are groups with direct links to Osama’s terrorist network. In India’s eyes bin Laden can only be seen as a terrorist so if ordinary Muslims are misled into having sympathy for his cause there can only be trouble. The Prime Minister informed us, last week, that we were ‘prepared’ for war. Nobody, though, tells us if we are prepared for the domestic war we may have to fight. It should be a time when leaders of the Muslim community urge their less educated co-religionists to take a more sensible view of events but there is little evidence of this. With the honourable exception of Rafiq Zakaria, Islamic scholar and former politician, there have been few voices heard that condemn the bin Laden concept of jehad. Most others have chosen instead to complain publicly about the injustice of always being asked to take a position when there is some Muslim act of terrorism. The result is confusion in the minds of ordinary Muslims, confusion that borders on open support for terrorists like Bin Laden. It is a moment for leaders of the Muslim community to stand up and lead and leading at this time means calling a terrorist a terrorist and making a distinction between terrorism and
jehad. |
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Musharraf and media caught in a
pincer FOR
the Musharraf government and Pakistani media, it has been a difficult time assessing what it is required to do by the Americans and what the government and the country should be doing keeping their national interest in mind. Pakistan is caught in a pincer. The masters are telling to extend total support not only to finish the leader of the terrorist outfit, Osama bin Laden, but the Taliban and instead install a regime, may be consisting of Northern Alliance and the ousted King Zahir Shah. This would mean an unfriendly government and long and difficult border to defend besides taking care of India. In that situation, how would Pakistan run its proxy war in Jammu and Kashmir? Newspapers like Dawn, Nation and News International besides Jung have carried detailed analysis and comments. Some are indeed candid. Here is what Dawn said, “Pakistan has done well to caution the world against the hazards of arming the Northern Alliance. The warning came from Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar, who said Pakistan was concerned about reports that some Afghan groups including the Northern Alliance, were asking the US for military assistance. Any decision to arm them, he said, would be a recipe for disaster, plunging the country deeper into factional warfare and adding to the suffering of the Afghan people.” Poor Sattar forgot when Pakistan acted as an opportunist frontline state to end the Soviet occupation and thereby caused death and destruction. Dawn admitted the involvement of Pakistan in the fratricidal war in that hapless country. It further added, “The Sept 11 terror attacks in New York and Washington and the American resolve to punish the Taliban government for harbouring Osama bin Laden, ‘the prime suspect’, seem to have given the Northern Alliance a fresh opportunity for a renewed bid for power. Now they expect the US to give them military help on a massive scale so that they can defeat and dislodge their adversaries. However, doing so would be a great mistake. The Northern Alliance is seeking power for reasons of self-vindication and for no higher purpose’’. Similarly, Nation on Sept 27 said, “while President Bush insists he is focused on dealing with Osama and Al-Qaida, and the overthrow of the Taliban is not his goal, hints have been dropped by members of his administration that they might support the Northern Alliance. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for instance, regards the Afghan opposition as a potential ally. There are reports about British SAS units operating alongside the Afghan opposition. Some European Union members too are supposed to have a soft corner for the anti-Taliban conglomerate. Before any decision is taken on the Taliban, the US and its allies must decide whether they want Afghanistan to be stable and united. Despite the numerous failings of the religious militia, some quite serious, the Taliban are the only political group in the country which established effective control over 95 per cent of the territory. The cultivation of opium has been successfully banned, warlordism eradicated and there are no threats to public peace.” The claims are indeed interesting when Afghanistan neatly earns $5 billion every year from the sale of narcotics.
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What makes women live longer Women live longer than men because they gain inner strength from a more powerful immune system, according to research conducted at the Imperial College School of Medicine (ICSM) in London. Researchers found that women produce more infection-fighting white blood cells than men of the same age, the New Scientist magazine reported. Dr Richard Aspinall and a team at the ICSM tracked the number of new white cells known as T-cells in 46 healthy men and women between the ages of 20 and 62. In both sexes, the thymus gland, which produces T-cells, made fewer cells with increasing age. But women still had higher levels of new T-cells than men of the same age, New Scientist reported. The researchers then looked at deaths in Britain from pneumonia and influenza between 1993 and 1998. They found that more men than women died from the disease — and the trend mirrored the difference in thymus activity between the sexes. The shorter life span of men has traditionally been blamed on greater risk taking, both in terms of accidents and illnesses linked to lifestyle such as heart disease and
cancer. DPA
Drug to aid abdominal surgery An experimental drug can shorten hospital stays after abdominal surgery by modifying the effects of some painkillers so they do not interfere with bowel function, researchers report in New England Journal of Medicine. After abdominal surgery, patients commonly suffer ileus, a temporary impairment of bowel movement. Opiates often prolong the condition that causes abdominal discomfort, nausea and vomiting. The painkillers, such as morphine, reduce the aches, but also reduce the activity in the gastrointestinal tract. Led by Dr Andrea Lurz of Washington University in St Louis, researchers gave different oral doses of the drug, ADL 8-2698, made by Adolor Corp., to 79 patients undergoing either colectomies or
hysterectomies. Reuters.
Abused children Sexually abused children are ten times more likely to take their own life, a landmark Australian study shows. Researchers at Sydney’s Westmead Children’s Hospital tracked the
lives of 200 sexually abused children aged between five and 15 over a ten-year period. They found them to have a suicide rate ten to 13 times that of a control group of others their age. There were no suicides in the control group but three of the abused children committed suicide, 32 per cent had attempted suicide and 43 per cent had thought about suicide. Paediatrician Kim Oates said the study showed the need to treat depression among the sexually
abused. DPA |
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Reconciled although he be, Never trust an enemy For the cave of owls was burned, When the crows with fire returned. *** If you permit disease or foe To march unheeded, You may know That death awaits you, sure if slow. *** Good counsellors should tell their kind, Unasked, a profitable thing; If asked they should advise. While flatterer who shun the true (which in the end is wholesome too) Are foemen in disguise. *** Make your peace with powerful foes Who are rich and good and wise. Who are seasoned conquerors, In whose home no discords rise. *** Make your peace with wicked men, If your life endangered be; Life, itself first made secure, Gives the realm security. *** By a stronger foe assailed, Bend as bends the river reed; Do not strike, as serpents do, If you wish your luck to speed. *** With foes unprincipled and false It is vain to seek accommodation; Agreements bind them not; and soon They show a wicked transformation. — The Panchatantra, Book III *** The senses should be controlled by the mind, and the mind should be controlled by the soul. So the soul should become the master of the mind and the mind should become the master of the senses then only the soul can go back to the Father. — Maharaj Charan Singh, Thus Saith the Master, Questions and Answers”. |
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