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| Saturday,
March 9, 2001, Chandigarh, India   
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Mayawati's deft move Please-electorate Budget PU in financial straits |
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Gujarat riots and the Army
Mad after dad
A ‘wish speech’ for the newly elected
‘Build our village temple first’
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Mayawati's deft move By resigning the Lok Sabha seat Ms Mayawati has sent out a clear signal to those watching the political stalemate in Uttar Pradesh that her primary concern was to somehow help the Bahujan Samaj Party form the next government in the state. In a single stroke the BSP leader put an end to the wild speculation about her being given a Cabinet berth at the Centre as part of a power-sharing arrangement with the Bharatiya Janata Party. From here the game should get interesting. It is significant that only the BJP and the BSP have welcomed Governor Vishnu Kant Shastri's recommendation for placing UP under President's rule. Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party, Mr Shri Prakash Jaiswal of the Congress and the leaders of the left parties are, of course, not happy with the turn of events. They are harping on the theme of the Governor having not followed proper procedure. Pray what would have been proper procedure? The numbers simply did not add up in favour of Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav and they could not have added up had he been invited by Raj Bhavan to become Chief Minister. The fact of the matter is that the three principal players, namely the BJP, the BSP and the Samajwadi Party, know that neither of them on their own can give UP a stable government. The fight is over who gets to become the caretaker Chief Minister. Yes, it is as simple as that. Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav is fuming that as head of the largest party this privilege has been denied to him. It would have helped him in no small measure in giving the Samajwadis a marginal advantage if and when fresh assembly elections are announced in UP. However, the Governor's recommendation, that was promptly cleared by the Union Cabinet at a special sitting on Thursday, has given an expected twist to the unfolding political drama in UP. The Samajwadis and their supports are out. The BSP and the BJP have up to six months to work out the modalities of power-sharing. If the Rajya Sabha turns down the Bill recommending President's rule in UP, the calculations would have to be re-worked. Of course, there are those who are looking at Ms Mayawati and Chief Minister Rajnath Singh to provide some clue to what is cooking behind-the scene. Whatever is cooking, Ms Mayawati is not going to give much breathing space to the BJP. She expects to become Chief Minister with its help. However, a point on which the talks are likely to break down involves the right to name the Speaker of the Vidhan Sabha. Once bitten is twice shy. Ms Mayawati was literally done in by the Speaker of the previous Vidhan Sabha, Mr Kesrinath Tripathi. The last Vidhan Sabha is dead and the Supreme Court has yet to give its ruling on the BSP MLA's disqualification case! However, the only way the deadlock can be broken is for both the parties to recognise that they shall be sharing power with the limited objective of contesting the assembly elections, whenever they are announced, literally from a position of power. If this is accepted, the Speaker's post would become a non-controversy. |
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Please-electorate Budget As elections draw near, all governments worth their salt start turning more and more people-friendly. What better way to help the voter forget the pain of the past than showering him with gifts left, right and centre? Himachal Pradesh has taken recourse to this time-tested strategy in the 2002-03 Budget. It has goodies galore for everybody while at the same time refraining from imposing any new taxes, making it what is called a tax-free Budget in common parlance. Government employees comprise the largest vote bank and predictably get the lion's share of the benefits. But other sections - be they farmers, pensioners, panchayati raj institutions or daily wagers - have all come in for favourable treatment. In short, there is something for almost everybody in the Rs 6,115-crore Budget. That appears to be too good to be true. The looks are deceptive indeed. Behind the cosmetic glow, there are several not so presentable warts. The feel-good Budget does not reflect the precarious financial health of the hill state. There is a huge deficit and the generosity comes at the cost of considerable public borrowing. Had the goodies been distributed while simultaneously curtailing the wasteful expenditure, it would have been a sign of genuinely good governance, but there are no signs of tightening the belt of the administration. What is more, the exercise to win friends and influence people may shift the focus away from development work. One redeeming feature is that the state has set aside a considerable sum for education. To raise money, the government has taken some measures which may have an undesirable effect in the long run. One of them is to increase the tax on all vehicles entering Himachal Pradesh. Tourism is the mainstay of the state and this decision will help collect a tidy sum. But this burden on the tourist should not be so steep that it should start putting him off. Short-term tourists will be particularly inconvenienced. Just look at the sharp fall in the number of visitors to historical monuments following a large increase in the entry fee by the Government of India. Himachal Pradesh should not repeat the same mistake. But the biggest threat is the debt trap which grows more and more vicious year after year. But in the anxiety to appease the masses, every government leaves the tough choices to its successor. As is obvious, this profligacy cannot go on forever and some day the bubble is bound to burst. The sooner the public is made aware of the harsh realities, the better. |
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PU in financial straits Panjab University is passing through a period of crisis. It does not have enough financial resources to manage its affairs properly. Its total expenditure for 2002-2003 has been estimated at Rs 89.62 crore whereas its expected income from all sources will be Rs 26.22 crore. Setting aside the mandatory allocation of Rs 1.91 crore for the Corpus Foundation for Higher Education and Research, there remains a huge deficit of Rs 65.31 crore. The Punjab Government, as per UGC norms, should arrange 40 per cent of the deficit, but it has declared that the university should not expect from the state more than Rs 15.4
crore. This is much less than the statutary share of Punjab. The state government may have its own reasons to justify its decision, as it is already in a financial mess. But that is not the problem of the university. Punjab must find a way to fulfil its statutary obligation. Or it should decide to dissociate itself from the university so that the institution, one of the oldest centres of higher learning in the country, knows where it exactly stands. The share of the Union Territory of Chandigarh, 60 per cent of the gross deficit, will be available, but that is not enough. The expressed inability of Punjab to meet its commitment, which means a shortfall of over Rs 10 crore, has a definite message. Some day the Union Territory Administration, which means the Union Government for all practical purposes, may also raise its hands. This is not unlikely, keeping in view the current thinking in the corridors of power in the national capital. All educational institutions are now supposed to be self-dependent, or raise their own resources. This is possible mainly by increasing the fees and other charges but remaining within reasonable limits and by collaborating with industrial enterprises. Alumni associations can also be depended upon. Panjab University is, therefore, not unfair in resorting to a fee hike. Yet the decision is questionable because it has not come in phases. A gradual upgradation of the fee structure, including the charges for courses involving thesis and dessertation presentation, could have been less painful. It is true that making higher education cost-effective amounts to creating an indirect quota for those who can pay. Interpreted differently, such an exercise will amount to creating unwanted hurdles in the way of students coming from financially less privileged families irrespective of their proven merit. This is a valid question and deserves to be answered by the government and philanthropic organisations. An educational institution — whether a university, college or school — has to be financially viable to ensure its existence. But those who pay have the right to demand the value for their money, as it is true in the case of industrial products. |
Gujarat riots and the Army The British in their long rule over this country were very sparing in the employment of the army in aid to the civil administration. There was a rationale to this policy. They did not wish the salutary effect, the presence of troops have on mobs, to wear thin by too frequent a use. The army was kept free from political interference and sanitised from the communal virus. At the same time both the civil administration and the police were maintained at a high state of efficiency, were well led and held accountable. All this was to change after Independence. Since Independence, the army has been called out in aid of the civil administration on over 4500 occasions and the quality of administration and policing has undergone a sea change. At the slightest signs of disorder or the occurrence of even a minor natural calamity, the civil administration throws up its hands and seeks army help. Every time the troops are called out to aid the civil authority, it is an admission of failure or inadequacy of the administration to cope with the situation. It is nobody’s case that the army should not be called out to aid the civil authority, but where the situation is well within the capability of the civil administration to tackle, there should be no need to seek army help. Whereas, be it a landslide in Kulu valley where some labourers were buried under the debris, or the floods in Patiala, immediate call went to the army. In Kulu the troops spent time digging out the dead, a task well within the resources of the administration, which was the very picture of helplessness. It was no better at Patiala. However, in this piece we are concerned with the specific issue of employment of the army to quell communal riots. India has very large police forces at the state level and with the Central Government. Enough to handle the worst possible communal riot situation. Still these forces are unable to handle such contingencies and the call goes out to the army, almost every time. The local police has its own compulsions of political interference. Since it has to live and work with the same people, it is hesitant to use force. Moreover, it has little salutary effect, being almost part of the local population. Both the local police and the central police organisations are also not completely free of communal bias. Consequently, they inspire little confidence in the targeted community on the one hand and fear amongst the miscreants. One of the cardinal features of mob control and stemming communal riots is that the forces employed must appear to mean business and the very embodiment of discipline and firmness. Force, if not applied at the appropriate time and moment, often leads to its subsequent enhanced use. It is mostly a case of a stitch in time. The security forces employed in riot control must appear, through deed and action, completely and utterly free of communal bias. Unfortunately this has not been so on many an occasion. There have been instances where the police has acted in a blatantly partisan manner and yet in some other cases actually aided and abetted the rioters. The breakdown, community wide, of over 70 persons killed in police firing during the Gujarat riots, may be quite revealing. The British diligently kept the army free from political influences and of those outside the hierarchical system. The army carried an aura of orderliness, discipline, fairness and firmness. It inspired confidence in the public. This carried on for many years after Independence. When the holy relic was removed from the Hazratbal mosque in Srinagar, there was utter chaos and confusion and by the afternoon nearly half a million people had converged on Srinagar. The mob put the local tehsil office, police station, State Bank, treasury, and some other buildings to torch. Fire tenders sent to deal with the fire were also burnt. The Chief Minister who was in town, took the unusual step of handing over the city of Srinagar to the army. Whatever troops were available in Badami Bagh were moved to the town within the hour, and a little later an army brigade arrived from Baramulla. Such was the impact of the presence of troops and the salutary effect they had on the crowds that though they stayed put in the town for many days, no one dared even light a match, leave aside torch any building etc. We never had to use force. Repeated use of the army has led to some degree of loss of its salutary effect on the mobs. Gradually and perceptibly some of it was to change. Since the internal administration of the defence forces passed into the hands of the civil services and the political bosses, some officers in senior ranks lost that independence of character and fearlessness to stay on the right course; afraid to act firmly, without fear or favour. During the eighties certain developments in the country, turns and twists given to these by the political parties and the media, led to the creeping in of communal bias in certain pockets of the military also. Thus during the troubled times in Punjab in “Ops Bluestar and Wood Rose” there were many cases of highhandedness and misconduct on the part of the troops. Communal bias way palpably discernible even amongst some senior ranks. If you travelled through the countryside of the Punjab of those days, you could sense not only sullenness but open hostility towards the army. People who had stood by the troops in the forward trenches in the 1965 war were loathe to have anything to do with it. It took much effort and the vision of commanders like H. Kaul (the then GOC-in-C Western Command) to win back that confidence and trust of the people. Two instances need to be noted to bring home the point of loss of salutary effect and the inability to act firmly, without fear or favour, on the part of the army. In both the cases political interference and a degree of communal bias contributed to inaction on the part of the army and the mayhem continued. The first was the anti-Sikh riots in Delhi. The motivated delay in calling the troops apart, their arrival failed to stem the riots which continued at an unprecedented scale for full three days after the arrival of troops. Needless to say that the army used no force to control the situation. The battalion which would have contributed in controlling the situation was held back at Delhi Cantt. Watching the scene at Delhi, Romilla Thapar recorded that Nadir Shah appeared to be once more on a visit to this city. The second instance is the anti-Muslim riots in the nineties in Bombay. Here again there was delay in calling the troops and their arrival did not control the riots for a number of days. The then Defence Minister had positioned himself at Bombay during that period for whatever purpose, but his presence there seemed to have inhibited troops from carrying out their duties faithfully and fearlessly. None of the commissions appointed to investigate these riots have looked into this very disturbing aspect of failure of the army to control the situation, and the factors and interference which prevented it from doing its duty. It appears that in both the cases, and on many occasions, the local leaders were directing the lumpens and the police was in league with them. At the top political level, Rajiv Gandhi’s statement of, “big tree falling ...... ” and now Modi’s characterisation of Gujarat riots as, “public anger” provided the incentive and justification for mass killing. The administration in India is characterised by lethargy and inefficiency. An alert and energetic administration would have been alive to the brewing conspiracy and preparations for the attack on the train at Godhra, carrying Hindu Karsevaks from Ayodhya, who had earlier ransacked the railway station. Even if it was yet another failure of intelligence, prompt and timely action by an alert administration would have prevented the tragedy. Once the burning of karsevaks occurred, administration in all communally sensitive regions should have automatically moved into high alert mode and put all precautionary measures and contingency plans in place. The government in Gujarat was tardy in its reactions and infact, waited for events to overtake it and went into a comatose state. To top it all, there was inordinate delay in asking for army deployment by the state and hesitation in equal measure at the Centre to clear its deployment. When it finally arrived by air at midnight on Thursday, no transport to carry it to the effected areas was made available till late afternoon. At the first signs of an emergency the state administrations seem to go into a state of shock and, therefore, incapable of undertaking urgent steps to cope with the developing situations; be these floods in Orissa, earthquake in Tehri Garhwal/Gujarat or riots in Delhi/Mumbai/Ahmedabad etc. In the case of the current deployment of the army in Gujarat, the presence of Mr George Fernandes on the scene seems to have had a positive impact on its functioning. Else the police and the state government’s uncooperative attitude would have seriously inhibited the army from carrying out its task of controlling the situation. Due to the lack of suitable transport and inadequate strength, the army could not fan out into the countryside and consequently killing, arson and looting continued in outlying areas. The main lesson to emerge out of the Gujarat riots is that the army, once called out, must be allowed to function freely and in accordance with well-established procedures. It must have the fullest cooperation from the police and the administration. At Ahmedabad elementary requirement such as “control room” had not been established. The old procedure of each column being accompanied by a magistrate may work in dispersing an unlawful assembly, (from the British days magistrates have displayed propensity to slip away at critical moments!) but is impracticable at a stage when riots are widely spread and troops have to fan out and operate in small detachments in large size towns or patrol the country-side. Therefore, the law in this regard needs to be suitably amended, giving powers to detachment commanders to deal with those indulging in rioting, looting and arson. Further, there is need to have these detachments mounted in smaller vehicles, with good communications so that they can freely move in narrow lanes etc. At the state level, contingency plans to cater to various types of situations need to be worked out in greater detail, frequently rehearsed and coordinated with the neighbouring states and at Delhi. In a riot situation it is not merely a question of controlling these, but putting into top gear various components of the administration to provide succour and relief to the victims. Finally India will have to find a solution to the periodic outbreak of communal riots and the ever growing population of lumpens in the expanding urban ghettos. These pose a very serious threat to the social fabric of the country and its future. The writer, a retired Lieut-General, is a former Deputy Chief of Army Staff. |
Mad after dad “Father’s love matters most,” screamed a newspaper headline. The Lady of the House (LoH) followed suit. And all hell broke loose. She thrust the newspaper in my hands to make me read and realise what Rohner and Robert a Veneziano reported in the current issue of the “Review of General Psychology,” that the withholding of love by either the mother or the father was equally connected to a child’s lack of self-esteem, emotional instability, withdrawal, depression and anxiety. And having the love and nurturing of either parent had an equally positive effect on a child’s happiness, well being and social and academic success from early childhood through young adulthood. Researchers found that in certain instances, the love of the father played an even more important role than that of the mother. And, father’s love was the sole determining factor when it came to a child’s problems with personality, conduct, delinquency or substance abuse. Fellow fathers would empathise with me that I was least prepared to face this fusillade. That too on a sunny Sunday morning. Not knowing whom to curse — the newspaper, the LoH or the researchers — I collected my wits and rummaged through my repertoire of quips, quotes and bons mots. I quoted not one but 11 great men whose fathers were as humble and ordinary mortals as most of us are. Here they are: Shakespeare (s/o a wood merchant), Abraham Lincoln (s/o a poor farm labourer), Christopher Columbus (s/o a weaver), Sophocles, a Greek poet (s/o a blacksmith), Adrian, acetic pontiff (s/o a beggar), Emperor Diocletian (s/o a slave), Cardinal Antonelli’s (s/o a bandit), Virgil (s/o a porter), Demosthenes’ (s/o a blacksmith), Ben Franklin (s/o a soapboiler), and Daniel Webster (s/o a poor farmer). To buttress my point and to boost my teacher wife’s ego, I cited Gandhiji and Chhatrapati Shivaji who were greatly influenced by their respective mothers in their childhood days. “All of them, I’m sure, could have achieved still greater heights if only their fathers were not frugal in bestowing their time, attention and love on their progeny,” thundered the LoH. “Remember, children begin by loving their parents, after a time they judge them, sometimes they forgive them,” she murmured meaningfully. I agreed. Do you, too? The twin teenagers who were since watching from the sidelines joined in to recite this poem: A careful man I ought to be; A little fellow follows me; I do not dare to go astray For fear he’ll go the self-same way. I cannot once escape his eyes, Whatever he sees me do he tries. Like me he says he’s going to be, The little chap who follows me. He thinks that I am good and fine, Believes in every word of mine. The base in me he must not see, That little chap who follows me. |
A ‘wish speech’ for the newly elected What kind of speeches are we hoping and desiring to hear from our political leadership and what are we getting? Foreign policy statements, warnings to our neighbours, or areas of good governance? Do areas of roti, kapada and makan figure as burning issues? How important to the audience are the mandir-masjid issue of party leader ‘A’ or ‘B’ ? Interestingly, from what was seen in the recently concluded political rallies that whenever people were clapping or cheering it was over the entertainment being provided by film stars “swinging” or “singing”. In some places individuals with long criminal records were addressing rallies. What had they to say and with what credibility? No wonder in this country incumbency is becoming a factor which works against the government in power. Another word for incumbency is “governance” and “performance”. So when it is an anti-incumbency vote, it is as well a rejection of the performance of the administration as a whole which includes the bureaucracy the most. People require a good administration, which is efficient, which delivers services, solves civic problems and provides internal security with a vision for the future. Below is an attempt at a “wish speech” which people in constituencies would have loved to listen and see it translated into action: This “wish speech” is for a victorious leader after having returned as elected. Here it goes: “My fellow citizens: “I am grateful to all of you for having chosen me to represent you (in the Assembly or Parliament). I assure you that I will prove worthy of your trust. I stand before you as a full representative of the entire constituency and not only of those who voted for me. I now represent the interests of all of you equally. The problems and issues of the constituency are my priorities. We will identify the essential needs at various levels to be worked on. Thereafter we will collectively declare area-wise priorities and proceed to match the available resources. How I will use my constituency funds I will publically declare so that you all know how the constituency fund will be utilised. We will all work collectively to ensure that the money spent is well invested and gives us all maximum benefits possible. We will create overseeing local groups to ensure transparency and people’s participation in all projects. We will all along evolve a system of partnership in administration at all levels of governance, rural or urban. My friends..... we will make our plan and implement them in such a way that in our constituency no child goes without schooling; no adolescent without vocational training; no tubewell or industry without power. We will see that no one feels insecure and no crime goes undetected. We will so organise ourselves that crimes are prevented. Those which still happen do not go undetected. We will work on crime correction and even rehabilitation. Collectively, we will ensure water harvesting and water management so that we give to our next generation more than we had. “Together we will ensure higher productivity in all establishments in our constituency so that we earn more, employ more and contribute more to the national exchequer. We will work towards enhancing the quality of life so that our people live in harmony and prosperity. So you see we have lots to do. I am confident that we will succeed. I can assure you that whatever I expect from you I will provide you first. I will be with you in the different areas except for the days of the sessions. I will declare my visit programme so that you know in advance when I will be with you for interaction. When I come I will do so with the district administration i.e. the area Superintendent of Police or the DSP or the SHO and the Dy Commissioners or SDMs or SDO and other officials of important agencies so that we can collectively see what is wrong and what is right...... and what needs to be attended to on priority. “While I will give you what I must, you too will give to yourself and your neighbourhoods your role as responsible and participative citizens. You have elected me for a limited period and we have a lot to do. I do not know whether I will like to stand for another term.... but if I do it will be if we achieve what we set out to. Before I close I am publically declaring the assets I or my immediate family owns. And before laying down my
responsibility as your elected representative I will come again to redeclare for you to see with what am I leaving. Come let us do what we must for the sake of our country and our future generations”. While I wrote this “wish speech” I came across two speeches which do come as a silver lining. I am encouraged to bring forth the short excerpts: The first one is of the new Chief Minister of Punjab, Capt Amarinder Singh, when he said: “This government and administration would be completely transparent and the Press would be permitted full access to whatever information they sought about the working of the administration”. We will seek to emulate Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost.” The second is from the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, Mr Digvijay Singh. “India has suffered from excessive governance, which is why the state has to withdraw from many of its traditional roles. I believe administration has to be brought to the door of people”. If these words get translated into deeds there will not be anti-incumbency votes..... but an avalanche of consensus to carry on.... |
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‘Build our village temple first’ Let me begin by saying that I believe that the Muslims were as responsible for the demolition of the Babri Masjid as the Hindus. I say this not to be provocative but because it is my view that the Babri Masjid Action Committee (BMAC) and the other bodies negotiating on behalf of the Muslim community were as inflexible in the position they took as the Hindu representatives at the table. Their fundamental mistake was to insist on historical evidence that there had once been a temple at the site where the mosque was built. This irritated not just Hindu fanatics but even your normal, non-fundamentalist Hindu because everyone knows that Muslim invaders razed thousands of temples and monasteries. Even if proof was absent in Ayodhya, it is not elsewhere. So, when L.K. Advani decided that the solution lay in a “rath yatra” to Ayodhya, he got more support than he could possibly have dreamed of and it is from this expedition, as we know, that the Bharatiya Janata Party emerged as a political party capable of taking on the mighty Congress. If the BMAC had been paid by the BJP they could not have taken a position that benefited the party more. If, on the other hand, the BMAC and other Muslim bodies, had taken the view that demolishing places of worship was a medieval thing that medieval conquerors did but that in modern, democratic times there should be no room for this kind of bad behaviour, it would have put Hindu fanatics of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Bajrang Dal variety in a fix. And the Babri Masjid may well have still been with us. The reason why I begin with this little glance into the history of the Ayodhya movement — now once more taking its toll — is that it is important for the Muslim community to acknowledge past mistakes so as not to repeat them. After the BJP’s disgraceful performance in the recent Assembly elections, particularly in U.P., it has become clear to most political observers and the party’s senior leaders that Hindutva’s appeal is on the wane. It will be even more firmly in the waning mode after the terrible violence in Gujarat. The images of those bloodthirsty Hindutva mobs that came into our living rooms thanks to television were enough to put off the most ardent Hindus. and, if the sight of the mobs was not repulsive enough we had statements from various Hindutva leaders — including Gujarat’s Chief Minister — virtually justifying the violence that left more than 400 Muslims dead. It was enough for many people to forget that Gujarat’s recent cycle of violence was started by the Muslims in Godhra. Many an editorial in the past few days has dwelt on the colossal administrative and intelligence failure that allowed thousands of Muslims to gather at Godhra railway station to attack Sabramati Express. This it indeed was but the local Muslim community cannot be absolved. It was they who participated in the murder of 58 people of whom many were women and children. What caused such hatred? Is it Ayodhya again? Or is it the fact that ever since the Babri Masjid was demolished the average “secular” hack and politician has led the Muslim community to believe that the demolition of the mosque symbolised the end of Indian secularism? It unfortunately continues to be portrayed that way with some politicians of the Left going so far as to suggest that December 6, 1992 was the "darkest day" in Indian democratic history. This is rubbish. There have been much darker days when ordinary people have been brutally massacred by vengeful mobs driven by communal hatred. Surely, even the murder of one innocent person is more important than the demolition of a structure made of brick and mortar? It has, alas, never been looked at his way with the result that the word Ayodhya triggers off such an irrational reaction among Muslims that they fail to see the bigger picture. The bigger picture is that despite repeated efforts to get people to come and build that temple in Ayodhya the average Hindu seems uninterested. The thousands who participated in the movement before the mosque came down no longer come to Ayodhya despite the hectoring speeches that the likes of Ashok Singhal and Giriraj Kishore spew out on a daily basis. They do not come to Ayodhya because some were put off by the demolition of the Babri Masjid and others believe that there is no real need to build another temple. Ordinary Hindus I have talked to on my travels often tell me that they see no point in building new temples when the temples in their towns and villages are neglected and falling apart. In the words of a Haryana villager, “Look at the temple in our village, it’s all broken down and dirty, if we are going to build a temple we should start here.” That this is a widespread sentiment can be seen from the results of last month’s U.P. elections where the BJP performed worse than any other political party. It may not have come last like the Congress did but in many ways it did much worse because it lost a greater percentage of the votes and did so badly in Uttaranchal — carved out from U.P. — that the Congress ended up forming the government. So in general things look bad for both the BJP and Hindutva. But, the situation could alter if the Muslims do not understand that they also need to cooperate by condemning the sort of Islamic fundamentalism that caused the incident in Godhra. The hatred that Gujarat’s murderous mobs showed is a sign matched the hatred the Muslim mob showed in Godhra and is a clear indication that relations between India’s two main religious groups is at a frightening low. Since our politicians — from extreme Left to Right — have proved that they can only fan the flames and not put the fire out it is time for religious leaders to step in and help solve what is essentially a religious dispute that should remain outside the arena of politics. The Shankaracharya of Kanchipuram needs to be commended for already stepping in to calm the passions of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad but it is time for others to come forward. We need the Dalai Lama, Sri Sri Ravishankar along with Muslim and Sikh religious leaders to come together to discuss not just a formula for Ayodhya but a formula that would bring more lasting communal harmony. The Prime Minister, who has since the incident in Godhra put in one of his least inspiring performances ever, could perhaps remedy things by calling a conference of religious leaders and scholars in Delhi. It would also help for them to hold their deliberations as publicly as possible. Another thing that could help is a referendum on whether anyone really wants that temple in Ayodhya. It could turn out that the average Hindu is not even slightly interested and that could shock the Vishwa Hindu Parishad or the “Ram-janmabhoomi Nyas” or whatever they want to call themselves into behaving more responsibly. |
The man who, by the grace of the Lord, has renounced all things, in whom there is complete harmony, to whom true wisdom and true jnana (knowledge) have been revealed, whose being is united with the Lord — that Man is no longer affected by any action whatever or by any sin; he has attained the Supreme Bliss of Brahman. Furthermore, even the Man who is not yet altogether detached, to whom wisdom has not yet been fully imparted, who is still living an imperfect, ever evil, life — he too, if he adores the Lord with all his being and with sincere intention, will be purified and will come to know wisdom and that peace in the Lord which will last for ever. — Raimundo
Panikkar, The Vedic Experience: Mantramanjari *** True emotion is needed in love, exterior garbs do not matter; If you so like, live in the house and if you please dwell in the forest. It makes no difference. Dost thou want to drink the draughts of love and to maintain thy pride? Two swords have never been seen nor heard of in one sheath. I wandered in search of a lover but I found none. When lover meets lover, then is the devotion to the teacher strengthened. I have clasped to my heart the cup of love. It has permeated every pore of the body. I need no other potion now. I have tried many medicines but found none more efficacious than love. When love starts in one part of the body, it spreads and transmutes the whole body into gold. — Ameer
Khusaru, Kulliyat-e-Anasir-e-Dawawin |
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