E D I T O R I A L   P A G E

EDITORIALS

Bullying the players
IT is sheer blackmail on the part of the International Cricket Council (ICC) and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) to hold the gun of boycott to the head of the players and make them sign a draconian sponsorship clause. If they sign the contract, they have to ditch the sponsors whose products they have been endorsing. This indeed amounts to forcing players to relinquish all their intellectual property and personal commercial rights. The high and mighty attitude of the BCCI is also visible in its refusal to recognise Ravi Shastri as the players’ representative.

Tractor-driven growth
THE picture of a 1962 model of a tractor carrying garbage in an uncovered trailer in Amritsar published in The Tribune on Thursday reveals the ugly face of urban Punjab, the other side of the so-called progressive state. A high per capita income is meaningless unless it translates into an improved quality of life. The presence of 40-year-old tractors on the Amritsar roads may be a tribute to their makers’ engineering skill, but that also shows how little the methods of waste transportation have changed.

FRANKLY SPEAKING

Hari Jaisingh
Gujarat: the ball now in court
A test case for Indian democracy
IT is a pity that one major autonomous pillar of the Constitution has got politicised. This does not reflect well on the custodians of Indian democracy. The question here is not of who is right or who is wrong, but of norms, decorum and constitutional propriety of the way the ruling establishment should conduct itself in the face of what it thinks to be "a provocative act" to its political authority.

MIDDLE

Rakhi musings
Punam Khaira Sidhu
YOU know what they say about sons being sons until they acquire a wife, and daughters being your little girls all their lives. Well, as I grew older I found that this homespun adage is perfectly true of real life. My brothers who were part of a close knit family unit changed after they married. No more phone calls, or flying visits to renew the sibling bonds. No more caring or sharing and keeping each other updated on every new pimple or itch.

COMMENTARY

Can India be a world model?
M. S. N. Menon
CAN India be a “model” for the world? Yes, says Stephane Dion, Canadian Minister for Inter-Governmental Affairs. To Canada, India is a source of hope for humanity. But how? According to Dion, India is all about the art of living in harmony, all about co-existence of races and religions and cultures. And India has had a large measure of success.

A VIEW POINT

Settling water dispute
G. S. Dhillon
FROM media reports readers fear that another Mahabharat is planned to be fought by politicians over the issue of the completion of the SYL. It is proposed to look back into the history as how Punjab resolved its water disputes with its neighbours. After the completion of the Satluj Valley System in the 1930s, Punjab wanted to take up the work of building the Bhakra Dam, a storage project on the Satluj, the Sind province protested that it would adversely affect the equitable distribution of water between the British Punjab and the Sind province. As a result, the Government of India set up the Rau’s Commission.

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

EDITORIALS

Bullying the players

IT is sheer blackmail on the part of the International Cricket Council (ICC) and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) to hold the gun of boycott to the head of the players and make them sign a draconian sponsorship clause. If they sign the contract, they have to ditch the sponsors whose products they have been endorsing. This indeed amounts to forcing players to relinquish all their intellectual property and personal commercial rights. The high and mighty attitude of the BCCI is also visible in its refusal to recognise Ravi Shastri as the players’ representative. This despite the fact that the players in many countries negotiate through their representatives and even have their own unions. In its wisdom, the BCCI has announced that it has selected a second-string team to represent India in the ICC Champions Trophy in Colombo next month. That may be only to put pressure on the existing players, but will vitiate the atmosphere further. The BCCI itself knows that a team without Sachin Tendulkar, Saurav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid, Virender Sehwag and Harbhajan Singh will be only an apology. It has also been trying to pressurise junior members of the existing team to sign on the dotted line but the group has shown amazing unity so far. The way names of the second-string probables have been kept secret, there is every likelihood that they might also opt out in solidarity with their seniors. That will serve the officials right who tend to treat the players as an expendable commodity.

The support that the Indian players have got from their counterparts in other countries indicates that the ICC will have to eat humble pie. It has already climbed down by pleading that they should sign the agreement only for the Champions Trophy and not for the entire period up to the 2007 World Cup. But the players are right in pointing out that even that agreement would be exceptionally restrictive. It is to be operational not only during the Champions Trophy but also 30 days before and after it. Since less than a month remains for the start of the Champions Trophy, the players could become liable for breach of contract proceedings by signing it. They are right in pointing out that such a sponsorship policy does not exist in any other sport. Even in the Olympics and the World Cup football, players freely endorse the products of corporates who have supported them all along. The ICC’s case is that it wants to protect its sponsors from “ambush advertising”, the phenomenon by which rival firms ride on the hype for an event through the use of individual stars in their promotionals. In reality, it is the ICC which is trying to indulge in “ambush advertising” by forcing players to renege on contracts that they might have signed years ago.

Tractor-driven growth

THE picture of a 1962 model of a tractor carrying garbage in an uncovered trailer in Amritsar published in The Tribune on Thursday reveals the ugly face of urban Punjab, the other side of the so-called progressive state. A high per capita income is meaningless unless it translates into an improved quality of life. The presence of 40-year-old tractors on the Amritsar roads may be a tribute to their makers’ engineering skill, but that also shows how little the methods of waste transportation have changed. Environmental pollution is a major life-shortening hazard to which the people living in the cities are exposed. If the municipal corporations themselves run such polluting vehicles, how can they be expected to undertake any environment-friendly initiatives? That also indicates the level of awareness of those running the municipal corporations, apart from the general indifference of the ordinary citizens, who have resigned themselves to a revolting situation. Because of this collective neglect of civic affairs and lack of enthusiasm to set things right, cities and towns of Punjab are increasingly becoming unlivable. Much of the present mess is blamed on lack of funds with the civic bodies. Their debilitating financial position is a reality, but little effort has been made at generating new sources of income and plugging the existing loopholes. Rampant corruption has crippled the functioning of most municipal corporations. Besides, the available funds are misutilised. For instance, the Amritsar Municipal Corporation spends 84 per cent of its Rs 114 crore budget on its own upkeep and the employees’ salaries. Only 16 per cent of the budget is left for sanitation and maintenance work.

But if there is a commitment to improve the quality of life, funds can hardly be a hurdle. International funding agencies, NGOs, philanthropic businessmen and NRIs can be tapped. Voluntary effort can be organised if there is a proper initiative. Even citizens do not mind paying a little extra if they are convinced that the money will be rightly spent and there are concrete results before them. There are issues that require long-term planning. Providing regular power and managing traffic are the two challenges that need to be taken care of. Population pressure is mounting on cities, which are growing wildly with unplanned construction work and encroachments galore. During the days of militancy, many left their insecure villages to live in better protected cities and stayed on because of the trappings of city life. On the other hand, villages remain deprived of basic amenities and means of livelihood there are fast shrinking. So there is a continuous migration to cities, which find it difficult to cope with the pressure. An integrated development approach is required to tackle the situation, otherwise it would be difficult to meet the citizens’ basic needs for clean drinking water, uninterrupted power supply, safe roads and a tolerable environment which may lead to more social strife.

FRANKLY SPEAKING

Gujarat: the ball now in court
A test case for Indian democracy
Hari Jaisingh

IT is a pity that one major autonomous pillar of the Constitution has got politicised. This does not reflect well on the custodians of Indian democracy. The question here is not of who is right or who is wrong, but of norms, decorum and constitutional propriety of the way the ruling establishment should conduct itself in the face of what it thinks to be "a provocative act" to its political authority.

One may or may not agree with the assessment of the Election Commission with regard to the holding of elections in Gujarat. It is also not necessary to endorse the position the Chief Election Commissioner, Mr J. M. Lyngdoh, has taken on the desirability of imposing President's rule on the trouble-torn state.

Here opinions could vary. So could be the assessment of the situation. Unfortunately for Gujarat, even a perspective reading of the situation gets stuck in the majority-minority syndrome. Indeed, there are already certain disturbing signs in the polity which need to be corrected in the larger interests of the nation.

When senior functionaries the government and the ruling BJP take a position, they ought to keep in mind whether their public postures, wittingly or unwittingly, would affect the autonomous standing of the Election Commission or not.

The commission cannot be treated as a static body. It must be viewed as a dynamic organ of the Constitution which has to appropriately respond to new challenges and new situations. It would, therefore, be wrong to suggest, as stated by former Law Minister Arun Jaitley, that the EC should solely concentrate on the election question and that it has no authority to assess the overall situation in Gujarat whether normalcy for holding polls earlier than scheduled exists or whether those affected by the riots have been properly rehabilitated or not. We need to appreciate that the poll process is not a mechanical device. It is part of vibrant India's live democracy.

Mr Jaitley has unnecessarily tried to mix up too many things by giving examples of Kashmir and militancy-day Punjab. Those are separate issues with different backdrops and ground realities and, therefore, must be seen differently. Well, Mr Jaitley, the country's political complexities cannot be seen and argued in terms of a lawyer's brief!

The trouble with the BJP leadership is that it has been seeing Gujarat solely from the point of view of its votebank politics and not in the larger context of the fractured polity that requires special care and a healing touch. The primary task in Gujarat is of creating the right atmosphere for holding free and fair election there. Chief Minister Narendra Modi has nothing to lose by a more benevolent and humanitarian response to heal the wounds of the riot victims, whether Hindus or Muslims.

The BJP leaders must not forget that they have a solemn obligation towards larger Indian society, beyond Gujarat. They have to be fair and transparent both in thinking and actions for the sake of the party's credibility and in the interest of the country.

What is disquieting in the whole setting is the growing area of intolerance. Some of the BJP leaders are both restless and restive in their "quickie politics" with the result that they are unable to build the requisite goodwill among all sections of society to register their political legitimacy.

Gujarat today cannot be seen in isolation. It has to be viewed in totality of Indian ethos of secularism and communal harmony, keeping in view its sensitivities and susceptibilities. It is a fact that Gujarat's wounds are yet to heal after the traumatic communal holocaust of recent months. The Godhra carnage was a beastly face of the Indian polity. So were the subsequent incidents of riots and violence in different parts of the state.

The question here is not of who is to blame or who started what and when. We have now to look beyond and promptly take correctives to bury the most gruesome chapter of Indian democracy which has virtually pushed the country years behind in its march forward.

I have analysed the Gujarat happenings earlier a number of times. I do not wish to repeat my observations. Of course, I still carry a feeling of hurt and try to examine why the Indian leadership has failed to set the pace for a new India over the past five decades with a view to evolving an integrated harmonious society where citizens of all religious, opinions, shades, castes, colour and creed live together for betterment and with a total commitment to the national good. The failure is obviously deep-rooted. It cannot be wiped out by a quick electoral stroke.

Amidst the onerous task ahead, even small and small honest steps can go a long way in creating the right atmosphere for generating confidence among all sections of the population.

The ruling establishment ought to have shown more understanding and guts to properly respond to the Election Commission's assessment of the situation in Gujarat. This would have earned it goodwill without dragging the EC into controversy.

Those at the helm of national affairs must learn to respect the opinion of the constitutionally provided autonomous institutions, even if it means swallowing a bitter pill or two.

The Union Cabinet is, of course, very much within its rights to refer the matter to the President for seeking an opinion from the Supreme Court. I wish the government could have avoided this course and shown more gracious response to the observations made by the three-member Election Commission.

Dynamic institutions demand a dynamic response. A number of steps have been taken in the past with a view to curbing the autonomous functioning of the EC. Even the enlargement of the one-man Election Commission to the three-member body was meant to neutralise the Seshan Effect which was then not being relished by the powers that be at the Centre.

Mr T. N. Seshan had his own eccentricities, but he did put life into the commission by fighting against some disturbing facets of the electoral system. He was somewhat despotic, but he meant business, enforced discipline and played tough.

Indeed, the time has come to look at men, matters and issues objectively and dispassionately. It is also necessary not to push the Election Commission to the wall. In fact, no political party or group of individuals should be allowed to hijack Indian democracy on one pretext or the other.

A degree of caution has to be exercised on the way India's constitutional units function, keeping in view the country's democratic tradition. The credibility of Indian democracy depends on how independently the Election Commission works. Equally important is its functional transparency in the discharge of its role in today's turbulent polity.

Unfortunately, for years there has been too much stress on individuals and too little on institutions, their integrity and autonomy. This has led to an erosion of both effectiveness and morale in the crucial segments of the constitutional apparatus with a corresponding increase in arbitrariness, often leading to partisan and reckless intervention.

Sadly, this has led to a systematic neglect of democratic values and norms. Indeed, the tendency to treat power as a means of partisan gains and the state as an instrument of patronage and profit must be checked.

The country's democratic institutions are like tender plants. They need proper nurturing and care, and not distorted responses.

What we need today is a new kind of politician who understands the importance of the country's democratic institutions. These need not be seen as inimical to his existence and political goals.

Indian democracy no doubt is passing through a period of grave crisis. Politically, everything is on the boil. There are several areas of conflict, often grave. The dimensions of the present controversy are actually a pointer to the crisis of leadership. The problem is of the absence of a vision and the ability to see problematic areas in a wider rational and national perspective. We hope the apex court would see the EC controversy in the larger context of Indian democracy to ensure its healthy growth.

MIDDLE

Rakhi musings
Punam Khaira Sidhu

YOU know what they say about sons being sons until they acquire a wife, and daughters being your little girls all their lives. Well, as I grew older I found that this homespun adage is perfectly true of real life. My brothers who were part of a close knit family unit changed after they married. No more phone calls, or flying visits to renew the sibling bonds. No more caring or sharing and keeping each other updated on every new pimple or itch.

I can act constructively to do something about it while there is still time. I pack my bags, put in a leave application and tell my husband that Raksha Bandhan is when I need to be with my brother. So what are you waiting for?. Just get together a thali, a Rakhi and a box of sweets and go visit the recalcitrant truant who is an inextricable part of your memories of growing up.

COMMENTARY

Can India be a world model?
M. S. N. Menon

CAN India be a “model” for the world? Yes, says Stephane Dion, Canadian Minister for Inter-Governmental Affairs. To Canada, India is a source of hope for humanity.

But how? According to Dion, India is all about the art of living in harmony, all about co-existence of races and religions and cultures. And India has had a large measure of success.

India has been a model for millennia. To the early Greeks, the Gymnosophists (the rishis of ancient India) were ideal men. To Megasthenes, the Greek ambassador to the court of Chandragupta Maurya, the Indian state and society were models of virtue. To the Chinese, India was the “western heaven”. And India was the model for Sir Thomas More’s Utopia.

What is the secret of India’s success? According to Stephane Dion, it is its policy of “Sarva Dharma Samabhava”. Equal respect for all. Or if you like, its policy of secularism. We can trace this spirit back to the times of Ashoka, the greatest emperor in history.

Canada is a country of two major ethnic strands — the Anglo-Saxons and the French. They have not yet found a way to live together in concord and amity. At one time, the Anglo-Saxons wanted to assimilate (absorb) the French, but the French refused to give up their district language and culture. And yet we in India have dozens of languages and cultures — all living in harmony. That is why Canada is deeply interested in the Indian experience. The success of India is essential for the success of the Canadian experiment. And perhaps of the world.

Says Father Peter Hans Kolvenbach, former Superior General of the Jesuit Order: “How people with many languages, religions and cultures live together in India is a lesson to learn. India has an important role to play in shaping the destiny of mankind.” Coming as it did from the Jesuit Order, it was high praise. But the children of Macaulay are not impressed. They have not thought of it as a fit subject for study. They prefer to imitate the West.

One people, one language, one religion, one culture — this was a tribal ideal. India was the exception. (True, there are still advocates of this tribal ideal in India.) But to know how India chose diversity, we have to go back to the Vedic Age.

The Vedic poet asks: “Who is there who truly knows and who can say/Whence this unfathomed world and from what cause?” A profound question. It was in the quest of its answer that the Aryan discovered his religions, philosophic systems and many other things. Kapila and Charvaka, Buddha and Mahavira were the first pioneers. They created a whole world of thought. India continues to be on that quest.

Others had other answers. They reserted to “revelations”. All the semitic faiths explain the great mysteries in terms of the revelations of their faiths. But they had to pay a heavy price to their gods: they were denied freedom of enquiry. (The Christians have since discovered their folly.)

Aurobindo warns us not to “chain the (human) spirit to some fixed mental idea or system of religious cult...(not to) declare all departures from it a peril and a disturbance.”

Thus the Indian civilisation was founded on freedom. Almost all others were founded on unfreedom — on its denial.

Freedom of thought and freedom of senses led to diversity of life and thoughts. Which explains how India’s is the richest civilisation — a wonder of the world. But freedom is not enough to maintain this diversity. Other things are also needed, which is why India is a model. And it is lack of these other things that had been the cause of the failure of various experiments in the West. If the immigration policy has failed in the West, it was because diversity did not lead to tolerance. In fact, want of freedom among the Semitic faiths led to dogmatism. And that led to intolerance of all kinds.

Aurobindo used to say that the world can be organised only on the basis of two principles: the principle of freedom and diversity and the principle of uniformity. The Semitic faiths prefered a world of uniformity the “American way of life,” “globalisation” and so on. Truly, a cemetery of dead ideas and dead habits, where existence is repetitive.

India considered mankind as one large family — “Vasudaiva Kutumbakam”. There is no scope here for heathens or pagans, for infidels or Darul Harbs. In one of his rock edicts Ashoka says: “There is no higher service than the welfare of the whole world,” He made no distinction between Buddhists and others.

No wonder, India became the home of all the races of the world. It was its tolerant spirit which attracted men from different parts of the world. The Dravidians and Aryans were the first to come.

Then came the Sakas, Kushanas, Seythians, Greeks, Tartars, Persians, Mongols, Turks and so many others. The flow has not ceased. The Tibetans are the latest to come and they have all found a secure place in this land. Only with Islam we had difficulties. But then that is a different story.

There are believers and non-believers in India, heretics and sceptios, rationalists and free thinkers, materialists and hedonists. Indeed, the entire spectrum from theists to atheists. No one is persecuted in this land for his belief. No one had to leave this land to preserve his faith.

Plato concentrated his thoughts on the perfect Republic. And that has remained the quest of the Western man to this day. But India concentrated its thoughts on the perfect man. Without the perfect man, there can be no perfect republic. But such a thought never occurred to the West. Belief in the perfectability of man runs like a red thread throughout Indian history. Gandhi (Churchill was contemptuous of the “naked fakir”) was the latest exponent of this doctrine.. He had no faith in systems. More so in systems of the West.

India’s is a universal spirit. Never parochial. That continues to this day. Mahatma Gandhi (Great Soul), Nehru (visionary), Aurobindo (mystic), Vivekananda (reformer), Tagore (universalist poet) and Radhakrishnan (philosopher of East and West) — all of them were universal men. India has never stretched its nationalism beyond a point. “I do not subscribe to the doctrine of Asia for Asians,” said the Mahatma.

Today about 10-15 million are on the move each year. They leave their hearths and homes in search of greener pastures. Perhaps this will continue. Everywhere we have mixed societies. But men do not know how to live in mixed societies. It is to this task that the world is turning today. And it looks to India as the most successful model. Which is what prompted the Canadian Minister to put so much faith in India.

The West stands for an active life. The East for a contemplative, reflective life. Each is not complete in itself. We have to bring them together. They are complementary.

Throughout the ages, the West has sought paradise on earth, while India has sought the inner perfection of man. After having failed to create a paradise on earth, the Western man is now ready to experiment with the inner perfection of man. And it is here that India has much to give the West.

A VIEW POINT

Settling water dispute
G. S. Dhillon

FROM media reports readers fear that another Mahabharat is planned to be fought by politicians over the issue of the completion of the SYL. It is proposed to look back into the history as how Punjab resolved its water disputes with its neighbours.

After the completion of the Satluj Valley System in the 1930s, Punjab wanted to take up the work of building the Bhakra Dam, a storage project on the Satluj, the Sind province protested that it would adversely affect the equitable distribution of water between the British Punjab and the Sind province. As a result, the Government of India set up the Rau’s Commission.

After prolonged hearings, the award given in 1945 provided with the construction of the Bhakra Dam, the level of the Indus river would be affected leading to the inundation of canals in the Sind province. So Punjab should pay to Sind the cost of construction of two barrages on the Indus river at Kotri and Gudu.

Accepting the recommendations, the Government of India asked Punjab and Sind to settle financial and other matters amicably through negotiations. A draft was prepared, but before it could be put up for signatures, British rule came to end. After Independence, East Punjab felt “relieved of the obligations” arising out of the Rau Award of 1945 and took up the construction of the Bhakra Dam without any fetters and obligations to meet the water needs of Bhawalpur, West Punjab and Sind in Pakistan.

This led to turmoil in West Punjab (Pakistan) as irrigation water to about 5.5 per cent of the sown crop area got stopped at the most critical time of the kharif period. Pakistan dispatched a high-level ministerial delegation to New Delhi for negotiating the restoration of the canal supplies fed from the two headworks in India. As a result of the negotiations, an agreement was signed on 4.4.1948 and this came to be known as Inter — Dominion Agreement of May 1948.

Under the agreement Pakistan deposited an advance with the Reserve Bank of India to cover the part cost of the O&M of the headworks. This agreement did not settle anything but provided a “working basis” which remained in force until displaced by the comprehensive Indus Water Treaty of 1960.

As a result of the Indus Water Treaty coming into force in 1973, the amount of water that became available to India was 15.2 MAF. Out of this 8 MAF was to be allocated to Rajasthan and some to the Delhi Water Supply and J&K areas. The balance water which became available to Punjab was around 7 MAF. The division of this water became the bone of contention between Punjab and the newly formed Haryana.

Looking minutely we find that the amount of water that became available on the completion of the Beas-Sutlej Link at the Nangal pond (EL.1154 ft) i.e. 3.82 MAF engaged the attention of Haryana. It may be borne in mind that Haryana could get water that is available at the Nangal pond level.

Looking at the other headworks we find that the pond level of the Madhopur headworks is EL. 1143 ft, at the Harike headworks it is EL. 700 ft and that of the Ropar headworks of EL. 762 ft.

Haryana’s share as provided in the sanctioned Beas dam project amounted to 0.9 MAF and currently Haryana is getting about 1.62 MAF through the Narwana branch.

Punjab feels that more water if given to Haryana will be at the cost of the farmers being fed from the Ropar headworks i.e. the command areas of the Sirhind canal and the Bist Doab canal.

The data presented by Punjab’s C.M. is the water being utilised by the Punjab Canal System, but Haryana puts forward the allocated water which includes the water joining the Ravi below the Madhopur headworks i.e. through the streams flowing from J&K.

But as one bank of the Ravi is with Pakistan so infrastructure work could not be built, Similarly the water joining the Satluj below the Harike barrage is included in Haryana’s calculations. It may be mentioned that there is a bridge head just 6 km above the Hussainiwalla headworks and both the banks of the river are with Pakistan. So with the present state of affairs, it is not possible to utilise water from the Satluj — although the Punjab Irrigation Department is trying to check the water outflow at the Hussainiwalla headworks, but it is not very significant.

Another fact is that the amount of water being obtained from the Yamuna is kept out of the calculations whereas in the case of Punjab flow of water in the Ravi river is considered.

Looking back we feel that if Punjab could solve the problem with Pakistan without any fight, why is it not possible in the case of the dispute with Haryana.

Of the three eastern tributaries of the Indus river i.e. Satluj, Beas and Ravi, with the flow in a mean year of 34.8 MAF, Punjab has already given 22.8 MAF water to the non-riparian states and so Punjab cannot be called to be acting in “too miserly a manner” with Haryana. But Haryana is trying to obtain the entire quantity of the Beas water diverted through the B.S. Link which had become available. This cannot be considered as just.

It is proposed that we should return to the pre-reorganisation state i.e. before Ist November, 1966, and pool all the water resources and then allocate water to the different command areas. This work may be given to “neutral” experts from abroad e.g from the World Bank of the UN who will then put their recommendation before the two states.

It may be mentioned that in 1954 East Punjab did a similar exercise when Rizak Ram was the Irrigation & Power Minister and Partap Singh Kairon the Chief Minister. That report, known as the Rizak Ram Water Distribution Report, can form the basis for the experts.

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

The ‘chaupayees’ (quatrains) composed by the warrior guru, Guru Gobind Singh, were added to Rehras by Sikh scholars. The guru’s prayer asking God for His help in fighting evil forces is evident in this composition.

Extend your hand, be my protector

Fulfil my mind’s desire;

Your blessed feet be my mind’s repose

Cherish me like a relation close.

Of all my foes be the destroyer

Extend me your hand, be my saviour;

Bless my family with everlasting peace

Creator, preserve my Sikhs and devotees.

Save me with your own hands I pray

Slay all my enemies today;

Let all my wishes come true

Give me an unending thirst for worshipping you.

Make me meditate on none but you

Whatever I wish, I get from you;

Help my Sikhs and devotees cross life’s ocean

Single out my enemies and slay them one by one.

With your own hands uplift me

From fear of death set me free;

Forever remain on my side

May your sabre and banner by me abide.

Protect me O great protector

Lord of saints, helper of your loved ones;

Always friend of the poor, foe of the evil remain

Lord, the fourteen worlds are within your domain.

When the right time came you created Brahma the creator

When the right time came you created Shiva the destroyer;

At the right time, you sent Vishnu the preserver

Eternal time is your plaything forever.

When you who made Shiva an ascetic, recluse,

And then Brahma vedic knowledge pursue;

To that moment, when you adorned the universe

I render my salutation.

To him alone I offer salutation

All subjects are whose creation;

Who bestowed goodness and virtue on them

And in a trice all enemies overran.

Rehras, Guru Granth Sahib