The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

EDITORIALS

Tasks before new J&K CM

NOW that People’s Democratic Party leader Mufti Mohammad Sayeed has been sworn in Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, he should waste no time in coming up to the expectations of the terrorism-hit people of the state. The voters gave a mandate for change in the hope of getting a government that not only works but also appears to be engaged in alleviating their difficulties. There are three basic problems that demand immediate attention of the PDP-Congress coalition government: unending militant violence, people’s alienation and providing a responsive administration. Of course, the common minimum programme (CMP), agreed to between the PDP and the Congress, is there, but the three key issues cover most of the promises made by both parties during electioneering or through their election manifestos. The new Chief Minister, who heads perhaps the first coalition ministry in the state, is known for his soft corner for militants and pro-Pakistan elements, but those who have taken to the path of the gun and grenades have shown by attacking the Mufti’s house in the outskirts of Srinagar on Saturday, immediately after he took the oath of office and secrecy, that they remain a major threat to the interests of the country and the state. Thus, there is no qualitative change in the terrorist problem plaguing Jammu and Kashmir for over 12 years. This is mainly because India’s belligerent Western neighbour continues to pursue its policy of destabilisation on this side of the border.

What the new government in Srinagar should do is to launch a vigorous campaign of exposing the Pakistani dirty designs aggressively by highlighting the plight of the poor people of the state. The misguided local people, including the indigenous variety of militants, should be made to realise their follies under the influence of Pakistan, which have led to the present plight of Jammu and Kashmir. But a clear message must be sent out that the militants of the foreign variety will be dealt with ruthlessly, as has been the case so far. In dealing with militancy, which, in any case, has to be the government’s top priority, care must be taken to ensure that the innocent and the ordinary people are not harmed or harassed. They have already suffered enormously as a result of cross-border terrorism. Now they must be made to feel that there is a government that works for safeguarding their interests despite all odds. This will help infuse a new sense of belonging among the people, an important strategic weapon for defeating the monster of terrorism. In the context of Jammu and Kashmir, the government will appear to be highly sensitive to the people’s complicated problems if it succeeds in launching economic growth-related projects on a large scale, thus creating increased job opportunities. This is not a tall order if the Mufti government concentrates on infrastructure development considering it as a priority area. Infrastructure projects, by their very nature, have immense employment potential, particularly for the educationally deprived sections of society. If such people find enough opportunities for engaging themselves in the task of economic advancement, it will be difficult for the terrorist industry to get fresh recruits. One hopes Mufti Mohammad Sayeed is also thinking on these lines.

Taxes without exemptions

TO judge the tax reforms package of the Vijay Kelkar committee, announced on Saturday, one should first ask: what is wrong with the present system, and will the new package improve it? One, Indians are among the highly taxed in the world. Dr Vijay Kelkar, an adviser to the Union Finance Minister, has not lowered the individual tax-payer’s burden. Of course, he has raised the tax exemption limit from the present Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh, but also axed all hitherto available exemptions, including the standard deduction for the salaried class. There are some concessions for the handicapped and the senior citizens to get relief on medical expenses. The move, however, will not leave “more money in the housewife’s purse”, to quote Mr Jaswant Singh’s favourite expression. There is no incentive to save. The declining interest rates are already making bank deposits unattractive. The level of corporate taxation is being reduced to 30 per cent from the existing 36.75 per cent. What many may find it hard to digest is the proposal to reduce tax on foreign companies to 35 per cent from the present level of 40 per cent. There are certain dampeners for the corporate sector also. The minimum alternate tax, says the committee, should be scrapped and corporate profits taxed at the proposed rate of 30 per cent. The whole gamut of proposals will be “revenue-neutral”, which means no extra burden on the corporate or individual tax-payers. The second wrong with the existing tax system is that it is too cumbersome. To its credit, the Kelkar committee has attempted to simplify it by reducing the number of slabs and doing away with all exemptions. This is its main achievement. The corporate sector and rich individuals exploit the system’s loopholes to avoid or evade tax, while the plethora of exemptions lead to unnecessary litigation.

Dr Kelkar has tried to address the third widely perceived wrong in the tax administration, that is, while the small fry is caught, the big fish escapes the net. He has reopened the debate whether farm income should be taxed. The committee observes, and rightly so, that much of other income of those engaged in agriculture and related activites like renting out farmhouses for social functions, is passed on as farm income. The loss to the exchequer on this count is estimated at Rs 1,000 crore. If the states give a green signal, they can keep the proceeds from this tax. On paper, this sounds nice. But its implementation will lead to harassment of small farmers at the hands of tax officials and loot at the hands of tax advocates. Besides, farming being still largely dependent on the monsoon, farm income is uncertain and unreliable. The exemption limit for the agriculture sector needs to be raised further so that only the real rich are taxed. Making the tax refund system simpler and setting up a tax information network to assess advance tax and refunds are welcome proposals. All in all, the sweeping proposals will definitely remove some of the shortcomings in the system, but these will also hurt the vested interests, which may try to put these in the cold storage. The Kelkar committee insists that the entire package should be implemented at one go, which, in the existing political culture, is a tall order.

OPINION

India’s strategic culture
Need for consensus, will power and being pro-active
V.P. Malik

THE editorial of a weekly, published soon after the terrorists’ attack on Gandhinagar’s Akshardham Temple stated, “As a nation of forgetting and forgiving, ever ready to bleed and wail, India is unique.”

Why are we unique in this manner? Why are we not pro-active in our security and economic policies and their implementation? Should we blame our strategic culture for such a “passive” outlook? What is our problem that often leads us to strategic indecisions or in-actions and compromises?

Strategic culture is defined as the “ability of the people and society to generate power; and to have the social will and ability for a full and effective use of that power”.

Let us look at India’s strategic culture through our history. India was a powerful and rich nation during the Maurya dynasty (305 BC), the Gupta dynasty (400-600 AD), Moghuls rule (1526-1761 AD), and then the British. The last two came from outside although the Moghuls chose to be absorbed within India. The outsiders were able to conquer and rule because the Indian society had lost the ability to generate power, and the will and the ability to make use of that power. We did not think strategically or consider ourselves as a nation. We were a house divided, fighting among ourselves.

By the 20th century we had acquired, and accepted, an image of being an accommodative and forgiving Hindu, Jain, Buddhist society, full of piety and ahimsa: one, which believes more in God-given destiny than making our own destiny. Out of spirituality, pacifism and non-violence, many of our 20th century political leaders conjured up the idea of a morally superior India, professing peace and harmony, in a world where nations indulge in cut-throat competition for their own interests. They professed “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam” (when India itself could not live like a family) and other value-based politics, which is morally superior but does not reflect the international realism. One cannot blame them altogether because during centuries of slavery and colonialism, the Indian leadership forgot all about Chanakya’s “Arthashastra” and its lessons! The British never permitted Indian political leaders or civil servants to deal with strategic matters. Strategic planning and organisational affairs of the defence forces were kept away from the public view.

We gained Independence after a long struggle, but without fighting the rulers. We tackled them non-violently although Hindus and Muslims of the subcontinent killed each other in lakhs. Many people blame Gandhiji’s strategy of non-violence for our “passive” and “inactive” strategic culture. That is not correct. Gandhi functioned at two levels. He was a hard realist. He adopted a proactive non-violence strategy against the British, because at that time we did not, and could not, possess the force of arms to fight the British. In September, 1947, he said, “If there was no other way of securing justice from Pakistan, if Pakistan persistently refused to see its proven error and continued to minimise it, war would be the only alternative left to the government.” He maintained that violence was better than cowardice. He gave his blessings to Brigadier L. P. Sen and his troops when they were flown to Kashmir to fight Pakistani raiders and soldiers in October, 1947. In matters of national security, Gandhi relied more on the doctrine of sword than the doctrine of non-violence. He was conscious of the compulsions and complexities of international power play. And for that reason he was against India taking the issue of Kashmir, even as a complainant, to the United Nations: a strategic error for which we continue to bleed till date.

Despite Gandhi’s realism, our strategic thinking, with one exception of the integration of over 600 states within the Indian Union and which included the use of military in Hyderabad and Junagadh, was missing. Several successive and tragic events come to our mind: approaching the United Nations Security Council on the J & K issue when we were winning that war, granting of “suzerainty” to China over Tibet without any quid pro quo, provocative forward deployment policy on the Sino-Indian border without adequate military preparedness in 1962, return of the strategically important Haji Pir Pass to Pakistan after the 1965 war, return of 91,000 prisoners without making Pakistan agree to a permanent solution of J & K at the time of signing the Shimla Agreement in 1971, dithering for 24 years between the testing of a nuclear device in 1974 and of the nuclear weapons in 1998. Today, all these events reflect on our inexperience and neglect of a strategic mindset.

In 1999, we prepared a draft nuclear doctrine but introduced a clause of No First Use: we shall not use our weapons till the enemy bombs us ! We keep warning Pakistan of dire consequences and indulging in political rhetoric everyday, but never mustering the will to take action! We keep the armed forces deployed on the border for 10 months but are not clear as to what we wish to achieve from it. We have a terrorist assault on Akshardham Temple and all we can think of is to have a nationwide bandh!

Our political parties keep criticising each other daily over important national security policies on Pakistan, J & K, terrorism, Gujarat, Cauvery river water and so on, but they will not sit together to work out long-term national security and national interest policies. Long- term strategic thinking and the social will and determination to set things right, pro-actively or otherwise, continues to delude us.

Ever since the Bofors controversy there have been more acrimonious debates in Parliament, not on defence policies but about defence purchases. The Opposition (whichever) blames the government for the lack of defence preparedness but also raises controversies over every defence purchase. The media, the CAG, the PAC and the CVC; all keep talking of scams and procedural lapses. And due to “suspected” scams and prolonged acrimonious debates in Parliament and the media, no leader or official is willing to give a decision and expedite the procurement of new weapons and equipment. But how do we explain this to the troops which remained deployed on the front for a long time? Who is accountable to them?

What about our economic culture and policies? We call and accept our low GDP growth rate of 2 to 3 per cent as a Hindu growth rate. A Hindu growth rate! A country becomes rich when its people are rich. But how do we in India look at the rich people? With suspicion, as if they all are sinners! If making money is a sin, then how can the country become rich? Why do some people use the word “Bania” disparagingly? Why should society not look at people making money with respect, so long as they are using legitimate means and paying their taxes? We think of the “pro-active” economic policies for investments and disinvestments, and then quickly make them “inactive” for the sake of people who demand that they remain on the payrolls without working! There is neither political consensus nor the will to set things right. The result is weak governance.

Our weakness in the strategic culture stems from our inability to learn from our history. There is too much of political infighting and too less political consensus. We are a politically divided house in essential policies of security and economic development. Age-old weaknesses in the attitude and approach to national security and interests are finding their echo in the lack of decision-making, or wrong decision-making. Our governance is weak. We remain internalised, fixing each other rather than fixing the outsiders.

In today’s world, neither security nor economy can be compartmentalised. They have to remain complementary, not at the cost of each other. Security is a basic prerequisite, and the faster and broader-based the economic development of the nation; the greater is its security. If we want to encourage foreign investment into the country, we have to create an image of security and stability. This is where China beats us hollow. We are the world’s largest democracy and liberalised economy, but we get less than one-twentieth of the foreign direct investment (FDI) that China gets. The same USA that praises our democracy and transparency and protests about the Chinese human rights violations and dictatorship, sends maximum FDI to China.

So how should we overcome the weaknesses that have crept in today and improve our strategic culture? Here are a few basic suggestions.

* First and foremost, even in the globalised world, we have to remind ourselves about nationalism and patriotism. These are forgotten today except in the Army where every officer is required to practice “the safety, honour and welfare of your country come first, always and every time. The honour, welfare and comfort of the men you command come next. Your own ease, comfort and safety come last, always and every time.”

* We must keep reminding ourselves that we are Indians first, and only then Punjabis, Gujaratis or Madrasis: Hindus, Muslims or Christians; or Pandits, Thakurs or Dalits. Ernest Rennan said, “What constitutes a nation is not speaking the same tongue, or belonging to the same religion or ethnic group, but having accomplished great things in common in the past, and the wish to accomplish them again in future.” In the interest of Indian nationalism, such regional, communal and casteist identities and diversities have to be underplayed and not emphasised.

* We must create and maintain political consensus on the formulation and implementation of national security and major economic policies. We must not politicise routine governance, and demand actions from the government services like the civil, the police, the armed forces and the judiciary in political interests instead of national interest.

* Strategy and diplomacy in international relations are based on the art of the possible, and the advancement of national interests. The Western world believes that “morality in this ethical system is the handmaiden of state policy. It is a virtue dictated by the situation in which we are placed”. The Vedic thinking has been that “Chakravarty Raja is free to have his policies limited by strictures and tampered by ethical considerations and sentiments, but not if his intention is to best serve the national interests”. A righteous cause is important, but the method need not be sentimental, or even ethical! According to Kautilya, “when the interests of the country are involved, ethics are a burdensome irrelevance”. Today, Pakistan has one short and long-term policy towards India: to make it weak and make it break. We need a security doctrine, a long-term policy on Pakistan, even on J & K. There is need to “act” and not always “react”.

* Let us teach patriotism to our children in schools, colleges and at home. Soldiering, it is said, is an honourable profession. And yet no political leader, bureaucrat, or industrialist wants to send his children to the armed forces. Greater social respect and not greater pay is needed to make this profession more popular. Let us not forget our war heroes, as we did on Vijay Divas this year, within three years of the Kargil war. If the leadership neither knows about the military nor has any stake, and also keeps the military leadership on the sidelines, how can they take correct strategic politico-military decisions?

* We need to make national wealth, individually and collectively, along with progress in science and technology, art and culture. Let us, therefore, stop the culture of social and political pampering of non-working people and correct our labour laws. All of us should make money, but by right means, through intelligence and cleverness and not by deceit and crookedness.

India has to carve out strategic space for itself in the world. This is achievable but can happen only when we begin to pursue our national interests collectively and passionately, in a sustained manner, whatever the cost. We should consider these issues as a nation, not on a political party or regional basis. We need to be realists; neither moralists nor pessimists. That should be India’s strategic culture of powering the nation.

The writer, a retired General, was the Chief of Army Staff during the Indo-Pak Kargil war.

POINT OF LAW

Gurdwara Judicial Commission and the claim to perpetuity
Anupam Gupta

FEW “courts” in the history of the court system in India have been used as an instrument of politics and factional warfare more openly, and by all sides, than the Sikh Gurdwara Judicial Commission set up under the Sikh Gurdwaras Act of 1925.

And though the five-member Full Bench of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, which pronounced on the status, character and tenure of the Commission on September 13, holding it to be a body whose functions under the Act are “purely judicial”, had no option but to construe the statute the way it did, the political interest the Commission has aroused in recent times does no credit at all to its reputation as a judicial body.

Refraining studiously from intruding into the political domain — to the extent that (but for a passing historical reference at page 157) the majority verdict, 173 pages long, does not even refer to the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) by that name, preferring to call it just what the Act of 1925 calls it, the “Board” — the Full Bench grafts nonetheless a highly creative and purposive limitation on this peculiar judicial body seemingly inseparable from Sikh politics.

A limitation as to the tenure or life of the Commission — or of the members of the Commission, to be more precise — a point on which the Act of 1925 is intriguingly silent.

The term of a member of the Commission is “coterminous or co-tenuous” with the term of the Board, holds the majority, comprising Justice G.S. Singhvi, Justice V.K. Bali and Justice Nirmal Singh, speaking through Justice Bali.

As per Section 51 of the Sikh Gurdwaras Act, the term of the Board (or the SGPC) is five years from the date of its constitution or until the constitution of a new Board, whichever is later.

The use of the expression “co-tenuous” in the majority judgement alternatively with “coterminous” is, in the context in which it is used, highly significant, even if innovative.

Edited by Lesley Brown and published in 1993, the New Shorter Oxford Dictionary (volume 2) illustrates the meaning of “tenuous” with a breathtakingly evocative quotation of P.D. James (“the wave retreated to leave its tenuous lip of foam”).

Even more to the point, perhaps, is the illustration from Henry James (“the tenuity of the thread by which his future hung”) against the immediately preceding entry, “tenuity”, a word far less frequently used in modern times.

Whatever be the nuance, there is no doubt that “co-tenuous” as an alternative for “coterminous” in the majority verdict is meant to highlight the brevity of the Commission’s tenure as against the claim that the members of the Commission hold office in perpetuity.

A claim that was not only advanced before the Full Bench in so many words but has actually found favour with one of the dissenting Judges, Justice Amar Dutt.

The members of the Commission, rules Justice Amar Dutt, “would hold the office in perpetuity” unless any one of them incurs any of the disqualifications prescribed in Section 79 or the Commission is dissolved as provided in Section 83 of the Act of 1925.

The legislature having, in its wisdom, chosen not to provide any fixed tenure for the members of the Commission, says the Judge, it would not be appropriate for the court to “fill the void” by interpretation.

The court cannot, he says sharply, quoting English judge Patrick Devlin, legislate — in the guise of interpretation — for a casus omissus (an event or contingency for which no provision is made), and goes on to cite the example of Lord Denning, who earned a stinging reprimand from the House of Lords in 1951 for daring to do so.

With great respect to Justice Amar Dutt, a claim that members of a judicial body in a developing, democratic society like India hold office “in perpetuity”, is a claim too startlingly feudal to be accepted in the name of the “wisdom of the legislature” or any other canon of statutory interpretation.

Whatever may be, or may have been, the position in other countries like the United States or England with developed democratic cultures, and a historically-nurtured ethic of institutional functioning and accountability, the legal system in India simply cannot do without either a fixed tenure for all those who hold any kind of judicial office or a binding and inviolate age of retirement.

By failing to provide for either, the Sikh Gurdwaras Act of 1925 reveals a casus omissus which, if not provided for by judicial interpretation — call it judicial legislation, if you like — would render the Act itself, insofar as it establishes the Judicial Commission, plainly unconstitutional.

For while I cannot point to any individual article in the Constitution that postulates such fixity or brevity of tenure as a matter of general principle, there cannot, I am convinced, be a more egregious violation, nay, subversion, of the nation’s founding charter and the democratic, egalitarian vision that animates it than the concept of a judgeship, or incumbency of any other public office, in perpetuity.

The rap on the knuckles that Lord Denning received from the House of Lords in the Newport Corporation case five decades back for presuming to fill in a legislative gap by interpretation, rather than waiting for an amending Act, must be seen in the context of the severe limitations on judicial review that obtain in a country which has no written Constitution and where the absolutism of Parliament is an established legal dogma.

Even for England, however, it may be noted, the approach of the law lords in the Newport Corporation case in 1951 was an expression of what Prof Robert Stevens has described as the “era of substantive formalism”, an era in the history of the House of Lords that he places between 1940 and 1955.

Throughout the 1940s and for much of the 1950s, writes Prof Stevens in his massive work “Law and Politics: the House of Lords as a Judicial Body, 1800-1976,” there was virtually no acceptance by the law lords of any element of discretion in adjudication, let alone a balancing of interests.

For these fifteen years, he says, judges wrote their opinions “with an air of expression of single-line inevitability” and, under the guise of an extreme form of the declaratory theory of law — the theory that judges only declare the law and do not make it — played the role of total deference to the executive.

The result, observes Stevens, was that the Court that had once boasted of Atkin and Wright — judges who consciously developed many areas of the law and provided an outstanding decade of judicial performance in the 1930s — came now to regard itself “not only as incapable of major judicial legislation, but also as incapable of the most trivial judicial legislation, even when the inexorable logic of the common law appeared to leave a gap.”

Justice Amar Dutt’s dissent is based precisely on such an exaggerated attitude of self-denial, strengthened not inconsiderably by his reading of the legislative history of Section 79 (iv) of the Sikh Gurdwaras Act.

The State Government may remove any member of the Judicial Commission, said Section 79 (iv) before it was struck down by the High Court in 1968, if he has served as a member for more than two years.

Reintroduced in the statute in 1954, this power of removal upon expiry of a fixed term — mistaken by Justice Amar Dutt as a statutory prescription of a fixed tenure — was enjoyed by the State Government even under the original Act of 1925 till it was done away with by an amendment in 1944.

“On the face of it,” ruled a three-member Full Bench of the High Court in 1968, the power in Clause (iv) of Section 79 is arbitrary and unguided and violative of Article 14 of the Constitution. The tenure of a member of the Judicial Commission would, after the expiry of two years, be entirely at the whim and caprice of the government, who had no guidance given to them in the statute as to when such power is to be exercised.

No attempt having been made by the legislature for thirty years thereafter to re-enact Section 79 (iv) and provide a fixed tenure for members of the Judicial Commission, says Justice Amar Dutt, the court cannot step in to fill the void.

That, as would be obvious by now even to the lay reader, is a reminder of the doctrine of casus omissus and I can do no better myself than hark back to Prof Robert Stevens’ formidably researched critique of the House of Lords.

For all the excursions of Denning decried by the House of Lords, he writes, the law-making functions of the lords “became increasingly widely accepted” by the late 1960s, even as it came increasingly to be realised that judges were applying policies just as much when they refused to apply a principle as when they extended one.

By the mid-1970s, concludes Stevens, the House of Lords “was no longer regarded (merely) as the restater of accepted doctrines, but rather as the incremental developer of new doctrines”. While the belief in the necessity of “clear” legislative rules was still stronger than in many other common law jurisdictions, the “belief in the anonymity and irrelevance of the judicial contribution had largely evaporated.”

As Justice Amar Dutt’s dissent shows, however, it is a belief that still finds an echo, and a rather loud one, in the Punjab and Haryana High Court.

TRENDS & POINTERS

Raveena Tandon to animals’ rescue

RAVEENA Tandon shows that she’s all heart in a new advertisement protesting the suffering of animals in transport. The actress, who won top honours for her role in Daman, was so disturbed by PETA’s evidence of abuse that she posed with Jamuna, a cow just like those killed for their meat and skins, to urge the public to “steer clear of animal cruelty”.

“Jamuna and other animals like her are as gentle as their abusers are violent”, says Raveena. “Their abuse at the hands of corrupt skin and meat traders must be stopped.”

PETA’s investigation of the trade in cattle, goats, sheep and other animals reveals beatings, mutilation and a miserable death at the hands of transporters and abattoir workers. After they are sold at auction, many animals are marched for days and are given neither a sip of water nor a bite to eat. When they collapse from exhaustion, handlers twist and break their tails or rub tobacco or hot chilli peppers in their eyes. Most are crammed, in hideously overcrowded conditions, into lorries. By the time they reach the abattoir, many bones have been broken. The killers, most of whom have never been trained to kill animals painlessly, saw dull blades back and forth across the animals’ throats.

These abusive transport and slaughter practices are illegal, but corruption allows them to continue. Despite PETA’s pleas, to date the federal government has not compelled officials to enforce the laws. Prime Minister Vajpayee’s only action has been to send a letter requesting that state officials fine violators of the law, but with no follow-up, the police in many areas accept bribes to look the other way.

Raveena joins a growing list of celebrities from around the world who want the government to enforce its own laws, including Anupam Kher, Akshaye Khanna, Manisha Koirala and Juhi Chawla, Om Puri and Sir Paul McCartney. PETA

Sweets do not cause obesity

Moderate consumption of sweets and chewing gum is not a major cause of obesity or caries, according to the Spanish Association of Dieticians and Nutritionists (AEDN).

Sugary foods should make up 10 per cent of daily energy intake, and that proportion could include sweets and chewing gum, consumed a maximum of four times daily, AEDN representative Imma Palma said.

Sweets contain glucose, proteins, vitamins and minerals which can improve children’s memory, according to the study. There was no proof that the consumption of sweets caused diabetes, and it did not necessarily lead to caries provided it was combined with adequate dental care. DPA

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

Of all Religions this is the best religion,

To utter the Holy Name with adoration,

and to do good deeds;

Of all rites the holiest rite

Is to cleanse one’s soul

in the company of the saints;

Of all strivings, the best striving

To meditate on the Name and praise it for ever;

Of all speeches, the ambrosial speech is

To utter aloud, having hearkened to it, God’s glory;

Of all shrines, the most sacred shrine,

Nanak, is the heart in which the Lord indwelleth.

—The Sukhmani, Ashtapadi (Sri Guru Granth Sahib)

***

Nanak, among millions of men there is scarcely one Aparas

Whose tongue will not touch falsehood,

Whose heart yearns for the vision of the Immaculate One,

Whose eyes covet not the beauty of his neighbour’s wife,

Who serves the Lord’s saints and loves them,

Whose ears will not hear evil spoken against any.

Since in his heart he deems himself lowliest of all men,

Who by the Guru’s grace has freed himself from all wickedness,

Has banished all evil desires from his heart,

Has conquered the passions, and is free from the fine cravings!

— The Sukhmani, Ashtapadi (Sri Guru Granth Sahib)

***

To dwell in a pleasant land, good works done in a former birth, right desires in the heart: this is a supreme blessing.

—The Sutta-Nipata, 260

***

As a fortress guarded within and without, so guard thyself. Leave no loopholes for attack.

—The Dhammapada

***

If I disobey my heart I disobey God.

—A Sufi saying