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Tuesday,
November 26, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
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Time to
act firmly Western
indifference No end to
Veerappan drama |
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Drought
a systemic failure?
In days
gone by
Politics:
limits of outsourcing
Why
people get sick at weekends
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Time to act firmly Sunday’s terrorist attack on Jammu’s Raghunath Temple and Shiv Temple points to a well-calculated design. This is the second attempt to target the historic Raghunath Temple this year—the first occurred on March 30. In between militants struck at Gujarat’s Akshardham Temple. The dirty plan appears to be to provoke one section of society against another. After all, these killers are identified, though wrongly, with one particular community because of their names. They and their masters across the border can achieve their real objective only if communal illwill reaches a dangerous level. Luckily, this has not happened. It is a tribute to the maturity of the people. They have saved the country from falling into the militants’ traps. But the question is: what are the authorities responsible for unearthing such dangerous plots doing? It is not enough to blame India’s enemy number one, Pakistan, whenever there is an incident of terrorist violence. This is the easiest way for the government to hide its weaknesses or its poor performance. Broadly, terrorism can be defeated in two ways. One is to destroy terrorists’ sources of strength, including their bases, and punish their sponsors—which means taking military action against Pakistan. The Union Government did try this method recently but it could not succeed because of the American factor. The second method is to have foolproof security arrangements at all sensitive points and dealing with militants ruthlessly. This demands a highly efficient intelligence gathering network. Without a strong intelligence backup it is just not possible for security agencies to do their job effectively. Why is it so that our intelligence personnel fail to smell the rat when a plot is hatched against the country with presumably local support? The terrorists reach their destination and create havoc, and yet our intelligence people get no wind of it. Attacks on religious places are too serious occurrences to be taken in a routine fashion. Heads must roll in the intelligence agencies after identifying the men and women responsible for the intolerable failure. There must be a system to ensure accountability. The country’s security cannot be compromised under any circumstances. So far as the Jammu and Kashmir Government is concerned, it should not forget that its performance will be judged primarily keeping in view its role in taming the terrorist monster. Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed should remember that terrorists and their Pakistani masters will use every opportunity to carry on the proxy war they launched over a decade ago. His government must not appear to be lax or soft on the question of handling terrorism. Militants basically understand the language of the gun. The government must adopt a no-nonsense approach for dealing with these killers. It must review its decision to keep POTA (Prevention of Terrorism Act) on hold. Going slow on such matters is always helpful. This, however, does not mean that it should not care for innocent people who too suffer in the process of tackling terrorism. |
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Western indifference The international response to the terrorist attack on two temples in Jammu on Sunday night is not surprising. It has once again exposed the lopsided priorities of the global community on the important issue of combating terrorism through collective action. For most international TV channels, including the over-rated BBC, the top story remained the violence in Nigeria. There was not even a brief reference to the attack on the Raghunath Temple and the adjoining Shiva Temple hours after the story was broken by most Indian channels. Not that it is going to make any difference to the way the US-led international community looks at incidents of Pakistan-engineered acts of terrorism on Indian soil except that it would help local audiences know that our fight has to be waged on our own steam. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee did the right thing by daring to question the proposed attack on Iraq by the USA on the pretext of making the globe safe from the threat of weapons of mass destruction in President Saddam Hussein’s arsenal. The concern is over-hyped. The USA cannot dispute the fact that India was among the front-runners in condemning the terrorist attack on the mightiest nation’s symbols of economic and military might. It was also among the first to join the global campaign against terrorism and gave unqualified support to the US initiative. But what has India got in return? President George W. Bush continued giving certificates of good conduct to Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf in spite of evidence of his role in backing terrorist attacks on key institutions in India. The attack on Parliament three months after 9\11 was the handiwork of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba. The attack on the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly too was carried out by Pakistan-trained outfits. But neither President Bush nor other members of the global coalition against terrorism showed more than the routine interest in the threat to India’s security from the trained and well-armed malcontents from across the border. And why should the international media behave differently? The violence in Nigeria remains big news because western commercial interests have been hurt by the campaign against the holding of the Miss World pageant in Abuja, an exotic region of Nigeria. The presentation of facts was distorted to play down the role of an English daily whose blasphemous comments against the Prophet of Islam in the context of local opposition to the pageant turned the protest into a bloody riot. The fact that the editor who wrote the offensive article was sacked too was underplayed by the international media. The development was projected keeping in mind the western agenda of giving Islam a bad Press. But even this is done on a selective basis. The acts of Muslim fundamentalists that resulted in violence in the Akshardham Temple in Gujarat and now in Jammu did not receive the same attention because Pakistan remains the most trustworthy ally of the USA in the region. But demons seldom respect their masters. The Taliban and Al-Qaeda were created by the USA to deal with Soviet influence in Afghanistan. After 9\11 the White House had to change its priorities in a hurry. When will it grasp the danger to global peace from Pakistan? |
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No end to Veerappan drama There seems to be no end to the three-month-old hostage crisis in Karnataka. Ever since the kidnapping of Janata Dal (United) leader and former Minister Nagappa, notorious brigand and sandalwood smuggler Veerappan has been making all sorts of demands. However, none of these could be met by the Karnataka Government, mainly because of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa’s refusal to release any of the prisoners from the jails in her state, as demanded by Veerappan in exchange for Mr Nagappa’s freedom. The Karnataka Government’s latest decision to release Tamil activist Kolathur Mani from the Bellary jail to help him negotiate with Veerappan in his hideout has kicked off a major controversy. What seems to have influenced the government to withdraw the cases against Mani under Section 321 of the Criminal Procedure Code and release him is the 12-day deadline set by the brigand to either secure the release of Mr Nagappa or receive his body. It would, however, not be easy for the government to release Mani. The Karnataka Government would be violating in letter and spirit the Supreme Court’s ruling of November 7, 2000. On that date, the apex court, in response to a petition, had not only restrained the Karnataka Government from releasing 51 TADA detenues from the Mysore jail, as demanded by Veerappan in exchange for the release of Kannada superstar Rajkumar, but also issued a stern warning to Chief Minister S.M. Krishna to either bring the elusive brigand to book or resign from the office. Interestingly, Abdul Kareem, a retired Deputy Superintendent of Police, who was the brain behind the petition filed in the Supreme Court in November, 2000, said on Sunday that he would repeat his act now and thwart the government’s plan to compromise with the outlaw. It may be recalled that Kareem’s son, who was a Sub-Inspector of Police, was shot dead by Veerappan during one of the anti-Veerappan operations. Karnataka seems to be on a sticky wicket as far as the Supreme Court precedent is concerned. It categorically ruled two years back: “the S.M.Krishna Government has acted in panic and haste by dropping TADA charges and releasing the accused on bail”. The judgement also found fault with the government’s legal position on the issue. It will be a Herculean task for the government to convince the apex court of its intentions as there is absolutely no change in its legal position between then and now. Meanwhile, the S.M. Krishna government has been on the mat ever since the startling revelation by a former Director-General of Police, Mr C. Dinakar, in his book that Rs 20 crore (in addition to Rs 5 crore by Chief Minister Krishna) was paid to Veerappan for the release of Dr Rajkumar in
2000. |
Drought a systemic failure? Picture this: Four people shake a leg at a glittering function at a five-star hotel. Replete with the choicest of food and wine flowing like water. Side by side, a mal-nourished, naked and gnarled child’s face pleads for a drop of water and a morsel of roti. Both reflect the horrendous tragedy and brutality of present day India. The former, our greedy, power hungry “aaj ke netas”. The latter, a gnawing symbol of the drought sweeping across the country. Taking a toll of a large number of starvation deaths in 13 states. The two faces of India — powerful New Delhi and parched countryside! What is the big deal? Has drought not become an annual phenomenon on which millions of words have been written and millions more will continue to be written? But it is like water of a duck’s back. Our leaders merely go through the stereotype motions. Appropriate noises are made, hollow concerns voiced and instant remedies offered at the time of crisis, only to be dismissed as a bad dream post-crisis. This time round was no different. In fact, it was worse. Scandalously as drought stares the country in the face and dead bodies pile up, our granaries are overflowing, feeding rodents. There is a quadruple surplus, more than the 16.8 million tonnes needed for India’s food security. Also, India exports foodgrain to 30 countries. Yet there is no food for its own people. Look at the heartlessness. Even as state governments knock at the Centre’s door, our parliamentarians make their token contribution — via an adjournment motion moved by the Leader of the Opposition, Mrs Sonia Gandhi, on Wednesday last. In a well-researched speech, the Congress president lambasted the government for its lethargic and insensitive response. Agriculture Minister Ajit Singh blamed the states for not implementing the crop insurance scheme. Food Minister Sharad Yadav wanted the Chief Ministers to simplify the process of identifying people below the poverty line. All pointing an accusing finger at each other, amidst assertions that they were against politicising the issue (sic.). Their ideas and remedies were as shrivelled and parched as the subject under discussion. So much for their agonising concern! The big question is: Does anyone care? Not really. Prime Minister Vajpayee simply dismissed it as systemic failure. “We have not been able to streamline an archaic distribution network that we inherited from previous governments”, he said. He is correct. It is a systemic failure of leadership. A shameless excuse for incompetence. Only a smokescreen to cover up the government’s own failures. Arguably, if Infosys’ Narayan Murthy can work the system, as also Wipro’s Azim Premji and Reliance’s Ambanis, why can’t the government with all its wherewithal at its disposal? All it takes is leadership. Remember Indira Gandhi and her successful ship-to-mouth scheme when India faced one of its worst famines in the early seventies. When there was acute foodgrain scarcity and stocks had to be imported! The then Prime Minister ensured that grains were speedily lifted from ships to waiting trains and spread across the country. Today we have well-stocked granaries, fattened rats and empty human stomachs! For Mr Vajpayee, the permanent solution to famine lay in linking all rivers in the country. Already, the task force to link the Ganga with the Cauvery was in place. What is new? This scheme had been conceived in the late fifties by the then Irrigation and Power Minister, K.L. Rao. A committee headed by M.N. Dastoor made two proposals. One, connecting all the Himalayan rivers under the “Garland Canal Scheme” and the “Peninsular Canal Scheme”, connecting the 17 southern rivers. The project promised to deliver additional irrigation for 25 million hectares from surface water, 10 million hectares from increased use of groundwater, generation of 34 million KW of power while reducing floods and drought. But it continued to gather dust and will continue to do so, despite Mr Vajpayee. Why? The reasons are many. They don’t have everything to do with money. They’ve to do with our polity and their muddying the waters. Would the Centre and the states agree to adhere to the technical reports? A very big “if”. As it stands, only six out of the 30 feasibility reports have so far been studied. Simply because no state is willing to say it has surplus water. The result? The country continues to reel under water shortage. Not only that. With 67 per cent of the cultivation still dependent on rain, groundwater continues to be lifted indiscriminately, leading to a sharp drop of 3 to 5 per cent every year in the water tables from 20-30 ft to 300-400 ft. In some areas all the three levels of soil stand exhausted. Add to it the fact that only 40 per cent of the cultivable land in the country is irrigated, it spells disaster. Why must we always depend upon rain for food production? Especially when 4,000 cubic billion metres of rain — 75 per cent of the total rain — falls during the 70 to 90 days of the monsoon? Only 1000 billion cubic metres fall during the remaining nine months. Moreover, the rainfall varies from a low of 0.50 to 55 mm and a high of 12,000-13,000 mm. Also, when we know that our land and water resources are stretched beyond limits due to our burgeoning population. India’s landmass of 329 million hectares accounts for only 2 per cent of the globe’s land area while its population accounts for 16 per cent. Thus, our ancient land’s carrying capacity has been exhausted. Equally scandalous is the government’s stand. It continues to depend helplessly on the weatherman’s predictions which have almost invariably gone wrong. All are aware that the world is under the grip of the E1 Nino affect. Global warming has reached worrisome heights where even the glaciers of Antarctica are melting rapidly. With weather patterns changing drastically, was the government waiting for the drought to occur? And then, try to minimise its impact. Why was nothing done to stop deforestation, which has resulted in the drought-prone areas retaining less and less water? What is being done to stop village tanks from being silted? Why does the Centre not have a full-fledged rain-harvesting plan? The inter-state disputes are piling up. No plans are in the pipeline to decongest highly populated areas, which result in too many tubewells and a lowering of the water-table. Vast deforestation has further polluted the environment. Generating more heat and leading to a meltdown of the glaciers. This would entail uprooting people and resettling them somewhere else. This is a highly volatile issue as experience in the ongoing Narmada Dam controversy shows. As it stands, there is a severe resource crunch even for the ongoing projects. Shockingly, 169 projects pertaining to the Fifth Five Year Plan continue to be in limbo due to lack of funds. Besides, politicians are interested only in major and medium irrigation works. The focus on large, expensive projects ensures that local solutions are not given the attention they deserve. This leads to regional disparities, as irrigation can be assured to only 33 per cent of India’s agriculture. One of the reasons for the failure of the government to provide any permanent solution to the problem of recurring drought is that the money spent, though astronimical, has always been on the “dig and fill up” type. There is no attempt to link grants to the creation of permanent assets. which may take care of the people during distress. It is high time our leaders pulled up their bootstraps. They have to shed their desire to pander to vote-banks and reluctance to focus on long-term rather than short-term planning.
— INFA |
In days gone by These days when I read of unpleasant incidents in England involving Indians who are not UK citizens or are there on a visit, I cannot help recalling my own enjoyable sojourn in that country as a student in pre-War London. Of course, the circumstances were entirely different. Britain had not been “invaded” by people of Asian or African origin seeking a new life (and fortune) for themselves because for one reason or another, the one they had been born to wasn’t to their liking. There were no ghettos as in Notting Hill, Southall or Brixton. Unemployment had not reached the alarming proportions as it has done in recent years. No one could accuse the few thousand coloured immigrants of stealing the bread from the mouths of British workers. I cannot recall a single humiliating experience in my two years in the UK on account of the colour of my skin. This might well have been due to the fact that, at the time, I belonged to a subject race and that the British are well-known for their kindness to the underdog so long as he keeps his place and is not too “uppish”. Today, the coloured immigrant comes from a free country and having acquired British nationality, claims the same rights and privileges as any other citizen of the country. I lived in Golders Green in north-west London. The Hippodrome opposite the tube station specialised in staging new plays before they moved to the West End. It was here that for a modest outlay of two shillings and six pence for a matinee show I was able to see in the flesh stars such as Noel Coward, John Gielguid, Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh, Diana Wynyard and Margaret Lockwood. Standing in the queue I often saw the actors and actresses alight from their cars and dash for the stage entrance. Within walking distance of my digs sprawled the vast expanse of Hampstead Heath beyond which stood two of England’s oldest pubs, Jack Straw’s Castle and The Spaniard, selling draught beer at 11˝ pence a pint. A 20’s pack of Gold Flak cost a shilling. One sunny day in June I boarded a bus at Golders Green for Oxford Street. We had travelled a couple of miles before the conductor spotted me. “And where did yer get on may I arsk?” he said. When I told him he pushed back his peaked cap, scratched his head and said: “Cor blimey, I must be getting colour-blind!” It was this Cockney sense of humour that I loved most about the London I knew more than 65 years ago. This, and the happy knack of the English being able to laugh at themselves and their misfortunes. Without these assets they would surely have gone under when Goering’s Luftwaffe was pounding their cities night after night.
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Politics: limits of outsourcing Mr L.K. Advani’s assertion that India will never be a “Hindu Rashtra” and that the BJP should not exploit the Godhra tragedy for votes seems to have surprised many. The BJP has never formally endorsed the Hindu Rashtra thesis but its reiteration on the eve of the crucial Gujarat election by a person like Advani should not be dismissed as a slip of the tongue.
Advani is never known for loose talk. Among the top two he is certainly more trusted by the RSS parivar. And hard Hindutva can surely be a hard sell in today’s crudely polarised Gujarat. The strategist who had used Hindutva to telling effect cannot be unaware of its present relevance in the state. Then why does Advani make such a bold policy statement accompanied by plenty of liberal platitudes and thus earning the VHP epithet of being “pseudo-secularist”, a term he himself had once coined? Is it only to agree with Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee? Or a temporary posture to comply with the Election Commission’s guidelines? Advani’s condemnation of the VHP’s extremist Hindutva is based on harsh ground realities. First, he realises that Modi’s election agenda of extreme religious hatred has reached its climax in Gujarat, and any further accentuation would make it highly counter-productive. Already there are reports of backlash from the corporates, medium industries, traders and those lost business and job during Modi’s cynical programmes for tapping the Hindu votes. The state’s hitherto robust economy has been collapsing. Investors are withdrawing and even Bill Gates refused to go to Gujarat. Second, as the BJP’s sole future super boss, Advani is ready for a rather long haul. He might be painfully aware of the great Indian riddle under which political domination of any single entity — religious, caste, class or provincial — over others will have a short life. Every move for caste consolidation had its corresponding responses in the form of a coalition by the rival castes. This makes it difficult for a BSP, SP or RJD to rely on its own caste strength for a majority. Every move for a Hindu political consolidation too had met with powerful implosions leading to proportionate boost to newer caste-based parties. Thus even if the BJP scrapes through the next month’s elections in Gujarat, the Modi model stands little chance of replicating itself elsewhere. Different political and social dynamics prevail in each of the eight states going to the polls next year. Unlike the mid-80s, Indian states have come to build their own walls to insulate electoral behaviour. Therefore, an astute strategist, Advani must be looking beyond the Modiland. No political realist in the BJP can lap up the VHP-Bajrang Dal claim to generate so much minority hatred in such a short span of time in Delhi, MP, Rajasthan, HP, Tripura, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Nagaland. It is true that barring the Northeast, in all the four Hindi heartland states the Congress and BJP will have direct confrontation. The BJPs i.e. Advani’s, best calculation is that the party stands a better chance if it goes to the polls in these states — except Himachal Pradesh where it is in power — on the anti-incumbency factor rather than religious hatred. As for the general election in 2004, the Modi model is bound to have a more pernicious effect. Most allies will find it extremely difficult to toe the line. Parties like the PDP and the DMK have been assiduously trying to insult themselves from the parivar’s protracted pressure to impose their divisive programmes. Unfortunately for the BJP, it has suffered defeats in all recent assembly elections. Goa alone may be an exception. In UP, it was pushed into the third position after the Mulayam party and the BSP. Infighting has gripped almost every state unit whether in power or out of it. What has added to the BJP’s worry has been the steady decline of its own NDA allies in their state strongholds. This inhibits whatever hopes the present ruling party at the Centre had about retaining power on the allies’ piggyback. The NDA’s better performance in 1999 as compared to the previous elections has been entirely due to the goodwill that allies had in their respective states, The BJP’s own showing has been not that impressive. Barring states like Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, Chhatisgarh and Uttaranchal, the BJP will now have to heavily outsource its support. Its fate, and that of the NDA, depends on the allies or outside supporters in UP, Bihar, Maharashtra, Orissa, Haryana, Punjab, West Bengal, Chhatisgarh, Andhra Pradesh and other southern states. So the political health of the allies is crucial for its survival. Sadly, decline in the BJP’s fortune as reflected in the assembly elections has also affected the NDA allies. Tailism has ruined every NDA ally. Among those suffered rout in the assembly polls are the DMK, the Mamata party, the Akalis, the National Conference, the Hegde party and the Shiv Sena. Others like Om Prakash Chautala are yet to test their popularity. It is significant that the NDA partners alone have suffered the people’s ire. The outside supporters could come out in flying colours. The BSP, which was never in the NDA government at the Centre, wrested the second position in the UP assembly elections, pushing the BJP to the third. The TDP’s case is more striking. The party stood by the NDA but refused to join the government. On all issues involving secularism it adopted an independent posture. This has been in striking contrast of those like Sharad Yadav and George Fernandes. At time, the TDP had threatened the BJP against encouraging Hindu bigotism. As a result, the TDP alone among the NDA allies and supporters could return to power after its five years in office. This is a credible performance. After being part of the BJP government, the DMK’s decline has been pathetic. However, in Tamil Nadu this may not pose any problem for the BJP because the victorious AIADMK is ready to replace the DMK any moment. Mamata Banerjee, another NDA ally, who was badly mauled in the poll at the hands of the CPM, had to pay a heavy price for her prevarications. She suffered further humiliation at the hands of the BJP. None in the BJP bothers about her. Her own junior leaders are revolting against her. The fate of the National Conference looks still worse. No one knows whether Omar Abdullah still remains a minister at the Centre. Humiliated and shunted out of his favoured ministry, Sharad Yadav has nowhere to go as his party remains in a shambles. Few bother about this brave warrior of the yesteryear. Navin Patnaik has been able to win the poll, but his party is haunted by splits and revolts. A majority of his MPs have challenged his authority. Hegde is still languishing. The Prime Minister did not help free Vaiko, who has been his self-proclaimed supporter, from Jayalalithaa’s jail. Incidentally, the opposition outfits like the Laloo party and the Left who could be potential allies of the Congress at the Centre, and the Samajwadi Party have a clearly better record in the Assembly elections. It has been such adverse political climate and grim prospects that have made Advani to look nationally more acceptable. Modi & co, on the other, has only a narrow range to cover.  |
Why people get sick at weekends Ever wondered why a number of people tend to get sick at weekends or while holidaying? Well, if a new Dutch study published in the journal Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics is to be believed, such people may be suffering from so-called leisure sickness, a relatively new medical condition. According to researchers from Tilburg University in the Netherlands, some people become ill with a variety of different complaints as soon as they stop working and try to relax. Symptoms like fatigue, muscular pains and nausea are most common at weekends, while cold and flu-like symptoms are particularly common during holidays. After surveying 1,128 men and 765 women from across the country, the researchers found that approximately 3 per cent of both men and women reported symptoms in line with the researchers’ definition of leisure sickness. Most of those surveyed linked their symptoms to stress and difficulty in “switching off” when they took breaks from work. It was also found that those with a heavy workload or those who had a high sense of responsibility were most at risk. Prof Cary Cooper, President of the International Stress Management Association, said: “Relaxing can be very stressful for a lot of people. When they got off the treadmill of life, their immune system collapses. Sometimes that is the only way they can relax. But leisure time can also be stressful because it means the day is unstructured, people have to re-establish relationships and spend time with their families. Many people are not used to this and find this stressful. That will have an impact on their immune systems”. ANI Of high-protein diet & weight loss The American Heart Association has denied reports that it is changing its policy toward high-protein diets, reiterating its belief that such weight-loss plans could be harmful. Earlier this week, a Duke University study reported at a Heart Association meeting said patients on the Atkins diet, a low-carbohydrate diet that allows unlimited meat and fat, not only lost weight but saw their cholesterol levels drop. In the study, widely reported in the media, the researchers said the patients on the Atkins-based diet lost more weight than people on a low-fat diet. The Heart Association President, Dr. Robert Bonow, said that many people were under the false impression that his organisation now endorsed the Atkins diet. “We decided we had to come up with a new statement indicating what the nature of this study was. It was one of 3,600 papers presented at the meeting,” he said in an interview with Reuters. The Heart Association is holding its annual scientific meeting in Chicago, at which doctors and researchers hear about thousands of studies. The association’s statement said: “Media reports about a small study funded by the Robert C. Atkins Foundation may have created the erroneous impression that the American Heart Association has revised its dietary guidelines.” It added: “This is not the case.” The Heart Association in fact recommends a diet based on whole grains, with plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables and a small amount of lean meat and low-fat dairy products. In the study, Dr. Eric Westman of Duke studied 120 patients who got either a low-fat diet — not the Heart Association’s diet — or one advocated by best-selling diet book writer Robert Atkins. Added to the Atkins-type diet were oils containing omega-3 fatty acids, which can help reduce heart disease and stroke risk. They included flaxseed, borage and fish oils. Patients on the low-carbohydrate diet lost an average of 31 pounds (14 kilograms) during the study period compared with a 20 pound (9 kg) weight loss in the low-fat diet group.
Reuters |
Speech which eulogises the virtues of God is speech in the true sense of the term. Hands which perform God’s work are true hands. The mind which is engaged in remembering God as the indweller of beings, both animate and inanimate, is the proper type of mind. Ears which hear the sacred stories of his sports are true ears. The head which bows to both the Forms of God is a true head. The eyes which behold both these forms are true eyes. Limbs which are baptised with the sacred water in which the feet of the Lord and His devotees have been washed, are the only worthy limbs. — The Bhagavata Mahapurana
*** Only though devotion will you be totally aware, open, free, inspired. Only through devotion will you become what you aspire to unfold within yourself. — Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, Merging with Shiva, Hinduism’s Contemporary Metaphysics
*** Is there any sin... as bad as backbiting or any virtue as great as charity and compassion? Shri Ramacharitamanasa
*** A river may be very broad but if kings get bridges constructed across it even the tiniest ants may mount them and cross to the other side with ease. Shri Ramacharitamanasa
*** The intrinsic movement of the mind towards the Self is lulled to sleep on the bed of attachment to the objects of the world. Without the awakening caused by scriptures and sages, this mind cannot be awakened. The Yoga Vasishtha
*** Do not tell yourself you will be wise enough to practice virtue tomorrow. Do it now, for it will be your deathless companion when you die. The Tirukural |
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