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London struck again Nuclear threats |
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China yields a
little Yuan revaluation below expectations The 2.1 per cent upward revaluation of the Chinese currency, yuan, against the dollar effected on Thursday, is much less than what was expected, but it is seen as a positive beginning the world over as the emerging Asian giant’s financial system is expected to be more flexible and responsive to market forces. For about a decade China had pegged its currency at 8.28 against the dollar.
The Sen
prescription
Change of opinion
Village growth hit
by lack of road Corruption spreads
in Russia Defence
notes
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Nuclear threats PRIME Minister Manmohan Singh has raised a significant question vis-à-vis Pakistan’s nuclear assets. How will the world handle a situation that may arise if Pakistan’s weapons of mass destruction fall into the hands of jihadis in case General Musharraf loses power? This is not unthinkable in the case of Pakistan, where extremist religious leaders, the mentors of jihadis, have a vast following. The world knows that there are elements within the Pakistan Army who sympathise with the extremist “cause”, and one should not be surprised if they seize power tomorrow. Religious extremists, who are already in a position to influence the government in Islamabad, can occupy commanding heights by winning an election. Dr Manmohan Singh has the reputation of making statements after giving considerable thought to a subject. Therefore, when he says, “I hope that this does not happen and I pray that this will not happen”, his concern cannot be ignored by the world community. The jihadis have emerged as a major threat to peace and stability. They are capable of derailing the on-going peace process between India and Pakistan. Dr Manmohan Singh has rightly said that no government in India will be able to continue the peace efforts if the regime in Pakistan allows the territory under its control to be used by jihadis for killing innocent people in India. Terrorists and their mentors are bent upon vitiating the atmosphere essential for the success of the peace process. Even General Musharraf has admitted in his Thursday’s televised address to the Pakistani nation that the jihadis and their mentors do not believe in peaceful means to settle the disputes between India and Pakistan. He has become overactive because of pressure from the US and the UK in the wake of the London blasts, believed to be the handiwork of Pakistanis. Otherwise, he was the least bothered about the Kashmir-centric jihadi elements who were engaged in destructive activities in India’s Jammu and Kashmir. Anyone who preaches hatred and talks of violence even in the name of religion deserves to be dealt with sternly. Violence cannot be justified under any pretext. |
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China yields a little The
2.1 per cent upward revaluation of the Chinese currency, yuan, against the dollar effected on Thursday, is much less than what was expected, but it is seen as a positive beginning the world over as the emerging Asian giant’s financial system is expected to be more flexible and responsive to market forces. For about a decade China had pegged its currency at 8.28 against the dollar. The undervalued exchange rate had given China an unfair trade advantage over the US, Europe and other countries. The US alone had a massive bilateral deficit of $200 billion. This had provoked the US Senate to support a Bill to impose 28 per cent tariffs on imports from China unless the yuan is revalued to that extent. The US has been benefiting from cheap imports from China, which also has to sell its currency to maintain the dollar-yuan peg, thereby keeping the US interest rates low and financing the consumption boom in the world’s richest economy. But China, along with India, is also seen as a stealer of American jobs through outsourcing. Politics also promotes the misconception that outsourcing hurts the US interests. Americans were alarmed when a Chinese business group, Cnooc, recently attempted to take over California-based Unocal oil company in an all-cash $18 billion deal. This has led to a Senate amendment requiring Congressional approval for the acquisition of US assets by a foreign company. The less-than-expected yuan revaluation may help ease trade tensions between the two countries and correct trade imbalances elsewhere, but the pressure to do more would continue. Global money markets reacted favourably to the development and many currencies, including the rupee, appreciated, but the London bomb blasts spoiled the market mood. For India too it is a positive development as the Reserve Bank of India can now let the rupee appreciate. This will help imports. The pressure on inflation and the interest rates will also ease. |
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A library is thought in cold storage.
— Lord Samuel |
The Sen prescription
I
REMEMBERED the most argumentative
Indian I ever met when I read Amartya Sen’s The Argumentative
Indian*. He was a train passenger who, unmindful of a towel on a
seat, occupied it. Soon, the towel owner came and asked him a little
angrily, "Did you not see the towel I had put on the seat?"
The "usurper" coolly responded, "Oh, if you put your
towel on the Taj Mahal, will it become yours?" It was a
spontaneous, devastating argument that completely floored the towel
man, who instantly sought truce. It is Sen’s contention that the
argumentative tradition is endemic to India and Indians. He draws from
history and mythology, philosophy and astronomy, instance after
instance when even the meek stood up to the mighty and asked questions
that could have been considered impolite or, to use a modern term,
politically incorrect. How else could Javali, a skeptical pundit, who
denounced all religious practices, give this epistemological advice to
Ram: "Follow what is within your experience and do not trouble
yourself with what lies beyond the province of human experience"?
Sen is on a strong wicket when he argues that disputation was a
characteristic of the Indian tradition which allowed even women to
question established doctrines. Long before the Council at Nicene
sought to grapple with the contradictory teachings that sprouted in
Christianity, Ashoka had organised the third Buddhist Council at
Pataliputra, to resolve the extant differences in religious principles
and practices. Not only that, he had also formulated the rules for
public discussion — "restraint in regard to speech, so that
there should be no extolment of one’s own sect or disparagement of
other sects on inappropriate occasions, and it should be moderate even
on appropriate occasions". While we have such fascinating
stories as Mandan Mishra’s wife "moderating" the great
debate on the nuances of advaita he had with Adi
Shankaracharya, there is little to suggest that the counterpoint ever
prevailed — Sen draws a blank on this. He begins the book with a
reference to Krishna Menon’s futile nine-hour, non-stop speech in
the United Nations to point out that prolixity is not alien to us in
India. But what the author does not mention is that after all his
loquaciousness — in wanton disregard of Ashoka’s sagely advice
quoted above — India lost its case by a huge margin. Sen could not
have found a better ending to his essay than by quoting Rammohun Roy’s
lines about the dreadfulness of death, "Just consider how
terrible the day of your death will be./Others will go on speaking,
and you will not be able to argue back". It is Sen’s own
argumentative skill which lifts the book out of the ordinary and makes
it an enormous treat for the reader. Some of his theories — like
democracy being the best antidote to famines and a country’s
redemption lies in the universalisation of education — are too well
known to require repetition. But they pop up every now and then,
sometimes to the discomfort of the reader. How many times should one
read that India has a Muslim population larger than "the British
and French populations put together"? Or, for that matter, read
Tagore’s famous lines beginning with "Where the mind is
free"? Better editing could have also eliminated errors in
spellings of the Telugu Desam Party, Raja Rammohun Roy, the full form
of the RSS and the name of the first woman president of the Congress.
All this does not, however, detract from the intrinsic merit of the
book which is in the scholarship employed. For an avid reader of Sen,
many portions of the book may not be new, as he himself admits it is a
collection of essays — eight new ones and eight previously
published. Sen, who is now Lamont University Professor at Harvard, is
at his combative best when he discusses India’s heterodoxy, which
rules out any straitjacketing of its traditions and cultures.
Rejecting such notions as "India is secular because India is
Hindu", he argues that diversity is at the core of Indianness.
His grandfather placed him in the atheistic — the Lokayata
—part of the Hindu spectrum when he was told that religion did not
at all appeal to him. But his agnosticism sometimes prevents him from
giving due credit to the contributions of religion, say, in the spread
of basic education and healthcare in Kerala. He credits the
achievement to the anti-upper caste movements in the 19th and early
20th centuries. Perhaps, Sen does not know that the Malayalam word for
school is pallikoodam which can be translated as that which is
attached to the church. While Kerala is his ideal model of
development — socio-economic development in the southern state is
better than even China’s — is it because of anti-upper caste
movements that today tiny Mizoram, where head-hunting was a pastime in
the not so distant past, has a better literacy rate than even Kerala?
He need not be parsimonious in admitting the role played by those who
believe that dissemination of knowledge is God’s command in India’s
development. Surprisingly, Sen’s bias against most of the scholars
of the colonial period is manifest except when he pays handsome
tributes to William Jones who set up the Royal Asiatic Society of
Bengal. He dismisses James Mill, a British historian, because he never
visited India even while he extols the virtues of Max Mueller, who
brought out 50 volumes on the Vedas without ever setting foot on
Indian soil. Little surprise, Alexander Duff and Charles Wood find
only a deprecatory reference in the volume. Sen finds fault with Mill
because the historian found some claims about Aryabhata’s work a
"straightforward fabrication". His own language to debunk
the theories contained in the controversial book The Deciphered
Indus Script (published five years ago) is not sanguine, either.
More noteworthy, the Nobel laureate who digs into the puranas and
shastras to argue that the faculties of criticism and all that
is noble in the realm of science and ideas had an Indian origin has to
say, "The definitive demonstration of the fraud came from Michael
Witzel, Professor of Sanskrit at Harvard University, in a joint essay
with Steve Farmer". Note, both of them are not Indian
scholars. The author’s attempt to understand different cultures in
the context of the calendars they produced should have covered Sikhism
which, too, got its own Nanakshahi calendar two years ago. His
arguments against the nuclear bomb are well known; it did not make
India more secure; it did not strengthen India’s case for membership
of the UN Security Council; it did not prevent Kargil; and India lost
its superiority over Pakistan. However, his clinching argument against
the bomb is the cost: the money spent on it can root out illiteracy.
For those not well versed with the regular spat Gandhi and Tagore had,
reading the chapter on them is quite an experience. The greatness of The
Argumentative Indian is the boldness of Amartya Sen’s attempt to
critique history, culture and identity. It will definitely provoke the
reader, never disappoint him. *The
Argumentative Indian, Penguin, Rs 650 |
Change of opinion When I was going through my elementary and later university education I had as one of my staunchest friends Raghav Subramaniam, of excellent South Indian stock, popularly called Rags and not Raghu, as you may want to believe. Notorious for ragging freshers and juniors and, therefore, one wasn’t quite sure whether that wasn’t the reason for the abbreviated “Rags”, he also stood out for his brilliance in academics. He devoured books, was voracious and like a bespectacled blood-hound, sniffed out and all but gobbled up books, contemporary, classics, rare, best-sellers, lesser known, every conceivable subject from scriptures to sex. His knowledge and phenomenal memory astounded us. The teaching faculty, however, I suspected, was wont to deliberately underplay his extraordinary intellect. Early in life Rags had developed a habit to question. Needless to say that those gifted with brilliant minds and bordering on the genius tend to exhibit a pronounced tendency towards this. Curiosity, inquiry and questioning. It disturbed the teachers and the professors alike who felt intimidated and, if one may be permitted to use such a word, bugged. He postgraduated and obtained two masters degrees preferring history and economics. He went to the London School of Economics, got his doctorate and took up a teaching assignment there. I, on the other hand, joined the armed forces bent upon safeguarding the sovereignty and integrity of my country, I still can’t figure how, with the politicians working overtime to do exactly the opposite. Rags, not surprisingly, excelled wherever he was, London School of Economics, the World Bank, the United Nations and finally as Special Secretary in the Department of Economic Affairs in the Ministry of Finance. He had joined during Narasimha Rao’s time and understood his inscrutable expression and meaningful silence better than anybody else, continued through the block-buster “India Shining” years of Vajpayee — Advani and when the present government was installed accepted the elevation to Executive Director, National Economic Development Council, his own spectacular career rise having no relation to the economic growth rate of the country but comparable to the price per barrel of oil. Rags had, from his early years, been very clean and articulate in his views, his opinions and his pronouncement. While dwelling on Indian and world history he was unsparing in his critical appraisals of those who had held the free thinking people of the world to ransom, whose lust for power, bigotry, tyranny and whose fundamentalistic ideology had unleashed terror, violence, bloodshed and war. Being witness to the partition of India in those impressionable years, his judgement on the characters who held centrestage in the sordid drama and the villains in particular, was severe. A few days back, however, I got a hurriedly scribbled note from Rags: “... unable to hold on any more to firm views, opinions and beliefs. Mental equilibrium shaken. My study of history and knowledge of related events has come to naught. Jinnah’s apparition visits me night after night and he suddenly looks more and more like the benign and saintly Sri Sri Ravi Shankarji Maharaj, all robed in white, holding forth on the Art of Living. Not a word does he utter against the Hindus. He rubbishes the two-nation theory talking instead of August 14, 1947, the day Pakistan was created and became a sovereign Islamic state, being the saddest day of his
life....”
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Village growth hit by lack of road Jungi, a village of some 200 souls, is not an odd name. Ask anywhere, in Tatapani on the banks of the swirling Satluj, and people can direct you to this village that falls in Mandi district. Jungi, nestled at 5,500 feet, rightly boasts of a quarter-century old senior secondary school, a decade-old primary health centre, and as if that is not enough for better health care, also an ayurvedic dispensary. To this is added a child and mother care centre. It also claims to have the local centre for the Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan, supposed to take care of total literacy. The government has been extra kind to provide a revenue (kanungo) circle that came up some 40 years back; a post office was set up in 1960 and a branch of Punjab National Bank 10 years back. Its inhabitants can boast of many achievements. “There are plenty of institutions and they do bring some solace”, says Meena Ram, an articulate trader who stores everything under the sun, from salt, sugar, chillies to clothes, readymade garments, stationery, cosmetics and toilet supplies and has a food store too. He is well connected up to Mandi, the district headquarters and Sundernagar and has been around since 1985. It all looks rosy and should spread happiness. “People in this panchayat of seven wards and 80 villages with 3,000 odd population understand the importance Jungi,” adds Mela Ram, a 60-year-old farmer of Obra village with a chuckle. Its secondary school has recently been upgraded to the plus two level, though its dilapidated building in the vicinity of an upcoming temple tells its own tale of neglect. Still the villagers ought to be grateful to the mai baap government that has been kind to their village. What is more, the village can claim a rare honour in having a well-furnished Forest Department resthouse that was constructed way back in 1948 where politicians and officials come, camp and depart after “finishing their duty.” However, somewhere on the road to progress, the village has lost its moorings. The village that could claim to have a good shopping area since 1935 is no longer a hub of business activity. Meena Ram is unhappy as other small traders. His business is down. He blames it on the government and television. “I will soon shift. It is very dull and in this fashion I cannot survive and compete with the traders elsewhere in Karsog, Mandi and Sundernagar. They make quick bucks while I sit back and catch flies”, Meena Ram, (45) bemoans. Falling wooden structures, despite some upcoming pucca buildings, tell their own miserable tale. Meena Ram’s woeful tale is supported by the branch manager of PNB. “We have been planning to move out for the past two years. The villagers who do not use our service fully would not let us move. We have a total business of just Rs 5 crore annually. A few months back our seniors came from Shimla and wanted to close the branch and move closer to a big village which was located on a road. How can we survive?” He blames bad business on private money-lenders and poverty of the areas. “You notice those apple orchards, the owners now live either in Shimla, Chandigarh or Delhi. No deposits with us. But we are asked to lend money to low-caste or small people under various government schemes. How can I sink money on blacksmiths and all”, the manager goes on narrating his problems. How could this situation be improved and pat comes the answer, “Build these two kilometres of stretch and make it motorable. We shall have no problems. People do not wish to come to this God forsaken place on foot.” Health care facilities that cost the government heavily in terms of staff and equipment remain under-utilised. Poor attendance at the ayurvedic dispensary and the primary health centre, located at the end of the village where not to say of a road, even a pathway is hard to come by, only helps the staff play truant. Here too the staff has the same reply. The government has built everything here. But somewhere it lost its way and will to connect the village with a motorable road. People some time drive up to the resthouse in their personal vehicles, but the absence of a road discourages people to bring their sick on cots to the health centre. “It is a double punishment for the sick”, adds Sumitra Devi, mother of two who has experienced this hardship. Talk to the school teachers where roughly 400 students travel one to ten kilometres, their sadness is reflected in each word they utter. “Look at the tumbledown building of the school. It has been declared unsafe and unfit for years, yet there is no sign of the government coming to our rescue,” is the general refrain. Some teachers opined a simple temple structure, instead of an impressive one being raised by a local trader would have saved money for the school. “Priorities have gone wrong”, they felt. Most students walk on foot kilometres away in the tough hill terrain, leading to absenteeism. However, there are many who have an excellent attendance record. Their sincerity does not get fully rewarded since they are tired when they reach the school, affecting their attentiveness and resulting in poor grasp of subjects. There is a shortage of teachers, just 12 teachers for the middle and senior sections. Not many prefer posting here as it is a dull and drab place, far away from the main road head and they have either to live here or travel daily on rough and hard pathways. One silver lining, as a young well-groomed teacher Vinod Sharma explains, “People are progressive in the sense that there is no caste discrimination and despite some young having taken to drinking, are peace loving and respectful.” But he, like his colleagues, J.S. Bhulania and Hukam Chand, finds students not very bright. “They are okay. How could they be in this harsh kind of environment?’’ This is their more sympathetic comment. They regret the missing urge and craze for learning. Farmers whose crops often fail due to drought or adverse weather conditions and struggle to survive, traders with miserable trade and banks with low business and officials — all fail to understand that despite their repeated pleas over the years, a simple motorable road, stretching to a few kilometres and connecting it with the upper roads that lead to Pandar and Karsog, has not been built. “We are losing the war after winning each battle. The government’s priorities are skewed. It has a strange weird approach. We are not able to use the school, the primary health centre, ayurvedic dispensary and the bank for want of a road. We may soon lose these too.” This apprehension, expressed by a farmer, Bhup Singh, is shared by all. Contrast this with road side villages that envy these services in Jungi. Everybody feels weary of approaching ministers, MLAs and officials to correct this imbalanced approach and look into what the people need rather than thrusting priorities on them from their snug rooms of gigantic offices. |
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Corruption spreads in Russia The study, by the independent Indem think-tank and the respected Romir Monitoring Centre, revealed that the cost of the average bribe has rocketed by a factor of 13 in the past four years and Russians now pay $319bn (£183bn) a year in backhanders. The average bribe for an ordinary person now stands at about $100 but businessmen are forced to pay much more. In 2001, the average bribe in the business world was $10,200 but in 2005 the report said the figure was $135,800. Officials have “price-lists” for bribes and the report’s authors accused the Russian state of being “the country’s biggest racketeer” and said the sheer quantity of cash involved was more than two-and-a-half times greater than the annual state budget. Many of the bribes are for services supposed to be free but where professionals are so poorly paid that they turn to bribery as a way of topping up their meagre incomes. Top of the list of “everyday bribes” are those paid to university professors and officials to get places in some of Russia’s most prestigious educational institutions. They get $583.4m a year to provide university places. Next at $401.1m came bribes to doctors and medical professionals to secure treatment that is supposed to be free. Buying your son a conscription exemption from the notoriously brutal army also remains popular, with parents spending $353.6m a year on bribing military officials to dream up an imaginary health defect for their offspring. Making sure a judge rules in your favour in court also carries a price tag: Russians spend $209.5m a year on making sure the scales of justice are tipped in their favour. Lower down the bribery league came sweeteners to traffic police ($183.3m a year), backhanders to get jobs ($143.4m) and “ inducements” to gain places in the country’s best schools ($92.4m). Experts said officials had become more greedy because they feared they would soon lose their jobs in President Putin’s administrative reforms and therefore wanted to “make hay while the sun shone”. Georgy Saratov, Indem’s president, said: “The stable growth of corruption is being fed by the extra pressure the authorities are putting on ordinary people to make them pay bribes.” But most of the annual $319bn in bribes is paid by businessmen whose backhanders account for $316bn of that. Anti-corruption specialists said the report showed how spectacularly bad Mr Putin’s administration had been at stamping out corruption despite repeated promises in his annual address to do just that. “Now we know exactly what the authorities have been doing for these past four years,” Elena Panfilova, of Transparency International Russia, told reporters. “These findings are not just an analysis of corruption but a litmus test of the authorities and the efficacy of their reforms.” Indem said the government’s anti-corruption task force appeared to have achieved little and noted with irony that the initial head of the organisation, the former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov, was himself now being investigated over corruption allegations.
Everyday
expenses Medical treatment: Ensuring you get treatment varies from $7 (£4) to hundreds of dollars. Annual spend: $401.1m National service: If your son wants to avoid serving in the army for two years, it can cost $1,000. Annual spend: $353.6m Legal ruling: Persuading a judge to rule in your favour costs from $500 to tens of thousands of dollars. Annual spend: $209.5m Traffic cop bribe: Entry level price in Moscow $7 rising to $200. Annual spend: $183.3m University place: A bribe to secure a place at university varies from $9,000 to $35,000; law costs the most. Annual spend: $583.4m Securing a job: Or avoiding being fired, costs from $500. Annual spend: $143.4m School place: To get a child into a good school and make sure they do well there: starting price $1,000, or more. Annual spend: $92.4m The prices of bribes are estimates based on anecdotal
evidence. — The Independent |
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Defence notes by Girja Shankar Kaura It has long been believed in India and is practised all over the world. It is believed to bring about discipline in society and a feeling towards the homeland. Now a latest survey carried out here has confirmed that even the Indian want “Conscription” in the country. The survey undertaken by DefenceIndia.com says that as many as 87 per cent of surveyed respondents voted over-whelmingly in favour of conscription in the country. The question asked was whether conscription should be made compulsory in India. Conscription is a term used to describe compulsory enrolment in the country’s defence forces. The survey was conducted in Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir, Mumbai, Chandigarh, Jalandhar and Ludhiana, Chennai, Kolkata and parts of Sikkim. The total numbers of people surveyed offline was in excess of five lakh, and another six lakh participated in the online survey. The entire exercise spanned over a period of five months. Six per cent of the online respondents were NRIs, 93 per cent of whom voted for conscription being made mandatory. Respondents included teachers, lawyers, doctors, industrialists, students, government officers, NGOs, businessmen and shopkeepers.
MiG-29s and Su-30s The Indian Air Force will upgrade the first lot of Sukhoi-30s and some MiG-29s as part of its ongoing modernisation programme. The earlier versions of the multi-role supersonic fighter aircraft will be upgraded with the latest avionics and weapons. Air Force officials say that the upgradation is an ongoing process. The next in line of upgradation will be the earlier versions of Su-30s from Russia. The IAF will also begin upgrading the Russian-made MiG-29 fighters along with the Su-30s which would be followed by modernisation of Mirage and other fighter aircrafts. As part of the multibillion-dollar Sukhoi deal, the IAF has received 50 Su-30s in phases from Russia. Another 140 jets will be produced by Bangalore-based Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) under a licence from the Russian firms.
Motorcycle rally A motorcycle expedition team of the Indian Air Force, carrying a message of peace, harmony and brotherhood was flagged earlier last week on a journey across the country to mark the victory in the 1999 Kargil border conflict with Pakistan. The expedition comprising three officers and eight airmen was flagged off from India Gate by Air Marshal A.K. Singh, the chief of the Western Air Command. The team will cover a distance of 3,500 km across Delhi, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Haryana, Punjab, Uttaranchal, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir.
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From the pages of Two civilisations
In the West the type of civilisation has been established, its distinguishing features marked out and the “trend” of the forces at work clearly ascertained. All the apparent conflict of opinion really bends in one direction. The social or political workers know the materials at hand and, therefore, know how to use them with effect. But in India everything is different. We do not feel the ground under our feet. At the very outset we are confronted with the problem. Can a harmonious combination result from the mixture of the ancient Aryan and the modern occidental system of social government? How different the objects on which the institutions of the two systems are based! One looks for a state of absolute rest, unchangeableness; the other for perpetual action, strife… It is natural that the more successful civilisation of our conquerors should exert great influence on our society and there are men among us who think that the ancient Aryan civilisation is played out. But it is admitted by all that adoption of Western institutions would be inimical not only to our progress but to our existence.
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In the silent halls of the hardwon place, the victorious king treads alone. The only movements he hears are those of widows whites. Where are the people with whom he can share his joy? His exultation gives way to depression. — The Mahabharata Teach your children to introspect. If you teach them to be restless, their lives will be spent in running after transient goals.—Book of quotations on Hinduism One of the indictments of civilisations is that happiness and intelligence are so rarely found in the same person. — Book of quotations on Happiness Between two false hoods, which occupy either extreme, lies the middle course, the path of truth which can be kept only by the observance of the right occasion. — Book of quotations on Islam Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly often attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults. — Book of quotations on Happiness The work by itself is neither good nor bad. Our ways of thinking make it so. Any work done well becomes good if its intentions are also good. — Book of quotations on Hinduism Apparent failure may hold in its rough shell the germs of a success that will blossom in time, and bear fruit throughout eternity. — Book of quotations on Success Happiness sneaks in through a door you didn’t know you left open. — Book of quotations on Happiness Truly in the creation of the heavens and earth, and the alternation of the night and day are signs for those of heart. — Book of quotations on Islam The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer up somebody else. — Book of quotations on Happiness The mind of a man who has conceived God and obeys His word cannot be described. — Guru Nanak  |
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