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Rein in the khaps Amritsar-Lahore
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Hydrogen
future Challenging times ahead India is gearing itself up to meet the challenge to make hydrogen a viable alternative to fossil fuels, a challenge that it shares with the most developed of countries. The National Hydrogen Energy Roadmap, submitted last November by a steering group headed by Tata Group Chairman Rata Tata, has been approved by the National Hydrogen Energy Board.
The Army mindset
Mail from the past
Punjab units turn
into marriage palaces Cultural depletion
through Western imports For speed healing,
quit squabbling
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Amritsar-Lahore bus It
is not enough to just utter sweet nothings on the need for warming up India-Pakistan relations or roll out a ceremonial red carpet when the bus from Lahore arrives in Amritsar. The air of distrust and suspicion that still prevails must be sincerely removed to make the people-to-people contact really meaningful. That passengers are shying away from boarding the Amritsar-Lahore bus, thanks to irritating security concerns of extra-cautious mandarins on both sides of the border, points to the need for restoring their confidence and removing whatever irritants remain. Of course, there can be less obtrusive and less jarring ways of keeping an eye on undesirable elements trying to cross the border. It could have been an ominus start. The Centre had unwittingly hurt Punjabi sensitivities by treating the state as a disturbed area like Jammu & Kashmir. The damage, however, was controlled well in time. Although the Union Home Ministry has withdrawn the objectionable security vetting, travel is still not hassle-free. That the passengers are required to buy tickets well in advance, perhaps to check their credentials, is fair enough. But why should those boarding the bus at Amritsar need to first go to Delhi to secure a visa? Isn’t it simpler for the Pakistan authorities to open a visa office in Amritsar to avoid inconvenience to travellers? Their enthusiasm and goodwill must not be robbed at the very start of a journey. The Amritsar-Lahore bus service, the third after the success on the Srinagar-Muzaffrabad and Delhi-Lahore routes, is only a first step towards building far more cordial relations. If both countries divert their resources from competitive defence spending to cementing and extending cooperation on the economic, cultural and sports fronts, people on both sides of the border would breathe much easier. Ideally, sports, medicare, trade and tourism should be insulated from diplomatic highs and lows in India-Pakistan relations. |
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Hydrogen future India
is gearing itself up to meet the challenge to make hydrogen a viable alternative to fossil fuels, a challenge that it shares with the most developed of countries. The National Hydrogen Energy Roadmap (NHER), submitted last November by a steering group headed by Tata Group Chairman Rata Tata, has been approved by the National Hydrogen Energy Board. The NHER, which envisions a massive investment of Rs 25,000 crore between 2006 and 2020, would require supportive nods from the Planning Commission and the Finance Ministry, and eventual Cabinet clearance. The roadmap is aimed at putting 10 lakh hydrogen powered vehicles on the road by 2020, besides hydrogen-based power generation of 1,000 MW capacity. As much as Rs 24,000 crore of the proposed budget will go towards an infrastructure for hydrogen production, storage and distribution. The R&D challenge itself is formidable. Hydrogen production costs, currently estimated at several hundred rupees per kilogram, have to be lowered. Electrolysis, splitting water to get hydrogen, is expensive, and the NHER has recommended looking at a range of sources from nuclear to biological to renewable. There are problems in efficiently storing hydrogen, especially in a vehicle given the space and weight limitations. Hydrogen fuel cell based vehicles are already running, but cost way too much. It may take a decade to bring costs down to less than $ 100 per kilowatt, a benchmark for minimal efficiency. Clearly therefore, the NHER is ambitious. It has evidently been modelled on a similar roadmap prepared four years ago for the US Department of Energy. But a start has to be made, and the Centre will likely not grudge the Rs 250 crore required for the first phase. Encouragingly, many companies and research institutions are already on the job. No possible energy source can be overlooked in warding off the genuine threat of energy starvation in the decades to come, nor the need for clean sources of energy. Hydrogen energy is pollution free, and this is a big incentive. |
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Laugh when you can, apologise when you should, and let go of what you can’t change. Life’s too short to be anything but happy.
— Anonymous |
The Army mindset Janowitz, a management guru, once remarked: “The contemporary military establishment has for some time tended more and more to display characteristics typical of any large-scale non-military bureaucracy”. How true it is of our times. This is primarily due to a mindset which ignores the fact that change is a law of nature, but same cannot be said to be true of our military thinking. While we have quantified onto a strategic nuclear command and an Integrated Defence Services Headquarters, these run alongside redundant “strike corps” of the 70s and an Integrated Ministry of Defence. But what adds to our woes is a convoluted mindset, which is not prepared to shed the baggage of the 70s and at the same time gropes for the modernity of the 21st century. The end result: wasteful expenditure and lesser cost — effectiveness, which could lead to disastrous results. Let us authenticate the above audacious statements. To dislodge an intrusion by a battalion plus in the Kargil sector, the whole Indian Army went into a tizzy with formations being moved from the Eastern Sector and what not, to be followed by an acrimonious debate over the effective use of airpower. Let us take another example, which is a distinct possibility. A Pearl Harbour type of attack viz. sans warning, whilst our strike corps are ensconced in their peacetime locations. Kargil having been a played out game, Pakistan turns its attention towards the plains sectors of J&K where a surprise lightning armoured thrust coupled with infantry reinforcements would achieve rich dividends in terms of bargaining value and highlight the need for international resolution of the J&K problem. The events unfold as under:- l A Pakistani SSG (Special Services Group) company is heli-dropped on the heights dominating the Madhopur Bridge on the Ravi river in tandem with an armoured regiment thrust along an adjoining Cho. l 6 Armoured Division Ex Kharian, in a state of battle readiness in its cantonment is simultaneously launched. Because of shorter interior lines on the Pakistani side, their leading elements effect a linkup at Madhopur within 24 hours. Thereafter the division fans out and leans onto the Shakargarh Bulge towards the North, ignores Samba and extends in depth up to the Madhopur-Dar-Udhampur Road. This one-sided manoeuvre successfully cuts off any reinforcement from Pathankot side. l Simultaneously a Schleiffen-type double envelopment manoeuvre cuts off Jammu from Udhampur and Akhnur side. This is effected by an SSG company landing at the Nandini tunnel, with a brigade group and armoured regiment thrust linking up with it via Chicken Neck and areas North of Jammu; while another brigade group advances along the Akhnur-Jammu highway. l To contain our forces in the cutoff areas, brigade-sized thrusts are developed from Ranbirsing Pura side towards Jammu and another towards Hiranagar between Madhopur and Samba. The end result of the above double envelopment renders our armored brigades in Pathankot and Jammu ineffective with the infantry elements defending Jammu and Samba isolated. By the time our strike corps are mobilised, moved and deployed, the enemy is firmly ensconced and we find ourselves in a reactive mode akin to Kargil, but much graver. This could well have been avoided if we had hard-hitting mobile forces with integrated gunships and attack helicopters ready to be launched at short notice, rather than the white elephants slumbering at Ambala, Mathura and Bhopal. The intrusion being limited in space, with troops in close proximity exercising the nuclear option by us is out, however, the airforce is brought in, Pakistan too reciprocates. The fundamental objectives of defence planning is to achieve the most appropriate political-cum-military posture compatible with national resources, else a military imbalance will accrue as in this example. In the current nuclear scenario, the earlier concept of one of the strike corps hitting the Indus river in 72 hours, with the second cutting off the Shakargarh Bulge and the third held in reserve to cater for enemy reactions or to reinforce success, is more or less a thing of the past. This is primarily due to the nuclear threshold being crossed the moment our forces transgress across the enemy’s limit of acceptable penetration. In sum, future battles would perforce be fought within limited space; these would be of short duration because of international pressures and of a very intense nature. The aim would be to inflict maximum attrition and seize limited ground for bargaining purposes. The ability to bring down maximum firepower both from the air and ground would be the winning factor. In this we have a lot to learn from the Israelis. Tradeoff analysis, which includes cost-effective analysis, would dictate that we have a flight of attack helicopters and a flight to gunships integral to each independent armoured brigade and infantry division in the plains. The gunships besides having a tremendous firepower punch would also have the capability of airlifting infantry to reinforce any threatened sector if required. Thus in the plains of Punjab, Rajasthan Sector and southern areas of J & K, there is a requirement for a shift from pillbox type of defences to that of holding ground by firepower. Approximately half our armoured regiments should be replaced by air cavalry. Studies reveal that this would impose four times more attrition on enemy forces. The aim in short intensity wars would be to bring down maximum firepower to bear down upon the enemy, rather than wait for the strike corps to uncoil their tails, which has not happened in the past ever and now is out of question. It has to be the money’s worth. Similarly in the rest of J&K and along our northern borders, hard-hitting forces are mandatory for which the essence is mobility. And it is the gunships which will play a decisive role, though in the mountains it would per se be an infantry battle. To offset costs, besides cutting the armour strength by half, the requirement of an artillery division and assault engineer brigades for crossing over rivers too have little usage in the current context. With the air space being extensively utilised, an important issue, which has to be resolved between the army and the air force is that of air space management. The Americans have tried it, as also the British. Dual control of air space management is fraught with danger. This has to be handled by one agency and that is the air force. However the air cavalry has to be part and parcel of the army. Further with fast flying aircraft, the classic concept of close air support is also a thing of the past. It has best to be left to the gunships, which are best suited for usage in mountainous areas as it is problematic for fighter aircraft with their large turning circuits and lower manouverability in mountainous terrain/ valleys. The air force has other more important functions to perform viz. offensive air support, interdiction and the battle for achieving air
supremacy.
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Mail from the past
A
letter from home is the least you expect when trying to make sense of things in another part of the world. And this one was not a normal letter you could treat as routine — read, reciprocate and forget. This one would stay in my heart like a memory that grows younger with years. It was a letter from a girl I held dear at some point in my life, a girl who bewildered the adolescent in me by loving me most deeply without being able to explain why. Her favourite quote used to be: “I can never marry.” The next thing I remembered was the laughter I would indulge in. I still recall the vehemence with which I would brush aside the seriousness of her statement. I cared about her for the genuine friendly reasons and I wanted to keep her from desperate situations that could never arise. They had no fertile ground. So I would try deflecting her attention by telling her tales that lullabies are made of: “You will go running when your knight comes in a shining armour; you will go singing when he plays the melody of love; you will go and never return….” She would dismiss my songs by laughing as well, and by laughing more loudly than I ever could. By the end of it we would be laughing together having neutralised the situation we were not mature to understand. We handled it, nevertheless. With time, our bond grew stronger and our friendship became the topic of discussion at school. Baffled by the sudden, sometimes unwanted, attention we began to command, I acquired a low profile. She, however, relished every bit of it. Soon she withdrew from the world; her time became mine. Or so she said. I could hardly make sense of her words and I decided to ignore them until they reflected on my performance. My mind was now restive and it was evident that I was handling more than I was equipped to. I knew it was time to abandon the never-ending road. I also knew the retreat would leave her in grief and me in guilt. But from the lessons I learnt at school, I knew I must hold my friend with both my hands but I must also be ready to let go. Sometimes it is in the fall that the rising lies. So we made a pact. I decided to move away from her, hoping she would forgive me for deciding all by myself. We settled for letters and stuck to our guns for years, getting to know each other better over words which we meant more than ever before. We shared joys, as joys were all we had. But when sorrows came, I deserted the pact. I was left with neither words nor will. In the later years of life, I never looked back on her. Nor did she trail my path. But here she was — back in my life like a memory I had forgotten to recall. As I stood in an alien land with a familiar piece of paper in hand, I knew it held the meaning of true friendship for me. As I looked harder into the envelope to see if there was anything else for me, I discovered a card tinier than the letter. It was my friend’s wedding card. She had finally found her knight. I returned to the letter to look for more references to the wedding but there were none. What I found instead was a confession scribbled in a corner of the letter. “It takes a long time to grow an old friend,” it read. |
Punjab units turn into marriage palaces That the small-scale
industry (SSI) is nobody’s baby is clear from the fact that of the total about 70,000 small units in Punjab 25,000 have either died a natural death during the past one decade or are on the brink of closure. A combination of factors like a phenomenal hike in the prices of inputs, persistence of the octroi system despite the oft-repeated government promises about its abolition, the Inspector Raj and failure of the Punjab, government to protect these units have caused an irreparable loss to the SSI, which had once been the backbone of the economy of Punjab, particularly before the militancy in the early eighties. The SSI sector had witnessed a vast growth in the pre-terrorism days and this journey of progress somehow continued till about 10 years back when the government support, particularly subsidies, started eluding it gradually and when competition from within the country and outside started taking its toll and finally arresting the growth of the Punjab-based small industry. The biggest contribution of the small-scale industry, a major part of which is situated in the rural or semi-urban areas of Punjab, is not that it has just been producing goods and equipment like diesel engines, pump-sets, bicycles, bicycle parts, agricultural implements, hand tools, rubber goods, machine tools, ready-made garments and plastic items, but, also that it has been generating employment for a vast chunk of youth even during the decade-long turmoil in Punjab. Since there has hardly been any government support to the small- scale industry sector, a large number of owners of SSIs have closed down their units and have converted these into marriage palaces. The presence of such small industry units-turned-marriage palaces can be noticed along the busy Jalandhar-Amritsar, Jalandhar-Hoshiarpur, Jalandhar-Ludhiana, Ludhiana-Chandigarh and Hoshiarpur-Chandigarh highways. Enquiries have painted a gloomy picture of the small-scale industry sector of Punjab. The owners of almost half of the total 70,000 such units have either been forced to down their shutters or are in the process of winding up their ventures. As small-scale units had once come up on huge pieces of land, roughly about 10 per cent of the industrialists have thought it fit to convert their production facilities, particularly those situated along main roads, into marriage palaces as they thought that marriage palaces were more viable these days than industrial units. On the other hand, a large number of SSI owners have even gone bankrupt. “Nearly half of the small units of Punjab have closed down and the frustrated owners or their wards have already moved to the Gulf or other foreign countries to do menial jobs as semi-skilled or non-skilled labourers,” says Mr Ashwani Kohli, Senior Vice-President of the Punjab Chamber of Small Exporters. He feels that the erratic power supply, failure of the government to abolish octroi and failure of the Department of Industry and Commerce to pay subsidy arrears to the tune of Rs. 700 crore have been the major factors which have crippled the small industry of Punjab. “Punjab is the only state in the country where octroi still haunts traders and industrialists despite repeated promises of the state government to abolish it. The presence of octroi not only causes harassment to them, but, also adds to a straightway hike of up to 2 per cent in input costs and hence keeps away SSI owners from competition at the national and international levels. “The proposed recovery of income tax of about Rs 1,500 crore in retrospective in the light of the Taxation Amendment Bill, 2005, would further harm the exporters of Punjab,” rues Mr Kohli. According to Mr Gursharan Singh, President of the Federation of Jalandhar Industrial and Traders’ Association, the iron prices have gone up from Rs 15,000 to Rs 23,000 a tonne during the past one year alone. “You can imagine the plight of industrialists. The soaring costs of inputs have lowered their production capacity and they are hardly left with any capital to invest in production. Moreover, the government has failed to effect the VAT refund of Rs 400 crore to industrialists of Punjab, which is nothing but a direct loss of capital. Industrialists also point out that the “quiet burial” of the freight equalisation policy by the state government about eight years back had also hit the small sector of the state badly. Unlike in the past, when the policy was in force, industrial inputs like coal are not priced on a par with other states nowadays, which in turn, has led to an increase in input costs and as a consequence put Punjab products and goods out of competition at the national level. “When the freight equilisation policy was adhered to by the Punjab government, coal prices were kept on a par with other states and the price gap was filled by the Punjab government. Now the industry has to pay more for inputs, particularly, coal, feels an industrialist-exporter. “The Punjab government’s claims about putting an end to the Inspector Raj also do not hold any water as every exporter entrepreneur still has to file nearly 27 returns every month. Is it simplification of the process?” asks Mr Ashwani Kohli. |
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Cultural depletion through Western imports During
a literary meet I once attended, someone popped up this rather uneasy question in an equally unexpected manner: what is it that ails Punjabi literature? All kinds of plausible and implausible answers were put forth, ranging from the lack of government support to the apathy of readers. If someone spoke passionately about the need to promote our literary culture through a network of libraries, others felt it necessary to promote, albeit aggressively, Punjabi language in states other than Punjab. Almost everyone agreed that the problem lay with the external, motivating factors. Not even a single speaker thought it worthwhile to look inwards and suggest how far our personal and cultural attitudes were responsible for whatever was found wanting. Once I had a chance encounter with a bright-looking young man from the Department of Punjabi, who presented me with a strange request. He was looking for a portrait of Shakespeare and wanted my help in procuring one. I asked him, “Whatever do you want Shakespeare’s portrait for?” He said, “Sir, I believe he was the greatest dramatist we have ever had. I admire him a great deal. I want to get his picture framed and put it up in my room.” Now this had me completely flummoxed. After years of teaching Shakespeare, I felt I had finally come across a genuine Shakespeare lover. I said, “This is interesting. So you must have read most of his plays?” Without so much as a blink, he shot back, “No Sir, I haven’t read any. But I have heard a great deal about him.” Despite my familiarity with this oft-orchestrated Indian habit of icon-making and idolisation, I somehow felt rather uneasy about the excessiveness of this Punjabi response. I wondered if this was the way we Punjabis often formed our impression(s) about authors, our own or those of the other languages and cultures? Merely on the basis of what we hear rather than what we read or discover? This would have continued to mystify me had I not met one of my colleagues a few days later. After meeting him I began to understand that idolisation of a young fellow was not an aberration or an exception, but rather a product of a peculiar mindset, an outcome of a certain way in which we continue to perceive ourselves in relation to the Europeans in general and the British in particular, their literature, history and culture. In course of an absolutely innocuous conversation, this colleague of mine, who incidentally teaches Punjabi, nearly had me zapped when he said, “Oh! your situation is different. After all, you teach English literature”. More than the mixture of awe and envy in his words, it was this ideological mask of self-inferiorisation that unnerved me a great deal. It took me quite some time to recover from the shock and gather my wits. Finally when I had, I said, “Why do you say that? You should be proud that you teach your own language/literature. I feel like a condemned soul who is forever enslaved to teach someone else’s.” No doubt, the conversation ended on this note, but the words of my colleague haunted me for long. Though he had dedicated several “precious” decades of his life to the teaching of Punjabi literature, “my friend” hadn’t really developed genuine pride in what he did. Somewhere he still nursed a secret envy for his counterparts who taught English literature. Was it not a symptom or an expression of self-inferiorisation? Was it not the outcome of an ideology that often compelled us to indulge in inferiorisation of our own language(s) and culture(s) at the cost of valorising someone else’s? Once while attending a parent-teacher meeting, I was shocked when the teacher complained to one of the parents of a six-year-old, saying, “I always tell him to speak English, at least, in my class, but he doesn’t listen. He has this ‘bad habit’ of using Punjabi expressions in between. You must check him.” Do you recall having been subjected to this or having witnessed such a scene ever? Of course, all this is real, not just the figment of some crooked imagination. Now, had it been a matter of a few isolated individuals or their flights of fancy, one may not have really bothered much. But unfortunately, it has percolated so deep down to our institutional practices that it’s actually worrisome. While attending a seminar on Punjabi literature, I was aghast to learn how widespread and endemic this tendency among scholars and academics of Punjabi was to flaunt their knowledge of the critical theories, tools and procedures churned out by the Western Academy. With a genuine tinge of pride in his tone, one of the academics boasted, “In less than a year, every new book or theory that the West produces is made available to the Punjabi readers through translation.” But when I asked him about the reverse trend, he wasn’t too sure. It appears that our imports from other languages/cultures in terms of translated literature, literary conventions and critical theories far exceed our exports of own literature and literary traditions to others. (Elementary economics tells us that exports must exceed imports, if the balance of payments is to remain favourable). A well-known publisher of Punjabi literature once told me in strict confidence, “I’ve bought the rights to publish all the works of Paulo Coelho in Punjabi.’ This is admirable, but my point is different. While too many people are worrying about how the Punjabi reader is to be acquainted with the best there is in world literature, not many seem to bother about how our best could also be made available outside the frontiers of our state. Put simply, it’s a classic case of adverse balance of payments in purely cultural, if not economic, terms. Won’t it, then, create conditions where our own cultural depletion or impoverishment could become threateningly real? The height of celebrating our writers is that we eulogise Shiv Batalvi as the Keats of Punjab, and Mohan Bhandari as the Chekhov of Punjabi short story. By thus depriving our authors or their works of cultural specificities, we, willy-nilly, render them nameless or “identity-less.” Of course, we continue to wear and flaunt our masks of conquest, which, whether we realise or not, are our masks of self-defeat, too. Now finally, the clinching question: will this mindset, this state of affairs, this cultural self-hatred ever change? Yes, it just might. Only if we are prepared to change three things. One, genuinely improve our reading habits. Two, develop natural pride in our language/literature and increase our export surplus. Three, stop looking at our language, writers, literature and literary traditions through the tinted Ray-Ban glasses minted elsewhere. The writer, Professor of English at Panjab University, has nine works of translation to his credit. |
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For speed healing, quit squabbling You
may need to do more than keep a clean bandage on that cut you got a few days ago. In order to heal quickly, you may need to get some exercise and keep things happy on the home front. Two studies about healing, published in November and December by Ohio State University researchers, concluded that maintaining an exercise regimen and reducing marital hostility may speed healing. The trials were designed to measure the effects of two different behaviors on the body’s ability to heal. Both involved inflicting study participants’ arms with wounds, which were monitored as they healed. The November study, published in the Journal of Gerontology, found that regular exercise speeded the recovery of sedentary older adults aged 55 to 77. The 15 adults in the non-exercising group healed in an average of 39 days; the 13 exercising adults healed in about 29 days. The active participants took part in a three-month exercise program, consisting of a one-hour daily regimen of warm-up exercises and stretching, followed by 30 minutes on a stationary bike, jogging or walking, plus strength training. Those in the non-exercise group were told to maintain their sedentary routine. Lead study author Charles Emery said the findings demonstrate “one more benefit of exercise.” Exercise may simply lower stress, he said, allowing the body to heal more efficiently. But the results could also suggest that exercise triggers an enhanced immune system response, he said. The December study, which was published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, found that “hostile marital behaviors” impede wound healing, according to the findings. Forty-two married couples, ages 22 to 77, were admitted to a hospital on two separate occasions—once to talk normally and a second time to discuss a disagreement. At the time of the visits, they were inflicted with blister wounds on their forearms. Couples who had “consistently higher levels of hostile behaviors across both the interactions” healed at 60 percent of the rate of low-hostility couples, the study concludes. (Some couples fought unprompted during the first visit.) Wounds in the marital study “took a day longer ... to heal (after couples argued) than it did when they weren’t fighting,” said Ron Glaser, co-author of the study and director of the Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research at Ohio State. The results suggest “these kinds of things that take place at home could have implications for surgery down the road sometime in life,” he said. Because the exercise findings are preliminary and the wounds tested were minor, the authors don’t know if the results are “generalizable to someone who has been in an accident or who has had surgery,” said Emery. But it’s likely that “the quicker someone gets up (and becomes physically active) following a wound of any kind, probably the better,” he said. Other wound care experts agreed. Wound healing, as a practice, is “pretty basic,’’ said Richard A. Kelton, a specialist at the Wound Care Center at the Baltimore Washington Medical Center in Glen Burnie, Md. “You have to maximize blood supply to the affected area (and) you want to reduce swelling,” said Kelton. “Anything that slows down oxygen delivery to an area,” including stress or poor circulation, can impede healing, he said. If future research confirms these findings, the benefits could be far reaching, particularly for surgical patients, Glaser said. “A person going in for surgery is going to be pretty scared, and they’re going to be pretty stressed,” he said. —
LA Times-Washington Post |
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From the pages of DR SAPRU’S WARNING
HOWEVER opinion may differ regarding Dr Sapru’s actual achievement, no honest and impartial critic will deny that his speech at the Imperial Conference was a great forensic effort. As Gokhale once said of himself, nothing could have been easier than for Dr Sapru to have summed up his case in a few brave words, but those words, while winning for the speaker the applause of his own countrymen to whom they were not addressed and for whom they were not primarily meant, would have produced no tangible effect upon those whose judgement and will Dr Sapru was out to influence. The best thing Dr Sapru could have done would have been to withdraw from the Conference as a protest against the Kenya decision. His speech was a model of persuasive eloquence, and it is obvious not only from the speeches of most of the British and Dominion statesman who followed him but from the comments of influential newspapers that it has not been entirely without an effect.
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They do not know the value of God’s Praise and Satan ever abides in them. — Guru Nanak Steadfastness cements the road to Supreme Knowledge. —
The Upanishads O mind, forget the body, forget the sickness, and remain merged in Bliss! —
Ramakrishna One should always remember that all works are done by the energy of nature and that he or she is not the doer but only an instrument. — Bhagvad Gita My nationalism is as broad as my swadeshi. I want India’s rise so that the whole world may benefit. — Mahatma Gandhi A donkey anointed with sandal-paste will still roll in dust. —
Guru Nanak He who associates himself with evil-doers, is ruined. Being fed on poison (in the company of evil), his life goes to waste. — Guru Nanak One who has seen him experiences the stillness of a forest glad with himself. — The Upanishads
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