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Focus on farmers Agriculture needs more from budgets THE Budget for 2006-07 has special gifts for farmers: they will get short-term credit up to Rs 3 lakh at 7 per cent interest rate from the 2006-07 kharif season. There is also some relief on interest liability on loans up to Rs 1 lakh.
Indo-US nuclear deal
No English please!
Leave armed forces to Commander SGPC museum to harm Sikh interests Thanking kids for not being self-destructive
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Karachi blast THE twin blasts that rocked Karachi on Thursday on the eve of US President George W Bush’s Pakistan visit were a grim reminder that Pakistan continues to be the hotbed of terrorist activities. So much of violence and hatred have been nurtured there that the practitioners now think nothing of displaying their wares within the country itself. Terrorists are least bit bothered about the Pakistani lives that have been lost, since they have the “pleasure” of shedding American blood as well. There are enough fanatics around to target, or at least embarrass, a visiting American President who happens to be the most protected and also most threatened human being on the planet. That is why it is imperative that no country or government provides any of their ilk even indirect support, whatever be the garb in which it is given. Pakistan’s track record in this regard has been dismal. Terrorism aided and abetted by it has been playing havoc not only in India but all over the world. Claims of innocence have an unmistakable hollowness about them. Perhaps Mr Bush will utilise his visit to impress on President Pervez Musharraf the futility of hunting with the hounds and running with the hares. The world is sick and tired of such tactics. As long as he continues to stoke the embers of violence in Kashmir, he himself will be in the firing line because such lawless people are nobody’s friends. Now that the world has acknowledged and welcomed India’s advent on the world stage, Pakistan too should realise the futility of remaining engaged in a fratricidal proxy war. At least it must eschew violence. It has harmed itself also considerably in the process. This is the time when all countries should be sincerely engaged in wiping out terrorism, whether it is in Kashmir or Karachi.
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No shortcut THE much-touted “salva judum” (peace march) against the Naxalites in Chhattisgarh seems to have gone awry. Last week’s attack on the tribals returning from a rally in which over two dozen of them were killed shows the campaign has only exposed the common folk to greater risks. Chief Minister Raman Singh has been claiming from the housetops that “salva judum” started by Leader of the Opposition Mahendra Karma of the Congress has seen the back of the Naxalites in village after village in the tribal belt of the state. All that the Naxalites required to prick the government claim was to detonate a couple of landmines killing the unwary tribals. It is easy for a chief minister, protected as he is by Black Cat commandoes, to visit tribal areas and claim success. But when he leaves the area, it is the poor tribals who have to bear the brunt of the Naxalite anger. That is precisely what happened in Dantewada district last week. Reports from the area suggest that thousands of tribals have been forced to abandon their villages and take shelter in government-run relief camps where shortage of even food is common. In other words, they have been rendered destitute in their own land thanks to the adventurous policy of the government. The chief minister now claims that he does not have adequate security forces to deal with the menace in which case he should have thought of a better strategy to deal with the problem. His government’s claim that the Naxalites function in isolation and they are just an import from Andhra Pradesh does not carry conviction when they virtually control vast tracts of the tribal heartland. An ostrich-like policy like that of the Chhattisgarh government will not serve any purpose when the Naxalites function more effectively. There is little coordination among the states concerned. For instance, Chhattisgarh was supposedly hounding the Naxalites when the latter were engaged in peace talks with the Andhra Pradesh government. If the anti-Naxalite campaign is to be effective, there should be a serious endeavour to woo the misguided youth back into the mainstream for which the states will have to address many socio-economic problems of the region. The governments concerned will do well to remember that there is no shortcut to ending the Naxalite menace.
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Focus on farmers THE Budget for 2006-07 has special gifts for farmers: they will get short-term credit up to Rs 3 lakh at 7 per cent interest rate from the 2006-07 kharif season. There is also some relief on interest liability on loans up to Rs 1 lakh. The problem with bank loans is that they do not come as easily as those from moneylenders. Banks’ procedures and managerial attitudes keep off marginal farmers. The better-off farmers usually grab facilities aimed at helping the poor. Besides, farmers frequently misspend their loans. The purchase of tractors, unviable for their small land holdings, often lands them in a debt trap, especially when crops fail. Crop insurance has a limited reach. Irrigation has been getting increased funds. As the Finance Minister is aware, water-use efficiency in agriculture is very low. Rainwater harvest is also not getting due attention. States attach very low priority to water conservation. The Central scheme to renovate and preserve water bodies, announced in the last UPA Budget, is confined to 23 districts and needs to be extended. The Centre has not cared to help Punjab and Haryana, which have over-exploited their water resources to produce enough rice for the Central pool, in arresting the declining water table. There is much talk about but little action on crop diversification. It will not happen unless the returns from alternative crops are made lucrative and assured. Simultaneously, a farmer-friendly policy framework for contract farming needs to be put in place. The processing of fruits and vegetables is very low and wastage is huge in the absence of the required infrastructure. Agriculture will not be able to grow at the expected rate of 4 per cent unless its dependence on the monsoon is reduced and coordinated efforts are made to raise productivity to the global levels. Punjab Agriculture University, which has got Rs 100 crore from the Budget, will hopefully play the desired role in ushering in the second Green Revolution.
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Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else’s.
— Billy Wilder
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Indo-US nuclear deal THE successful Indo-US nuclear deal was entirely predictable. The two leaderships had invested so much of their prestige in the conclusion of this agreement, it was obvious that they could not afford to fail. This was missed by sections of media, academia and political class who continued to be conditioned by 60 years of Cold War mindset. The nuclear deal was finalised just an hour before the joint appearance of the two leaders before the media, just as it happened on July 18, 2005. This is also not unexpected because the kind of complex and complicated issues could not have been solved at bureaucratic levels. They needed interaction at top political leadership levels to reach a mutually satisfactory solution. There has been a lot of misunderstanding on this issue created by the nonproliferation ayatollahs in US and people of Cold War mindset in India. The key to the understanding of Indo-US deal is the acceptance by the US and other major powers that India is to be treated as an exception to the Nonproliferation Treaty. Second, the US President is convinced that the right approach to solve the global energy problem is to spread the generation of nuclear energy, which is environmentally clean, and use other sophisticated technologies for energy generation to reduce the dependence on oil. India, along with China and the US are potential large energy consumers. Therefore, India, along with China should be brought within the nuclear energy regime. Third, India is considered as the sixth balancer in the international balance of power and as an English speaking, multi-cultural and democratic country, whose skilled population has already contributed significantly to US science and technology, is a natural partner for the US. In a discontinuous change in policy the US won over China and weaned it away from communism in 1971 to the mutual benefit of both countries. It now expects to convert India from an estranged democracy to a natural partner to its own benefit. If this had been correctly understood then the ayatollahs of nonproliferation in the US would not have wasted so much time in trying to fit India into a traditional nonproliferation framework. The US administration had made it clear that India is to be treated as an exception to the NPT. Having made their entire careers on a not very successful, nonproliferation watch (they looked away from Chinese proliferation to Pakistan, latter’s proliferation to Iran, North Korea ad Libya and proliferation of Dr. A. Q Khan under CIA patronage) they found it difficult to accept this exceptionalisation extended to India. In this country our media and academia could not distinguish between the views of these nonproliferation ayatollahs and official strategy of the Bush administration, which marginalised those who held conventional views on state-to-state proliferation, overlooking the present-day dangers of WMD proliferation by non-state actors and the new nonproliferation strategy needed beyond the scope of the present Nonproliferation Treaty. The ayatollahs had no concept about the role of new plutonium energy economy, the Bush administration was envisaging. Many in India, including many of our nuclear scientists, took their pronouncements more seriously than they deserved and got into an exceedingly defensive mode. Others joined to further their own parochial agendas. Those who fiercely denounced the Indian nuclear tests and Indian nuclear arsenal, suddenly, became staunch defenders of the flexibility of the Indian nuclear arsenal and its expansion to deal with all kinds of future contingencies. Others who used to denounce the Department of Atomic Energy for its inadequacies, in terms of safety, progress in R&D and construction became champions of total autarchy of our nuclear research. Others raised very intricate issues, which finally proved to be no issues at all - such as tritium and fast breeders being kept out of safeguards. Lastly, came the safeguards issues and obviously India, having been recognised as a nuclear weapon state cannot accept the permanent safeguards, which are meant to apply to nonnuclear weapon states. Therefore, the issue had to be solved on the basis of India being an exception. This could be done only at the political level. This was neither an issue for the Department of Atomic Energy in India nor for the arms control bureaucracy of the US. Such discontinuous changes in foreign policy, having global implications, are usually generated by visionary political leadership and it takes time for the bureaucracies to understand and adjust themselves to such changes. In this case, the initiative for this discontinuous change in policy towards India has come from President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The State Department bureaucracy, Congress, the various think tanks and the media in the US are yet to absorb the implications of this policy. Therefore, a certain resistance to change and bias in favour of status quo were to be expected. On the Indian side the situation was worse. While Dr Manmohan Singh and some of his close associates are globalisers and believers of the balance of power thesis, most of the bureaucracy, political class, media and academia are still conditioned by the Cold War memories and the U.S.un-friendliness towards India, during that era. In international politics a nation deals with others not on the basis of how virtuous other nations are but on the basis of mutuality of interests of the moment. Most of the nonaligned nations were autocratic, non-democratic and non-secular and that did not prevent India developing friendly relations with them. India had no hesitation in dealing with Stalin with all his genocides, ethnic cleansings and Gulags. Nor did we raise issues about Mao Dze Dong being responsible for 38 million Chinese deaths. India signed Shimla Pact with Bhutto who instigated the Pakistani generals to commit genocide and ethnic cleansing in Bangladesh. For that matter Sheikh Mujib-ur-Rahman himself made peace with Bhutto. Therefore, India deals with the US as a country to promote current mutuality of interests. Getting exceptionalisation from the NPT is in India’s interest. Enhancing relationship with the US in turn results in improvement of relationship with the European Union, Russia, Japan and China. That is in Indian interest. In a recent poll in India, 72 per cent people considered the US a bully, yet 55 per cent felt that India could trust that country and 66 per cent agreed that George Bush was a friend. That is the nature of international real-politik and ultimately every country has to concentrate on promotion of its national interests, in a complex real world full of contradictions. The Indo-U.S nuclear deal signals the recognition of mutuality of national interests between the two
countries.
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No English please! TROUBLE was the last thing I had anticipated while planning my 14-day trip across Europe. Like any fresh traveller, fed on the usual diet of the “sophisticated” developed world and its world-class travel facilities, I too hit the ground with tremendous assurance in my heart. But in the zeal of experiencing the first world, I had forgotten a fundamental fact — illusion does not always translate into reality. And of this I was reminded every time I stepped on the soil of a new European city, my first halt being Paris. Too proud of their language to care for a non-French speaking visitor, the Parisians barely yielded clues to my destination. And here I was — trapped in the midnight frenzy at the famous Gare de Lyon railway station in the fashion capital of the world — unable to make a single right move. With everyone around singing the “no-English please” song, I had no chance of breakthrough till, of course, I bumped into a Bangladeshi whom I had mistaken to be an Indian. He had faint knowledge of French, but useful enough to get me going after an unwanted spell of rest. Finally I had the right indications that led me to the metro rail network — the easiest means of local travel at an unearthly hour like that. Had it not been for this chance meeting with a Bangladeshi, I would have remained a hostage to the famed sophistication of the first world! Later at the hotel reception I discovered the Parisians were officially discouraged from speaking English. They believe in the supremacy of their language and would rather appear inhospitable than instruct the first-time traveller in English. Things did not seem to change much with time zones. In Italy — my next halt — I had another quaint experience. Besides enduring the usual language problem at the train station, I landed myself into another formidable mess. At the International Youth Hostel in Rome, where I was supposed to check in, I discovered the receptionist knew not a word of English. A man in his 70s, he racked his brains to decipher my demands. He took two hours to accept my entry form; then gave seven wrong keys to my room before finally managing to hit the right one. By the time I had the privilege of entering my room, it was dawn. Small wonder then that I spent much of my next day in Rome practicing the sign language. To my surprise, it worked best. In fact, it alone worked. Further down in Switzerland, the language blues persisted but in lighter shades. The Swiss seemed to treat the English-speaking with a little more dignity than some of their French and Italian cousins. And I didn’t know this change of hearts had something to do with the projection of Alps in Bollywood, until a tourist officer proclaimed: “Switzerland shines more in Bollywood archives than anywhere else. We owe a special something to you.” In The Netherlands too, the Bollywood influence proved useful as I easily found indications (in English) to the flower-laden valley facing a windmill — a sight immortalised by Yash Chopra in his film “Silsilay”. This short-lived euphoria apart, the challenges of communication returned to baffle me at almost every crossroad in Europe. Besides the other things my Europe visit taught me, it helped me wake up to another realisation — that English is not such an international language after all. It has a series of odds to brave before it can qualify as the world language. Meanwhile, independent travellers like me could actually do with little Italian and loads of
French!
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Leave armed forces to Commander THE safety, honour and welfare of your country come first; always and every time. The honour, welfare and comfort of the men you command come next. Your own ease, comfort and safety come last, always and every time”. This is the credo of the Indian Military Academy (IMA) in Dehradun which guides every Army officer in the country. It is engraved on the portals of the Chetwode Hall. These are the portals through which Gentlemen Cadets of the IMA pass after their Passing Out Parade and once they pass through these portals, they becomes officers in the Indian Army. The Credo, itself, has been taken from the inaugural address of the Academy by Field Marshal Sir Philip Chetwode, Baronet GCB, GCSS, CCMA, DSO, then Commander-in-Chief India, after whom the main building and its central hall are named, delivered on December 10, 1932. The recent controversy following the Sachar Committee reportedly asking for the number of Muslims in the armed forces with a rankwise breakup, which has been commented upon widely in the media, and which seems to have been laid to rest by the Defense Minister’s statement in Rajya Sabha, needs to be seen in light of the credo of the IMA. Mr N.N. Vohra, writing in an English daily, brought the much needed sense of balance and proportion to this debate. He attributed the controversy to “an inability to maturely deal with issues of high national importance (which) arises from the failure of political parties to follow a bi-partisan approach in regard to such matters, particularly those which may impinge on any aspect of national security” (I.E, February 20, 2006). While the Indian Army always fights for and puts the safety, honour, and welfare of the country first “always and every time”, and the officers of the Indian Army put their own ease, comfort, and safety last, “always and every time”, we need to ask how does this credo apply to the politicians and political parties in the country as a whole. Based on what could be gathered from media reports, the mandate of the Sachar Committee seems to be to assess the status of Muslims in the country in terms of socio-economic parameters, including educational, vocational, employment, etc.; to determine reasons for the existing status; and to possibly suggest ways and means for improving the status. Based on the data that it is reported to have asked the armed forces to provide, it seems the Committee is engaging in a data collection exercise in the hope of providing a statistical rationale for its findings. One does not have to go far to come to a reasonably accurate assessment of the status of Muslims in India. The socio-economic, educational, vocational, and other job related facets of the status of Muslims in India have been widely documented by a multitude of social scientists and social commentators over the years, some belonging to the community and some others. There is ample documentation available, some of which would certainly be based on rigorous field work, which provides an accurate, realistic, and reliable picture of the situation as it exists on the ground. The socio-economic status of Muslims in India is a very large and macro level issue of the Indian society as a whole. Given the wide range of social issues, it stands to simple logic that macro issues need macro methodologies. Therefore an issue such as socio-economic status of Muslims in India also requires appropriate methodologies. It is for the Sachar Committee to decide whether it wants to continue the exercise of counting the trees or would it also like to look at the forest. If we take an overall view, it is not hard to see that the socio-economic status of Muslims in India, as a religious grouping, is not commensurate with other religious groups, be they Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, or Parsis. If one is to look for reasons for this state of affairs, it would not take long to see that one major contributor is the fact that most major political formations have tried to exploit religion for political purposes. The current state of the socio-economic status of Muslim in India has been contributed to in a large measure by (a) the exploitation of religion for political purposes by almost all political formations, (b) the vocal and fanatic elements in all religious groupings, and (c) the inability of the larger Muslim community to organize itself against the smaller but vocal and fanatic elements. While other religious grouping can influence the internal functioning of the Muslim community only to a limited extent, the exploitation of religion for political purposes by almost all political formations is an issue of major concern about which the nation and its people must be concerned and need to do something. While agreeing with several commentators who have suggested that the functioning the armed forces be left to the chiefs of the services and to the Defense Minister, we should also remember that the ultimate responsibility for the armed forces is of the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces and the Head of the Nation. All of us, including the politicians, will earn the right to interfere in their working only when we can actually put the safety, honour and welfare of the country first, always and every time, and our own ease, comfort and safety last, always and every time. The writer is a professor at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad
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SGPC museum to harm Sikh interests THE decision of the SGPC to set up a “Sikh Sangharsh Museum” in lieu of “Minar-e-Shahidan” is something that has the potential of harming the interests of the Sikhs in times to come much more than some of the earlier developments that were hailed as great steps to further the so-called Sikh concerns that include the launching of the Singh Sabhas and the setting up of the Shiromani Akali Dal. Contrary to the tenets of the Sikh religion, all these initiatives were inspired by some perceived fear instead of molding responses of the community in accordance with the will of the Almighty. These earlier initiatives launched with the best intentions for the Sikh community have so far resulted in disenchantment because there was an element of self-centredness involved in them. The Khalsa according to Guru Gobind Singh was launched by him as per the will of the Almighty and as long as the Khalsa acted as an instrument of the Almighty, it would remain insurmountable. The collective refrain of “Raj Karega Khalsa” only reflected the above conviction among the community. However, the Khalsa is a brotherhood of God-centred human beings for upholding “dharma” in society that was operating in the ever-changing environment. It required a mechanism for checking its course from time to time. This mechanism was provided for the Khalsa in Guru Granth Sahib as holistically imbibed and internalised by the community with an injunction that if anything went wrong in the calculations of the community, the community had to look inwards for discovering its shortcomings but never to resort to blaming others for its woes. Secondly, it was emphasised that in decision-making a Sikh is to be guided by the Guru’s word and not by his deeds or example. It is for this reason that despite all the devotion that the Sikhs had for their Gurus none of the Sikhs who later became Gurus thought it appropriate to pen a biography of the Guru person to whom they were so devoted. The Khalsa sway in the Northern India came about during a period of turmoil in the twilight of the crumbling Mughal empire. We do not have adequate written records to make an analysis of the various factors that resulted in according to Bulleh Shah, “Mughlan zahar pyale pite, bhurian wale raje kite”. The literature that is available of the period projects Khalsa as the vanguard of the Hindu revival and yet permitting the Muslims to follow their own religion and “sharia”. Bhai Santokh Singh, who wrote Suraj Parkash, virtually the first comprehensive history of the Sikh religion, presented the Sikh Gurus as the successors to the Hindu “avtaras” Ram and Krishan. Incidentally, Suraj Prakash is the only granth that is permitted for use in discourses in the gurdwaras. other than gurbani or verses of Bhai Gurdas or Goya. The same is the view of the Bhatts, whose panegyric verses are a part of the Granth Sahib. The shine of the rule of Maharaja Ranjit Singh prevented the Khalsa from noticing the erosion of values of the Khalsa Dharma that led to the defeat of the Khalsa army at the hands of the British. The milieu generated by the defeat produced the Singh Sabha response, which sought to revive the pristine Khalsa through modern education and projection of literature that focussed on the Khalsa identity and “rahit” without jeopardising the loyalty to the British. A spectre of fear of the “Arya Samaj” or missionaries provided the raison de’etre for pursuing the cause. It became a fashion to identify scapegoats for various failures and shortcomings of the Khalsa. The association of Gandhi with the Akalis during the gurdwara reform movement did not bring about any change in the mindset of the Sikhs. Rather as the events moved towards the transfer of power by the British, the major concern of the Akalis became the prevention of the Muslim League from coming to power in Punjab. The post-partition politics of the Akalis got focused on a Sikh majority state which was opposed by a vocal section of the Punjabi Hindus. This purely political struggle resulted in creating a perceptible chasm between the two communities. Our scholars and historians too contributed their mite in fostering the Sikh separatism. It had started with the Singh Sabha writers to bring out printed works that were edited to remove the earlier Hindu friendly description of the Sikh struggle. Surjit Hans, a well-known historian, showed in one of his research papers as to how a doctored version of Panth Prakash of Ratan Singh Bhangoo was brought out by the Chief Khalsa Dewan. Many scholars exaggerated the occasional controversies to deliberately foster enmity against one community or the other. A perceptive Pakistani observer, lamenting the communal massacres of Punjab in 1947, concluded that perhaps the fault lies in history, which Paul Valery, a French thinker, calls the most dangerous concoction of the chemistry of mind for it “intoxicates people and sets them dreaming, keeps old wounds open, inspires men with megalomania or the persecution complex and makes nations proud, bitter, vain and insufferable.” Punjab has only recently come out of a phase of senseless violence and agitations. The only silver lining of that phase is the current realisation and consensus among Punjabis that they have to live and prosper together as brothers. Mr Parkash Singh Badal has displayed wisdom in accepting this reality and the SAD has been thrown open to the Hindus. The proposed Sangharsh memorial in this context would be counter-productive as it would be presenting a lop-sided and partisan view of the Sikh history, always playing into the hands of the ill-wishers of Punjab.
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Thanking kids for not being self-destructive AT the end of last summer, I bought my daughter an iPod. It was a “thank-you” present. Thank you for not wrapping your car around a tree while running with your girlfriends all summer, I said. She laughed at me and told me none of her friends had crazy mothers like me, but what she never understood was how truly grateful I was that the state police hadn’t shown up at my door at 3 a.m. on some rainy night with really bad news. I was grateful for a lot of other things, too. Any of you who have teenagers can make the same gratitude list I made after a long, hot summer with a college student under the roof. But I don’t think we say “Thank you” as often as we should. We are more likely to say it to the grocery store cashier than we are to our spouses, and we almost never say it to our kids. This is ironic, considering the emphasis parents put on the whole “thank-you” thing when the kids are small. “Please” and “thank you” are phrases children learn right after “mommy,” “da-da” and “no.” As soon as they can scribble with a crayon, we are lashing them to the kitchen chair to turn out thank-you notes to family and friends who bestow gifts upon them. Certainly, we say thank-you to our children, especially when they are young. But it is primarily a modeling behavior. We are showing them what gratitude looks like, but I don’t think we ever show them the actual gratitude. Am I more grateful that my daughter did not tank her first semester in college than I am that she brought her dishes to the sink? You bet. Why would I say an absent-minded “thank you” for the trip to the sink, but not sit her down and tell her thank-you for the grades? While I am at it, why would I not take out a full-page ad? Why wouldn’t I hire a plane to trail a banner shouting, “Thank you for the 3.0” ? Because, I think, those are expected behaviors and somehow parents don’t think they should reward expected behaviors. Like giving report-card presents. We shouldn’t pay our kids for good grades. After all, school is their job and they are expected to do it right. My children’s grandmother would send report-card checks before the report cards were even issued. But that wasn’t a reward for a job well done. That was unconditional love. My husband and I used to dole out report card presents, too. I will take academic effort regardless of its motivation. But my sisters and my friends frowned on it. They don’t believe parents should reward expected behavior. But I disagree. How will our children know what we expect of them — what we hope for them — if we don’t call attention to those good behaviors in a way that will make them sit up and take notice — like the sound of a parent saying a sincere thank-you? We assume children somehow know that we prize honesty and self-respect and common sense without our having to spell it out, and that’s a mistake. It is like assuming that a 6-year-old knows instinctively to run toward first base and not third. What do honesty and self-respect and common sense look like? Would it kill us to point out these things by saying, “Thanks for not shoplifting, thank you for showing up for your job on time, and thank you for not jumping off the neighborhood bridge and into the creek just to see what would happen.” I went to a shower once for what used to be called an unwed mother, and she received a mountain of gifts and a preacher’s blessing from people who loved her and knew she needed their support. I was one of those people. — LA Times-Washington Post
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From the pages of “Reward” for Motilal Nehru
One statement made by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel in his recent speech at Bombay is of obvious and undoubted significance. “Pandit Nehru,” he said, “had made a peace gesture and he was rewarded with imprisonment.” This is what everybody in India who is anybody is saying. The arrest of Pandit Motilal Nehru would have been a blunder at any time. Coming at the time it did, so soon after his memorable interview with the “Daily Herald” representative, it was almost criminal. It showed that the counsels of the Government in India are inspired far more by a regard for the technicalities of law and an overweening sense of prestige than by even the most rudimentary statesmanship.
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The world is like an animal and the arrogant death is like the butcher. — Guru Nanak But the senses are blind inwards. So Man cannot see the spirit with his senses and thinks that it does not exist. — The Upanishads To enter the martial field, the warrior needs nothing but strength of his arms and his might. His right to combat is sanctified by his valour. — The Mahabharata All men arise from him. But the senses perceive men as different from each other. — The Upanishads
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