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Criminals in khaki Couples in combat |
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It’s 9 per cent India again surprises sceptics Predicting a 9 per cent growth for the economy this fiscal, the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council has stressed on taking hard decisions like controlling external debt, allowing further rupee appreciation and emoving bottlenecks to corporate acquisitions abroad. These all make sense.
Fading saffron
Coorg: the Indian Walden
Rethink MSP to ensure food security So who really does the talking? Defence Notes
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Criminals in khaki THE charge-sheet against three IPS officers — D.G. Vanzara, M.N. Dinesh and R.K. Pandian — and 10 other policemen by the Gujarat CID (Crime) in the fake killing of Sohrabuddin Sheikh is a shocking reminder of the increasing rot and decadence in the police. According to the 700-page charge-sheet, Sohrabuddin was pulled out of a Hyderabad-Mumbai bus with his wife, Kauser Bi, on Ahmedabad’s outskirts and shot by a joint team of Gujarat and Rajasthan police in November 2005. The policemen later killed Kauser Bi and burnt her body to destroy the crucial evidence. A third person, Tulsiram Prajapati, is still missing. Presently in judicial custody with other accused policemen, Vanzara dubbed Sohrabuddin as a terrorist planning to kill Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. He thought shooting a “terrorist” would help him gain “promotion and personal gain in career”. If policemen, that too, senior IPS officers, have no respect for the law, compromise their professional values, forget the training imparted to them, and indulge in fake encounters, they must be punished for their barbaric behaviour. The reckless manner in which they executed the operation shows their total lack of respect for law and humanity, and also a smug belief that they would be protected by the Narendra Modi government, whatever the consequences. The style of functioning of Vanzara, the suspended DIG, is repugnant to all the principles for which the IPS stands for. Mr Modi’s blue-eyed boy, he had risen fast up the ranks. He is a star of many encounters and he used to take his orders from the “highest levels”, often bypassing his immediate superiors. Now that the accused have been charge-sheeted, a fair and speedy trial is a must. This is particularly important in the context of Additional Solicitor-General Gopal Subramaniam’s doubts about a fair trial under Mr Narendra Modi’s dispensation. As the amicus curie in the case, he told the Supreme Court on Monday that the CID charge-sheet was riddled with loopholes, providing “a gateway for the accused to walk out”. This must not be allowed to happen. Apparently, Ms Geeta Johri, IG (CID), has done a good job despite many hurdles in her investigation. Since the Supreme Court is monitoring the case, one hopes that justice will triumph finally. The ends of justice will be met only if all the accused are handed out severest punishment.
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Couples in combat THE growing divorce rate can be viewed both as a sign of progress and as a sign of the increasing strain on the institution of marriage. In the 19th and early 20th centuries romantic fiction and films were about tempestuous love affairs that invariably ended in marriages and the couples “living happily thereafter”. Today films and fiction are more about infidelity, aged men falling for nubile girls and women having multiple partners. Vows that man and wife will remain united “till death do us part” and the mantras that are chanted when the couple takes the seven rounds of holy fire are increasingly losing their relevance when more and more couples are approaching courts, familial and judicial, to seek divorce. Kerala, which recorded a 350 per cent increase in divorce cases during the last 10 years, leads the nation in this sphere too. The reasons are not far to seek. Take the case of Kerala where literacy among women is the highest and where a larger percentage of women are in the workforce. The economic independence emboldens them to stand up against the kind of injustices in the family their mothers and grandmothers would have uncomplainingly suffered. Even the church that considers marriage as a sacrament, rather than a social contract, is increasingly veering round to the view that separation is a better option when irreconcilable differences crop up between a husband and a wife. Divorce is a reality from which the church is unable to escape. Ditto for communities where divorce is an easy option for the partners who can no longer cohabit. Couples aspiring for legal separation are on the increase but the law has not kept pace with the changing times. Mutually agreed divorce is a little easier to come by but the law is still heavily loaded against those who seek separation. This is because the law is more concerned about the continuance of the institution of the family. Yet, the practitioners of the law have begun to interpret it liberally to make separation easier for couples in combat. In all this, there is one group that suffers the most - the children of divorced couples. Quarrelsome parents do not engender the best values in children. Nor do separated ones who often leave their children traumatised and unfit to face the challenges of life. In other words, children pay the price for their parents’ divorce. |
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It’s 9 per cent Predicting a 9 per cent growth for the economy this fiscal, the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council has stressed on taking hard decisions like controlling external debt, allowing further rupee appreciation and removing bottlenecks to corporate acquisitions abroad. These all make sense. The growth rate is not exaggerated as the CII too pins its hopes on 9.2 per cent. Last year the price rise and the subsequent RBI’s key rate hikes had created fears of a slowdown. The rupee’s appreciation against the dollar and the uptrend in the global oil prices had strengthened those fears. But the growth rate is proving the sceptics wrong. The possibility of a sharp price rise remains this year too though former RBI Governor C. Rangarajan, who heads the council, expects inflation to stay at 4 per cent. The price rise, which hits the common man the most, is largely due to the shortage of food items. This year too the wheat prices are on the rise. Traders and speculators can exploit the shortage of pulses and oilseeds to push up prices, while the RBI is more concerned about keeping the money supply under control. If the rupee is allowed to appreciate further as has been suggested by the Council, the exports are bound to get hurt. There are two major challenges that have to be met head-on to sustain growth. One is sluggish agriculture and the other inadequate infrastructure. The present high growth is fuelled by manufacturing and services with a constant inflow of foreign investment, but it cannot go on without revitalising agriculture and putting in place reliable infrastructure. A fair distribution of rewards of growth is also necessary to keep the public faith in economic policies. Poverty is on the retreat, but the urban-rural divide is growing. A recent prosperity index of 50 nations placed India at 46 largely due to an extreme deficiency in health, poor education and a high cost of bureaucracy. |
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Ambition, in a private man a vice,/ Is in a prince the virtue. — Philip Massinger
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Fading saffron
A
defeat invariably undermines the position of the party chief. Nor is it unusual for inner-party groups opposed to him to take advantage of his discomfiture to run him down. There is nothing surprising, therefore, if the BJP is experiencing this debilitating process after its setback in UP. However, these virtually routine developments are complicated in the BJP’s case by the involvement of a powerful outside agency, viz. the RSS. So, the first visit which party president Rajnath Singh made after the conclusion of the recent national executive meeting was to Nagpur to consult his mentors at the RSS headquarters. The BJP’s reverses in UP mean that the entire game plan of the RSS, in which Mr Rajnath Singh is a key figure, has started unravelling. And since there are only two years before the next general election, Mr Singh and his patrons have no time to lose to re-establish their credibility. Yet, no immediate corrective measure is in sight if only because the RSS has purposefully, if unwisely, restricted the options before it. What is more, the head of the Sangh Parivar has so openly become involved in the affairs of what is commonly believed is its political wing that it cannot beat a retreat. The RSS could have taken such a course earlier when it pretended that it was no more than a cultural organisation and had no direct control over the BJP - or the Jan Sangh before 1980. But those were the days when no one believed that the saffron outfit would ever gain power at the Centre. Since the mid-nineties, however, the stakes have become too high for the RSS, for it has seen that the seemingly impossible can be achieved. Its only problem is that the BJP has become too moderate for its liking. Not only that, the RSS’s tunnel vision has convinced it that the BJP’s defeat in 2004 was the result of its moderation. A more assertive, pro-Hindu line, the RSS believed, could have ensured its victory. It isn’t only the Nagpur bosses who believe in this recipe for success, but also the VHP. Hence, the latter’s publicly expressed disdain for moderates like Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the failed rathyatri L.K.Advani. Hence also the RSS’s decision to use Mr Advani’s pro-Jinnah speech in Pakistan, which smacked of moderation and, even worse, secularism, to remove him from the post of party chief and install Mr Rajnath Singh. So far, so good. But now that the UP defeat has hurt Mr Singh, what next? Even the RSS must have realised that Mr Singh’s belief that he could lead the party’s baraat (wedding procession) to Delhi in 2009, which he expressed at the party conclave in Lucknow before the elections, wouldn’t be fulfilled. But there is no replacement in sight. Reinstating Mr Advani may enthuse a section of the BJP supporters, but there are several disadvantages, of which the age factor is the least important. One disadvantage is that it will be a huge blow to the RSS’s prestige and no one knows what will happen to the Parivar if the paterfamilias loses his grip. As it is, the RSS is worried about the falling attendance in its shakhas. Now, if the BJP goes its own way and that, too, along the path of moderation where it will have to dilute its Hindutva agenda, then the dream of establishing a Hindu rashtra will have to be abandoned. Besides, if one member of the family asserts his independence, so will others like the VHP unless the RSS makes the VHP its new political wing. However, a serious rift between the RSS and the BJP will be unthinkable for the true blue - rather, true saffron - members of both organisations because of their longstanding guru-shishya relationship, which is exemplified by the annual payment of gurudakshina by the BJP to the RSS. Although there have been murmurs of protests by Jan Sangh presidents going back to Mauli Chandra Sharma in the early fifties about the RSS’s interference, they have always managed to settle the disputes, usually by surrendering to the RSS. It will be difficult for the members to take any other course. The other problem with Mr Advani’s return to a position of formal authority is that it will set off factional feuds not only between him and losers like Mr Rajnath Singh, but also with GeNext, which includes Mr Narendra Modi and his long-time friend, Mr Arun Jaitley, who saved the Gujarat Chief Minister when Mr Vajpayee was about to sack him in the aftermath of the 2002 riots. This group obviously believes that the future is theirs and not Mr Vajpayee’s and Mr Advani’s. It is for this reason that Mr Modi has been focussing on Gujarat’s development and trying to play down his and his party’s role in the riots. But for the RSS, this change of tack is tantamount to revisionism, to use a communist jargon. Normally, Mr Modi should have been a hero for the RSS because of what the VHP described as the ‘awakening’ of the Hindus in 2002. But Mr Modi probably realised that if he wanted to be upwardly mobile in an essentially pluralist country, he could not carry the albatross of the riots round his neck all the time. He also angered the RSS as also his opponents in the party in Gujarat by becoming too arrogant after his success in the 2002 elections. Perhaps many in the BJP also know that Mr Modi is too acerbic a personality to be a success at the helm at the Centre since it will mean keeping the NDA with its ‘secular’ components together. So, Mr Modi is out and, with him, Mr Jaitley. It isn’t only that the BJP has no one of stature (apart from the two old warhorses, Mr Vajpayee and Mr Advani) to lead it, the party has also become unsure of its communal-ideological moorings. Nothing showed this bankruptcy more starkly than the fact that Mr Kalyan Singh, its chief ministerial candidate in UP, didn’t even speak at the last national executive meeting. Yet, at the earlier conclave, he was one of the most vocal speakers with his anti-Muslim rhetoric, telling an appreciative audience to remember that it was only the Muslims who gave shelter to the terrorist infiltrators from Pakistan. Mr Kalyan Singh’s speech provided the backdrop to the vicious anti-Muslim compact disc which the party first issued and then disowned when its contents proved too embarrassing even for it. It was obvious then that the BJP hoped to ride to power with such venomous declamations, apparently drafted by the RSS. But the party has fallen silent after the defeat, not even mentioning Afzal Guru. Any hope that the BJP might have had of a rift in the UPA, especially between the Congress and the Left, has been belied. The Congress has managed to keep the coalition running - or limping, as some might say - by often bending over backwards to keep the allies, usually the Left and the DMK, in good humour. Instead of the UPA breaking up, it is the NDA which has suffered an erosion, with even the Shiv Sena of the extended Hindutva Parivar charting its own course in the presidential election, ditching the BJP veteran, Mr Bhairon Singh Shekhawat. Among others who have drifted away is Mr Chandrababu Naidu, although he is now in the company of ‘Maulana’ Mulayam Singh Yadav, whom many suspect of having secret ties with the BJP. The saffron camp, therefore, is evidently in considerable disarray and is unlikely to be interested in advancing the 2009 election, as Mr Jaitley had suggested after its victories in Punjab and Uttarakhand. It also knows that a second successive defeat in a general election will be disastrous for its
cohesion.
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Coorg: the Indian Walden
We had gone to Coorg for our summer holidays this year; Coorg, that the british claimed was the “Scotland of India”. Nature, they say, had been partial to scotland in bestowing abundant, and unparalleled verdant beauty. One has to see it to believe or it may even be beyond one’s paradigm of beauty. At least, that is what we thought until we visited Coorg in Mysore this summer. After Cauvery darshan, as we descended through the road, we saw the sangam of three rivers (a confluence), with river Kanika on the left, river Sujoti in the centre and Cauvery on the far right. As we drove through Mercara to one of the private coffee estates of Coorg, thickets of bamboo appeared by the roadside, pronouncing the onset of lush terrain for which Coorg is famous. We meandered through the narrow roads with neatly lined coffee plants and shrubs of cardamom, pepper and poinsettias and came upon quaint little cottages built right in the middle of the estate surrounded by silver oaks and rosewood trees. The cottage where we were supposed to spend the night was a delight, in the midst of solitary and serene nature, totally undisturbed and untamed by man. The environment was fresh and green and the world appeared washed and laundered to the naked eye. We experienced, first hand, the humming and singing of the crickets and birds, the nocturnal insects and animals and the lightening bugs glistened against the dark green foliage. A stream gurgled nearby and we sat munching peppered rice-pancakes and sipped tea under one of the open thatched huts, looking at the raindrops clinging to the straw covering the huts. Ferns and bushes had sprung up all around in the wild with specks of lavender flowers dotting the estate. Our reclusive cottage was a little haven right in the lap of Nature; nature as it should be, and not perfectly manicured, and trimmed. Coffee stems had been used liberally in the furnishings inside the cottage, including the mirror frame on the wall and even the tiny lamps were made of coffee wood. As we got ready to take pictures of the heavenly scenario with the sunlight glinting off the wooden pillars and panels, my mind went back to the writings of the famous American transcendentalist, Henry David Thoreau and his living experiment in the solitude of Nature on the shore of Walden Pond. His symbolic retreat from the world to “move away from public opinion, from government, from religion, from education, from society” was also aimed at meeting “myself face to face”. The lesson that he learned and left for others was one word, i.e. “Simplify”, which meant that one should simplify one’s needs and ambitions and learn to delight in the simple pleasures that the world of nature offers, a philosophy also proponded by Wordsworth in his famous poem, The Tintern Abbey. It look me a trip to Coorg to understand this simple philosophy that could seem so bookish in real terms. Perhaps, we need not go to Walden to experience that “simplicity” as we have it in abundant measure in our own hill resort called “Coorg”. |
Rethink MSP to ensure food security THE procurement season of wheat is over and the government is a worried about the food grains situation, especially with regard to wheat. Despite a bumper crop and increase in the procurement as compared to last year, it has fallen short of the procurement target. Many factors have contributed to this impending food crisis. The buffer stock of wheat, which stood 32.4 million tonnes in 2002, had fallen to 17 million tonnes in the beginning of 2007. Post-procurement it has slightly improved to 23.3 million tonnes on July 1. The government this year procured a total of 11.5 million tonnes of wheat, which is higher by 21 per cent compared to last year. But it still falls short of the 15 million tonnes target set by FCI. The stocks are falling mainly because of increased demand of wheat as a more preferred consumable food grain over rice, especially in the southern parts of the country. This shift is due to changing food habits of the people and increased purchasing power after the IT revolution. 13 million tonnes of wheat is needed for PDS this year. Thus the government is left with the only option of importing the foodstuff from foreign markets. The prices of wheat in the world market range between $320 to $370 per tonne. Last year the government had purchased the same wheat in the range of $ 265 to $ 302 per tonne. Imported wheat at the prevalent prices shall cost the government around Rs. 1400 per quintal, C&F. The increasing global prices are the cumulative effect of increasing demand, falling production due to weather problems and changing cropping patterns around the world. Due to erratic weather in the US and drought in Russia and Ukraine, the world wheat production has fallen to a 30-year low. Much of this production loss is due to global warming, According to experts, every 1.4 per cent increase in global temperature will lead to 10 per cent fall in the food grains production. It is estimated that by 2030 there will be 30 per cent decline in the world wheat production. In India, though wheat production and procurement were up compared to last year, it is still not sufficient for the needs of the country. Due to unattractive price of wheat and better prices of other cash crops, more and more farmers are moving to alternative crops. The MSP regime has been very unfair to the farmer and most of the time he is not able to recover even the costs. The huge loss due to a deficient MSP can be gauged from the fact that it has remained much lower in comparison to the Wholesale Price Index (WPI) in the past. The WPI was 100 in 1980-81, when it was taken as the base year; the MSP of the wheat was fixed at 117 Rs per quintal. WPI rose to 243 in 1990-91 and the wheat price, which should have been Rs.284 based on the index, was fixed at Rs. 215 per quintal. The farmers of Punjab contributed 4.3 million tons (73 per cent) to the central pool and suffered a remuneration loss of Rs 490 crores. The total loss due to a lower MSP till the decade up to 1990-91 amounts to more than Rs 5000 crores. However the MSP in 2000-01, which should have been Rs 576 based on WPI, was fixed at Rs 580, giving the farmers a marginal positive remuneration of Rs. 4 per quintal. But in the subsequent years, it again became deficient. In 2005-06, an MSP based on WPI should have been Rs 724 per quintal, but was fixed at Rs 640 instead, causing a loss of Rs 84 per quintal to the farmer. Punjab contributed 9.5 million tons to the central pool and was underpaid by Rs 798 crores. The cumulative loss of less than WPI based MSP, if calculated for these 25 years, crosses Rs 20,000 crores. Roughly, this is the amount of debt owed by the farmers of Punjab to various institutions. Establishing the Multi-Commodity Exchange (MCX) in November 2003 and legalising future trading in wheat and rice led to the proper price discovery of wheat, and it traded at around Rs 1000 per quintal last year in the open market. The government was forced to ramp up MSP to Rs 850 per quintal this year from Rs.650 of the previous season, giving the highest ever jump of 31 per cent in the history of MSP regime. Still, the price if calculated on the basis of input costs is not very attractive. The real return to be termed as remunerative shall accrue if the MSP is fixed close to Rs.1100. International prices also point in the same direction Another alarming situation, which may hit the country’s food security in a big way in coming times, is the fact that farmers are leaving farming en-masse. The hard labour and comparatively poor returns are forcing him to find alternative occupations. Though reliable statistics are not available, 65 per cent of the farmers are ready to leave farming if given an alternative choice. A random survey conducted in some villages around Kapurthala showed that persons of below 40 years of age are difficult to find in the agriculture profession. Each family is exploring alternative choices for their children. The government shall have to think seriously if it wants to retain them in farming and protect the food security of a billion plus people. A simple alternative could be to pay its own farmer what it is paying in the international market. Let the Indian farmer be nurtured by making the MSP regime more rational and
farmer-friendly.
The writer is a senior lecturer in commerce at the NJSA Government College, Kapurthala
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So who really does the talking? It’s no surprise that a one-page article published this month in the journal Science inspired innumerable newspaper columns and articles. The study, by Matthias Mehl and four colleagues, claims to lay to rest, once and for all, the stereotype that women talk more than men, by proving – scientifically – that women and men talk equally. The notion that women talk more was reinforced last year when Louann Brizendine’s The Female Brain cited the finding that women utter, on average, 20,000 words a day, men 7,000. (Brizendine later disavowed the statistic, as there was no study to back it up.) Mehl and his colleagues outfitted 396 college students with devices that recorded their speech. The female subjects spoke an average of 16,215 words a day, the men 15,669. The difference is insignificant. Case closed. Or is it? Everyone wants to know who talks more, but the answer can’t be found by counting words. So concludes a forthcoming article surveying 70 studies of gender differences in talkativeness. (Imagine – 70 studies published in scientific journals, and we’re still asking the question.) In their survey, Campbell Leaper and Melanie Ayres found that counting words yielded no consistent differences, though number of words per speaking turn did (and men, on average, used more). You have to ask: What’s the situation? What are the speakers using words for? I was addressing a small group in a suburban Virginia living room. One man stood out because he talked a lot, while his wife, who was sitting beside him, said nothing at all. I described to the group a complaint common among women about men they live with: At the end of a day she tells him what happened, what she thought and how she felt about it. Then she asks, “How was your day?” – and is disappointed when he replies, “Fine,” “Nothing much” or “Same old rat race.” The loquacious man spoke up. “You’re right,” he said. Pointing to his wife, he added, “She’s the talker in our family.” But he explained, “It’s true. When we come home, she does all the talking.” The “how was your day?” conversation typifies the kind of talk women tend to do more of: spoken to intimates and focusing on personal experience, your own or others’. I call this “rapport-talk.” It contrasts with “report-talk” – giving or exchanging information about impersonal topics, which men tend to do more. Studies that find men talking more are usually carried out in formal experiments or public contexts like meetings. For example, Marjorie Swacker observed an academic conference where women presented 40 percent of the papers and were 42 percent of the audience but asked only 27 percent of the questions; their questions were, on average, also shorter by half than the men’s questions. And David and Myra Sadker showed that boys talk more in mixed-sex classrooms – a context common among college students, a factor skewing the results of Mehl’s new study. Many men’s comfort with “public talking” explains why a man who tells his wife he has nothing to report about his day might later find a funny story to tell at dinner with two other couples (leaving his wife wondering, “Why didn’t he tell me first?”). In addition to situation, you have to consider what speakers are doing with words. Campbell and Ayres note that many studies find women doing more “affiliative speech” such as showing support, agreeing or acknowledging others’ comments. For women and girls, talk is the glue that holds a relationship together. Their best friend is the one they tell everything to. Spending an evening at home with a spouse is when this kind of talk comes into its own. Since this situation is uncommon among college students, it’s another factor skewing the new study’s results. Women’s rapport-talk probably explains why many people think women talk more. A man wants to read the paper, his wife wants to talk; his girlfriend or sister spends hours on the phone with her friend or her mother. He concludes: Women talk more. Yet Leaper and Ayres observed an overall pattern of men speaking more. That’s also a conclusion women come to when men hold forth at meetings, in social groups or when delivering one-on-one lectures. All of us – women and men – tend to notice others talking more in situations where we talk less.
The writer is a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University.
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Defence Notes Winning comes easily to the young ‘Rhinos’ of No. 30 Squadron, flying the Sukhoi-30 MKI. And it was not just friends that they won from air arms around the world at the annual ‘Royal International Air Tattoo’ held over the weekend at United States Air Force (USAF) 420th Air Base Group at Fairford in Gloucestershire – some 70 miles west of London. They also won the challenging BAE Systems’ “The Graviner Spirit of the Meet Trophy.” Already known to be among the best in the world, the IAF fighter pilots impressed all at the air tattoo, which is one of the world’s largest military air shows and is held annually in support of the Royal Air Force (RAF) Charitable Trust. The show witnessed as many as 320 aircraft from 24 countries representing 34 international air arms, with nearly 2,600 aircrew and ground crew converging at the venue. The youthful quartet of Squadron Leader PK Garg (Team Leader) and Flight Lieutenants S. Mishra, M. Gera and R. Panwar, all Su-30 MKI pilots from the Pune-based No. 30 Squadron, were winners of the trophy awarded to the crew making the most outstanding contribution to the success of ‘The Meet’. Earlier curtains finally came down on the second Indo-UK bilateral air exercise – Indradhanush 2007 – at Royal Air Force (RAF) Waddington. The exercise that began with a series of one-to-one sorties, reached its crescendo with a highly complex scenario of a six-to-six aerial combat involving four Su-30 MKIs, four F3 Tornadoes, two Typhoons and two GR9 Sea Harriers of the Royal Navy. Also airborne was an IL-78 air-to-air refueller and an E3D Sentry AWACS aircraft in the vicinity of the exercise. This was the first time that the IAF carried out an exercise anywhere in the UK. The visit by the IAF team also coincided with the Waddington International Air Show where it won the trophy for the best static display. ...and en route When the Indian Air Force (IAF) Jaguars flew to Alaska during their first overseas joint air exercise Cope Thunder in July 2004, the newly inducted Ilyushin-78 MKI ‘air-to-air’ refuellers of the IAF heralded the newly acquired strategic reach capability. However, this year the IAF further displayed its enhanced strategic reach capability by flying two IL-78 MKIs of the ‘Valorous MARS’ (No. 78 Mid-Air-Refuelling Squadron) from Agra along with the six Su-30 MKIs that flew from Pune airbase in India to Royal Air Force (RAF) airbase at Waddington (UK). This was the fifth overseas assignment for the IL-78 MKIs. By the time the fighters reached Waddington they would have flown nearly 19,000 kms each, tanked eight times and transferred nearly 225 tonnes of fuel mid-air, spread over 28 flying hours both ways, with stopovers enroute at Doha (Qatar) and Tanagra (Greece). |
Neither abstinence from fish or meet, nor going naked, nor shaving the head, nor miring the body with mud, nor sacrificing to fire will cleanse a man who is not free from delusions. —The Vedas Ahimsa means infinite love, which again means infinite capacity for suffering. —Mahatma Gandhi There is no limit to God’s works, no ends to his gifts. — Guru Nanak God’s doings are beyond any count. — Guru Nanak
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