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The deal is done, almost No work, no pay |
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Power of contempt
Need for an Asian Congress
Welcome Citizen Kalam
Iraqi Hollywood actor turns hangman in Baghdad Cycles move Paris now Delhi Durbar
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The deal is done, almost India
and the US have reportedly succeeded in finalising the draft of the 123 Agreement to make the much-awaited civilian nuclear deal operational. Though the exact details will be known when the process of its “review” by both sides is over and preparations begin for the signing of the final document, reports suggest that the draft worked out during last week’s talks in Washington D.C. satisfies major concerns of the two countries. The critics of the deal in India may now have little to complain about, as the country’s nuclear programme remains unaffected as was promised by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Parliament. The sceptics in the US would now need to keep quiet, as their viewpoints have possibly been taken care of without hurting Indian interests. The 123 Agreement allows India the right to reprocess spent nuclear fuel and an assured fuel supply for the reactors to be imported from the US and other countries as a result of the deal. India’s negotiators deserve appreciation for making the US agree to the idea of setting up a dedicated facility for spent fuel reprocessing purposes. The dedicated facility, aimed at satisfying the American non-proliferation lobbies, will be under the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards as suggested by India. The third major concern of India has been that if circumstances force India to call off if its voluntary moratorium on nuclear tests in the face of a nuclear threat, there should be no abrupt suspension and withdrawal of US nuclear supplies, including fuel and equipment. The deal “termination clause” has it that no nuclear equipment or fuel supplied by the US will have to be returned immediately. There is reportedly a provision for technical consultations in such an eventuality. How the two have sorted out this issue remains to be seen. Now India will have to go in for an India-specific safeguards agreement with the IAEA and the approval of the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group. These hurdles are easier to cross once the 123 Agreement is signed and given a final sanction by the US Congress. The US administration may have to do some canvassing at the Capitol Hill which is committed to the restrictive Hyde Act. Thus, the way is almost clear for a more hopeful Indo-US nuclear cooperation. India will now have full access to the latest nuclear power technology, which it needs to meet its fast growing energy demand. But what is more gratifying is the indirect recognition of India as a nuclear power like the five members of the Nuclear Club and India getting access to sensitive technology in many other areas. |
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No work, no pay IT speaks volumes about the sense of duty of Honourable MPs that Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee has had to go to the extent of thinking of hanging the “no work, no pay” sword on the heads of parliamentarians. Some of the MPs have indeed been more concerned about claiming their substantial perks and allowances and less about discharging their responsibilities to the House and the electorates. In fact, some have honed the technique of disrupting the proceedings into an art form and doing many other things they should not be doing. The end result is distressing for the nation. As the “Citizens Report on Governance and Development” has pointed out, the 11th Lok Sabha (1996-98) lost 5.28 per cent of its time due to pandemonium while the loss went up to 10.66 per cent in the 12th Lok Sabha. It further rose to 22.4 per cent in the 13th and was a staggering 26 per cent in the 14th Lok Sabha, which commenced in June 2004. The total cost to the nation can be gauged from the fact that each minute of Parliament costs over Rs 26,000. If one also adds up the cost in terms of urgent parliamentary business that could not be transacted, the amount may be astronomical. There still are some serious parliamentarians in our ranks. It must be galling for them to rub shoulders with those who give an unmistakable impression of being, at best, callous in their attitude. Such MPs are in urgent need of a reminder that their duty towards the people does not begin and end with signing the attendance book and claim the daily allowance. Yet, the way things are moving, the Speaker’s well-meaning move may not find many takers, since the disrupters come from virtually all parties and none of them wants to annoy its members. But the Speaker’s move is welcome, nevertheless. In the absence of self-disciplining, the prestige of the MPs is getting eroded day by day. Not only does the parliamentarians’ conduct come in for disparaging remarks, uncomfortable questions are also being asked about other related issues such as why they should have the right to revise their own salaries, allowances and pensions. The office-of-profit controversy has furthered diminished their moral standing. The MPs will be doing themselves and their image a great service if they give an impression of greater sobriety, maturity and purposefulness. |
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Power of contempt The
Supreme Court’s directive to the judges to exercise the power of contempt with due restraint and circumspection is most welcome. Quashing an order of the Madhya Pradesh High Court recently, a two-member Bench consisting of Justice R.V. Raveendran and Justice Lokeshwar Singh Panta deplored the tendency on the part of the judges to misuse the power of contempt. This, it felt, might erode the public faith and confidence in the judiciary. The problem is that some judges have been using the contempt power as a shield to cover up their own failures and malfunctioning. Questions have often been raised about the relevance of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971 to define and limit the courts’ power to punish for contempt. However, the Act, rather than defining and limiting the courts’ powers to punish for contempt, has let itself be misused to stifle genuine criticism against the judiciary. This has grave implications for ensuring the accountability of the judiciary — one of the key pillars of the democracy. One must consider the courts’ power to punish for civil contempt (which is defined in the Act as willful disobedience to any judgement, decree, direction, order, writ or other process of a court or willful breach of an undertaking given to a court) in the right perspective. Undoubtedly, this power is essential to preserve the court’s authority and the rule of law. However, if the judges misuse it to cover up their own shortcomings and stifle genuine criticism, it becomes an infraction of the law and thus cause for serious concern. Against this background, the apex court ruling setting aside the Madhya Pradesh High Court’s order sentencing a police officer on the ground that the alleged act of contempt was done in due discharge of his duties cannot be faulted. Indeed, the ruling is a welcome relief to officials against the judges’ arbitrary exercise of the contempt power. It has ruled that officials should not be hauled up or even summoned to the court for contempt for “unintended acts and technical violations”. Its advice that adverse comments should not be made against those who are not parties to a case will be hailed by those who have been at the receiving end of justice. It is the duty of the people, the bureaucracy and the media to respect the judiciary, but it does not help if the judges are too touchy about criticism, which sometimes may not be without reason. |
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Advice is seldom welcome, and those who want it the most always like it the least.
— Lord Chesterfield |
Need for an Asian Congress
History
is in the making in Asia where two new powers — China and India — are rising, and Japan, long acknowledged as the world’s second economic power after the United States, is re-emerging as a major modern military and naval power. Russia’s status as a nuclear- weapon super power and a science and space giant is being reinforced by the resurgence of its economy. NATO’s advance to Russia’s frontiers pushes Moscow closer to Beijing and enhances its Asian role. The US, the giant with interests all over the globe, and a substantial military presence in every region of Asia, completes the Asian power pentad. The US is integral to Asia’s political scene today; and, for good or ill, developments in Asia are going to be influenced by its policies and actions for a long time to come. In the century of new frontiers of science and technology its long science and technology lead over the other four, over China and India in particular, will determine Asian power equations for a better part of this century. Allowing prejudice to overtake this reality in the name of “strategic thinking”, as some in our country are wont to do, is not going to make this a CHINDIA century. China’s ascendancy is driven by the manufacturing of twentieth century goods, and in the last couple of decades India has been slipping in science even behind China. Nevertheless, China and India are in Asia’s big league because of their huge geographic extents, large populations and resource bases and their big and growing markets. With Japan’s exception, all these countries are nuclear weapon powers, and Japan, presently under American nuclear umbrella, has all the wherewithal to be a nuclear weapon power on its own. Each of them is in possession of sufficient strength to deter aggression and fight off pressures. One thing is, therefore, clear: in the unravelling Asian situation, no single power will be able to prevail over another militarily and in that sense, at least, the US’s unipolar moment is long past. Our world is a multipolar world and diplomatic manouvres to contrive one or another triangular power equation within the pentad, to achieve multipolarity or some other aim are a purposeless pursuit. What Asia needs is a covenant of cooperation and peace among its five leading powers. The conjunction in close proximity of five military and economic powers of such magnitude is a truly extraordinary occurrence. Times of such catalytic change are riddled with uncertainty, potential threats to peace, antagonisms, mistrust and differences of approach to problems resulting from cultural conditioning of policies. We must remember that each of these countries is an inheritor of a distinct civilisational and philosophical tradition. Even soft power, so-called, often does generate a hardening effect on the policies of nations. Because of their very proximity, each one of the five countries has security concerns vis-à-vis one or more of the others. Their real or perceived economic, commercial and political interests intersect, clash and converge at several points providing scope for rivalry, competition and conflict. These realities of Asian politics cannot be wished away. A collective endeavour on the part of leaders of the continent’s major powers is, therefore, necessary to create an environment of tolerance, honesty, candour and the spirit of accommodation, which will help dissolve differences in pervasive harmony of purpose and action on the part of one and all. A prior requirement for Asian peace in the 21st century is to humanise big power diplomacy by excluding from their pursuit of their own interests of military pressure, threat of war and malefic proxy utilisation of smaller neighbours. The one single principle that has traditionally governed international relations, the Principle of National Interest, is not good enough in Asia’s new circumstances; it needs enlargement. In the pursuit of its own national interest, a nation must not trespass on the national interest of another. This should form the firm basis of all dealings among them. Strategic partnerships being forged among the Asian big five are, perhaps, a move in that direction. India is into strategic partnerships with each of the other four, including China with which country it has a major border problem. India’s justified suspicion about China’s massive military modernisation, its disturbing recent rhetoric on Arunachal Pradesh and its military relationships with India’s neighbours were not allowed to come in the way of this good neighbourly tryst. In an even more dramatic Asian “Love-in” China has forged strategic partnerships not only with India and Russia, but also with the US and Japan! Was the suspicion of infidelity ever a bar to impassioned embrace? Perhaps, one should not be too questioning or cynical about these happenings. For, whatever their motivations of the moment, in time these could freeze into solid, trouble-free bonds excluding all chances of armed conflict. Also, thanks largely to globalisation, economic relations among the five Asian greats have acquired a dynamic of their own and the on-going proliferation of business dealings between them has become a compelling factor for cooperation and inter-dependence. Fresh adjustments in their attitudes and in their relations are underway which should help bring about a new balance of complementary and competing interests. These tentative moves need to be regulated into a new regime of restraints, moderation and recognition of limits which would admit of multiple engagements in common endeavours for humanity’s advance, such as the exploration of space and planets. Time is ripe for such an endeavour and the statesmen of China, India, Japan, Russia and the United States should jointly convene a five-power conference to lay down the framework for a tranquil Asia in a world of harmony, cooperation and peace. They should meet in an Asian congress, something on the lines of the Congress of Vienna but without the latter’s intrigues and territorial manipulations. The framework they devise for Cooperation For Collective Human Advance — not mere co-existence — should then be placed before an assembly of all nations of
Asia, a second Bandung. An Asia of this kind was Jawaharlal Nehru’s dream, and we should not be deterred by the sad end of his endeavours. Nehru was way in advance of his time, and the Asia of his day was not ready to reap the fruits of an Asian relations conference or a Bandung. Nehru’s noble dream was overtaken by the wars in Korea and Vietnam, by its outright rejection by the US in the West and by the betrayal of the Panchsheel ideal nearer home in the east. Bandung had roused Asian hopes and inspired confidence among the newly liberated nations, but even as Nehru there hailed and lauded revolutionary China, Zhou-Enlai was propounding to the Pakistan Prime Minister an alliance against India on the ground that it would be easier for them together to settle their respective territorial scores with India. And so did Bandung founder on Himalayan heights in 1962. A great change has swept over our continent and in the new Asian environment conflict and contention must yield place to conciliation and cooperation. For a change, let an Asian congress, with the US and Russia in it, lay down the rules for an Asian concert and a more humane behaviour of nations in the larger
world.
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Welcome Citizen Kalam
IT was a foregone conclusion that APJ Abdul Kalam would not be a candidate in the current presidential election for he knew his arithmetic for sure. It is as well that he finally decided to decline the invitation to seek another presidential term. President Kalam is to complete his term in the midst of a countrywide accolade of affection for his intellectual calibre and warm human qualities. A glorious presidential term will soon be behind him. A peoples’ president is how he will long be remembered. With no personal axes to grind, he occupied the august office and edifice of Presidency with great distinction. He came to that office with no experience of political and constitutional intricacies and made no more than one untoward and innocent mistake. Innocence and humility are what mark the man whose warm heart and brilliant mind have carved a niche for him in the hearts of the people. As the republic prepares to say farewell to President Kalam, about to demit office, the people and the nation in the civil society eagerly wait to embrace a man whose intellect and human qualities qualify him for a citizen’s role bigger than that of the President of the establishment. Citizen Kalam in a bungalow in Lutyen’s Delhi will, I am sure prove to be many notches taller than President Kalam in Rashtrapati Bhavan. Four great presidents of India (Dr Rajendra Prasad, Dr S. Radhakrishnan, Dr Zakir Hussain and Mr R. Venkatraman), one of whom is happily with us (about to reach his hundredth year) have left a great constitutional legacy, but Kalam’s forte was quite a different one. The level of his outreach too was different. The point is that he always chose to be himself, like the red collar button in his Jodhpur jacket. Catapulted into the great office by a sudden configuration, he has had a mind and heart of his own. If he acquiesced in being woken up rudely at midnight to sign a presidential proclamation regarding Bihar faxed to him (an obvious lapse), he was also able to say no to the Office of Profit Bill and give his own cogent reasons for exercising his presidential prerogative. He has the charming humility not to claim any infallibility. He has an open and creative mind which has the capacity to ignite a million more minds. And what a mind! All his speeches are cerebral and inspiring. There is not one speech he made as a mere ceremonial verbosity. There was always weight and substance in what he said. His website is a treasure house of his extraordinary versatility. His speeches were always bubbling with ideas and innovations. Though he occasionally caused discomfiture to the staid and the conventional; it was a part of being Kalam for whom the presidential office was never a sine cure or a prison house. He worked hard, selflessly and for long hours, led an austere life in an opulent palace. Whenever I went to visit him I found him working at his computer. Simplicity, patriotism, equanimity rectitude were the hallmarks of President Kalam. What does a President do when he retires? Kalam is energetic and in good health. I see for him the role of the nation’s conscience and the civil society’s voice. He tells me he will teach and write. That he must. But his voice should always be heard above the din of the distorted discourse of plotting and scheming politicians in our public life. His spiritual and moral energies should be harnessed in awakening India and realising its spiritual, cultural, economic and social aspirations. The nation needs the sanity and equanimity of Kalam, the austere and ascetic
citizen. |
Iraqi Hollywood actor turns hangman in Baghdad BAGHDAD, Iraq — Basam Ridha traded the business of Hollywood for the business of hanging. The Los Angeles resident, an Iraqi who fled Saddam Hussein’s regime 25 years ago, is a member of the Screen Actors Guild with a smattering of small parts alongside the likes of George Clooney and Omar Sharif. But he’d rather be known for his current role: as Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s adviser on judicial matters and executions and the go-to man for all things gallows. Life in the concrete-and-dustbowl environment of Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone is far different from his time in Southern California. Ridha speaks longingly of his hillside home in San Dimas: the panoramic view toward Los Angeles, the yard full of fruit trees, and the pleasure he used to take driving his kids to school, without a coterie of bodyguards. But he has no regrets. Each time the noose tightens around the neck of a Saddam aide and the platform falls away, Ridha thinks of the tens of thousands of Iraqis – including his brothers, Bashar and Qazem – who were killed by the former Iraqi president. “The blood of my brothers will not go in vain,” said Ridha, a longtime Iraqi American activist who was asked to return to Baghdad in 2005 to work with the first post-Saddam Iraqi government. When al-Maliki took over the following year, he asked Ridha to stay on. “It is not a nice thing to see someone being killed or dying in front of you, but I look at them and say, ‘These are the people who killed my people.’ “ In a land of perpetual insecurity, Ridha may have one of the most secure jobs around. He has a firm future keeping watch on the high-profile trials of alleged human rights abusers linked to Saddam and arranging the logistics of their executions. “All the details, from A to Z,” Ridha says proudly. The former president and three close associates already have been convicted of murder and hanged, but more than 115 other people are still awaiting trial in connection with Saddam-era crimes. For now, Ridha’s preoccupation is with the anticipated execution of the man whom he and many Iraqis consider the worst offender after Saddam: Ali Hassan Majid, also known as Chemical Ali. Majid was convicted of genocide on June 24 and sentenced to death for overseeing the use of chemical weapons on tens of thousands of Kurdish civilians in northern Iraq in 1987-88. “We’d like to get it over with, because this is an important case for Iraq,” said Ridha, who already is preparing for the event. It is not an easy task. There are regional sentiments to consider, security issues, and Iraq’s reputation, which some human rights groups have said is suffering as a result of its use of the death penalty. At least 100 people have been hanged since a moratorium on executions was lifted in 2005. On paper, at least, Ridha seems an unlikely candidate for his job. His expertise is in mechanical engineering, which he studied in Ohio and Louisiana. His Louisiana State University bachelor’s degree is displayed on a shelf in his office, where the air conditioner is set at 64.4 degrees Fahrenheit. Ridha, a young-looking 44 who would look younger still without the white streak jetting through his black hair, sits behind a large desk and sips hot, sweet tea from a delicate glass cup. Like thousands of Iraqis, his surviving siblings began searching for evidence of the missing brothers’ whereabouts after Saddam was toppled. Each day, Ridha’s sisters would scour intelligence agency records. Their mother would wait at the doorstep of the family’s home in the upscale Mansour neighborhood of west Baghdad, hoping for good news. After 11 days, they found a list of names of young men executed by security forces in the early 1980s. Both brothers’ names were on it. “We have not found their graves,” Ridha said bitterly. “Those mass graves that everybody talks about – I have two brothers somewhere out there.” His desire for payback helps drive Ridha, and he makes no apologies. Hanging those who have done harm will help Iraqis recover from the past, he said. Ridha seeks to avoid a debacle similar to that surrounding the hanging of Saddam’s half brother, Barzan Ibrahim Hasan, whose head was torn off during his execution in Baghdad. That came on the heels of Saddam’s hanging Dec. 30, 2006, during which onlookers taunted the former dictator on the gallows. The scene was captured on video taken with a cell phone. Ridha blames the problems on his government’s inexperience in executing people. He also is convinced that if he had been present for Saddam’s hanging, it would have been a smoother operation. Instead, Ridha was in the Mall of the Emirates in Dubai, teaching his son to ski on the man-made slopes after having been assured that U.S. officials would not hand Saddam over to Iraq’s government until after the New Year. “I was pretty upset,” said Ridha, who had spent months planning the operation. After Hasan’s botched execution, Ridha had new gallows built. Since then, executions have gone without a hitch. “The whole idea is they don’t stick around for long,” Ridha said. “They die instantly.” By arrangement with
LA Times-Washington Post |
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Cycles move Paris now PARIS — The Tour de France hasn’t arrived yet, but the bicycles have. Paris is awash in two-wheelers, thousands of taupe bicycles that are part of a plan by City Hall to get people out of their cars and onto more eco-friendly transportation. The bicycle rental service still has some kinks to work out, but the first week of the Velib program was a big hit with Parisians. City Hall reported 45,000 rentals a day and counting. “It’s superb,” said IT engineer Olivier Lemaitre, 35, who rode a bike from Les Invalides on the left bank of the Seine to La Madeleine on the right. “I used to come by Metro, but it’s better to be outside.” “It’s healthier and the weather is beautiful,” science writer Sophie Antoine, 29, said, taking her purse out of the metal basket in the front of the bike. Mayor Bertrand Delanoe launched the program to alleviate traffic jams and parking problems. The city has placed more than 10,000 bicycles at about 300 stations around the capital. Riders can buy an annual pass for 29 euros or pay a euro on the spot to use a bike for half an hour, which is long enough to get almost anywhere in central Paris and park at another station. The price goes up with time – another euro for an additional half-hour, two euros for the third and four euros for the fourth. The idea is to keep the bikes in circulation as transportation. But cyclists have encountered a few bottlenecks. Lemaitre and Antoine couldn’t find parking for the bicycles they were trying to return and had to rush off to other stations to look for a place before the clock ran out. Management consultant Jean Marc Baron, 50, rented a bike to go out for drinks with friends in the 17th “arrondissement” the other night. When they finished, he said, “There weren’t any bikes to ride home and we all ended up walking.” Graphic designer Olivier Patte lives at the top of hilly Montmartre, and his station is often empty when he goes looking for a bike. “Everyone goes down and no one wants to ride the bike up the hill,” said Patte, 30. “The bikes are all at the bottom.” The city has trucks to move the bicycles from one station to another, but officials say they need time to learn the traffic patterns. Another problem, Patte said, is taxi drivers. “The taxis really don’t like us,” he said. “They stick close to us so we can’t turn right or left. We are in their bus lanes and they don’t like it.” There are, of course, the universal hazards for cyclists: erratic drivers and sudden stops. Car doors opened without warning. Wind and rain. Police who insist on enforcing the law. (No riding on sidewalks, no going the wrong way on one-way streets, “alors”.) No bike accidents were reported in the first week and, in fact, very few bicycle accidents are reported in Paris each year. In 2005, for example, bicycles accounted for only 5 percent of all traffic accidents, compared with 50 percent for motorbikes. Three people were killed in bike accidents that year, the last for which there are figures. The bicycles come without helmets, which are not required in Paris. And not wanted, it seems. Not a single rider of scores observed Friday was wearing a helmet or appeared to want one. “What about a helmet?” businessman Xavier Barroux was asked as he fiddled with a bicycle lock in a business suit the color of creme brulee. “Ah, yes, it’s a good question,” he answered. “I don’t want to carry one.” Le Figaro newspaper has been a bit snippy about the enterprise, which is new to Paris but ongoing in cities such as Barcelona, Spain; Geneva; Stockholm, Sweden, and Vienna, Austria. In an editorial, the paper said it would take more than bicycles to solve Paris’ traffic and pollution problems, and criticized the city for focusing on bulky, three-speed bicycles. “Paris is not Amsterdam,” the newspaper said, noting that the French capital is not flat and that perhaps its chic population won’t be too happy cycling to business meetings. “An electric bike, which would prevent arriving at an appointment all sweaty, may have more future as an alternative,” Le Figaro said. But city officials are bullish on the bikes. They say that Velib – short for “velo libre,” “free bike” – a public-private partnership, will have more than 20,000 bicycles on the streets by the end of the year and triple the number of parking stations. Times staff writer Achrene Sicakyuz contributed to this report. By arrangement with
LA Times-Washington Post |
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Delhi Durbar Outgoing President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, known for breaking various “traditions” during his tenure, paid a visit to the Supreme Court as Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan and his colleagues wanted to give him a farewell. Always ready to oblige, Kalam drove down to the apex court on Friday afternoon for a tea party. The party was a closed-door affair between Kalam and the apex court judges, where they exchanged pleasantries with him. Kalam was the first President to have visited the apex court for a farewell party. As his office was the last judicial authority in the country, he had also made it a point to visit the Supreme Court to meet the judges after he assumed office five years ago. Questions for BJP After the BJP’s unimpressive performance in the Uttar Pradesh elections, it is the Presidential elections that have posed questions for the party with regard to its ambitions to regain power at the Centre. Despite the negative publicity in the media against the UPA-left candidate Pratibha Patil, the BJP could not get any major party outside the NDA to extend support to Vice-President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, who contested as an independent. Its ally Shiv Sena declared support for Patil and the JD(S), with whom the BJP is sharing power in Karnataka, thought it fit to abstain. The UNPA, despite a pronounced anti-Congress stance, decided against supporting the NDA-backed candidate, though the AIADMK did a u-turn at the last moment. The secular parties that dumped the BJP were mostly those who, in the past, had not hesitated to form coalition governments with it or benefitted from its decisions.
No repeat of 2002 Barely 48 hours before the Presidential poll on July 19, supporters of Bhairon Singh Shekhawat had made one last ditch attempt to retrieve a bad situation for their leader, a task which they realised was next to impossible. Nevertheless, they went on with their campaign. They said the NDA nominee, contesting as an independent, was above party politics, and praised Shekhawat’s contribution as the former Chief Minister of Rajasthan. Further, they stressed that 1977 marked a watershed in Rajasthan’s economic history when Shekhawat introduced Antyodaya to deal with rural poverty. The results of the Vice Presidential election in 2002 were astonishing. It was evident that 74 MPs outside the NDA fold had voted in favour of Shekhawat. All political parties gave Shekhawat an emotional welcome and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who was then the leader of the opposition, observed that Shekhawat’s public life spanning more than 50 years has been “full of wisdom, knowledge and experience and we are proud of it. This would prove very useful to us.” The defeat in the Presidential poll could not have come as a surprise to Shekhawat, but this was the only time in his political career he must have felt he got caught in the race for nothing. Contributed by S.S. Negi, Prashant Sood and S. Satyanarayanan |
The rituals and the sacrifices described in the Vedas deal with lower knowledge. The sages ignored these rituals and went in search of higher knowledge. — The Mundaka Upanishad The Fire God believes that he is all powerful. But even his power to burn comes from the Supreme. — The Upanishads The devotees are contained in God. Even as God is contained in his devotees. — Guru Nanak Only the toad under the barrow knows where it pinches him. — Mahatma Gandhi You, O Lord, are the River, the All-knower, the All-seer. How can I, a mere fish, perceive your expanse. — Guru Nanak |
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