PLEASE DON'T ADVISE............!!

former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and other Muslim leaders have no moral right to advise the Prime Minister on the safeguards as they had failed to protect Hindus and Sikhs in the Valley. They were mute spectators when Kashmiri Pandits were forced to leave their homes in the 1980s.

Dada forced to quit......!!!

History will record that Sourav Ganguly announced his retirement, but actually he has been forced to retire. Sourav’s recent performance was above his teammates. In the last Test played in India, Sourav not only bagged the man of the match award, but also scored two half-centuries and averaged 52.75. Failure in one Test series against Sri Lanka gave selectors the chance to drop him for the Irani Trophy. When a senior player like Sourav is asked to prove his worth time and again, it hurts the honour and the prestige of the player and he is left with no other option but to quit. It is a sad moment for Indian cricket that the most successful skipper of the nation has been shown the door in the most disgraceful manner possible.

Yardsticks........!!!

R vips/vvips above rules?

I support those who have questioned the exemption granted by the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) to spouses of VIPs/VVIPs from pre-embarkation security checks at airports across India.It may be recalled that even the service chiefs were not exempted from it till last year. I fail to understand why there are two sets of rules, one for those categorised as VIPs/VVIPs and another for the rest? Our Constitution has no provision of VIP/VVIP status for anybody. Those holding vulnerable positions may be protected by the state, but in no case should they be above the rule.

Sovereign status........!!!

India’s decision to postpone the signing of the nuclear deal till it gets President Bush’s signature is correct.There is no need to rush through an important deal when the American side of the formalities are not over. If, by chance, the obligation was on the part of India in a similar deal, would the American President sign such an incomplete document? India and the US are sovereign states and they must respect our national status. Whatever the stakes India must take all precautions before it signs such an important deal. India displayed maturity without hurting its partner and the US should accept this with grace.

2 early 2 speculate.......!!!

The Australian cricket team has arrived in India. Ahead of the Test series to be played between India and Australia, the media and cricket experts have started speculating. While the Indian team has the advantage of playing at home, the Australian side should never be underestimated. Their pace attack is still formidable. Moreover, there is little hope that our senior players will put up a grand show and lead the team to victory. Hence it is better that the media and the so-called sports critics wait till the commencement of the Test series.

Power hungry Politicians..........!!!

HRD minister Arjun Singh and minister of chemicals and fertilisers and steel Ram Vilas Paswan have supported the vice-chancellor of Jamia Milia Islamia, Mushirul Hasan, in his decision to provide legal aid to two of its students accused in the Delhi serial blasts. The minister is supporting those involved in killings of innocent people in the country by carrying out serial bomb blasts. At an age where they could have played a constructive role in the country’s development, they chose to join hands with terrorists and deceived their own country. How can any politician support those who never thought about their motherland? It clearly shows the hunger of politicians for power. No doubt these politicians will join hands with terrorists if it ensures power.

Gandhi ji & Hinduism........!!!

Hinduism, as viewed by Gandhiji, could be used to refertilise and revitalise that tradition. Dr S. Radhakrishnan, in connection with his study of religion, posed three questions to Mahatma Gandhi: "What is your religion? How are you led to it? What is its bearing on social life?"

Gandhi replied the first question thus: "My religion is Hinduism which, for me, is the religion of humanity and includes the best of all religions known to me." In response to the second question, Gandhi said: "I take it that the present tense in this question has been purposely used, instead of the past. I am led to my religion through truth and non-violence. I often describe my religion as religion of truth. Of late, instead of saying ‘God is Truth’, I have been saying ‘Truth is God’. We are all sparks of Truth. The sum total of these sparks is indescribable, as yet unknown Truth, which is God. I am daily led nearer to it by constant prayer."

To the third question, Gandhi replied: "The bearing of this religion on social life is, or has to be, seen in one’s daily social contact. To be true to such religion, one has to lose oneself in continuous and continuing service of all in life. Realisation of Truth is impossible without a complete merging of oneself in and identification with this limitless ocean of life. Hence, for me, there is no escape from social service; there is no happiness on earth beyond or apart from it. In this scheme, there is nothing low, nothing high. For all is one, though we seem to be many."

Gandhi elaborated: "The deeper I study Hinduism, the stronger becomes the belief in me that Hinduism is as broad as the universe. Something within me tells me that, for all the deep veneration I show to several religions, I am all the more a Hindu, nonetheless for it."

On the Mahatma’s birthday, it seems necessary to bring home these fundamentals, particularly to those who go on condemning Hinduism without even studying it and also to those members of the ruling elite whose attachment to fake and fraudulent "gods" have made the country a den of corruption, callousness, confusion and criminality.

Gandhi’s elucidation makes it clear that true Hinduism is nothing but spiritual secularism. To relegate such a religion and to follow a shallow and superficial secularism is one of the worst sins that the false prophets of contemporary India are committing. They call Gandhi the Father of the Nation. And yet in practice they do everything to negate all his beliefs.

Throughout human history, religion has remained a potent force, despite all the pounding it has received from thinkers like Marx who called it "opiate of the masses" and Freud who termed it as "a collective neurosis of the masses". It may be relevant to recall a talk between Cardinal Gonsalvic and Napoleon. The Cardinal was pleading the case for the Catholic Church. Napoleon got annoyed on some point and shouted at the Cardinal: "Your Eminence, are you not aware that I have the power to destroy the Catholic Church?" The Cardinal smiled and replied: "Your Majesty, we, the Catholic clergy, for the last 1,800 years, have done our level best to destroy the Catholic Church. We did not succeed. You will not succeed either." This conversation brings out in a telling manner the staying power of religion, notwithstanding its internal and external destroyers.

While religion has its influence in every country, it is more so in India. Swami Vivekananda, with his characteristic clarity and insight, has observed: "Each nation, like each individual, has one theme in its life, which is its centre, the principal note around which every other note comes to form the harmony. If any one attempts to throw off this central note, that is, its national vitality, the direction which has become its own through the transmission of centuries, that nation dies. In India, religious life forms the centre, the key-note of the whole music of national life. Take away religion from India; nothing would be left."

Power, in present day India, has become an end in itself. Justice is being buried deeper and deeper. Means, howsoever unscrupulous, are resorted to and then rationalised. Corruption in public life has attained alarming proportions. Most of our institutions have lost their underlying motivation of service and become effete and venal.

Why has this happened? Why have our State and society become soulless entities? Why have criminals enlarged their hold on politics? And why have power and pelf become everything, and justice and truth nothing?

The answer to these questions is that the ethical foundation of Hinduism, as seen by Gandhi, which could provide "an awakened conscience" to an individual and make him an honest, just and compassionate component of society, has been destroyed partly by the stink and slush of our past degeneration and partly by the type of spurious secularism which has been exploited in post-Independence India.

Hinduism, as made clear by Gandhi, sees all human beings as "sparks of truth/divinity". As such, it neither goes against any other religion, nor is it incompatible with the constitutional goals of equality, fraternity, liberty and justice. If the same divinity constitutes the core of all individuals, they cannot but be equal. Further, divinity in one person cannot in any way be unjust to the same divinity in another person. As the Gita puts it: "Seeing the same God equally present in everything, one does not injure the self by self; and goes to the highest goal".

In Hinduism, Gandhi saw a unique quality: "In it there is room for the worship of all the prophets of the world. It is not a missionary religion in the ordinary sense of the word". Gandhi underlined: "God is not encased in a safe to be approached only through a little hole in it, but He is open to be approached through billions of openings by those who are humble and pure of heart".