NEHRU’s VIEWS ON SECULARISM

 

NEHRU’s VIEWS ON SECULARISM

In a speech at Madurai  on 5^th October 1961, free India’s first Prime Minister, Pt Jawaharlal Nehru (14 October 1889 – 27 May 1964) said: The conception of Bharat as one great land which the people considered a holy land has come down the ages and has joined us together, even though we have had different political kingdoms and even though we may speak different languages. This silken bond still keeps us together in many ways.  

             Throughout these thousands of years, this land has been ours , ours in mind, ours in heart, and ours in spiritual heritage. I who come from the north feel at home here, because I am in a part of my country, among friends, among colleagues and among people who have the same ideas, same thoughts and same urges.  Similarly, the north does not belong exclusively to those who live there, but belongs to you also, even though you live in the sough of India. The Himalayas are yours as much as they are mine, and Kanyakumari and Madurai are mine as much as yours. This land is a common heritage of ours, where we have been born and which we seek to serve.

             Throughout the ages geography has made us one great land, history has made us one land, the common culture has made us one land, and our common aspirations, our common hopes and fears, victories and defeats, have made us one. That is the past. In the present, by our common labours, common sacrifices and common struggles, we gained the freedom of India.   

                How then can we today, when we are at last politically united and when we are a free country, allow ourselves to destroy that unity which we have inherited and disturb that freedom which we have struggled to achieve? The past and present have provided a common ground to us. So also must the future be common to us, the future that we are striving to attain, the future of millions of our people, their welfare.  In whatever region we may live, this calls for unity of purpose, unity of endeavour and sacrifice.”

                   On another occasion almost at the same time :Our constitution lays down that we are a secular state, but it must be admitted that this is not wholly reflected in our mass living and thinking. We have not only to live up to the ideals proclaimed in our constitution, but make them a part our thinking and living and thus build up a really integerated nation.

                     Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru is no longer with us, but his views about the unity of India and her secularism are .  Let us continue to embrace them.  

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14^th November 2022                                                               G.R.Kanwal

 

GURU NANAK Said GOD IS ONE

                      GURU NANAK Said

                                   GOD IS ONE

 

There is ONE God’, all powerful.  Everything happens with His will. He is al-powerful.  The world is just a shadow, a mere pretext.

 

God raises him whom He pleases. With his pleasure the sea flows over the desert and the lotus blooms in the sky.

 

Nobody can find fault with God’s doing.

 

All things in the world are transient ; God alone is eternal. Even the sun and the earth will vanish.

God is  formless and immaterial. He is Truth. He belongs to everything and everything belongs  belongs  to Him.  He is the creator and the creation.

 

He  is the true and the  eternal.

He was true in the beginning is  perpetually true since then. Hs true today and will always  remain true.   

               

           

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8^th November 2022                                                                 G.R.Kanwal

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

GOD CREATED ALL

 GOD CREATED ALL

In the sixth stanza (quatrain) of his book The Ramayana , the Indian poet Tulsidas (1532-1623) asks “Why enumerate the faults and defects of the bad and the virtues of the good? --- both are a boundless and unfathomable ocean. Hence occasionally virtue is reckoned as vice, improperly and from want of discrimination. For God hath created both, but is the Veda that has distinguished one from the other. The heroic legends and Puranas also, no less than the Veda, recognize every kind of good and evil as kind of good and evil as creatures of the Creator. pain and pleasure; sin and religious merit; night and day; saint and sinner; high caste and low caste; demons and gods; great and small; ambrosia and life; poison and death; visible world and the invisible God; life and the lord of life; rich and poor; the beggar and king; Kashi and Magadha; the Ganges and the Karmanya; the desert of  Marwar and the rich plain of Malwa; the Brahman and the butcher; heaven and hell; sensual passion and asceticism; the Vedas and the Tantaras, and every variety of good and evil.” (English version by F.C.Growse, Fellow Calcutta University). 

           

It is a wonderful stanza poetically, philosophically and religiously. It describes the world as a manifestation of opposites, both negative positive, condemnable and commendable. Surprisingly, both are God’s creation, but with a purpose.  Choose either of the two and reap the reward accordingly.  Both lead to some action with the appropriate reward. One has the freedom to choose either of the two  but not without the test of one’s good or bad nature. In some cases, may be, it is God’s will that works but by and large it is one’s own choice and thus his responsibility which illustrates the proverb: As you sow, so shall you reap.

 

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27^th October 2022                                                                   G. R. Kanwal               

 

 

 

 

                                                HATRED

HATRED

Some of the synonyms of hatred are : dislike, hostility, ill-will, enmity, grudge, antipathy and antagonism.

            None of these traits is desirable to be cherished by any human being.

            Hatred is poisonous.  It kills the joy of him who hates and of him who is hated.

            Saints do not permit hatred.  They recommend love even towards those who hate you, if you have any quality which they dislike for any religious or secular reason.

            Someone rightly said hate no one; hate their vices, not themselves.

According to French novelist Balzac (1799-1850) hatred is the vice of narrow  souls; they feed it with all their littleness, and make it the pretext of base tyrannies.

            English divine F.W. Robertson (1816-53) permits the  hatred of vices like hypocrisy, intolerance, oppression and  injustice,

            What is really  disallowed by the right-minded thinkers are ugly traits which make human beings disagreeable characters.  They disallow the hatred of fellow human beings for any reason whatsoever.  Hate the sin, not the sinner is their motto, and that is O.K.

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24^th October 2022                                                                         G.R.Kanwal

 

 

 

 

RETURNING GOOD FOR EVIL

 

RETURNING GOOD FOR EVIL

            It is almost impossible for a non-Buddha to return good for evil. The  whole world  is full of  persons who persistently nourish a spirit of revenge. 

              Crime, as a  result of vindictiveness, prevails everywhere  survives not only for days but even months and years  among individuals, as well as groups  and  nations.

           To forgive and return good for evil, one has to be a Buddha. Lord Gautam Buddha (over five hundred years before Lord Christ) is said to have told a  disciple “If a man foolishly does me wrong, I will return to him the protection of my ungrudging love; the more evil comes from him, the more good shall go from me; the fragrance of goodness always comes to me, and the harmful air of evil goes to him.”

  According to him a wicked man who reproaches a virtuous one is like one who looks up and spits at heaven; the spittle soils not the heaven, but comes back and defiles his own person.

The slanderer is like one who flings dust at another when the wind is contrary; the dust returns on him who threw it.

The moral of the story is that: the virtuous man cannot be hurt: the misery comes back on the slanderer. 

So don’t be a slanderer,  be a virtuous man and return good for evil.

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19^th October 2022                                         G.R.kANWAL                                                                                                                                                  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE REALITY OF RELIGION

In his essay “The Reality of Religion, Rabindra Nath Tagore  said “I do not mean to advocate a common church for mankind,  a universal pattern to which every act of worship and aspiration must conform.’’  This view was in fact the substance of an address given at the Sri Ramakrishna Centenary Parliament of Religions, 1936 and  was later published in a book entitled: “Vedanta for Modern Man” with 60 other essays contributed  by renowned spiritualists like Aldous Huxley, Alan W. Watts, Gerald Heard, Swami Prabhavananda, Anne Hamilton, and others.

            

            Tagore said in his address: The arrogant spirit of sectarianism which so often used either active or passive, violent or subtle , methods of persecution on the least provocation or without any , has to be reminded of the fact that religion like poetry, is not a mere idea ----- it is expression. The self-expression of God is in the variedness of creation; and our attitude toward the infinite must  in its expression also must have a variedness of individuality, ceaseless and unending.   

         

According to Tagore when a religion develops the ambition of imposing its doctrine on all mankind, it degrades itself into a tyranny and becomes a form of imperialism.

This  is why, says Tagore, we find ruthless methods of autocracy in religious matters prevailing in most parts of the world, trampling flat the expansion of the spirit of man under its insensitive heels.

The most important part of the  address mentioned  above reads like this; The attempts to make the one religion which is their own,  dominate all time and space, comes naturally to men addicted to sectarianism.

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14^th October 2022                                                                   G.R.Kanwal

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THERE IS BUT ONE GOD

 

THERE IS BUT ONE GOD

I feel puzzled when some determined devotee of a religion tells me that there are many gods and one can choose any one of them for his regular worship. 

According to my observation it is not so; I ab convinced that  there is only one God, one Creator, one Supreme deity who rules over the whole world. Had there been many Gods, there would have been many skies, many moons, many  suns and  many globes. But it is not so.

Of the many prayers which I have come across, it is the Morning Prayer of Guru Nanak (1469-1538) known as Japji which confirms my belief in the Oneness of God. It is composed in Punjabi language and its English version reads as follows:   

There is but one God whose name is true, the Creator, devoid of fear and enmity, immortal, unborn, self-existent. The True One was in the beginning; the True One is now also, O Nanak; the True One also shall be.   

By thinking I cannot obtain a conception of Him, even if I think hundreds of thousands of times.

True is He, true is His name which is spoken with love. At the ambrosial hour of morning, we should meditate on His true name and Greatness. He cannot be described by words.  He is the single giver, the one single  Bestower on all living beings. To get from Him, what I want  I should not forget Him and utter His name with love.

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10^th October 2022                                                                   G.R.Kanwal

                                               

    

 

GANDHIJI  SAID :

I.                    I believe in the truth of all religions of the world. And since my youth upward, it has been a humble but persistent effort on my part to understand the truth of all the religions of the world, and adopt and assimilate in my own thought, word and deed all that I have found in the best of those religions. (Harijan, 16 Feb 1934).

 

II.         I should love all the men ---- not only in India but in the world ----belonging to the different faiths, to become better people by contact with one another, and if that happens, the world will be a much better place to live in than it is today. I plead for the broadest toleration and I am working to that end …I do not expect the India of my dream to develop one religion, i.e. to be wholly Hindu or wholly Christian, or wholly Mussalman, but I want it to be wholly tolerant with its religions working side by side with one another. (Young India,: December 22, 1927}.    

Note: Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on 2^nd October 1869.  He is also  called Mahatma Gandhi and the father of the nation, for he used the unique method of non-violence to get India liberated from the British rule . Indiia became free on 15^th August 1947. Unfortunately, he was assassinated in New Delhi by an Indian on 30^th January  1948. Among the masses of India he is also remembered as BAPU.  

 

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2^nd October 2022                                                                                G.R.Kanwal

 

WHO IS AN OUTCAST?

 

WHO     IS   AN  OUTCAST?

When asked who is an outcast Lord Gautam Buddha replied : Not by birth does one become an outcast , not by birth does one become a Brahman.  It is by the nature of his deeds  that one becomes an outcast or a Brahman.  

According to deeds, an outcast is one who bursts into anger, bears hatred, acts wickedly, thinks  hypocritically, embraces error and behaves  deceitfully.

He is greedy, full of evil desires, wickedness, jealousy and shamelessness. He commits wrongs without fear. 

His birth has no connection with these evil deeds. Even a Brahman who commits these deeds may not be called a Brahman,  

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22nd August 2022.                                            G. R. KANWAL   

LORD KRISHNA SAID

 

LORD KRISHNA SAID

On this birthday of Lord Krishna, let us recall some of his sayings which are eternally preserved in his epic song ‘The Gita’.

The first saying which is most important and gives strength to humanity is that life is not perishable.  It is the body which becomes lifeless at its appointed time. The soul that keeps the body alive is imperishable. It is both birthless and deathless.  It is cyclic, moves from one body, into another.  It is unlike material bodies which can be burnt by fire or cut into pieces by a weapon like a sword. With these words, the Lord successfully makes human beings fearless of death.

Several other sayings of the Lord act as a guide to peaceful and  dynamic life.  Action, says He, is better than inaction. Duty has to be performed as a right but its reward cannot be claimed as a right. Peace depends upon the state of one’s own mind. Too many desires destroy happiness. Anger, lust and greed are the three greatest enemies of humans. . A man is the epitome of his beliefs. Ego and envy are negative forces. Positivity lies in love, compassion and humility. The greatest conquest is the conquest of one’s mind. Don’t’ entertain worries about the future. The present time is the only  real time, embrace it. God can be won only by love. Have empathy. Feel the joys  and sorrows of others as your own.  This will lead to a spiritual union between you and them.   There are five disciplines of the mind to be practiced. These are self-control, purity of thought, gentleness,  silence and  calmness. The mind of man is fickle. It must be made steady by the use of intellect whenever it goes estray.

Make these sayings the guidelines of your life and lead a most successful and joyous life.

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19^th August 2022                                                            G. R.KANWAL

 

 

 

A POET”S PRAYER

 

 

                             A       POET”S      PRAYER

 

WHEN the heart is hard and parched up,

Come upon me with a shower of mercy.        

 

When grace is lost from life, come with

a burst of song.

 

When tumultuous work raises its din

on all sides shutting me out from beyond,

come to me, my lord of silence, with thy

peace and rest.

 

When my beggarly heart sits crouched,

shut up in a corner, break open the  door,

my king, and come with the ceremony of

a king.

 

When desire blinds the mind with

delusion and dust, O thou holy one, thou

wakeful, come with thy light and thy thunder.

 

                The author of this lovely prayer is the  Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore (7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941), It is taken from his ‘soothing garland of verses’ called “Gitanjali” which won him Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913.

                Tagore often addresses God as his king. In the short prayer which is given above, the poet is in an unbalanced condition. His heart has become dry and parched up and the remedy for this is a dose of mercy without which the heart is devoid of delicate feelings. The tumultuous work  which raises a lot of din and shuts up the poet from the silent gates of heaven is unbearable, so he prays to his God of silence, to come with his peace and rest and fill the space with tranquillity.

                The poet treats himself as a beggar who depends on the bounty of his Lord, the king. Whenever his heart becomes poor and he sits crouched up in a corner, he appeals to him  to come with the ceremony of a king and enrich him with the specific treasure that befits a pious and generous  heart.

                                The poet is not in favour of cherishing unholy  desires that blind the mind with dust and delusion. At such a time, he wants God , the Holy One, to come with light and thunder and shake him up so that he wakes up and does not entertain the unholy desires.     

                                 This short prayer is almost a perfect prayer. Though Tagore wrote it and is the supplicating  voice of his own  heart, it may be considered as the payer of every sane and  pious heart in the world.                     

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17^th August 2022                            ,,                                                    G.  R. KANWAL

 

 

 

 

SOME COUNCELS FOR Judges

 

SOME COUNCELS FOR Judges

There is wisdom in old books. Not in all of them but surely in such ones  as scriptures and classics.  

One among the literary classics is a Persian book bearing the title The Qabus Nama , translated into English as A Mirror For Princes,   by a  Cambridge University professor Reuben Levy. This  book contains counsels for princes to be promulged by them in various spheres of their responsibilities.

Given below are some counsels for judges.

Published in the eleventh century this book of wise counsels is  as valid and relevant  as if it had been written just today.

            “Although you (judge, magistrate) should be very unassuming at home, yet in a court of law the more awe-inspiring, stern-faced and unsmiling you are,  the better, in order to preserve the distinction and eminence of your position. Further, be dignified and of few words, but never weary of listening to argument or of making decisions. And never display impatience, but be forbearing; if a problem occurs, do not be content to reply upon your own judgment, but seek advice of jurisconsults also. Keep your judgment unclouded and never rest from studying problems and beliefs.

                The qadi (judge, magistrate) then must be a person self-controlled, God-fearing, pious and capable of elucidating the law. There are certain times at which he should refrain from sitting in judgment. They are when he is hungry or thirsty, at times of personal distress or when some anxiety over everyday affairs distracts him.”

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6^th August 2022                                               G. R. Kanwal

THE ARROW AND THE SONG

 

THE ARROW AND THE SONG

I shot an arrow into the air,

It fell to  earth; I knew not where;

For so swiftly it flew, the sight,

Could not follow it in its flight.

 

I breathed a song into the air,

It fell to earth, I knew not where;

For who has sight, so keen and strong,

That it can follow the flight of song?

 

Long, long afterward, in an oak,

I found the arrow still unbroke;

And the song from beginning to end,

I found again in the heart of a friend.

         

          The brief poem given above is both symbolic and inspirational. It is the creation of the  American poet, Henry Wordsworth Longfellow (1807-1882). Short in length, it has massive  breadth and depth. Simple in diction, it Is complex in meanings. Like all the brief poems of Longfellow, this one , too, is delightfully melodious.

 

            Both the arrow and the song, as used in this poem, have everlasting life. The arrow remains unbroken and the song does not fizzle out.  The first one remains unchanged wherever it falls against a person whom it was aimed at out of enmity.  Its impact survives the passage of time like enmity, hatred, hostility and bitterness which should be avoided for these negative reasons.  The song, a symbol of love, kindness and friendship towards the entire humanity despite differences in castes and creeds, faiths and beliefs, does not turn into nothingness. Its soothing impact  and delightful melodiousness  go on showing their  balmy effect.  

           

            So, let us abandon the arrow and embrace the song in our dealings with friends and foes.  

            Remember, all out actions and utterances become eternal facts of our life and character. Therefore, don’t regard them as temporary phenomena.

 

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19^th July 2022                                                                          G. R. Kanwal

COUNT THAT DAY LOST

 

COUNT THAT DAY LOST

‘COUNT THAT DAY LOST’ is a short but one of the loveliest poems written by George Eliot.  This versatile  English author  was born on 22^nd November 1819 and passed away on 22^nd December  1880. Her original name was Mary Ann Evans. She was  a novelist, poet, journalist and translator of great fame. As a novelist she was vastly readable and is known for such popular works as The Mill on the Floss, Romola, Silas Marner, and Middle March.

                 ‘Count That Day Lost’ is an inspirational poem.  It defines the nature of a day well-spent by any unselfish and kind-hearted man who loves to cheer up the people he meets.  Our days are  not meant to be spent in doing idle things. That day will be considered as  lost when no good deed is done to some needy person.  Gainful  days are intended to add warmth to the hearts of the people we meet and by providing  brightness to their lackluster lives.     

                    The poem reads as follows:

If you sit down at set of sun

And count the acts that you have done,

And, counting find

One self-denying deed, one word

That eased the heart of him who heard;

One glance most kind,

That fell like sunshine where it went ----

Then you may count that day well spent.

 

But if, through all the livelong day,

You’ve cheered no heart, by yea or nay----

If, through it all

You’ve nothing done that you can trace

That brought the sunshine to one face----

No act most small

That helped some soul and nothing cost----

Then count that day a worse than lost.

 

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14^th July 2022                                                                          G. R. Kanwal

A POET”S PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE

 

A POET”S PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE

The poet here is William Shakespeare(1564-1616 ) and the  philosophy of life given below  has been taken from a very small  bunch of his works.

1.      Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage.

And then is heard no more; it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury

Signifying nothing.                                                      Macbeth   Act 5, Sc.3

                                    ………….

2.        All the world is a stage,

And all the men and merely players:

They have their exits and entrances;

And one man in his life plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,

Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.

And then the whining school boy, with his satchel,

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school. And then the lover

Sighing like a furnace, with a woeful ballad

Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,

Full of strange oaths, and bearded like a pard,

Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the canon’s mouth. And then the justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lin’d,

With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances;

And so he plays his part. The sixth stage shifts

Into the lean and slipper’s pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,

His youthful hose well sav’d a world too wide

For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,

Turning again towards childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion,

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.           As You Like It,  Act II, Sc.VII

                                   …………..

The quality of mercy is not strain’d,

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven,

Upon the place beneath: it is twice bless’d;

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:

‘T is mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes

The throned monarch better than his crown;

His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,

The attribute to awe and majesty,

Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;

But mercy is above the sceptred sway,

It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,

It is an attribute to God himself,

An earthly power doth then show likest God’s

When mercy seasons justice.                                                Merchant of Venice, Act Iv, Sc. I                                                   …….…………..

 

By a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to, ‘t is a consummation

Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;

To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there ‘s the rub;

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil.

Must give us pause. There ‘s the respect

That makes calamity of so long life;

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,

The pangs of dispriz’d love, the law’s delay

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of the of the unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscover’d country from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of ?                                          Hamlet, Act III, Sc. I

                                            ……………..

 

Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O, no ! it is an ever-fixed mark,

That looks on tempests and is never shaken.

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth is unknown , although his height be taken..          Sonnet CXVI

 

Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle’s compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me be prov’d

I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.                                                  Sonnet CXVI

 

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10^th July 2022                                                                                     G.R.Kanwal