From ‘The Myth of Wu Tao-Tzu’ by Sven Lindqvist

Few deserts are so well taken care of as the Australian. Every stone, every bush, every waterhole has its specific owner and custodian, its sacred history and religious significance. Every holy place has its own holy picture.

The eternal truths of Aboriginal religion are expressed in the surrounding landscape…..

‘Following the summer of 1902 came a hard winter. Great numbers of the unemployed formed into processions, as many as a dozen at a time, and daily marched through the streets of London crying for bread.’

That I had never seen in Stockholm. I had never seen ‘tottery old men and women searching in the garbage for rotten potatoes, beans, and vegetables.’

……..Hermann Hesse…….. wrote an article on the task of intellectuals in war……..

The first casualty of war is the truth. Does a Japanese drama become worse because the Japanese fleet has shelled Tsingtao? Has a bad German book become superior to an English book because those countries are at war? …..

That is what they want us to think. We must refuse to participate in this deceit.

It is understandable that politicians and soldiers are blinded by hatred of the enemy. But when intellectuals are also seized by warmongering and write battle poems, boycott ‘enemy’ art and defame whole peoples – who will then defend the truth?

Goethe did not write war poems in 1813. He retained his own inner freedom and followed his intellectual conscience. Anyone who has once believed in the idea of humanity, in the universality of science, in art with no national boundaries, must not betray his conviction now that it is being put to the test. If intellectuals betray spiritual values, war will destroy the foundations of Europe. Someone must uphold peace even if the whole world is at war. Someone must attempt to preserve as much peace as possible – that is the task the future poses today.

Each stroke is irretrievable. Alteration is a mortal sin and a child can spot it. So in calligraphy it is often a matter of waiting, but never hesitating.

Calligraphy is not an art for the rebel. It is based on disciplined spontaneity, inconceivable without rules and doctrine. The doctrine is the sum of tradition: a way of performing. Mastery consists of achieving freedom in relation to tradition. And freedom consists of a kind of assimilation of the rules agreed on, so that no decision from above is necessary. Judgement can be left to the hand.

You no longer support the arrow once it has left the bow, runs an old saying.

So write nothing on the first day. Just look at the character and let it sink into your consciousness. Don’t write on the next day either. Just wait and let your desire work until the knowledge has penetrated throughout your entire body.

Wait until your hand knows it.

And nothing else.

Wait until your hand is empty and everything else has fallen out of it.

But when your entire consciousness embraces the character ande nothing else – then grind the ink, pick up the brush and give your hand the freedom of your heart. And with one strong blow, as if from the tail of a fish, your ‘self’ has vanished.

It is in your hand that everything has to be. At every moment it chooses between a thousand possibilities. It is too late to issue orders. It is not the time to explain. Whatever does not exist stored as experience in your hand is useless. What at that moment does not go up into the movement is irrelevant. Your will can only block. It is useless to draw in air and pump yourself up. It can happen only by itself. We want to draw inside what is beyond our control and thus force it. But what is best will never allow itself to be forced. That can be achieved only in the way the calligrapher achieves it.

Although my arms, legs, head and body still obeyed me, at the same time they added something extra, something quite unnecessary. I wanted to place my hands and feet naturally, but they made certain flourishes of their own, and that resulted in a pose – like at a photographer’s.

Strange! Although I am an ordinary, natural person, I simply couldn’t sit still, and behaved like a bad actor. Theatrical falseness was closer to me than genuine naturalness. They said afterwards that my expression turned stupid and I looked guilty.

‘Lets go on now’, said Tortsov, after I had been tormented enough. ‘But we’ll eventually come back to these exercises and learn to sit still.’

‘Teach us to sit?’ the pupils said in wonder. ‘Wasn’t that what we were doing?’

‘No,’ replied Tortsov firmly. ‘You weren’t content just to sit still.’

‘What should we have done, then?’

Instead of answering, Tortsov quickly got up and walked in a businesslike manner over to the chair, then sank into it as if he were back at home.

Afghanistan – an old tribal society where man is still not subdued. Everyone I meet considers himself to be just as much a human being as I am. After India, this is wonderful, refreshing, an almost unbelievable experience.

Is it their religion? Or is it the mountains? Or that they have never been colonized? It is certainly not a high standard of living and modern civilization. The poverty is profound. Here as everywhere the big farmer, the usurer and the merchant form a steadfast trinity. But there is counterbalance.

‘The rich have traditional duties to the village and the family. That has an economically levelling effect.’

It is said that a travelling foreigner can get shot in Afghanistan. No such risk in India, but I would rather be afraid myself than see others cringe.

The British brought peace and order to India. They created a kind of rule of law, but that also entailed the right of the landowner, the usurer, and the merchant to oppress. It made the masses helpless in the hands of those who had the economic and social advantage.

Guns and a wild determination to use them were what saved the Afghans from being civilized by the British Empire. And nothing but guns and determination will, in a pre-democratic, pre-organized society, guarantee that the interests of the people are to some extent satisfied.

I am a pacifist. But after seeing the fear, the mad fright in Indian eyes, that unnatural abasement both ostentatious and ashamed, but most of all cowed, humiliated and broken – after having been in India, I am glad to see armed peasants.

It must be possible. The prospect of a clearer and freer way of living has always been held out to me. It must exist. I’ve seen it in poetry and pictures. I’ve heard it in music. There’s a fearlessness there which makes my life foolish. There are opportunities for happiness there which frighten me more than unhappiness. There’s an abyss in reverse, and one falls upwards.

Why, then, do I live as I do?

……India ……… But if you don’t hang yourself in your hotel room on the very first evening – and what use would that be? – then a creeping dehumanization occurs. The simplest humanity demands that you try to save the life of another person. In a city where the cleansing department collects the bodies of the dead off the streets at dawn and in uncertain cases turns the sleeping over with a foot to see if they are still alive – in a city of that kind, even the simplest humanity demands too much. You lose faith in it.

From ‘Things can only get Feta. Two journalists and their crazy dog living through the Greek Crisis’ by Marjory McGinn

George Bernard Shaw’s famous quote: ‘I dislike feeling at home when I am abroad.’




Greeks pour onto the beaches in August as this is the month when they take their holidays en masse. Greeks have no issue about crowds and space, unlike the British. We like our personal space and exclusivity, whereas they adore parea, company and closeness, which is why there is no word in the Greek language for ‘privacy’ as we know it. The Oxford Learner’s (Greek English) Dictionary translates privacy with the Greek words for ‘loneliness’ or ‘secrecy’.



….in a culture where dogs are chained to trees night and day, often standing in their own excrement. It was the most frustrating part of the Greek culture for us – the attitude to animals.

From ‘The Wisdom of Compassion. Stories of Remarkable Encounters and Timeless Insights’ by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Victor Chan

“Some mysterious things certainly there,” the Dalai Lama continued his reply to the rabbi. “We believe that these so-called higher beings have more energy than us. At a practical level, much depend on our own effort. If our effort comes, then some of these positive energies, I think, we can connect. From the Buddhist viewpoint, these higher beings develop higher energy because of their practice of altruism….”




“……reincarnation………If you ask me what explanation Buddhism? Then I will say: life after life. This physical body, together with our grosser mind, cease to exist. But our main mind, this means our more subtle mind, will continue. Another life begins.”



…the Dalai Lama has himself witnessed certain phenomena that his rational mind finds hard to explain…..the death of his senior tutor, Ling Rinpoche, who died at the age of eighty-one …… Although Ling Rinpoche was clinically dead – his breathing had stopped and there was no pulse – he remained in some form of meditation for thirteen days. During this time, the area around his heart remained warm, and his body, unmoving in a meditative pose, showed no signs of deterioration. On the last day, his head dropped and a small amount of blood escaped from his nostrils. The Dalai Lama believed that it was only then that Ling Rinpoche’s consciousness finally left his body.

From ‘Editor Unplugged. Media, Magnates, Netas & Me’ by Vinod Mehta

Malcolm Muggeridge ……. ‘Few men of action have been able to make a graceful exit at the appropriate time.’ ….Enoch Powell edict: ‘All political careers, unless they are cut off midstream …end in failure.’

It is common knowledge that investing in a media company yields very low, if any, returns. In fact, the corporate owner invests precisely because he longs to influence editorial policy. And for such influence he is prepared to risk a few million rupees.

Groucho Marx quipped, ‘Of course I have principles, and if you don’t like those, I have others.’

The precondition for a successful love search required, and I use [Bertrand] Russell’s worlds, ‘all passion to be quenched’

George Orwell: ‘Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful.’

In the introduction he was excessively eulogized. [Malcolm] Muggeridge began his speech saying, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, when people tell me who I am I can hardly wait to hear myself speak.’

In Bertolt Brecht’s acclaimed play Galileo, one of the characters makes an excellent point, ‘Unhappy is the land that needs a hero.’ …. F. Scott Fitzgerald: ‘Show me a hero,’ he said, ‘and I will write you a tragedy.’

We, the middle class, have concurrently created ‘pockets of California and sub-Saharan Africa’. ….Half of India’s population (600 million) defecates in public, 50 per cent of Indian children are stunted due to malnourishment, 50 per cent of women are anaemic…..

Whether it is fair to label the BJP as communal is debatable. What is not debatable is the fact that at the heart of the Sangh Parivar communal elements prosper. They become less or more vocal depending on how the Lotus is blooming.

From ‘Baba Amte. A Vision of New India’ by Hans Staffner S J

When asked whether he had drawn inspiration from any particular school of thought or leader Amte replied: “Yes, from several: Marx, Ruskin, Mao, Kropotkin, Tagore and Gandhi.”

The particular image under which Gandhiji chooses to worship God is Truth. In later years he does no longer say that God is Truth, but rather, that Truth is God. Gandhiji is not so much a theorist as a man of action. He prefers to define God in terms of a practical method of approaching Him rather than in terms of an abstract idea. We experience God by experiencing what is best in us. …..Gandhiji intends to state we can approach God by clinging to the Truth, by being true to what is best in us….being faithful to the voice within, to the voice of conscience, to the voice of God…clinging to the sanatana dharma….the law which is imprinted in man’s heart. Clinging to the sanatana dharma is not necessarily the same as clinging to the written dharma, the traditional law. The sanatana dharma is higher than all traditional or written law.

It is an ancient Indian insight that on account of human weakness errors may creep into the traditional law. From time to time people with deep spiritual insight will discover such errors and condemn them in the light of their insight into the sanatana dharma…..

….Though orthodox Hindus maintain that untouchability is prescribed by the Hindu dharma, and the law of Manu seems to bear them out, the reformers agree with Gandhiji, who following in the footsteps of Yudhishthira declares. “I decline to be bound by any interpretation of dharma, however learned it may be, if it is repugnant to reason and to moral sense,” and he declared untouchability to be an ineffaceable blot which Hinduism carries with it”, and insisted that it be abolished.

In his reply to the Templeton Foundation Baba Amte states: For me there is no better religion than the one that builds inside human beings a sense of dignity and self-esteem. I am glad this definition of religion seems acceptable. I am not religious, traditionally speaking, but I feel religion is that force which builds a stronger and more righteous human being.” 

From ‘Travels with Epicurus. Meditations from a Greek Island on the Pleasures of Old Age’ by Daniel Klein

It is not the young man who should be considered fortunate but the old man who has lived well, because the young man in his prime wanders much by chance, vacillating in his beliefs, while the old man has docked in the harbor, having safeguarded his true happiness.

-          Epicurus

Not what we have, but what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance

-          Epicurus

The islanders say that on a man who has weathered challenging experiences, a finely seasoned face will emerge in old age. It is the face he has earned, and its raw beauty is in the fully lived life it expresses.

What Epicurus mainly had on his mind was the question of how to live the best possible life, especially considering that we only have one of them – Epicurus did not believe in an afterlife.

….Epicurus….aphorism…. “Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little.”

Epicureans consider communal silence a hallmark of true friendship.

… [Epicurus] wrote, “Of all the things that wisdom provides to help one live one’s entire life in happiness, the greatest by far is the possession of friendship.”

…Epicurus believed that choosing with whom one eats dinner is far more significant than choosing what the menu should be. “Before you eat or drink anything, carefully consider with whom you eat or drink rather than what you eat or drink, because eating without a friend is the life of a lion or the wolf.”

By the joys of friendship, Epicurus meant a full range of human interactions ranging from intimate and often philosophical discussions with his dearest companions ….to impromptu exchanges with people, known and unknown, in the street. The education or social status of those with whom he conversed mattered not a whit; in fact the height of true friendship was to be accepted and loved for who one was, not what station in lie one had achieved. Loving and being loved affirmed one’s sense of self and conquered feelings of loneliness and alienation. It kept one sane.

Michel de Montaigne, the sixteenth-century French essayist….wrote, “And with Epicurus, I conceive that pleasures are to be avoided if greater pains be the consequence, and pains to be coveted that will terminate in greater pleasures.”

….Epicurus’s dying words to his friend Idomeneus: “On this blissful day, which is also the last of my life, I write this to you. My continual sufferings from strangury [bladder spasms] and dysentery are so great that nothing could increase them; but I set above them all the gladness of mind at the memory of our past conversations.”

In every real man a child is hidden who wants to play.

-          Friedrich Nietzsche

…the bedouin saying, “Beware of what you desire, for you shall always get it.” ….Oscar Wilde: “In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. The last is much the worst”

Memory is the mother of all wisdom

-          Aeschylus

Charles Dickens begins his masterwork David Copperfield, “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.”

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

-          Jean-Paul Sartre

….Friedrich Nietzsche…wrote, “When marrying, ask yourself this question: Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this person into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory.”

Kierkegaard….wrote, “To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself.”

…Aristotle’s observation, “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”

The best remedy for anger is delay

-          Seneca

A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds to religion

-          Francis Bacon

Take more time, cover less ground

-          Thomas Merton

From ‘2014 The election that Changed India’ by Rajdeep Sardesai

In its original avatar as the Jana Sangh, the party had won just three seats and 3.1 per cent of the vote in the1952 elections. Now it had won 282 seats and 31 per cent of the national vote – astonishing figures when you consider that the BJP’s catchment area of winnable seats was less than 350 eats.

The BJP, bolstered by unflinching corporate support, easily outspent its rivals, but the more worrisome aspect is just the quantum of money that is now needed by every member of Parliament to win an election. Because, with every rupee donated, the IOUs need to be encashed post-election.

A candidate in Andhra Pradesh admitted to me that he needed ‘at least Rs 15 to 20 crore to just stay in the fight.’ …….

….1990 rath yatra ….Advani was the mascot, but the real stars were the Hindutva demagogues Sadhvi Rithambara and Uma Bharati. I shall never forget their speeches during the yatra, seeking Hindu mobilization and loaded with hate and invective against the minorities.

In early conversations, I never heard Modi speak of his caste background or his years in Vadnagar. He did speak, though, of his RSS mentors with great fondness. ‘Lakshman Inamdar… is a Maharashtrian like you, he guided me always….’

My verdict is that the Modi government was utterly incompetent because it was aware that the Godhra violence could set of a cycle of vengeance and yet did not do enough to stop it. In the places from where I reported in Ahmedabad, I just did not see enough of a police presence to act as a deterrent to the rioters. The violence only really began to ebb once the army stepped in….

What is probably true is that in February 2002, the real boss of Gujarat was not Modi but the VHP general secretary Praveen Togadia. If there was a ringmaster for the 2002 riots it was Togadia ….several ministers were beholden to him, and the street cadres were his loyalists. At the time, maybe even Modi feared him.

…..On the streets, the VHP’s foot soldiers were most visible and led the attacks against the minorities. In the Naroda Patiya massacre in Ahmedabad in which ninety-seven people were killed, the list of those arrested (and later convicted) included a roll call of prominent VHP members of the area …..

In a television interview after his surprise defeat in the 2004 general elections, Vajpayee admitted that not removing Modi at the time was a mistake.

….Modi used the Gaurav Yatra …. In every speech, he would refer to ‘Miyan’ Musharraf …..the message was really aimed at local Muslim groups…

The distinctly communal edge to the Gaurav Yatra surfaced in its most vitriolic form during a rally in Becharji on 9 September. This is where Modi referred to the riot relief camps as ‘baby-producing centres’ with him infamous one-liner, ‘Hum paanch, hamare pachhees’ …..The tone of Modi’s speeches was set by the fragility of communal relations and the climate of fear and hate that had been sparked off by the violence.

That verdict was delivered on 13 December 2002…. The BJP won an impressive 126 seats …That evening at the BJP headquarters, Modi agreed to do a ‘live’ interview with me. The mood amongst the cadres was not just jubilant but vengeful too. ….Surrounded by his supporters, Modi was an intimidating sight – steely eyes, a finger pointing at the camera, the face impassive. It was one of the most difficult interviews I have ever done.

Yes, Gujarat has also seen more successful prosecution, but many of these were achieved only because of the tireless work done by a Supreme Court-supervised Special Investigating Team (SIT) and indomitable activists like Setalvad, and not because of the Gujarat police. Honest police officers who testified against the government were hounded. Lawyers who appeared for the victims, like the late Mukul Sinha, were ostracized.

When Modi was re-elected Gujarat chief minister in 2002, he gave [Amit] Shah multiple portfolios, including the crucial home portfolio. The home ministry was critical because it gave Modi control over the police. In the backdrop of the riots and charges of conspiracy being made against the chief minister’s office, Modi needed someone in the home ministry who would be totally faithful to him, Modi trusted very few individuals – Shah was the one politician he felt a certain comfort factor with…..

It was during his tenure as home minister of Gujarat that [Amit] Shah courted controversy. Between 2003 and 2007, there were a series of encounter killings in Gujarat in which several young Muslims were killed. Shah claimed they were ‘terrorists’, some of whom wanted to kill the chief minister… Human rights activists argued that many of the encounters were ‘fake’….

In 2010, Shah was arrested by the CBI and accused of killing a criminal, Sohrabuddin Sheikh, his wife Kauser Bi and their associate Tulsiram Prajapati, in a staged encounter….Shah got bail three months after his arrest but was told he would have to leave Gujarat for fear that he would influence the investigation….

….did the political parties of UP, especially the BJP, stoke the communal fires to derive political beneit? That BJP leaders were present at a ‘maha’ panchayat where a call was made to avenge the killings and to demand justice for Jat bahu-betis is undeniable. That one of them, an MLA called Sangeet Som, put out a false video on Facebook showing an alleged lynching of Hindu boys is also true. At a Modi rally in Agra in November, the BJP leadership even felicitated its MLAs who had been charged with inciting violence. Two of its leaders named in the riot FIRs were given tickets, and one of them, Sanjeev Balyan, would eventually become a Union Minister.

….it is a fact that local Muslim leaders from the Congress, SP and BSP…were caught on tape delivering inflammatory speeches. …..the collective bankruptcy of a political class that was seeking votes over dead bodies.

Anna decided to go on another fast, this time calling for an FIR to be registered against fifteen UPA ministers. On day nine of the fast, he made a public appeal to Kejriwal to form a political party. Kejriwal, who had realized that the politics of fasts and dharnas was subject to diminishing returns, was excited at the prospect. Two days later, Anna backed out of the proposal, leading to complete confusion in the ranks. ‘We had made all the plans and then Anna ditched us,’ is how one Kejriwal aide described it.

….Gautambhai [Adani] had struck friendships with politicians from different parties. He kept a steady equation with Congress leaders in Gujarat and beyond ….Perhaps his closest friend in politics was NCP leader and UPA minister, Sharad Pawar. …The two would often dine at each other’s houses….

Generally, parties like the Congress and the BJP have a ‘graded’ system – ‘winnable’ candidates are provided a sum of around Rs 2 crore from the party funds, while the next category gets Rs 1 crore. The balance amount is expected to be raised by the candidates, with Rs 5 to 10 crore being the average cost for fighting an election (in states like Andhra and Maharashtra, it can go up to rs 15 and 20 crore, but it is less in north and east India; while urban seats are more expensive than rural ones).

Only a few business houses have set up official electoral trusts to give money by cheque. Most of the election money is generated through cash-rich businesses like real estate, liquor, stockbroking and mining.

At a rate of around Rs 8 to 10 crore per ‘winnable’ constituency plus other campaign expenses, the BJP had raised anywhere between Rs 4000 to 5000 crore – at least that’s my hunch…. The Congress was probably a few thousand crores behind in the race this time.

….NDTV is seen as occupying a politically left-liberal space….

Some of the most abusive Twitter activists seemed to be linked to either pro-BJP websites or even individual party members…..The campaign was much too organized for it not to have at least some level of endorsement from the leadership. The ‘HDL’, or Hindu Defence League, on Twitter was like a swarm of bees that would sting anyone who questioned their political beliefs. This wasnt healthy debate – it was vile abuse being spewed under the c