Shrimad Bhagavad Gita 1.3

पश्यैतां पाण्डुपुत्राणामाचार्य महतीं चमूम्।

व्यूढां द्रुपदपुत्रेण तव शिष्येण धीमता।।1.3।।

1.3. O teacher! Behold this mighty army of the sons of Pandu, marshalled in a military array by Drupada's son, your intelligent pupil.

Here we get to know what was left in the second shloka of the respective scripture. Duryodhana approaches Acharya Drona and talks to him about the might Pandava army standing in front of him. In a way, Duryodhana extols the military line up set up by Drishtdumn, Draupadi’s brother and Acharya Dron’s pupil.

Duryodhana, emphasized the name of Drupada’s son because of an old incident as per which Durpada did penance to get children who would one day kill Acharya Drona, in order to avenge the slight to his might inflicted by Acharya Drona. The two children who were the fruition of the Putrakameshti yagya were Draupadi and Dhristdumn.

Much as Acharya Dron knew everything about the yagya from the beginning, he still didn’t eschew his paramount principles as a teacher, and hence allocated combat training to Drishtdumn with Pandavas and Kauravas.

Duryodhana’s shrewdness as a sanguine fighter is seen in this shloka as he is ostentatiously reminding Acharya Dron that he must not shower mercy on the antagonistic side, by making him recapitulate about the yagya and the purpose for which Drishtdumn was born.

JAI HIND, JAI BHARAT 

JAI MA BHARTI

Shrimad Bhagavad Gita 1.2

सञ्जय उवाच

दृष्ट्वा तु पाण्डवानीकं व्यूढं दुर्योधनस्तदा।

आचार्यमुपसङ्गम्य राजा वचनमब्रवीत्।।1.2।।

1.1   Sanjaya replied: "The Prince Duryodhana, when he saw the army of the Pandavas paraded, approached his preceptor Guru Drona and spoke as follows:

In the first shloka King Dhrithrashtra erupted the genesis of conversation by asking Sanjaya to notify him about the scenario of the grand battle. In the second shloka of Shri Bhagwad Geeta, Sanjay replies back after sneaking into the battlefield through the clairvoyance that made things as much lucid to him as if each and every character was whispering his talks in Sanjaya’s ears.

Sanjaya, on assessing that King Dhrithrashtra certainly wanted to know about his own children first, initiates the talk about Duryodhana.  Through the psychic vision he could see Duryodhana approaching Acharya Drona and saying the words that follow in the next Shloka i.e. the third Shloka.

P.S. - If you mull over a little you can also assess that Sanjaya was the only person out of the characters of Mahabharata, other than Sri Krishna, to have been granted the prerogative of uttering the ginormously pious words of Sri Bhagwad Geeta. While perusing Bhagwad Geeta, we also seem to inflate the importance of Pandavas and subvert the vitality of Kauravas, Sanjaya, Acharya Dron, Pitamah Bhisma, Sangram Vijayi Kripacharya, Karna and Asvathama. Though Karan has got some recognition for his adherence to his morals and his dexterity in warfare, other characters still perish as unimportant in most of the people’s memory while studying Sri Bhagwad Geeta and hence such readers can never get anything out of this Holy Scripture.  Weren’t Sanjaya and Dhritrashtra even more fortunate than all the other characters? Lord himself chose them to hear what other were dying to hear, and still we continue to undermine their importance; Duryodhana was more skillful than any other person in blunt mace fighting and also happened to be the greatest devotee of Goddess Laxmi. Though he used Machiavellian methods, but he never floundered the rules of battle; there was no one as much resolute and determine as Pitamah Bhisma, who abandoned all the amenities and even the power to become the ruler of Hastinapur; Pandavas couldn’t even touch Acharya Dron in the whole battle. Even Yudhisthira, son of Dharamraaj, had to prevaricate to get Acharya Dron killed; No one was able to kill Ashvathama in the whole battle and though he could have chosen to fight from the side of Pandavas, he chose to be loyal to his father and his best friend Duryodhana.

Prejudices are the suppliers of ignorance. No knowledge can thrive where preconceived notions have taken ground. While diving deep into the realms of Sri Bhagwad Geeta, deem every character as pious, holy and close to God. Pandavas were no better than Kauravas, it was Lord Krishna who did everything. Remember, we have got no rights to rebuke any character of Mahabharata who has ever got the chance to see Lord Krishna. Just ponder over how close they all were to the Lord’s heart and hence our plausible rants and fictitious condemnation are nothing but the lacunae in our own brain.   

JAI HIND, JAI BHARAT

JAI MA BHARTI

Shrimad Bhagavad Gita 1.1

धृतराष्ट्र उवाच

धर्मक्षेत्रे कुरुक्षेत्रे समवेता युयुत्सवः।

मामकाः पाण्डवाश्चैव किमकुर्वत सञ्जय।।1.1।।

1.1   The King Dhritarashtra asked: "O Sanjaya! What happened on the sacred battlefield of Kurukshetra, when my people gathered against the Pandavas?"

Commentary: The battle ground was all set and the vanguards were poised to inflict lethal attacks on each other. The ground of Kurukshetra had never been such pious. On one side there were the unparalleled fighters comprising of the great archer Arjuna; the epitome of veracity Yudhishtira; the paragon of endless power Bhima; the exemplary sword fighter Sahdeva and the sanguine Nakula.

The antagonist side too had no paucity of dexterous fighters. Duryodhana was the most adroit in gada-yuddha (blunt mace fighting) ; Sangram Vijayi Kripacharya was insurmountable in any battle he fought and remained victorious in all the combats; Acharya Dron who was himself edified by none other than Lord Parshurama, an incarnation of Lord Vishnu; Pitamah Bhisma whose tenacity was extolled by the God himself; Ashwathama who was invincible in night-combat and was born with a blessed “mani”(gem) ; Karna whose archery skills even confounded Arjuna’s and who also happens to be a pupil of Lord Parshurama.

Many other unrivalled fighters stood on both sides and this was an unprecedented moment in the history of this universe. Even the Lord had to step down and employ his mystical tactics to make the war conclusive.  

Far away from the holy battleground sat, King Dhrithrashtra who was curious to know how a battle such inexplicably humongous would proceed ahead. Unfortunately, Dhrithrashtra was blind and hence couldn’t himself become a witness to the audacity of those great combatants. Albeit, Ved Vyasa had proffered him “divya dhrishti” but Dhrithrashtra didn’t deem it correct to accept the proposal.

Owing to Dhrithrashtra’s love, his wife Gandhari had also vowed to put a blindfold over her eyes so that there remained no disparity between the husband and wife and hence Dhrithsrashtra believed that getting the clairvoyance would be a slight to his wife’s deeply entrenched resolute and faith in Dhrithrashtra.

Ergo, it was decided that charioteer of Dhrithrashtra, Sanjaya would be provided with the divya dhristi or the psychic vision, who would then convey the proceedings of the battle ground to Dhritrashtra.

Thus comes our first shloka Shri Bhagwat Geeta where Dhrithrashtra accentuates his eagerness to know about the battle by asking Sanjaya about actions of his sons “Kauravas” and the sons of his brother Pandu, “Pandavas” who had congregated on the battleground to fight the most prominent battle of the mankind’s history.

JAI HIND, JAI BHARAT

JAI MA BHARTI

Indian "Soft Power"

In the 1980s eminent American political scientist Joseph Nye presented the concept of ‘soft power’. Later his 2004 eponymous book further laid the rubrics for the erection of a soft power. According to Mr. Nye, global politics can be played through three different modes of operation: 1. Coercion with threats (stick) 2. By alluring the other parties through money in form of investments (carrot) 3. Soft Power (attraction through culture and attitude). Mr. Nye furthers his exegesis by saying that though sticks and carrots will always be needed yet being a soft power can implement a drastic drawdown in their requirement.

Being a ‘soft power’ demands a nation to entice others not through cajolery, coercion or rewards but through what indeed a nation is. In fact, one of the kernel reasons behind the United States of America’s global rise has been the unique quiddity of their culture. The United States has been a paragon state as per the criteria laid by Mr. Nye. It has been the birthplace of McDonald’s, Starbucks, Coca-Cola, Apple, Microsoft, Intel, Hewlett-Packard and all other companies which have become indispensable for our daily lives. This ultimately led to formation of a global perception that amenities are preponderant in the American culture and this further accentuated “the great American dream.” The USA became a globe straddling power not only because of its colossal army but also because of the notion of the opulence of American middle class that they were able to disseminate around the world after the World War II.

Other countries too have unraveled the humongous strength of being a soft power and hence have tried to inculcate in themselves elements germane to it. French used it to reinvigorate their nation with a new sense of hope after the fall of Second French Empire in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and thus established Alliance Française around the world in order to impart education pertinent to the French culture. With more than 850 institutes worldwide, Alliance Française has contributed a lion’s share in the efforts to make the world conversant with the might of the French culture. Other countries too followed the suit: The UK has the British Council, Germany has Goethe Institut, Spain has Instituto Cervantes, and Italy has Istituto Italiano Di Cultura. 

Though, around the world countries have taken big strides to wield benefit more from the ‘soft power’ concept, yet what plunges me into despair is India’s blithe attitude towards this increasingly crucial phenomenon. Due to the flippant as well as ignorant eschewing of this concept, our nation which boasts of world’s oldest and sumptuously decorated culture, has not been able to garner condign popularity tantamount to its ‘soft power’.

A big step was taken on 9^th April, 1950, when Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) was founded to foment the interest of the world in the Indian culture and to promote the cultural integration of different civilizations with that of the India. Though the merit of the Indian culture can provide ICCRI with exceptional sinews, yet due to negligence of account of the authorities, ICCR continues to exist in a fallow state.

On one hand, as of 2014 People’s Republic of China (PRC) has opened over 480 Confucius institutes (with the first being opened in 2004) and on the other hand, ICCR (which is now 68 years old) has been able to open only 35 Indian culture centers around the globe. Moreover, the funds endowed to the council are meager and many programs worldwide have to be aborted due to the unavailability of funds. Such brazen disregard is vexing and seems veritably lout but still continue scourge Indian prospects of being a globally eminent power. China, despite practicing gross human rights violation, is projecting itself as a center of culture and excellence through the Confucius institutes (though their illicit activities on the campuses are exposing them),and India on the other hand continues to sit idle and do nothing to correct the wrongs.

Besides this, our diplomatic relations too need a major overhaul. The whole world is aware that Africa is going to become the food-bowl of the world, and India, owing to its ginormous population, would need Africa as a stable partner, yet we have not established our embassies in numerous countries of the African union. Same remains the story for countries in Latin America (which believe that India is the next big). We continue to wax praises about our prospective role as a global leader nation, yet there are countries where we don’t even have an India mission. Shashi Tharoor, in his book Pax India, talks about the same woe through his example of Timor-Leste (a strategically important place where even Pakistan holds an embassy!)   

India’s potential is surely marvelous and the economic progress that we have exhibited in the seventy years of our independence is awe-inspiring, yet it remains to be a matter of pity that people around the world are not even aware of what India has to offer for them, and that too not because of their ignorance but because of our own dereliction of duty. Latin America and the African Union are going to play a large role as the power houses of the future world powers and countries like PRC have already started working there with their characteristic mandarin speed and if we still continue to lag behind, then our status quo would never change from being a developing country to being a developed country. It’s high time we started doing things with a vision of establishing Indian as a serious player at the international stage.

JAI HIND, JAI BHARAT

JAI MA BHARTI

Judicial Impact Assessment: Need of the hour.

Indian judiciary has been lately on media’s billboard germane to the bustling activities going on in the court lobbies. Albeit, the internal crisis imperiling the judiciary is bountiful, yet what’s more harrowing is the patchy judicial delivery system and the dawdling of cases till sheer ad nauseaum.

According to recent statistics, a colossal 2.8 crore cases are pending in India’s district courts and moreover, the dearth of judges to combat this deluge is exacerbating the condition. As per the numbers, Indian courts are in need of more than 15,000 more arbitrators to even come close to fighting the backlog. Some more vexing numbers are: More than 2 million cases have been stuck in district courts for more than 10 years, around 2.3 million cases are pending in High Courts for more than 10 years.

Certainly, we are not in the shining years of our judiciary. The internal power tussle, paucity of judges, lackadaisical court systems, and an overwhelming backlog of cases is indeed a pellucid tocsin of how our system is currently osculating the nadir. Though all this may seem aggrandized and inordinately cynical and pessimistic look, however, the grass-roots condition is exactly the worst. A demotic legal maxim avows, “Justice delayed is justice denied” and if we base our extant scenario on the apothegm, then certainly we have bungled up in dispensing justice to those who confide in the system. The preposterously dilatory system of ours is not only obliterating the lives of millions of law-abiding denizens but is also mulcting so many taxpayers. The ginormous amount of cases is bamboozling the national treasure, as the cost of financially supporting the courts for running cases which should have been arbitrated years before, is also highly exorbitant.

All in all, we are in a quagmire of problems that have blighted our system. And out of this catch-22, there is only one way out- addressing the problem in the apposite manner. Though addressing this mammoth issue is in itself a formidable task, yet Judicial Impact Assessment (JIA) can unequivocally ensure a better and promising future.

When new laws are promulgated, all the practical technicalities are by no means kept in mind. The putative reason is the lack of opportune coordination between the legislature and the judiciary. This, in turn, leads to an augmented onus on the shoulders of the judiciary, as the court system is left with meager resources to take into account the excessive burden. For instance, the amendment in Section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act in the year 2005 generated more than 25 lakh new criminal cases. JIA focuses on centering on such exigent issues.

One of the prime reasons behind our faltering judicial system is the lack of requisite data even at the levels of the subordinate courts. For there has been no judicial assay hitherto, there are no official figures which talk about the working of our judicial system. We still have been unable to decipher the primary causes for the delay in sloughing off the cases (besides the shortage of judges), we are also not aware of the costs that are accrued in the proceeding of various cases and our system also lacks any mechanism to calculate such expenses. The budgeting mechanism is obsolete, and investment of Judiciary has not even exceeded more than 0.1% of the total outlay under the plan “Administration of Justice: constitution and organization of all courts, except the Supreme Court and the High Courts,” mentioned in the Concurrent List. The budget making procedures are obviously outdated and aloofness between the judiciary and the legislature in budget allocation corral to compound matters further.

The underlying principle behind the JIA is the constitution of a body consisting of statisticians, legal advisors and economists who would collaborate with the judicial department, CJI of India, Chief Justices of the High Courts and officials of the Home Ministry and Law Ministry to effect reforms in the legislature-judiciary-executive coordination and also to formulate better budgeting procedures for our courts.

With certitude, being au courant with the statistics of the current scenario is a strong need for the success of any such constitutional body and JIA would provide that pedestal of support. On one hand, the assessment will work towards devising strategies to estimate the judicial workload resulting from new laws and the cost of various services like judge-time and support services involved to carry on with the burden, and on the other hand, it will also focus on a deep lacuna in the central funding of our courts.

Over 90% of the judicial cases are processed in our subordinate courts which have been ‘forced’ to deal with both central as well as state laws. Though Article 247 requires the Central government to constitute additional courts to deal with matters appurtenant to the laws enacted by the parliament, yet the Union government circumambulates this requirement by citing that the executive powers guaranteed to it by the constitution doesn’t allow it establish courts in states. JIA will accentuate this issue and raise the concerns regarding the adequate funding of the subordinate courts for tackling the cases arising due to the Central laws.

The pain and the suffering of so many litigants behooves us take this enormously pivotal step since justice that is not delivered timely is in itself a repulsive injustice to our citizens.   

JAI HIND, JAI BHARAT

JAI MA BHARTI

Finding God

One of the most subtle yet conspicuous concept in this world is of “God.” Nobody knows who created the God, nobody knows whether God was ever created or not and nobody, in actuality, knows what is GOD. Albeit some have the proclivity to deem themselves as “atheists”, some consider themselves “theists” while some other live in agnosticism, yet there is not a single being who has been able to remain unpartisan and unfazed by the notion of God. For the nonce, let us forget your predilections towards the respective topic and become disinterested in dealing with the veracity of the context. There is not a single human being who doesn’t desiderate to meet God, some want to have a ‘dekko’ of him to achieve utter bliss, some want to ascertain whether he is actually extant, and some want to curse him for all the adversities that they have faced throughout their lives. Throughout our lives we are in the pursuit of God. Knowingly or unknowingly, we base our propositions on him. In fact, Science talks about nothing but the ultimate unification of how the nature works and nature is indeed an even more subtle term for God, so Science is looking for God also. While some are pursuing their dreams of reaching God through science, some adopt austere lifestyle of ascetics and those who can’t go either way end up erecting their own realms about God. In fact the biggest question that the world has ever faced or will continue to face is “WHAT IS GOD?”

We all have our own proclivities regarding God. Some envisage him standing in the ground of Kurukshetra with a handsome countenance and the enigmatic azure colour, while some may imagine him sacrificing himself on the crucifix to redeem the mankind of its maladies; but unlike our naïve minds which have presented God as an individual belonging to only one section of the mankind, a great poet envisioned his truth:

Nida Fazli once said:

Ghar se masjid hai bahut duur chalo yuun kar len,

Kisi rote hue bachche ko hansaya jae

The mosque is too far, so for a while

Let us make a weeping child smile

So much ingenuity is hidden in this couplet that the one who can unravel the real meaning and induce it into one’s life won’t need any further exposition germane to God. The most pitiable thing about our life is that we are not living at all, we are just surviving the daily affairs. We have crowded our lives with so many complications and superstitions that we have impelled ourselves to forget the cardinal meaning of life. Isn’t human life a big wonder in itself? Have your ever extolled yourself for your body is not a mere piece of flesh, so much internal work is going in inside you that science may not replicate it in the coming five hundred years, yet we take our lives for granted. Have your ever felt yourself? Have you ever given time to look into yourself rather than onto others? Nida Fazli hints that living life is God and I believe that the paramount reason why we fail to achieve bliss is because we shun the real God and look for the immaterial questions and answers. We all have been given this life just once, yet we waste it peering outside and floundering ourselves with things that don’t matter. Our life is nothing less than a miracle. You look at it from any dimension, scientifically, spiritually or psychologically, our body, our cells and our mind are such wonders that can never be created by any artificial means. We often fail to adulate that great gift that we have been bestowed with, we often fail to belaud the God that has been embedded into us and try to look for some charismatic personality that indeed doesn’t exist outside of us. Human beings have got unlimited potential. If you peruse Liao Fan’s lessons, one obvious takeaway that you can get is the kindness is fate and fate is God and God is you. The biggest happiness that you can ever derive can only be extracted by helping others. The day you resort to helping the needy, caring for those who can’t care for themselves and eschewing fallacious beliefs and inspired notions about the myths, all manacles will be broken; fetters will be annihilated and you will find the God. You have been endowed with this life through an excessively remarkable combination and permutation by the nature and each and every person must be proud over this fact. All our life, we make goals for ourselves, when we reach those goals, we make new goals and we continue doing it till one day death strikes our door and we understand that indeed we did nothing. A life that has not been dedicated to helping the impoverished is life wasted. So many people are going to walk this earth but only a few will be remembered, only a few will be the source of inspiration to many and the thing that differentiates them from others is that they dedicated themselves to their God and their God was their kindness.

Buddha preached agnosticism because he knew that everybody possess God but nobody would ever realize that and hence it is better to say that you can never ascertain whether there is God or not. Rather than digging deep into the questions that are of no utility to the mankind, he asked people to look within themselves and find their God. “Looking within oneself” has become a cliché yet this “self-mirroring” process eludes almost whole of the humanity.  Looking within oneself means being thankful and appreciative of this colossal universe and of being given the chance to make a change come true in the lives of those who can’t effect changes themselves. Looking with oneself means feeling your body and gasping the difference between your spirit and your flesh and understanding the egoism won’t last long, that superciliousness will be battered down and only the inner kindness in you will leave an indelible mark on this world.

Try to “look into yourself” rather than “looking onto others.” Till the last moment of your life, strive to do things that can make a crying child smile and let me tell you it is not that easy.

JAI HIND, JAI BHARAT

JAI MA BHARTI

When...

When times are not right and things go wrong,
When you are left behind and world moves on,

When the Sun has gone down and darkness refuses to recede,
When you are trying harder but success is not gonna pay heed,

When gloominess strikes and success eludes,
When the world is unfair and life remains impertinent and rude,

When answers seem abstruse,
Painful are, failure's scars and defeat's bruise,

When sorrows are abound and catharsis inevitable,
Wanton is life, nothing is tractable,

When merriment seems gone,
And fear of getting back up is chilling your bone,

When you no longer believe in yourself,
And have lost the track,
When defeats have take you aback,

When you have to stand alone,
Others refuses to trust or bank on,

When the apogee seems esoteric,
The acme seems aloof,

Every moment, dejection is striking hard,
Stay calm and DON'T YOU DARE TO RETARD,

I know it's heartrending,
But don't you dare to plummet down,

This journey is yours and you are its path,
Did you come this long only to fall apart!

Amid the din of harangues,
Listen to that silent yet blazing fire,
Rekindle it and veer your ire,

No matter what you do,
Don't dupe the traveler's desire,

Hilltop may be invisible for the moment,
But the clouds can't stay for long,
Through sheer tenacity,
Subjugate the impediments' throng,

If you can't run,
Just crawl,
Your fate can be redeemed by none,
But your own soul.

JAI HIND, JAI BHARAT

JAI MA BHARTI