Bharatham : Uthishtatha-Jagratha : (wef-05/11/2012. )

44. The Master saw God in enemies and in dacoits. On January 8, 1950, during the evening Satsang at the Ashram, a disgruntled inmate, Govindan by name, aimed three blows at the Master’s head with a crude axe. But in the dim light of the oil lamp—electricity had not come to the Ashram then—he missed his mark and hit the door and the wall instead. Only the wooden handle struck on the heavily turbaned head. The assailant was caught and the police were called in, but the Master would not let Govindan be prosecuted. "Do you mean to say that anything would happen without the Lord’s Will behind it?" he argued. "God alone prompted Govindan to do what he did. Are the words of the scriptures: ‘I am the gambling of the fraudulent’, and ‘prostration to the chief of the robbers’, mere words? Does not the same omnipresent Lord indwell the robber and the dacoit, the murderer and the burglar? No, no, I will not let the police charge Govindan. The Lord has spared my life as t...

43. The Master saw God in women. He saw, not sex, but Goddess Durga in every female form. One Vijaya Dasami day, he felt the urge to worship the visible manifestations of the Divine Mother. Immediately he sent an Ashram worker to the Rishikesh market to procure fruit, flowers and silk for the worship. And who were the Goddesses? They were the little girls of the school run by the Ashram. Aged three to ten, they were seated in a row on a long mat. It was a most entrancing sight to see the tall, burly Swamiji bend down with feeling before each little girl, applying kumkum on the forehead and offering worship with flowers. Then he gently waved the camphor Arati before them and served them with sweets specially prepared as offering. Such was the Master’s worship of the Divine Mother. Sri N. Ananthanarayanan To be continued ...

42. Swami Tapovan, too, had been depending entirely on alms, which was meagre and never included milk. Neither did he keep any money. However, somehow he managed to collect four annas and gave it to the Master, praising his great kindness and love of service. Both the Master and Swami Tapovan held each other in mutual esteem throughout their lives. True it was that this Sarvatma Bhava became second nature with the Master in his later years, but then, it was the result of assiduous cultivation. For instance, there was in him in the early years a lingering feeling of caste superiority, an instinctive bias that dies hard. The Master erased this subtle feeling by constantly prostrating to sweepers and scavengers, and treating them as equals. He called the scavenger the "health officer", the barber the "beautifying officer". He entertained no contempt even for the prostitutes, whom he characterised as the "fallen sisters". For years he deliberately let...

Opinion 15/06/2016 594. Sub : Report blames Nehru govt and army for misadventure that led to China war defeat : OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT. The Telegraph Ref : Nehru's failed foreign policy     Evacuation from Tezpur in Assam during the India-China war  New Delhi, March 18: Key portions of a secret 1962 Indian Army report that have emerged in public for the first time suggest that a mix of strategic and personnel blunders contributed to the humiliating defeat against China that year. The report, commissioned to pinpoint the reasons for the rout, purportedly identifies two key mistakes. One, an aggressive “forward policy” adopted under then defence minister V.K. Krishna Menon and two, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s decision to handpick Lt General Brij Mohan Kaul to lead operations in the North-East Frontier Province (Nefa). Authored by Lt General Henderson Brooks and Brigadier P.S. Bhagat, the report is dubbed top secret by the Indian government, whic...

41. The late Swami Tapovan of Uttarkashi, who knew the Master from the latter’s Swarg Ashram days, traced the boundless love and modesty of the Master to what he called the "Sarvatma Bhava", the saintly vision which saw God in all, which saw the self-same Spirit pervading all creation. "When I remember Swami Sivanandaji," he said in a birthday tribute, "this quality of that great saint comes to my remembrance more readily than his learning, authorship, religious leadership and all the other uncommon qualities and activities." In the early days of their Sadhana, the Master once went to Swami Tapovan and said, "A Bengali Sadhu is staying with me. For the last few days he has been very ill. I have been trying to get a little milk for him. I have gone from Ashram to Ashram just to obtain a few ounces, but no one has any. There seems no way of getting it except from some shop. If only I had two annas..." And the Master lapsed sadly into silenc...

 09/06/2016 Opinion 589. Sub : It's statesmanship. Ref : Narendra Modi's promises in US Congress : 1. Modi's  address was terrific, can see why he is popular: US Congressman 2. Modi wants deeper US-India security relationship 3. Time heals everything. 4. It's statesmanship. 5. Modi's 45-minute speech was a success. The 45-minute speech by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the joint session of the US Congress, acknowledged with 10 standing ovations and 69 rounds of applauses, is one of his best so far. This will go down in history with the Wembleys and Madison Square Gardens. It also tells us why Modi is one of the finest orators India has ever seen and an expert PR strategist. The prime minister has evolved his own method of conquering an international audience despite his perceived imperfections in the use of the English language. The best way to win the confidence of your audience, particularly in a foreign soil, is to praise them. Praise ...

40. The Master always tried to greet a person in the latter’s mother tongue. He was always eager to please people and put them at ease. Thus, besides Tamil, English, Hindi and Malay, which he knew well, he learnt words of greeting, proverbs and poems, songs and couplets, in several other languages. A Gujarati visitor to him would invariably be greeted with a sweet "khem che"; a Bengali Babu with a "kemon achen". A guest from Maharashtra, Andhra or Mysore would meet with like treatment. The Master felt at home everywhere and with everyone. During the 1950 tour, after a meeting at Madhav Bagh, Bombay, when he and his disciples attempted to come out, they encountered a big crowd, and in the confusion got into the nearest car, half supposing it was for them. Within seconds the Master suspected a mistake. He spoke to the driver. "Whose car is this?" "It is the Sethji’s car, Maharaj-ji." "Oh! We have got into the wrong car!" "No, Swam...

The Master often bowed to a visitor even before the latter could make up his mind to bow to him. On many an occasion he touched the feet of the visitor before the latter could conquer the hesitation to touch his. He would not hesitate to put the shoes on for one who found it difficult to bend. 　 Early in 1938, N.P. Kaliandasani, the hypnotist of Kalyan, read an article wherein the Master had mentioned that to bake roti on coal kept on the palm was only a trick and not magic. Wanting very much to learn the trick from the Master, Kaliandasani went to Rishikesh in August, 1939. 　 The hypnotist related his experience later on, "The Swamiji did not know me at all. As soon as I entered his room and bowed down before him, he himself placed his hand on my foot. At this I flinched as to how the great saint repaid our salaams, and I really forgot the object of my going over to him. The current of his eyes compelled me to think high in life. My tongue at last said to him that I ha...