Your body is God's palace
Creation has many aspects and among the various beautiful creations of God, the human body stands out prominently as His most wonderful creation. Swami Sivananda calls the body a mysterious moving palace within which God dwells. Buddhi or intellect is His prime minister; mind is the commander; the 10 indriyas or senses are soldiers; the eyes are the windows of the palace; and the devatas who preside over the indriyas — eyes, nose, ears, for example — are the gatekeepers.
The human body is therefore without doubt a work of art. Observing the artistic manner in which all the muscles are attached to the bones by tendons, joints balanced with the help of ligaments, fat deposited in a manner that imparts good shape to the limbs, trunk and abdomen; the skin pigment that makes the body look attractive — looking at all of these, one cannot help marvelling at God's creative output.
God makes use of the five elements of nature while creating the body: bone is nothing but earth or clay; blood is water; the radiance of skin and eyes is fire; and the prana or breath that moves through the nostrils and lungs is nothing but air which derives its support from ether. The four elements — air, fire, water and earth have all emanated from ether.
Swami Sivananda says that after demise of the body, all the elements get dissolved. What happens is that the bones merge with the earth and by doing so they go back to their source. When the body is placed on the funeral pyre, mantras are chanted with the purpose of invoking the blessings of the Lord so as to ensure that the body gets dissolved with its five material components of earth, water, fire, air and ether from where it originally emanated. The body is then offered to the fire.
It is rather ironical that despite the Lord dwelling right within the innermost chambers of one's heart, people remain unaware of His presence throughout their lives. Under the influence of maya or illusion, the power that deludes, people tend to cling to the perishable body even though it is filled with impurities like urine, faecal matter, pus and so on and they get trapped in the vicious circle of the unending process of transmigration.
Coaxing aspirants to become aware of the transitory nature of life, Swami Sivananda urges them to wake up from their slumber. Use the present time and devote the precious moments of your lives to the practice of meditation in order that the Eternal Lord — who provides support to all the pranas, mind, intellect, senses and the body — could be realised. He says that when the body is free from disease and decrepitude, when old age is still far off, when the powers of the senses are not affected and life is not decaying, the person of discrimination ought to constantly endeavour to attain Self-realisation through meditation. It is useless to dig a well when the house is on fire.
We may conclude with the following words of Swamiji: "O friends, wake up, sleep no more. Meditate. Open the gate of the temple of the Lord in your heart with the key of love. Hear the music of the soul. Melt your mind in His contemplation. Unite with Him. Immerse yourself in the ocean of Love and Bliss".
How to turn the tide
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently took over the finance port-folio. One of his first announcements was to re-examine the recently proposed General Anti-Avoidance Rules (GAAR) tax provisions. This is one of those rare occasions where i agree with the PM.
I spent 11 years in international investment banking firms around the world. I didn`t become an expert, but i can say two things about foreign investors. One, they love growth. Two, they hate uncertainty. India attracted foreign investors for the first reason. Now, with our arrogant government`s policies such as the GAAR we have created the uncertainty, and given them a reason to hate us. No matter how wonderful the growth prospects, people just can`t part with their money in an uncertain, arbitrary environment. Hence, India is no longer a hot investment destination right now. Three top international rating agencies have downgraded India.
The unattractiveness of India to foreign investors is a matter of great concern. Our government`s finan-ces are in jeopardy, with little room to invest in the country`s infra-structure or job-creating industries. Private Indian capital is limited, and cannot provide as much growth as the country needs. It is obvious; we need foreign capital if we want to be a high-income growth nation.
And yet, the government managed to enact such a disaster as the GAAR. Under these provisions, tax inspectors have sweeping powers to question any transaction ever done by a company and label it as tax avoidance. The company has to prove itself innocent. As we know, any power in India is abused. One can only predict what will happen because of these provisions.
The fallout of these announcements was terrible, with every investor across the world receiving a warning about investing in India.
Things became so bad that our ever-silent PM, who does not believe in verbal communication as a human need, had to comment on how the new tax policies need to be re-examined. There is no need to sugarcoat it. The GAAR needs to be not just relooked at, or postponed for a year, or deliberated. It needs to be thrown out.
Perhaps there was a positive intent in it somewhere, but now the perception of these draconian rules is so bad, that nothing short of flushing them down the toilet will work. In fact, even scrapping the GAAR may not be enough. For now, investors have a sneaky suspicion that the Indian government is out to get us. If a hapless investor puts the money in our country, works hard and waits patiently for years, the government will come running to pluck the fruit right when it ripens. In fact, this is what happened in the Vodafone case. The Supreme Court had ruled in the investor`s favour. In most countries, that would have been enough. However, our much too clever government passed a retrospective law to void the Supreme Court judgment. The greed to collect some extra taxes was too much for the government to ignore the repercussions to investor sentiment. Such government tyranny hardly depicts India as a good place to do business. In fact, most investment advisers would only give one advice to investors — run.
So why did the government do it? It isn`t passing the necessary reform laws or doing much to open the economy. Why then pass these draconian measures that spooked even the most ardent India believers out?
Three main reasons come to mind. One, the most short-sighted one, is the government was falling short on tax collections. Actually, the collections were decent, but the government wanted to spend way more money. Hence, it thought of ways to milk wealth creators more. One of those bright suggestions was to kill the golden goose for dinner. Given how desperate the government was, they accepted it.
Two, the government in India thrives on hubris. It is used to passing unjust orders that common people in India are only too happy to accept. It has power over the police, never reforms the judicial system lest it gets efficient and controls all vital resources in the economy. In such an atmosphere, arrogance is bound to set in. Deep down, the government does not believe the foreign investors are helping us, should be treated with respect or be given fair rights. The government believes that like the common man, the foreign investors too are its subjects. The market system that the government keeps talking about is a market where there are free markets, but subject to government approval for everything. It`s like a party where the parents want to sit in the middle of the room. It wants markets to function under its feudal benevolence and surveillance. Sure, parents should ensure there are no drugs at a party and some regulation is required. However, the rules have to be clear, not hamper business and not be ad hoc. The GAAR and the Vodafone cases were the exact opposite.
This kind of it`s-market-but-my-market system, will fail. The government needs to back off, and promise through strict laws that it won`t be arbitrary ever again. Foreign investors, unlike Indian janata, do have an option to not invest in India. And they will run away if you don`t play fair. Plenty of countries actually woo foreign companies to invest in their country. It adds to the GDP and creates jobs. Investors need world-class business environments to invest. We need to do everything to ensure that happens. Lately, we have done the opposite.
Hence on this rare occasion, let us support our PM. The GAAR laws need to be thrown away for good. Another law, to protect the sanctity of markets and interests of participants, needs to be passed to reassure investors. India needs to not only have an open mind, but also be open for business.
Confucian Constitution or convenient confusion?
China's intellectuals and their sympathisers have begun to peddle a bold new argument. They have started to hit international forums with the claim that China's system of governance, based as it is on pillars of Confucian wisdom, is not just superior to the liberal democratic system, it actually has more legitimacy.
We discussed one such claim in this column on March 24. In The New York Times of July 11, Jiang Qing and Daniel A Bell argue the case for a 'Confucian Constitution' for China. The political future of China will be better served, they say, by a long-standing Confucian tradition of 'humane authority' than by multiparty elections. Democracy is a flawed ideal in their view. It has only one source of legitimacy, i.e. the sovereignty of the people; political Confucianism offers much more.
Confucian tradition asserts that political power must have three sources of legitimacy: The legitimacy of heaven; the legitimacy of earth; and the legitimacy of the human. Democracy merely serves that last source through popular elections.
In modern China, write Qing and Bell, 'humane authority' would require a tricameral legislature: "A House of Exemplary Persons, that represents sacred legitimacy; a House of the Nation that represents historical and cultural legitimacy; and a House of the People that represents popular legitimacy." Only the House of the People "should be elected either by popular vote or as heads of occupational groups".
For more on this Chinese alternative to liberal democracy, you can read the op-ed. For a realistic assessment of such a proposal to make heaven, earth and people exist in Confucian harmony, we could, however, question the legitimacy of the whole idea.
Who, for instance, will have the privilege to decide the composition of the House of Exemplary Persons and the House of the Nation? Guess we can assume it will be the exclusive nine-member polit-buro that would continue to approve all such selections.
In other words, the proposed arrangement would in fact be a variation of the old Leninist concept of a Communist Party, composed of revolutionary intellectuals and their comrades, acting as the "vanguard of the proletariat" to look after the people's interests until such time as the working class has matured to governing ability.
The vanguard, or the New Class as the late East European intellectual Milovan Djilas dubbed it, doesn't let go the reins of power and privilege unless, of course, the entire edifice crumbles like the Soviet Union's did. In China, party bosses with their families do very well for themselves, living in too many cases way beyond the spending capacity of ordinary citizens. The recently disgraced Bo Xilai's family fell from power because of party intrigue but many other senior members of the party continue to live in extravagant grace thanks to heavenly authority while their children, called princelings, often live abroad in the wretched, liberal West.
To many of us, any talk of Confucian Humane Authority might sound little more than cleverly confusing mumbo-jumbo. But when thinkers from a globally powerful China start arguing for it earnestly, we ought to sit up.
Their argument is based, in my view, on three errors. One is a static picture of the current state of liberal democratic nations, particularly the state of their economies. It's a depressing but passing picture. It does not uphold the allegation of Qing and Bell that democracy is "flawed in practice". Sure, at a given point in time, democracy in any country can appear messy; but not if you take a longer dynamic view of the remarkable overall performance of post-World War II liberal democracies.
Second, any argument for benevolent authoritarianism assumes impartial and just benevolence at the top of the pyramid. Here's a question: What if a comparatively benevolent Deng Xiaoping had not returned to power in the late 1970s and another paranoid megalomaniac like Mao had instead run riot once again over China?
Third, popular elections are a part of democracy, not the entire substance. Assured access to fundamental rights to life and liberty, including the right to free and fair trial and the right to dissent, for all citizens is what makes a democracy liberal.
Can a Confucian Constitution, that enables the practice of Humane Authority, guarantee such simple lower-case rights for its citizens?
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