May 2015 Blog Posts (20)

Fallen Prison Walls was written more than a decade back sitting in Ernakulam.

Walls have fallen,

prison walls have fallen,

old walls have broken,

for new walls to come up.



Broken are the barriers,

erected of bricks and mortars,

bifurcating the mortals,

as prisoners and police,

advocates and judges.



No prisoners dare escape,

taking advantage of broken…

AUM

          MAHARANA PRATAP THE GREAT

                 By Brigadier Chitranjan Sawant,VSM

Military men and women who have faced the wily enemy across the borders and have been in the line of fire are indeed great admirers of Maharana Pratap Singh of Mewar. The sixteenth century scion of the House of Sisodias had faced the enemy, Moghul king Akbar, minor Sultans of Malwa, Gujarat and Vibhishans among the Rajput royal houses in the…

BHARATH YATHRA MUSINGS was written at Delhi on 20-01-2001 and no newspapers dared to publish it.  I am sharing this now with the Gandhi Topia members.

Atalji’s Kumarakam Musings prompted me to write this piece for what worth it is.  Call it musings or whatever else, this is the expression of an insignificant citizen while the Indian Republic is just to…

Ancient undivided India lived through its hundreds of thousands of villages.  Even today India lives through its villages – six lakhs of inhabited villages.  Early twentieth century rural population in India was 89% and it got reduced to 72% by early twenty-first century.

Indian soul and spirit are in these villages.  Here survives the time-tested ancient civilization.  Spirituality is kept in tact here without getting much affected by…

 “There is no conception here, as you see of doing anything administratively. I have expressed my own hope in connection with the Federal and Supreme Court. To me the Federal Court is the Supreme Court; it is the final court of Appeal beyond which there would be no appeal whatsoever; it is my Privy Council and it is the palladium of liberty. It is the court to which every person who is at all aggrieved can go. A great Jurist…

[WHY NOT A NEW CONSTITUTION? is my contribution published in 1992, in the book "REFORMING THE CONSTITUTION" edited by Dr.Subhash C. Kashyap, Former Secretary-General of Lok Sabha.  I thought it appropriate for me to share this with Gandhi Topia members.  The present Indian generation of this "IT Yug" must rise up and make it possible.  A change is inevitable.  Values change.  One has to accept this.  Let the change be directed towards the best for…

The following article was written in Written on 6^th March 1998 and published in THE HITAVADA, Nagpur.  It is equally relevant today than ever before.  Hence I chose to share this with Gandhi Topia members.

“The world is weary of hate.  We see the fatigue overcoming the western nations.  We see that this song of hate has not benefited humanity. Let it be the privilege of India to turn a new leaf and set a lesson to…

As for Civilization Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi wrote in the 1908 published book "Hind Swaraj" the following:

“I believe that the civilization India has evolved is not to be beaten in the world.  Nothing can equal the seeds sown by our ancestors.  Rome went, Greece shared the same fate; the might of the Pharaohs was broken; Japan has become Westernized;…

What a bliss to sit in Madhavi Mandiram,

in memory of a beloved and revered mother,

immortalized by an illustrious and immortal son,

illuminated by his illustrious disciple and daughter!

As it rains outside heavily, cooling fast the atmosphere,

trees around aplenty dance in joy dispelling heat,

dancing with the monsoon wind with immense joy,

shedding their older leaves like the falling…

Curtain will be raised before long to celebrate the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, whom I personally consider as a Spiritual Master of a Millennium.  I had the privilege of working for Gandhi Centenary Celebrations.  As a teenager I joined the National Committee for Gandhi Centenary (NCGC) Head Office in No.1, Rajghat Colony, New Delhi. I worked for NCGC from its inception until it was wound up.

After independence, all these…

Unfortunately a country like India, which got independence through a non-violent revolution, is bathing in violence and bloodshed even after 67 years of independence.  Over eight hundred million people are silent spectators to the violence and the killings spreading like a wild fire at the instance of a thousand people scattered here and there.  What a pity!

Mob violence and killings have become such a routine that such incidents are now…

My life is my message I said at all times,

yet all remember me for the life taken away.

Life is to live in freedom and not to get enslaved;

irony of man is to find joy by making other lives miserable,

fearing everything including one's own 'self',

encouraging others to die living and living to die.



India is a land of villages and gateway to spirituality;

sowed here are the seeds of wisdom to realize God.



Martyr I am…

I am just a cotton fiber,

with no strength of my own,

fragile enough to catch fire easily,

getting soaked by a drop of water,

blown away even by a gentle breeze,

floating on water getting drifted, and

flowing down fast to the ocean.

As I join and cooperate with my fellow fibers,

I start gaining strength immeasurable,

not getting blown away easily by air,

as we fibers stay together…

Politicians accused of serious corruption charges , actors indulging in heinous crimes and business men charged with  cheating  and evading taxes are able  to prolong the trial in the courts for several years  and then get bail  within a few days of being convicted. However, the poor persons  who may or may not be law breakers,  languish in jail as undertrials for several years  without their cases being taken up in the court for hearing .…

Obituary

Jyotiben Trivedi (1922-2015)

Vice Chancellor SNDT Women’s University, 1980-86

Dr. JyotibenTrivedi was the Vice Chancellor of SNDT Women’s University from 1980 to 1986.  Jyotiben passed away on 14-4-2015. She was kind, sensitive to the problems of all the employees of SNDTWU and took genuine interest in our lives. She helped and guided us at times of difficulty, and was generous in sponsoring education and health expenditure of the needy. Often…

Eyewitness Gandhi…

Hind Swaraj - Its Relevance Today

The quintessence of Gandhi's thinking was contained in his little booklet Hind Swaraj. Its import is so revolutionary, so different from what most of us are used to, that a real paradigm shift is…

AUM

                 MARITAL RAPE VERSUS SAMBHOG

                                 By Brigadier Chitranjan Sawant,VSM

The Vedic Dharm enjoins on all Aryas who wish to tie the nuptial knot to do so by going through the ritual of Vedic Vivah .The culminating point of a Vedic wedding is the Saptpadi – wherein the bride and the groom, after performing Havan and doing four perambulation take SEVEN steps jointly and take vows to…

Gandhian Economics : The need of the times

Mahatma Gandhi's views on Economics have been largely ignored by mainstream economists and leaders, even in India. This paper tries to show that the neglect of Gandhian Economics has led to…

Understanding Gandhi's vision of Swadeshi

Satyagraha and swadeshi are fundamental in Gandhi's philosophy of life. According to Gandhi, the whole gamut of man's activities constitutes an indivisible whole. Life cannot be segregated into watertight compartments like…