P A G E
Monday, May 17, 1999
today's calendar
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E D I T O R I A L P A G E |
Monday, May 17, 1999 |
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spotlight today's calendar |
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BJP
leads a front British
justice
PRESS
IN PAKISTAN A
crisis of legitimacy |
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Rajiv
case: terrorism by deed, not by claim
Big-time
partying takes a break
Bombing
stealthily
Segregated
plague camps |
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BJP leads a front Alliance is the name of the new game of the BJP and its electoral allies. And it should hopefully play several roles. The thin coating of organisational cohesion that the arrangement provides is a talisman to protect itself against the spell the Congress is casting against coalition governments. Not just the BJP-led one, but every single experiment in rigging up a multi-party ruling combination has failed, and miserably at that. And the Congress is cleverly hawking its brand of one-party stability, and initial reports talk of a warm market response. That must have been the message the BJP’s ultra sensitive antennae must have flashed for the managers to come up with the alliance option. Until a few days back, the party had been asserting that it would go to battle on the old seat-sharing basis and the ambiguously worded national agenda for governance. Now there is to be a new manifesto too to reinforce the unity image. So far it has been smooth sailing but the next phase may spell some minor trouble. Once a joint manifesto comes to be drafted, every party will like to project its sectarian interests or pet prejudices and seek national recognition and legitimacy. Some are innocent eccentricities and will provoke no opposition. But some, like the demand of the MDMK of Tamil Nadu to pledge all kinds of support to the Sri Lankan Tamils in their struggle for freedom is a heady stuff and will go down badly with others. Senior leader L.K.Advani will need all his persuasive skill to keep out hawkish stuff and also keep in all allies. That will be the first lesson in imparting the spirit of coalition dharma. The alliance is to include all political parties which supported the BJP-led government on the trust vote. But three parties absented themselves from the Saturday meeting. The TDP is one but then it is a half-member, propping up the regime but shunning any meaningful tie-up. The Trinamool Congress has developed a fine art of saying yes and no simultaneously. Dr Farooq Abdullah is out of the country and hence his party’s collective decision has to wait his return. The Chautala-led INLD has dragged its dispute with the Haryana Vikas Party into the alliance and he may inject his customary embarrassment into the alliance later. The attraction of the
illusion of unity will be much greater after the
elections. If the BJP fails to emerge as the single
largest party, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee will be ready to
stake his claim to form a government as the leader of the
largest block of members. Legally it makes a lot of
sense, and will also make it unnecessary to collect
letters of support to persuade the President to invite
him. Does this possibility, at present only a
possibility, give an inkling of the thought process of
the BJP bigwigs? This is surely more than taking out an
insurance against an electoral setback here and another
there. The alliance idea and the opportunity it provides
to lay claim to form a government has the unmistakable
appearance of being an escape route. Is this the shadow
cast by the infamous UP events? It is always difficult to
follow the intricate thinking of the BJP leadership, but
it is interesting to indulge in the guessing game. |
British justice THE British Government, more specifically the House of Lords, deserves a round of applause for a decision which has the potential to change the lives of countless employees of UK overseas subsidiaries. Henceforth, British companies, with poor safety standards in their overseas concerns, can be sued in UK courts. The first to take advantage of the new law were two Indian nationals who, in 1969, had joined Hindustan Ferodo, a subsidiary of the British T and N. It is widely known that constant exposure to asbestos dust can cause death and physical incapacitation. The management neither warned the workers about the hazards associated with regular exposure to asbestos dust nor provided them protective equipment like gloves and masks. It is pertinent to note that the ill-effects of asbestos had been discovered in the late twenties and its use was banned in most developed countries. The thought to sue the British firm for “consequential damages” never occurred to the Indian employees or their families because getting a job and sticking to it were matters of life and death for most of them. The legal fraternity too did not take any interest in their plight and trade unions were happy with whatever paltry amount they were able to extract from the Indian subsidiary for the workers, most of whom died of cancer caused by over-exposure to asbestos. But Africa is not
exactly a dark continent as far as fighting for the
rights of the workers is concerned. In 1993 two unions in
Africa decided to chance their luck by filing suits for
damages against a uranium mining firm in Namibia and a
mercury processing plant in South Africa. When word got
round of the law suits in British courts another 2,000
workers of South African asbestos mines run by British
subsidiaries filed similar suits for damages. The
companies, of course, pleaded for the dismissal of the
petitions because the damage to health or death of
workers did not happen on British soil. The issue was
finally referred to the House of Lords which concluded
that the ends of justice would be best served in the
cases were pursued in British courts. The Lords observed
that “if an MNC is made accountable in its home
country, it will not be able to escape obligations merely
by shifting factories abroad”. In future at least
British overseas subsidiaries would hopefully adopt the
same safety standards as they are obliged to follow at
home; and in the long run nudge even Indian companies to
follow suit. If the USA was still a British colony, Union
Carbide too may not have got away with genocide
remembered as the Bhopal gas tragedy. But who in India
cares? |
THE arrest of Mr Najam Sethi, Editor of The Friday Times, by the ISI for questioning in connection with his public speech delivered in Delhi has been rightly condemned not only by thinking people in the subcontinent but also by the US government. The official Pakistani version is that Mr Sethi had been arrested not for any critical writings against the government but for ridiculing the foundations of Pakistan and for speaking against his own country, of all places, on Indian soil and indulging in anti-Pakistan activities. He has been detained under the Armed Forces Act for his alleged links with RAW. His wife had moved the Lahore High Court which rejected her petitions for lack of jurisdiction to interfere with the affairs of the armed forces. The US government has strongly urged the Nawaz Sharif government to release Mr Sethi and other journalists being held by intelligence agencies. It has said that the crackdown on the Press is unacceptable to it. Islamabad has characterised the US comment as an unwarranted interference in Pakistan’s internal affairs. What was Mr Sethi’s “crime”? According to those who attended Mr Sethi’s lecture, he portrayed the conditions obtaining in Pakistan, especially the economic, social, political and constitutional problems facing that country. Unfortunately for Mr Sethi, the Pakistani High Commissioner, Mr Ashraf Jehangir, was an invitee. And to make matters worse for the journalist, Mr Jehangir was invited by Mr I.K. Gujral to adorn the dais — some think it is the invitation on the part of Mr Gujral that really caused problems for Mr Sethi, whereas Mr Gujral is of the view that, as Chairman of the Indo-Pakistan Friendship Society it was his duty to invite the High Commissioner to the dais. Now, if the Press reports are to be believed, what angered the High Commissioner was that Mr Sethi portrayed his country as an irrational, contradictory, corrupt, unstable and dangerous entity “and that too in India, of all places”. This, the High Commissioner thought, was an act of contempt against Pakistan and in fact amounted to treachery. He thought Mr Sethi’s pathetic and treacherous condemnation of his own country was music to an enraptured Indian audience, who had effectively been told that Pakistan should never have been created in the first place. There is no doubt that, for quite some time, after Partition, the feeling in India was that partition of the subcontinent could have been avoided. At any rate the country does not even now accept the two-nation theory based on religion. However, it is a pity that the Pakistani High Commissioner did not draw appropriate lesson from Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee’s gesture in visiting the minor that commemorated the foundation of Pakistan, and thereby sending the message that India had accepted the founding of Pakistan as reality that needed to be acknowledged. Nor does it seem to have occurred to the High Commissioner that a journalist’s or an author’s or a creative writer’s notions of patriotism are vastly different from that of a diplomat or a politician. While a journalist, or a historian, or a creative writer, does not consider it an obligation on his part, to utter merely platitudes about his country, a politician or a diplomat treats any adverse comment by a national on his own country as treachery. The more insecure a country is the more it fears the truth. I had occasion to watch this about 40 years ago. I was attending the Harvard International Seminar that was then run by Dr Henry Kissinger. American politicians, senior journalists and others freely and frankly talked about their country, some Black leaders describing President Wilson as the biggest bigot the USA had known. However, one of the sessions was devoted to the theme of corruption. When I described how the system worked in our country — in 1962 — a fellow seminarian, who was a Congress woman, later told me in no uncertain terms that I had let our country down. The programme included public lectures by the participants. One of the persons chosen for the lecture was a Ghanaian. Some of us had gone to great lengths in giving him lessons in public speaking. He began well, but then started stammering and in fact became speechless. Later we asked what had gone wrong. He admitted that while speaking, he saw a Ghanaian diplomat entering the hall and he knew his speech would be reported back to his country. He could not take any risk. The country was then ruled by Dr N’ Kumah. The next lesson I had was about 30 years later and that too in Pakistan. I had been invited, along with my wife, to visit that country by the Zia regime. Among my engagements was a talk at the Institute of Strategic Studies in Islamabad. The young researchers there had done their homework. Some of them quoted from my column “A Close Look”, in which I had been critical of the government or the political parties and wanted to know whether I held the same view even then — Indira Gandhi was in power. Not only did I stand by what I had said but made some more critical points. One of the researchers stood up to say that even though I was daring to say those things at Islamabad I would not have the guts to repeat them in my own country. I told him that I would be repeating what I had said in an article on my return to my country and would send him a clipping. I did. I realised then what a great fortune it was to have been an Indian, where the freedom of speech and expression, including that of the Press, had not been a mirage. Another distinct impression I got was that while the journalists and writers were trying to exist under a dictatorial regime, the fire in their eyes or hearts had not got extinguished. They were fighting the regime in their own subtle ways. They may have got subdued, but they never felt defeated. Clearly, Mr Najam Sethi is keeping that spirit alive, as are some others. They deserve our sympathy and support. On our part we may
derive satisfaction from the fact that, as far as the
state is concerned, freedom of the Press is a fact —
I am not talking about the freedom of the electronic
media because Doordarshan and AIR are proposed to be
taken back to the pre-Prasar Bharati days, if the BJP
returns to power. Such limitations as we have are of our
own making — or of the politicians and anti-social
elements who believe might to be right. The threat comes
more from the goons, political or otherwise, than from
the state. |
A crisis of legitimacy A downgraded definition of democracy may be given as a government of numbers, by a small number, for the smallest number. No less a person than Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee himself once chose to describe democracy in India as a “hollow shell” with elections “reduced to a farce”. Shorn of stability continuity and accountability, our brand of democracy has become a veritable carnival of chaos. The numbers game of “one-upmanship” both literally and metaphorically, played between the truncated ruling coalition and the so-called “shadow” coalition led by the Congress, which brought down the Vajpayee-led government, once again brought to the fore the larger role the smaller parties can arrogate to themselves to strive for a power-sharing arrangement. Let us admit that our politicos have brought democracy into disrepute. Three elections in three years bespeak a surging sickness in the body politic. The Indian state is facing a crisis of legitimacy, which cannot be blamed on our Constitution. It is high time the electoral reforms suggested by the Law Commission were earnestly examined and given practical shape without prevarication or perversion. Today, what counts in government formation is the seat majority rather than the vote majority. This negates the principle of “majority rule”, the hallmark of a republic. Rajiv Gandhi got a brute majority in 1984 when his party secured only 31 per cent of the total votes polled to win 76 per cent of the Lok Sabha seats. The system of proportional representation in terms of valid votes polled by a party would make the legislature more reflective of the sovereign will of the people. The Law Commission has recommended the adoption of semi-proportional representation system, in which a part of the seats will be filled by the “first past the post” system currently in vogue, and the remaining seats will be allocated in proportion to the votes polled by various political parties. To illustrate the point, if 100 seats are to be filled by the proportional system, a party which polls 20 per cent votes will offer 20 seats to the first 20 candidates appearing in the pre-declared list of its candidates. Given the fact that personal popularity and charisma of a politician, rather than his party’s policies and programmes, play a pivotal role at the hustings, political parties may not easily approve of the aforesaid list system. A way out could be the fresh delimitation of parliamentary and assembly constituencies on the basis of Census-2001, as envisaged in a constitutional amendment enacted in 1976. The incremental seats could be filled in proportion to the votes polled by the individual recognised political parties at the general election. Under the list system, no byelection is required to be held. A seat which has fallen vacant may be offered to the next candidate in the concerned party’s list. The list system, which is prevalent in many European countries, was first recommended by a parliamentary committee on electoral reforms in 1972 but somehow it didn’t find favour with successive Election Commissioners. This system can be made more effective and less amenable to abuse. In order to check indiscriminate proliferation of parties, an organisation securing less than 5 per cent of the votes can be disqualified for entry into the legislature. No candidate should be nominated thrice in the list system. This way men of learning and experience will be able to enter the legislature. In all fairness, a person elected on the basis of the list system may be made ineligible to become the head of the Cabinet. The prevailing distinction between individual and collective defection is anathema to democracy. The Law Commission has proposed that the question of disqualification of a defecting member should be adjudicated by the President on the recommendation of the Election Commission, and not by the Speaker. At the same time, the manifesto of a political party should be given statutory recognition so that those elected on its basis may be called into question for not working in accordance with it. And last but not least,
good customs contribute much more to the success of
democracy than good laws. Our customs give greater weight
to persons than to rules. Personal attachments,
loyalties, grievances and animosities play a decisive
role. The way Mayawati conducted herself on April 17, the
D-day for the Vajpayee government, amply illustrates the
point. |
UNDERSTANDING and essaying an immediate analysis of the 661-page verdict delivered by the Supreme Court last week in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case would be obviously presumptuous. But flipping through the three separate judgements that add up to that verdict, it is impossible to resist a feeling of disappointment. Tremendous, if not gross, disappointment. The assassination of Rajiv Gandhi on May 21, 1991, through the agency of a human bomb, leaving aside for a moment the 18 others killed and 43 others seriously injured at Sriperambudur, was, by all accounts, an event of exceptional significance in the annals of terrorism. An event that caused, in the brief but instructive words of Justice Shah Mohammed Quadri, the juniormost member of the Bench, a “severe blow to the democratic process, sent shock waves throughout the world and (owing to which) the nation had to pass through excruciating time.” The operational strategy of using a human bomb was, in itself, a unique and menacing contribution to the armoury of terrorism, compelling a review of all anti-terrorist security measures. The same strategy later came to be employed to eliminate the Punjab Chief Minister, Beant Singh. Justice Quadri’s opinion contains as well a remarkably succinct formulation of the motive, intention and objective behind the act, masterminded by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). “A crime (he says) committed on Indian soil against a.... former Prime Minister of India, for a political decision taken by him in his capacity as the head of the executive and which met with the approval of Parliament, by persons running a political organisation in a foreign country and their agents in concert with some Indians, for the reason that it did not suit their political objectives and that of their organisation....” And yet, all the three distinguished Judges (Justice Quadri included) hold in one voice that the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi was not a terrorist act at all but a murder pure and simple! We cannot hold, says the presiding Judge, Justice K.T. Thomas, that the conspirators “ever entertained an intention to strike terror in the people or any section thereof” (one of the ingredients of Section 3 of the TADA or the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Prevention Act of 1987). The “mere fact” that their action resulted in the killing of 18 persons which would have struck great terror among the people has been “projected as evidence” that they intended to strike terror. We have no doubt (he says) that the aftermath of the carnage at Sriperambudur had “bubbled up waves of shock and terror” throughout India. But there is “absolutely no evidence that any of the conspirators ever desired the death of any Indian other than Rajiv Gandhi.” Of course, adds Justice Thomas, the conspirators “should have anticipated that in such a dastardly action more lives would be vulnerable to peril.” But that, he says, is a different matter. Alternatively (he continues), even if Sivarasan — the one-eyed Jack Sivarasan, who later committed suicide — and the “top brass of the LTTE knew” that there was a likelihood of more casualties, even that “cannot be equated to a situation that they did it with an intention to strike terror in any section of the people.” We have it then, on the authority of the Supreme Court, that (one) the assassination of an individual, however important he may be, can never be a terrorist act for one cannot intend to strike terror among the people by killing an individual, and (two) the “mere fact” that some other persons, regardless of their number, are also killed in the act makes no difference to the situation unless and until it can be conclusively proved by the prosecution that the accused knew those other persons beforehand and had intended to kill them as well, in addition to the individual who was their principal target. With great respect to the Supreme Court and to Justice Thomas, one of the wisest criminal law Judges on the Bench today, this amounts to a virtual judicial repeal of the TADA. If the trial court, by sentencing all the 26 accused persons to death, had (in the words of Justice D.P. Wadhwa) committed “a judicial massacre”, the Supreme Court by holding that the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi was not a terrorist act at all has massacred the anti-terrorist law itself. The logic advanced by Justice Wadhwa in support of this conclusion is even more curious. We accept, he says, the argument that terrorism is synonymous with publicity. It is a matter of common knowledge that all terrorist acts are publicised and highlighted. Whenever a terrorist act is committed, some organisation or the other comes forward to claim responsibility. The LTTE, however (he says), tried to conceal the fact that it was behind the murder of Rajiv Gandhi. The object to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi was kept a closely guarded secret. The LTTE “was not owning the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi” and it cannot, therefore, be said that it intended to commit a terrorist act by “overawing the government” (another, alternative ingredient of TADA’s Section 3). Conspire, plan and kill.
But do not own up responsibility in public. And you would
thereby insure yourself against criminal prosecution for
terrorism. Can that be the law? |
Diversities
— Delhi letter THE ghost of the shoot-out at Tamarind Court restaurant still haunts many. In fact, if I am not mistaken none of the well known designers and socialites have hosted a big party this last fortnight. There is an air of horror and wonder. Horror at all that happens in big-time partying, where if the fuse blows off nobody remains your friend any longer. Look how each one of the guests or regulars at the Tamarind Court party is either keeping quiet or adding incriminating inputs. Wonder, I suppose, about who all will be in the big net before the heat of May and June transports many of the who’s who to the USA and Europe. And as news comes in of the questioning of Manu Sharma’s paternal uncle S. Sharma — former President of India Shankar Dayal Sharma’s son-in-law — there is talk of the former President’s failing health. The last I saw the former President was at the inauguration of the Kuchipudi Festival when he couldn’t even sit through the programme. He was said to be feeling ill and had left midway and it was the Japanese ambassador to India who gave away the mementoes and bouquets to the artists. Then, this is the fag end, as it were, of the season. And apart from the national-day receptions of Croatia (May 28) and that of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (May 24) and a major wine and cheese do the French ambassador’s residence on May 17 to coincide with the ‘Vinexpo’99’ exhibition in Bordeaux there isn’t very much happening here. And like the media focus is exclusively on the shoot-out and murder of Jessica Lal, so is the people’s interest. In fact, one of the fallouts of the shoot-out is that attention has been sidetracked from other recent murders and killings. In this context it will particularly relevant to write about the gruesome murder of a well known furniture dealer of the city, 45-year-old Shah Habib Alam on the night of May 6 and 7. Though he was killed here at New Friends Colony the killers were caught red-handed with the body on the outskirts of Karnal, where they had made arrangements to dump it. And if it hadn’t been for a team of daringly honest policemen manning the checkpost near Rambha village (Karnal) the murderers would have got away. It is said that though the alleged killers tried to offer a bribe of five lakh, the three policemen on duty — SHO Phool Chand, ASI Baljit Singh and Head Constable Pawan Kumar — simply didn’t relent. Instead, they overpowered the armed culprits, took them to Karnal’s Sadar Thana and had the body identified. In the case of Habib it would have been particularly difficult for his relatives and friends to have found out about his murder because he has no one of his immediate family here, in India. Son of a former DIG of one of the well known families of Lucknow his parents and a sister passed away several years back and his two brothers live in the USA. In fact, Habib was earlier an officer with the Reserve Bank of India but quit to work for one of the five star chain of hotels and then, within years took to making designer cane furniture. In fact, on May 11 he had to participate in one of the furniture fairs in Europe but fate had planned otherwise. At least it was fated that his killers would be nabbed, and for this credit goes to the policemen on duty that night at that particular checkpost. In the times we are living in it is absolutely important that these police personnel be honoured publicly and their example cited. Definitely surprising Just received an invite for the inauguration of Adarsh Alphons’ so-called ‘global exhibition’ of paintings by the President of India Mr K.R. Narayanan. One had heard of bureaucrat K J Alphons’s teenaged son Adarsh and his painting talent (said to be spotted amongst other places on a particular ministry’s walls too) but didn’t really realise that it would be of such level that the President himself would inaugurate that exhibition — on 17 May at the IHC. Further, the invite states that this exhibition is supported by India Habitat Centre, Air India, Leela Group of Hotels and Government of India. No matter how very talented the boy is, it sure comes across as odd that a bureaucrat working for the GOI — K J Alphons is posted in the Union Urban Affairs Ministry — seeks the support of the same for the promotion of his son’s exhibition. And from New Delhi this exhibition is to travel to London and then further to New York. Maneka’s punches After giving those
verbal punches during the course of interviews to the
sister-in-law Sonia Gandhi, Maneka Gandhi is said to have
recently ordered for the installation of a special
punching machine at her ministry — the Ministry of
Social Justice and Empowerment (formerly called the
Welfare Ministry). The seeming purpose of this machine to
punch attendance of officers and other staff up to the
rank of Deputy Secretary. And this is said to have caused
a commotion of sorts, for as some officers point out that
this clearly violates all rules. On the face of it
punching attendance doesn’t come across as anything
inhuman, rather it could set to discipline the
late-comers but being introduced now, when the government
is at its last stage, leaves little to no punch. |
KNOB Noster; no, I don’t mean knuckle duster. I mean Knob Noster, Mo. There, that should tell you that it is a place in Missouri, a small place because I couldn’t find it in a fairly good National Geographic map. So what’s special about it? Because it may just go down in American military history books — and that means the world’s — as the place which showed that Uncle Sam could knock the hell out of any target in this wide, wide world using an air base in the US of A, not one situated in a friendly Arab country, or a NATO ally, or a remote island in the Indian Ocean. For the last few weeks the world’s most secret aircraft in service, the B-2 Stealth bomber, has flown about 50 sorties from Knob Noster to Yugoslavia, non-stop there and back. Each time the boomerang-shaped bomber released more than a dozen 2,000 pound bunker busting bombs before making for home. The Brigadier General commanding the base told the Wall Street Journal that “there’s not a target on the planet that we can’t hit.” Good news for the world’s most sinister nation; bad news for the rest of us. The USAF authorities who allowed the pilots to be interviewed banned the use of their last names; and the pilots themselves vetoed even first names for fear of being grilled for info on their top secret aircraft if captured, and also for concern about possible terrorist attacks on their families. The words most used by them to describe their feelings about their missions are “weird” and “surreal“: “It is kind of weird to get dressed in your own bathroom and then go into combat”. Very few details are known of the most expensive plane in history at over two billion dollars each: a two person crew in an aircraft difficult to spot because its shape and surfaces are so designed to deflect or absorb radar waves; its engines are unusually quiet and disperse the exhaust gases across the top, the better to deceive heat-seeking missiles from below. So much secrecy surrounds the aircraft that it is readied entirely in a hangar to avoid spy satellite surveillance. Each of the missions to the Balkans with their dozen odd bunker busting bombs — the same as those used against Iraq — costs almost half a million dollars; and there have been about 50 such missions. The bomber is refuelled twice on each leg. Mission completed, bombs released,turning for home, safe and sound, the pilot’s wife is informed of this. Some 15 hours later he touches down. Now follows two hours of debriefing. Add the couple of hours of pre-flight briefing and this makes 34 hours on duty. Actually the WSJ report says that the pilots are told a week in advance that they are on call so that they can start adjusting their sleep patterns. Each of the two crew members can lie down in the space behind his seat in the aircraft, getting about three hours sleep during the mission. The bombs are released at high altitudes. One pilot recalls that when he got home, his wife kissed him and said: “You need to mow the lawn. “ After he had done this ”we ordered pizza because it was a special occasion.” After all it was his first combat mission, causing destruction and death from thousands of feet up. The hangar at the air
base at Knob Noster has this painted on its side in big
letters: GLOBAL POWER FOR AMERICA. |
Sir, I earnestly request my Hindu brethren to immediately avail themselves of this arrangement. I am negotiating with banks to take into safe custody the ornaments, etc, of people who would like to go into camps. It is the considered opinion of all the plague experts that segregation and giving up of the infected houses and staying in open fields are the best preventives against plague. In case people would take up this suggestion immediately, I am sure, the epidemic will soon subside. I, therefore, appeal to all men of light and understanding to encourage this work and to persuade people to soon shift into the camps and thus save themselves, their neighbours and, I say, even the whole of the city. I expect that all those who go there will abide by all the rules and laws that will be framed to keep the place clean and tidy. Persons wishing to take advantage of this scheme should see me or inform me. I have also arranged that a gentleman will remain on the spot to fit up things. For carrying on these arrangements in a proper way I need the aid of some public-spirited Hindu volunteers. I, therefore, request all such gentlemen who wish to take up honorary service to see me or correspond with me. KASHI RAM VAID |
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