Here are pictures from the recently held Girls Prout procession on 22 January 2014 in Tatanagar. For more information please read this posting: Female Exploitation.
Friday, January 31, 2014
Saturday, January 25, 2014
Child Slavery #2 + RE: OUTLANDISH
Baba
This email contains two distinct letters:
1. RE: Outlandish Claim by Dada K
2. Child Labor and Slavery #2
Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2014 09:46:17 +0200
From: Amrit Lalloo <amrit.lal...com>
Namaskar,
This email contains two distinct letters:
1. RE: Outlandish Claim by Dada K
2. Child Labor and Slavery #2
Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2014 09:46:17 +0200
From: Amrit Lalloo <amrit.lal...com>
RE: OUTLANDISH CLAIM BY DADA
K
Namaskar,
I heard many fake Baba stories but this one by
Kalyaneshvarananda takes the cake, else, he must be joking?
I don't for once believe Ac. Kalyaneshvarananda 's outrageous
story about " Baba asking Ramanandajii to meet RSS chief in
Nagpur and propose if AM and RSS can work together to fight with
common enemies as they are very powerful and that Baba
instructed us not to speak anything against RSS, although they
may criticize AM."
Who are the common enemies of both AM and RSS ? Is not
dogmatic RSS a "common enemy?"
This is a "once upon a time story." It is akin to Baba asking CPIM to work together with AM to destroy capitalism (see note 1).
This bogus story completely undermines Baba and his mission.
It is the most ridiculous story ever told. All be it,
wise Kalyaneshvarananda is the PRS of the Kolkotta faction.
This is the calibre of our so-called leadership.
Hiding my head in shame,
AmritNote 1: In India and in many places, the communists are in bed with the capitalists. For show, communists abuse capitalists to collect votes from the poor, but internally they are very close. This is quite prevalent - especially in India. Here we should keep in mind that both capitalists and communists are materialists.
From: Dada Kalyaneshvarananda
Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2014 13:20:37 +0530
Namaskar.
I wish to add a few points for dear Tarak's information.
1.In India RSS is supposed to represent Hindu interests. Once Baba asked Ramanandajii to meet RSS chief in Nagpur and propose if AM and RSS can work together to fight with common enemies as they are very powerful. I was present in that meeting in 1968 along with a few margiis. We met the then chief Mr. Golwalkar, who was a bright person, but did not agree with the proposal for their own reasons. But Baba instructed us not to speak any thing against RSS, although they may criticize AM.
2. Like Ac. Raghunath and many others, several good margiis were once RSS strong cadre. They came to AM for Sadhana and were charmed by Baba's personality. One such person was Shri V. M. Deshapande who later settled down in Mumbai. He had many friends in RSS and they always used to chide him that why AM does not call itself Hindu. He would answer them logically, but sentimentally his friends were never satisfied. He was also not understanding that most of the Shlokas Baba explained in His Pravacans are either from Vedas or Upanisadas or Giita or Shiva's treatise, which Hindu's consider as their heritage. Astanga Yoga is also considered as Hindu heritage by Hindu religion. Once Baba went to Ahmedabad where Vinayak Deshpande was working as Income Tax Officer. Without any reference, Baba said in a field walk, Vinayak, do you know that Ananda Marga is pure Hinduism. Vinayak Deshpande felt relieved of a great tension.
3. More than 99% margiis and workers in AM in India come from Hindus. Because Hindu was never been a religion- the Persians named the civilization beyond river Sindhu (Indus) as Hindu, as in Persian the word Sindhu is pronounced as Hindu. When militant Islam entered India, to combat it, the Hindus unconsciously been addressed and was accepted as a religion.
There are several dogmas in Hinduism -the biggest being the casteism. Baba asked us to fight with it through intercaste marriages, which are now so common in AM.
Ac. Kalyaneshvarananda Avadhuta
(To read earlier letter on this topic see link appended below.)
====
Date: 25 Jan 2014 13:32:58 -0000
From: "jayashrii"
To: ananda-marga-universal-forum-1@yogasamsthanam.net
Subject: Child Labor and Slavery #2
CHILD LABOR AND SLAVERY #2
Namaskar,
This is an issue of exploiter and exploited.
TO
GRATIFY THEMSELVES THE RICH CHEW THE HUMAN BONE,
AND SUCK HUMAN BLOOD
AND SUCK HUMAN BLOOD
"These days, a person who possesses wealth is respected and revered whereas a person without money is a person honoured by none. The poor, whoever they may be, have to woo the rich just for the sake of earning their livelihood. Human values have become meaningless, for human beings have become the means for the rich to earn money. The rich, having purchased the human mind with their money, are busy playing a game of chess with the other members of society. Bereft of everything, people toil round the clock to earn a mere pittance. Today the motto of people is, “I have to send some food particles into the apathetic stomach after somehow taking a dip in the muddy water amidst hyacinths.”"
"Those who are at the helm of society, constantly suspicious of others, forever count their losses and profits. They have no desire to think about the plight of humanity. Rather, to gratify themselves they are ready to chew the human bone, and suck human blood. For the self-centred there is no place for feelings of mercy, sympathy or camaraderie. The railway stations and market places are full of half-clad beggars and lepers desperately stretching out their begging bowls, earning their livelihood in the only way they know. They are fortunate if anyone contemptuously flings them a copper coin. The old blind beggars sitting all day long on the steps of a bridge automatically lift their bowls whenever anyone walks past. But their hungry pleas fall on deaf ears. On the other side of the social coin, sumptuous dishes are being prepared to entertain the rich dignitaries. These contrasts ridicule the present human society."
"Today, those who occupy high posts are also respected. Dignity is attached to post or rank. A station master will take great pains to prepare the railway minister's visit, but will never trouble himself with the inconveniences faced by the ordinary passengers. Luxurious houses are built for high-ranking officers while the poor live in shanty towns, barely protected from the elements. I don't say that large houses should never be built, but that everyone should be provided the minimum requirements. “I admit that both rice and tasty dishes are necessary for people, but I shall not demand a sumptuous dish from the goddess of food until I see that India [the entire world] has been overflooded with an abundance of rice.”" (AFPS-2, Social Values and Human Cardinal Principles)
India’s
child maids face slavery, abuse and sometimes rape
By Simon Denyer
By Simon Denyer
NEW DELHI — She was just 14 years old when she was picked up from her poor village in eastern India and promised good wages as a maid in New Delhi. Instead, she was forced to work for free as a virtual slave in a wealthy middle-class household.
When she plucked up the courage to complain to the “placement agent” who had found her the job, “he beat me and then he raped me,” the girl, now 17, said in an interview in this capital city. “He said if I ever tried to run away from home, he would kill off my family and burn down my house.”
Every year, hundreds of thousands of girls are trafficked from rural India to work as domestic servants in middle-class homes in India’s fast-growing urban areas. They are expected to work at least 15 hours a day for food, lodging and salaries well below the legal minimum monthly wage of about $125. Many end up cut off from their families, abused and treated like slaves. Some are sexually assaulted.
India erupted in outrage at the gang rape last month of a young woman on a moving bus in New Delhi. But in the same city, experts say, a vast network of child trafficking and abuse operates with society’s implicit sanction and official apathy. As India strives to become a modern and developed nation, the problem serves as a reminder of the exclusion of a vast swath of the population from the benefits of a rising economy and the broad indifference of many middle-class Indians to the rights of the poor.
“The trafficking of young children, especially girls, under the garb of placement agencies is the biggest organized crime in India today. And the worst part is, it is right there in the open, in our homes, and yet invisible,” said Bhuwan Ribhu of the child rights group Bachpan Bachao Andolan.
One of the six suspects in the gang-rape case, a purported 17-year-old, was himself trafficked at age 11 from a poor village in northern India to a life of child labor in the capital, where he worked in a roadside restaurant and as a bus driver’s assistant, police have said. He soon lost touch with his parents.
Law widely flouted
Many middle-class Indians believe they are helping poor families by giving their children work. But according to municipal law in New Delhi, which has enacted some of India’s strictest child labor laws, they should be jailed. Employing people younger than 18 in a hazardous job, as domestic service is defined, has been a non-bailable offense since 2009.
But the law is widely flouted, said Ribhu, who added that on rare occasions police carry out “rescue operations” of underage servants after complaints from parents or activists.
“Almost all of the domestic maids are either minors, or started work as maids before they were 18,” Ribhu said.
There has never been a systematic attempt to determine the scale of the problem. The government says 5 million children are employed in India, but activists say the real number could be 10 times that. A senior official at India’s Home Affairs Ministry, which oversees the police, estimated that as many as 4 million children work in domestic service nationwide and that up to 4,000 placement agencies operate in New Delhi and its suburbs alone.
But the official, who insisted on anonymity to speak candidly, said it was often hard to get his fellow bureaucrats to take the issue seriously because so many of them employ children at home.
A tool of control
Sometimes, placement agencies demand a one-time fee for supplying servants, a sum often docked from the girls’ wages by their employers. Other times, the employer pays the wages directly to the placement agency, which might give a portion of that money, or none at all, to the girl.
One 18-year-old interviewed, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution from former employers, said she received no money for four years of work as a maid for doctors and businesspeople. Another, whose statement forms part of a court case filed by activists in an attempt to force New Delhi authorities to regulate the industry, said in her testimony that she was paid $45 a month but was essentially imprisoned for years and never allowed to telephone her family.
When she complained to the placement agent, she said, he raped her. Ribhu said traffickers often use rape — which can ruin a young woman’s marriage prospects by robbing her of her “honor” — as a tool of control.
“I could not bear the pain and fell unconscious,” she said. “When I awoke, I found myself in a pool of blood. When I came out crying, he told me he would sell me off and never send me home if I didn’t keep quiet.”
The Washington Post generally does not name rape victims.
Activists have made progress only by taking such cases to Indian courts. New Delhi’s high court has led the way by ordering authorities to raise the minimum age for domestic service and requiring placement agencies to be registered. But the fine for failing to register ranges from just 50 cents to $5, and monitoring of registered agencies is nonexistent, activists say.
After two years of unpaid work, and after being raped on two occasions by her placement agent, the 17-year-old girl from eastern India was rescued by a Bachpan Bachao Andolan activist who was working undercover at New Delhi’s railway station.
The girl was at the station because the trafficker had promised to take her home to her village but had secretly bought tickets to the teeming commercial capital, Mumbai, where he apparently intended to sell her off into a life of further slavery or prostitution.
A year later, the girl is still in New Delhi, hiding from the trafficker. Small and shy, with her hair tied back in a bun and covered in a patterned scarf, she has an unassuming manner that masks a determination to see her tormentor put behind bars.
“The first thing I want is that man should be punished for what he did to me,” she said. “Then I want to see the money I am owed in my hand. The third thing is to go back home safe and sound.” (Courtesy of The Washington Post)
THEY
ARE ENEMIES OF SOCIETY
Here again is Baba's point that on such issues Prout has its own stand.
"All natural resources are meant to be used for collective welfare. No one has a monopoly over these resources. Some people argue, “When others by their manual labour earn money to provide themselves with food and clothing, why should I not be considered a member of the toiling masses when I earn by my intellectual labour?” In reply I will only say that by dint of intellect you may acquire as much of the boundless wealth in the intellectual or psychic realms as you like. Nobody can object to this. But if the intellect is used to appropriate limited mundane resources such as houses, land, food, clothing, money, etc., will this not deprive hundreds of thousands of people of their basic necessities? You may certainly earn your living by using your intellect, but your salary should be commensurate with the needs of your family, plus sufficient extra to take care of future contingencies, and not a penny more."
"It must always be remembered that the value of money lies in its proper use. If more money is accumulated than necessary, it loses its value due to lack of use. To the extent that you keep money idle and valueless, you become responsible for the injustices done to ragged, hungry people. You will have to give value to your accumulated money by utilizing it to provide opportunities for others. So in my opinion, those who do not know how to make good use of money, which is a medium of exchange for mundane resources, are enemies of society." (Human Society-1, Social Justice)
Namaskar,
In Him,
Jayashrii
(To read earlier letter on this topic see link appended below.)
Note 1: LINK TO EARLIER LETTER ON
KALYANESHVARANADNA
Note 2: LINK TO EARLIER LETTER OF
EXPLOITATION OF DOMESTIC ASSISTANTS
http://anandamargauniversal.blogspot.com/2014/01/other-side-of-story-slavery.html
http://anandamargauniversal.blogspot.com/2014/01/other-side-of-story-slavery.html
Friday, January 24, 2014
Re: Why Dry Sadhana
Baba
Namaskar,
Today I really got a wonderful teaching by this mail. It is extremely educative as well as informative about sadhana.
I will discuss this teaching in my unit among all margiis on Sunday D.C. followed by this we will inspire all margiis old or new to revise all their lessons.
In connection with this I am thinking to prepare a complete database of the brothers and sisters of the bhukti where we can keep track about no. of lessons taken, name of acharya, their contact no, email id, profession. Plus we will keep a separate database for the minor brothers and sisters so that we can program accordingly to make separate groups to frame their life as per Ananda Marga ideology.
In Him,
Anandam
On 01/23/2014 11:24 PM, Ananda Marga Universal wrote:
Namaskar,
Today I really got a wonderful teaching by this mail. It is extremely educative as well as informative about sadhana.
I will discuss this teaching in my unit among all margiis on Sunday D.C. followed by this we will inspire all margiis old or new to revise all their lessons.
In connection with this I am thinking to prepare a complete database of the brothers and sisters of the bhukti where we can keep track about no. of lessons taken, name of acharya, their contact no, email id, profession. Plus we will keep a separate database for the minor brothers and sisters so that we can program accordingly to make separate groups to frame their life as per Ananda Marga ideology.
In Him,
Anandam
On 01/23/2014 11:24 PM, Ananda Marga Universal wrote:
From: "Ananda Deva" divinebliss@ecco---
To: ananda-marga-universal-forum-3@yogasamsthanam.net
Subject: Why Dry Sadhana
Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2014 21:32:43
Baba
WHY DRY SADHANA
MUST KNOW THE MEANING OF THE MANTRA
1. Without knowing the meaning of one's ista mantra, mantra caetanya (awakening of the mantra) will not be achieved. That means one's mantra will not vibrate their being or become "live".
2. In that case, proper ideation will not come.
3. Instead, the mantra will remain dry - as if one is just involved in some parrot type of repetition.
4. The sadhana mantra is in Sanskrit, and if one does not know the meaning of the Sanskrit mantra then it will not work. For example, if English speaking people who do not know Hindi are told to repeat niibu', then saliva will not be generated in their mouth. But if the same English speaking person is told the meaning of niibu' is lemon, automatically their mouth will produce saliva. Because they know the meaning of that particular word: niibu'. The overall point is that knowing the meaning of a word or phrase is necessary to achieve the desired result. One must know the meaning of the mantra.
5. In our Ananda Marga sadhana system, there are many different ista mantras, and the meaning varies from one to another.
6. Each and every sadhaka must know the meaning of their own ista mantra.
BETTER NOT TO LEARN FROM QUACK ACARYAS
Unfortunately, there are many acaryas who themselves are unaware about all these points because they give more emphasis and importance to earning money than doing sadhana. Not only that, they do not like to admit or accept their deficit, so they just continue to misguide others by giving false answers and wrong teachings. In this regard, margiis should be careful and alert.
At the same time, when you see an acarya sincerely involved in sadhana and spiritual life then you should learn from them.
It is just like if you want to win a court case, then you do not hire xyz persons like a potato-seller or fruit seller etc. Rather one should seek out a trained attorney. And if you want to be cured of a disease, then do not consult a bicycle mechanic; rather one should find a doctor. Same is the case with learning sadhana: Seek out an acarya deeply involved in meditation.
Note: If anyone has any confusion about their ista cakra or ista mantra then they should not start haphazardly guessing and practicing it in the wrong way. Because that will be harmful. In that case, best is to communicate with a proper acarya.
Friday, January 17, 2014
Other Side of the Story + Slavery
Baba
Namaskar,
This is an issue of exploiter and exploited.
"What a dangerous outlook! What a rosy philosophy of capitalism! God save humanity from such perverted philosophy. Man’s desire for worldly pleasure does not cease until he finds a really great ideal. His hunger is insatiable. The wolf in him seems to say over and over again, “I am hungry, I am hungry.” His mouth is agape all the time and the fools of the earth, resigned to their belief in predestination, are swallowed by it. These wolves eat up their flesh and blood and cast away their insipid bones. Are we to support this wolfish philosophy? The dirty-clothed laborers, their faces lined with hard labor and fatigue, are not human beings in the eyes of those who have Mammon by their side."
"The characteristic of a vested interest is that it has no other thought but itself. The selfish man is the eater, the others are his food. His needs are never-ending. Out of his salary the poor man has to pay his house rent, support his family, educate his children, provide milk for his baby, marry his daughters. Are those necessities only for the people of the upper classes? Are these not the minimum necessities of life? Yes, but these thoughts of the poor are no concern of the rich! Such thinking involves some sacrifice, does it not? From where would objects of luxury for the rich come, if hunger were not the hard task-master of the poor? Let the daughters of the poor collect cow-dung forever and their sons be slaves in the households of the rich. What a fine arrangement! The high hopes of the poor?–pooh! pooh!! Aren’t they all moonshine?"
"No two things in the world are alike. So I do not suggest recasting everything into one mold. Still, for humanism and justice, equitable distribution of the resources of the universe is indispensable; co-ownership of the world’s resources is the birthright of every individual. Even a small attempt at depriving someone of this right is gross selfishness. Except when a special favor becomes necessary to give certain individuals impetus and inspiration, all persons must be given equal rights and opportunities in all spheres. Every individual must have equal rights regarding food, clothing, housing, medical aid and education — those things that are absolutely necessary for existence." (Human Society - 1, Social Justice)
here is another side to the story which generated much public intrigue in the week or so.
New Delhi: The diplomatic row over the Indian deputy consul in New York who was accused of underpaying her nanny may have been resolved, with her leaving the United States. But many Indians say the episode has laid bare the callous attitude toward domestic workers in the world’s most populous democracy.
According to a US indictment, Devyani Khobragade paid her Indian nanny $573 per month, a “legally insufficient” wage, and made her work more than 100 hours a week. Khobragade, who was charged with lying on visa documents about the babysitter’s salary, has maintained her innocence. Her arrest prompted widespread outrage among the Indian government and public.
“The fact that the domestic worker’s rights were violated was completely eclipsed by the shrill outcry by the government over the treatment of its diplomat,” said Ananya Bhattacharjee, who heads a domestic workers’ group called Gharelu Kaamgar Sangathan, based in the affluent New Delhi suburb of Gurgaon. The group had counselled the family of the nanny, Sangeeta Richard, after she filed a legal complaint.
“We had to try very hard to remind everybody that there are two Indian citizens involved in this case, not just one,” Bhattacharjee said.
Domestic workers have few legal protections in India. Activist groups say they are paid extremely low wages, have no fixed hours and no right to a weekly day off. About 40 per cent of the world’s 53 million domestic workers are employed in Asia, but most countries in the region have not enacted laws to regulate their labour, according to a recent report by Human Rights Watch. The report says domestic workers in Asia frequently experience physical, psychological and sexual abuse.
Even though exploitation of domestic workers in India is rampant, researchers say, it is only when things turn truly gruesome that the issue makes the headlines. In November, the wife of a federal lawmaker was arrested on charges of torturing a domestic worker to death in a New Delhi suburb. In October, another woman was arrested for severely beating her 15-year-old maid in the Indian capital. That month, police arrested an Indian airline stewardess for locking up her underage maid in her home every time she went to work.
In 2010, the children’s rights group Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save Childhood Movement) filed a petition in the New Delhi high court asking for protection of domestic workers’ rights and regulation of placement agencies for the workers. The court ordered the city to formulate a policy, but the government still has not done so.
When news of Khobragade’s arrest, strip search and brief incarceration broke last month, Indians were appalled. India’s national security adviser, Shivshankar Menon, called the actions “despicable and barbaric.” The government launched retaliatory measures, including removing security barricades at the US Embassy and shutting down all “commercial activities” at the popular embassy club.
Khobragade was formally indicted Thursday. But her government had already transferred her to a post at its mission to the United Nations, giving her a higher level of diplomatic immunity. On Friday, hours after Khobragade left the United States, India expelled an American diplomat.
“India has once again proved that the government is only for the big people, not for poor people like me,” said Paru Varui, 30, a domestic worker who cooks in four homes in Gurgaon and earns about $180 a month. She has been a domestic worker since she was 8 and took part in a demonstration here last month seeking justice for Richard.
“The government protects its own officer with all its power, but what about people like me who have been fighting for our rights for years?” she demanded. “My country has not found the time or the will to even pass a law, let alone enforce it.”
An unknown number of domestic workers in India are victims of human trafficking. According to India’s Labor Ministry, more than 400,000 legal complaints about children trafficked for domestic labour have been filed from 2008 to 2012. However, only 25,006 cases have been prosecuted, yielding 3,394 convictions.
Activists say Richard did not have the option of returning to India to recover unpaid wages through its court system.
“There is a legislative and policy vacuum here,” said Bhuwan Ribhu, national secretary of Bachpan Bachao Andolan. “I have never heard of anybody being arrested and going to jail in India for not paying minimum wages to a worker.”
The majority of Indians, he said, “do get away with such things and with impunity.”
On Sunday, the Indian television news channel NDTV 24X7 reported that the Foreign Ministry wants the government to designate the Indian maids accompanying diplomats abroad as government workers, so that they are not subject to the laws of a foreign country.
US officials flew Richard’s husband and children to the United States last month because a legal case was initiated in India to “silence her and attempts were made to compel her to return to India,” according to Preet Bharara, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York. (Courtesy of The Washington Post)
Here is a related situation.
It was the 13-year-old maid’s desperate cries for help that finally alerted neighbours to her plight. She was standing, sobbing, on the balcony of the upmarket Delhi apartment. Her employers had locked her in, she said, and gone on holiday. Finally rescued by a firefighter, she told a tale that prompted a widespread display of national revulsion.
Her employers – middle-class doctors Sanjay and Sumita Verma – had “bought” her from an agency, which had in turn bought her from her uncle. She was hungry, she said, because they barely fed her. She received no pay and was regularly beaten. Their latest act of cruelty had been to lock her in and go on holiday to Thailand.
The couple claim that they thought the girl was 18 and deny mistreating her, but they were roundly vilified and have been refused bail. In court the couple were accused of “subjecting the victim to a treatment which can be best described as torture”.
Perhaps the most puzzling aspect of the story is why it has caused such fury in a country where, after all, the sight of a youthful servant rarely raises a flicker of curiosity. Delhi’s thriving middle class would crumble without its army of domestic servants, whose presence enables couples to go out to work and continue to boost an economy projected to be the largest in the world by 2050.
The most liberal members of that society think nothing of employing a maid, a driver, a sweeper, a cook, a gardener and a couple of house boys who sleep on the roof, or in tiny shared rooms.
The International Labour Organisation estimates that there are at least four million domestic servants in India, including about 100,000 children working in and around Delhi. While it has been illegal to employ anyone under the age of 14 since 2006, that has done little to hinder the placement agencies which routinely hire out trafficked children.
A good maid might earn 3,500 rupees (£43) a month, if she is very lucky, or about half the legal minimum wage for an unskilled worker in Delhi. The less fortunate are bought from brokers and kept as unpaid skivvies – simply fed and given somewhere to sleep.
A company called Domestic Help in India is one of thousands of agencies supplying staff. Based in Gurgaon, near Delhi, the company charges employers 16,000 rupees to arrange the hire of a maid for 11 months. Its website is packed with adverts for staff, who can be selected on the basis of age (15 and upwards), religion and gender. Gurpreet, a maid/cook, has two years’ experience and costs 3,000 rupees a month. Harjett, who has one year’s experience, is available to anyone in Delhi for just 2,000 rupees a month. Those less comfortable with the way the system operates often try to assuage their feelings of guilt by hiring staff at above the going rate.
However, writing on an expatriate website that offers advice to foreigners moving to India, Shawn Runacres, managing director of the Gurgaon-based Domesteq staff placement agency, says there should be no need to feel awkward if staff are treated well. “Throw out the guilt – remember you are providing much-needed employment at fair rates and excellent working conditions,” she says. “The very thought of no longer having to make beds, cook, dust, wash dishes and do laundry sounds like heaven and, for those with children, if you add to all these things the possibility of affordable, on-tap childcare, it becomes irresistible.” Speaking on Friday, she said she was convinced that the market for domestic staff would continue to grow as India’s economy expanded, not least because of the challenges posed by living in India. “There are many more challenges to your daily life,” she said. She doubts that it would be possible to live without staff. “You would spend your entire time just trying to keep yourself fed and your home in some semblance of shape. You can’t just get water from the tap; you have to clean your water. You can’t just eat fruit off the tree or out of the market. Is it a luxury? No, not in India. It is absolutely a staple of life.” Runacres’s agency – which does not employ children and promises fair wages and dignity of labour – pays well above the average. Others are less scrupulous.
Bhuwan Ribhu, national secretary of the Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save the Childhood Movement), said child labour was now common in the cities, particularly involving girls aged 12 to 18, while boys aged 10 and upwards are more common in the countryside. “India cannot and must not grow at the cost of millions of childhoods,” he said.
Many children are trafficked from poor states such as Bihar and West Bengal through the thousands of illegal agencies operating in the cities. Last year the movement raided a placement agency to rescue six girls and uncovered evidence of 400 girls who had been trafficked.
Ribhu says people cannot resist a cheap deal. “Well educated or not, people try to maximise their profits by employing kids. They do not pay proper wages. The probability of children leaving employment whenever they want is very low, and they may be exploited, beaten and made to work long hours,” he said.
While many people in India may have been appalled by the Delhi case, he said, there were thousands of others who continued to employ children. “Children work because they are the cheapest form of labour, and in these situations they are victims of slavery. They are abused, not only economically but physically and sexually, as the exploiters also have little fear of law enforcement,” he said.
Patricia Lone of Unicef says domestic labour is one of the most dangerous forms of child labour because of the potential for abuse, particularly for girls. “It is a huge problem in most countries in south Asia because of the levels of poverty.”
Sometimes it is parents unable to support their children who pack them off to work; other times it is the children themselves who seek to pay their own way, she says. “But it is related to poverty, which forces parents and children to put themselves at risk.”
The outcry over the Delhi maid was encouraging, said Ribhu, in that it opened people’s eyes to the reality of what is going on. But he is not getting too excited about the arrests. They were, he said, an anomaly in a country where many people simply do not understand that using children as servants is wrong.”Recently, I was in a mall where I saw a couple with a 10- or 11-year-old girl taking care of their baby while they were eating. When I confronted them, the lady replied that: ‘She is in such a good condition here – she would starve to death in her village. Who will go feed her there? And she has even been taught English’,” he said. “When I asked her if she realised that she was committing a crime, she replied that the girl was being kept just like her own daughter and she is ‘even brought to the mall … can anyone in her village even dream of such a luxury, of going to the mall?’ “I explained as nicely as possible to her husband that if I were to call the police to their house, they would be arrested, and if the girl was ‘like their daughter’, why was she not eating with them at the same table? And he had no answer.” (Courtesy of The Guardian)
Here again is Baba's point that on such issues Prout has its own stand.
"What a wonderful capitalistic argument! Perhaps some academic stooge on the payroll of these self-seeking capitalists may even try to concoct a philosophy to support this proposition. God save humanity from such perverted philosophies! People’s physical longings are not satisfied until they come in contact with a truly great ideology. Till then, people’s wolf-like hunger is insatiable, as if they are incessantly repeating, “I am hungry, I am hungry.” Their jaws are always open, and the foolish people of this world resign themselves to their own fatalistic beliefs and fall into them. The ferocious wolf-pack devours their flesh and blood and casts away the unpalatable bones. Should we support this wolfish philosophy? The day-labourers, porters and gate-keepers around us who wear dirty rags and have fatigue etched on their faces are not considered human by those who are rolling in luxury."
"It is a characteristic of vested interests that they never bother to think of anyone except themselves. They must eat and the rest of humanity only exists to be eaten. They want increasingly more objects for their gratification. Those who earn three thousand rupees a month think that this is an extremely meagre amount, but they never stop to consider the needs of those who earn a negligible thirty rupees a month. A poor man has to pay his rent, maintain his family, educate his children, buy milk for his babies, and save something to put towards the cost of his daughter's marriage, all out of thirty rupees. Are these needs only applicable to the upper stratum of society? Are they not the minimum necessities of life? Rich people do not want to consider the needs of the poor, because if they do they will have to make some sacrifices. Where will their luxuries and comforts come from if hunger does not burn the bellies of the poor? Is it not a fine idea if the daughters of the poor go on collecting cow dung forever, and their sons work like slaves in the houses of the rich for generations together? Is this not a fine arrangement? As for the high hopes of the poor, aren't they ridiculous? Aren't they out of touch with reality?"
"No two things in this world are identical, so I am not suggesting that everything should be recast in the same mould. However, for the sake of humanism, for the sake of social justice, equitable distribution of all the wealth of the universe is indispensable, and co-ownership of the world's resources is the birthright of every individual. Even the slightest attempt to deprive anyone of this right amounts to gross selfishness. As long as certain difficulties, both great and small, exist in the practical world, however, it will not be possible to grant perfectly equal opportunities to everybody in all instances. Apart from this, all people should be granted equal rights and opportunities, except where it is necessary to inspire some people to undertake activities which will directly benefit society, or as a temporary reward for their distinguished contribution to society. In addition, every individual must have equal rights concerning things such as food, clothing, housing, education and medical care, which are absolutely essential for existence." (Humans Society - 1, Social Justice)
Namaskar,
In Him,
Jyotiish
OTHER SIDE OF THE STORY + SLAVERY
Namaskar,
This is an issue of exploiter and exploited.
"What a dangerous outlook! What a rosy philosophy of capitalism! God save humanity from such perverted philosophy. Man’s desire for worldly pleasure does not cease until he finds a really great ideal. His hunger is insatiable. The wolf in him seems to say over and over again, “I am hungry, I am hungry.” His mouth is agape all the time and the fools of the earth, resigned to their belief in predestination, are swallowed by it. These wolves eat up their flesh and blood and cast away their insipid bones. Are we to support this wolfish philosophy? The dirty-clothed laborers, their faces lined with hard labor and fatigue, are not human beings in the eyes of those who have Mammon by their side."
"The characteristic of a vested interest is that it has no other thought but itself. The selfish man is the eater, the others are his food. His needs are never-ending. Out of his salary the poor man has to pay his house rent, support his family, educate his children, provide milk for his baby, marry his daughters. Are those necessities only for the people of the upper classes? Are these not the minimum necessities of life? Yes, but these thoughts of the poor are no concern of the rich! Such thinking involves some sacrifice, does it not? From where would objects of luxury for the rich come, if hunger were not the hard task-master of the poor? Let the daughters of the poor collect cow-dung forever and their sons be slaves in the households of the rich. What a fine arrangement! The high hopes of the poor?–pooh! pooh!! Aren’t they all moonshine?"
"No two things in the world are alike. So I do not suggest recasting everything into one mold. Still, for humanism and justice, equitable distribution of the resources of the universe is indispensable; co-ownership of the world’s resources is the birthright of every individual. Even a small attempt at depriving someone of this right is gross selfishness. Except when a special favor becomes necessary to give certain individuals impetus and inspiration, all persons must be given equal rights and opportunities in all spheres. Every individual must have equal rights regarding food, clothing, housing, medical aid and education — those things that are absolutely necessary for existence." (Human Society - 1, Social Justice)
ANOTHER SIDE TO THE STORY
here is another side to the story which generated much public intrigue in the week or so.
Callousness toward domestic workers
By Rama Lakshmi
By Rama Lakshmi
New Delhi: The diplomatic row over the Indian deputy consul in New York who was accused of underpaying her nanny may have been resolved, with her leaving the United States. But many Indians say the episode has laid bare the callous attitude toward domestic workers in the world’s most populous democracy.
According to a US indictment, Devyani Khobragade paid her Indian nanny $573 per month, a “legally insufficient” wage, and made her work more than 100 hours a week. Khobragade, who was charged with lying on visa documents about the babysitter’s salary, has maintained her innocence. Her arrest prompted widespread outrage among the Indian government and public.
“The fact that the domestic worker’s rights were violated was completely eclipsed by the shrill outcry by the government over the treatment of its diplomat,” said Ananya Bhattacharjee, who heads a domestic workers’ group called Gharelu Kaamgar Sangathan, based in the affluent New Delhi suburb of Gurgaon. The group had counselled the family of the nanny, Sangeeta Richard, after she filed a legal complaint.
“We had to try very hard to remind everybody that there are two Indian citizens involved in this case, not just one,” Bhattacharjee said.
Domestic workers have few legal protections in India. Activist groups say they are paid extremely low wages, have no fixed hours and no right to a weekly day off. About 40 per cent of the world’s 53 million domestic workers are employed in Asia, but most countries in the region have not enacted laws to regulate their labour, according to a recent report by Human Rights Watch. The report says domestic workers in Asia frequently experience physical, psychological and sexual abuse.
Even though exploitation of domestic workers in India is rampant, researchers say, it is only when things turn truly gruesome that the issue makes the headlines. In November, the wife of a federal lawmaker was arrested on charges of torturing a domestic worker to death in a New Delhi suburb. In October, another woman was arrested for severely beating her 15-year-old maid in the Indian capital. That month, police arrested an Indian airline stewardess for locking up her underage maid in her home every time she went to work.
In 2010, the children’s rights group Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save Childhood Movement) filed a petition in the New Delhi high court asking for protection of domestic workers’ rights and regulation of placement agencies for the workers. The court ordered the city to formulate a policy, but the government still has not done so.
When news of Khobragade’s arrest, strip search and brief incarceration broke last month, Indians were appalled. India’s national security adviser, Shivshankar Menon, called the actions “despicable and barbaric.” The government launched retaliatory measures, including removing security barricades at the US Embassy and shutting down all “commercial activities” at the popular embassy club.
Khobragade was formally indicted Thursday. But her government had already transferred her to a post at its mission to the United Nations, giving her a higher level of diplomatic immunity. On Friday, hours after Khobragade left the United States, India expelled an American diplomat.
“India has once again proved that the government is only for the big people, not for poor people like me,” said Paru Varui, 30, a domestic worker who cooks in four homes in Gurgaon and earns about $180 a month. She has been a domestic worker since she was 8 and took part in a demonstration here last month seeking justice for Richard.
“The government protects its own officer with all its power, but what about people like me who have been fighting for our rights for years?” she demanded. “My country has not found the time or the will to even pass a law, let alone enforce it.”
An unknown number of domestic workers in India are victims of human trafficking. According to India’s Labor Ministry, more than 400,000 legal complaints about children trafficked for domestic labour have been filed from 2008 to 2012. However, only 25,006 cases have been prosecuted, yielding 3,394 convictions.
Activists say Richard did not have the option of returning to India to recover unpaid wages through its court system.
“There is a legislative and policy vacuum here,” said Bhuwan Ribhu, national secretary of Bachpan Bachao Andolan. “I have never heard of anybody being arrested and going to jail in India for not paying minimum wages to a worker.”
The majority of Indians, he said, “do get away with such things and with impunity.”
On Sunday, the Indian television news channel NDTV 24X7 reported that the Foreign Ministry wants the government to designate the Indian maids accompanying diplomats abroad as government workers, so that they are not subject to the laws of a foreign country.
US officials flew Richard’s husband and children to the United States last month because a legal case was initiated in India to “silence her and attempts were made to compel her to return to India,” according to Preet Bharara, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York. (Courtesy of The Washington Post)
SLAVERY
Here is a related situation.
The Delhi child servant scanda
By Gethin Chamberlain
By Gethin Chamberlain
It was the 13-year-old maid’s desperate cries for help that finally alerted neighbours to her plight. She was standing, sobbing, on the balcony of the upmarket Delhi apartment. Her employers had locked her in, she said, and gone on holiday. Finally rescued by a firefighter, she told a tale that prompted a widespread display of national revulsion.
Her employers – middle-class doctors Sanjay and Sumita Verma – had “bought” her from an agency, which had in turn bought her from her uncle. She was hungry, she said, because they barely fed her. She received no pay and was regularly beaten. Their latest act of cruelty had been to lock her in and go on holiday to Thailand.
The couple claim that they thought the girl was 18 and deny mistreating her, but they were roundly vilified and have been refused bail. In court the couple were accused of “subjecting the victim to a treatment which can be best described as torture”.
Perhaps the most puzzling aspect of the story is why it has caused such fury in a country where, after all, the sight of a youthful servant rarely raises a flicker of curiosity. Delhi’s thriving middle class would crumble without its army of domestic servants, whose presence enables couples to go out to work and continue to boost an economy projected to be the largest in the world by 2050.
The most liberal members of that society think nothing of employing a maid, a driver, a sweeper, a cook, a gardener and a couple of house boys who sleep on the roof, or in tiny shared rooms.
The International Labour Organisation estimates that there are at least four million domestic servants in India, including about 100,000 children working in and around Delhi. While it has been illegal to employ anyone under the age of 14 since 2006, that has done little to hinder the placement agencies which routinely hire out trafficked children.
A good maid might earn 3,500 rupees (£43) a month, if she is very lucky, or about half the legal minimum wage for an unskilled worker in Delhi. The less fortunate are bought from brokers and kept as unpaid skivvies – simply fed and given somewhere to sleep.
A company called Domestic Help in India is one of thousands of agencies supplying staff. Based in Gurgaon, near Delhi, the company charges employers 16,000 rupees to arrange the hire of a maid for 11 months. Its website is packed with adverts for staff, who can be selected on the basis of age (15 and upwards), religion and gender. Gurpreet, a maid/cook, has two years’ experience and costs 3,000 rupees a month. Harjett, who has one year’s experience, is available to anyone in Delhi for just 2,000 rupees a month. Those less comfortable with the way the system operates often try to assuage their feelings of guilt by hiring staff at above the going rate.
However, writing on an expatriate website that offers advice to foreigners moving to India, Shawn Runacres, managing director of the Gurgaon-based Domesteq staff placement agency, says there should be no need to feel awkward if staff are treated well. “Throw out the guilt – remember you are providing much-needed employment at fair rates and excellent working conditions,” she says. “The very thought of no longer having to make beds, cook, dust, wash dishes and do laundry sounds like heaven and, for those with children, if you add to all these things the possibility of affordable, on-tap childcare, it becomes irresistible.” Speaking on Friday, she said she was convinced that the market for domestic staff would continue to grow as India’s economy expanded, not least because of the challenges posed by living in India. “There are many more challenges to your daily life,” she said. She doubts that it would be possible to live without staff. “You would spend your entire time just trying to keep yourself fed and your home in some semblance of shape. You can’t just get water from the tap; you have to clean your water. You can’t just eat fruit off the tree or out of the market. Is it a luxury? No, not in India. It is absolutely a staple of life.” Runacres’s agency – which does not employ children and promises fair wages and dignity of labour – pays well above the average. Others are less scrupulous.
Bhuwan Ribhu, national secretary of the Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save the Childhood Movement), said child labour was now common in the cities, particularly involving girls aged 12 to 18, while boys aged 10 and upwards are more common in the countryside. “India cannot and must not grow at the cost of millions of childhoods,” he said.
Many children are trafficked from poor states such as Bihar and West Bengal through the thousands of illegal agencies operating in the cities. Last year the movement raided a placement agency to rescue six girls and uncovered evidence of 400 girls who had been trafficked.
Ribhu says people cannot resist a cheap deal. “Well educated or not, people try to maximise their profits by employing kids. They do not pay proper wages. The probability of children leaving employment whenever they want is very low, and they may be exploited, beaten and made to work long hours,” he said.
While many people in India may have been appalled by the Delhi case, he said, there were thousands of others who continued to employ children. “Children work because they are the cheapest form of labour, and in these situations they are victims of slavery. They are abused, not only economically but physically and sexually, as the exploiters also have little fear of law enforcement,” he said.
Patricia Lone of Unicef says domestic labour is one of the most dangerous forms of child labour because of the potential for abuse, particularly for girls. “It is a huge problem in most countries in south Asia because of the levels of poverty.”
Sometimes it is parents unable to support their children who pack them off to work; other times it is the children themselves who seek to pay their own way, she says. “But it is related to poverty, which forces parents and children to put themselves at risk.”
The outcry over the Delhi maid was encouraging, said Ribhu, in that it opened people’s eyes to the reality of what is going on. But he is not getting too excited about the arrests. They were, he said, an anomaly in a country where many people simply do not understand that using children as servants is wrong.”Recently, I was in a mall where I saw a couple with a 10- or 11-year-old girl taking care of their baby while they were eating. When I confronted them, the lady replied that: ‘She is in such a good condition here – she would starve to death in her village. Who will go feed her there? And she has even been taught English’,” he said. “When I asked her if she realised that she was committing a crime, she replied that the girl was being kept just like her own daughter and she is ‘even brought to the mall … can anyone in her village even dream of such a luxury, of going to the mall?’ “I explained as nicely as possible to her husband that if I were to call the police to their house, they would be arrested, and if the girl was ‘like their daughter’, why was she not eating with them at the same table? And he had no answer.” (Courtesy of The Guardian)
PROUT HAS ITS OWN STAND
Here again is Baba's point that on such issues Prout has its own stand.
"What a wonderful capitalistic argument! Perhaps some academic stooge on the payroll of these self-seeking capitalists may even try to concoct a philosophy to support this proposition. God save humanity from such perverted philosophies! People’s physical longings are not satisfied until they come in contact with a truly great ideology. Till then, people’s wolf-like hunger is insatiable, as if they are incessantly repeating, “I am hungry, I am hungry.” Their jaws are always open, and the foolish people of this world resign themselves to their own fatalistic beliefs and fall into them. The ferocious wolf-pack devours their flesh and blood and casts away the unpalatable bones. Should we support this wolfish philosophy? The day-labourers, porters and gate-keepers around us who wear dirty rags and have fatigue etched on their faces are not considered human by those who are rolling in luxury."
"It is a characteristic of vested interests that they never bother to think of anyone except themselves. They must eat and the rest of humanity only exists to be eaten. They want increasingly more objects for their gratification. Those who earn three thousand rupees a month think that this is an extremely meagre amount, but they never stop to consider the needs of those who earn a negligible thirty rupees a month. A poor man has to pay his rent, maintain his family, educate his children, buy milk for his babies, and save something to put towards the cost of his daughter's marriage, all out of thirty rupees. Are these needs only applicable to the upper stratum of society? Are they not the minimum necessities of life? Rich people do not want to consider the needs of the poor, because if they do they will have to make some sacrifices. Where will their luxuries and comforts come from if hunger does not burn the bellies of the poor? Is it not a fine idea if the daughters of the poor go on collecting cow dung forever, and their sons work like slaves in the houses of the rich for generations together? Is this not a fine arrangement? As for the high hopes of the poor, aren't they ridiculous? Aren't they out of touch with reality?"
"No two things in this world are identical, so I am not suggesting that everything should be recast in the same mould. However, for the sake of humanism, for the sake of social justice, equitable distribution of all the wealth of the universe is indispensable, and co-ownership of the world's resources is the birthright of every individual. Even the slightest attempt to deprive anyone of this right amounts to gross selfishness. As long as certain difficulties, both great and small, exist in the practical world, however, it will not be possible to grant perfectly equal opportunities to everybody in all instances. Apart from this, all people should be granted equal rights and opportunities, except where it is necessary to inspire some people to undertake activities which will directly benefit society, or as a temporary reward for their distinguished contribution to society. In addition, every individual must have equal rights concerning things such as food, clothing, housing, education and medical care, which are absolutely essential for existence." (Humans Society - 1, Social Justice)
Namaskar,
In Him,
Jyotiish
Saturday, January 11, 2014
Dying While Eating
Baba
Namaskar,
Following is an example of a man who indulged in food and literally gorged himself to death in an insect eating contest.
This way of living is a misuse and abuse of one's human potentiality. One has been blessed to receive a human body and it should be used for following bhagavad dharma.
Nowadays, many use their human body as tool of indulgence. This is the sad reality. And when that indulgence is directed towards food, they will literally eat themselves to death.
The story does not end there. According to their inherent desire they will again take birth. But then it will not be as a human being, but as a pig, bear, bull or some other degraded being or worse than that. In such a way one will have to face the consequences.
Read below the tragic example as well as Baba's divine teachings that dictate that those who misuse their human body will take birth in a lesser form in their next life. They will have to suffer the reactions of their misguided desires and lowly thoughts.
When you desire something animalistic then you will get the body of that animal or bug etc. One will be reborn as an animal because the human body is unfit to satiate their chosen desire. For instance, in this example below, a many died after eating large quantities of worms and cockroaches. In his next life he may be reborn as bug-eating crab etc, since a human body was incapable or satisfying his desire in that way.
These are the extreme examples. But in day to day life, most members of the general society do not use their human body in the right manner for the right cause. Mostly they desire something mundane. That is why, when the moment arises most will not get a human body - let alone moksa.
A 32-year-old man downed an unreported number of live cockroaches and worms in a contest, before suddenly dying yesterday.
The contest was hosted by a local pet store offering an $850 python as a reward for the person who could eat the most live insects and worms. Edward Archbold was one of the 20 to 30 contestants who participated in the “Midnight Madness” event at a Florida store.
Archbold won, consuming an unspecified amount of roaches and worms. He was described as the life of the party. But the event soon turned deadly.
Soon after Archbold’s triumph, he became ill and started to vomit. Archbold’s friend called for medical attention, and Archbold himself dialed 911. Shortly afterwards, Archbold collapsed outside the pet shop. An ambulance picked him up but he was pronounced dead at North Broward Medical Center. The hospital is currently conducting an autopsy to determine the cause of death.
According to New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, officials say, “While walking on spoiled food in garbage containers, they [cockroaches] pick up various bacterial organisms on their legs that they can later deposit on uncovered food. Cockroaches themselves are not implicated in the transmission of any diseases. However, many disease-causing organisms can grow and multiply in their guts and can then be deposited on silverware, plates etc. during defecation.”
But cockroaches and other insects are eaten in various cultures all over the world. In addition, the insects used for the contest were safely raised so that they could later be consumed by reptiles. “I mean, it was a shock,” Ben Siegel, the owner of the pet shop, said. “Eddie was a very nice guy. We just met him that night, but everybody that works here was very fond of him.”
All participants had signed a waiver absolving Siegel of blame before being allowed to compete in the contest. Archbold was reportedly going to sell the python to a friend who had taken him to the event. Since his death, the pet store has put aside his prize to give to his estate.
The above example does not exist in isolation. One's thoughts and actions affect not just the present but their future as well. Here following are Baba's teachings that clearly apply to all those who indulge in eating contests - as well as those plunged in other poor habits and lowly thinking.
"According to one's desires one gets the fruits thereof. If somebody is a voracious eater and always hankers after food then it is quite likely that after the death of his physical body he may get the body of a pig in the next life. Suppose somebody wants to be a runner like a deer then it is not impossible that he will eventually get the body of a deer after the death of this present human structure." (1)
"One acquires a physical body according to the nature of one's sam'skáras. A human being who behaves like a goat or a dog may be born as a goat or a dog in the next life, because such an animal body is the proper base for the congenial expression of the latent saḿskáras. Hence it is not at all impossible for a human being to be reborn as a hog, a worm, a tree, or even a piece of stone. One's destiny will be decided according to the nature of one's karma – this is an infallible law. In this regard, neither Paramátma nor Prakrti can do anything to help. But Parama Brahma out of His Infinite grace, will reconvert these “Ahalyás” (those converted into stone as a result of crude actions) into glorious human beings in the process of pratisaincara [the introversive movement of the Cosmos], and provide opportunities for their movement towards the most exulted life." (2)
"According to human longings and desires or according to human propensive pursuit, their minds take form i.e., they will gradually acquire the like Saḿskáras or reactive momenta. They first see within themselves what they aspire for and then let their minds flow towards it. Thereafter the external organs i.e., hands and feet, etc., set about achieving it. And so it is generally seen that the desires that they had been giving indulgence to throughout their lives, come hurtling over to them in a condensed form at the last hour, i.e., their mind-stuff takes the like mental form for the last time in order to shape itself into a fitting medium of the like Saḿskáras. Even during the life-time as well it is seen that the mind-stuff of a drunkard, which imbibes within it an indomitable desire or Saḿskára for wine, turns into a vantage ground for undergoing the next Saḿskáras or momenta of pleasure and pain. That is to say, such a person gets scent of the wine shop by the sheer propulsion of his acquired mental propensity, if he happens to go to a new and unfamiliar place. A man who has cultivated dog-like or swine-like desires all his life, dies with the same dog-like or swine-like frame of mind. Thereafter with the help of Prakrti’s Mutative force he acquires the form of a dog or swine in order to undergo the dog-like or swine-like Saḿskáras. The great ascetic, King Bharata, died thinking of a fawn, and that was why it is written in the Puráńas (Indian mythologies) that he had to take the body of a deer at his next birth." (3)
"Indulging in mean thoughts only engenders crude vibrations in the Citta, as the result of which you will have to take rebirth in lower species in order to suffer the lowly Saḿskáras created by those crude vibrations. Thus you must arouse higher vibrations in your Citta. Even a man of King Bharata’s calibre had to take rebirth as a deer because at the time of his death he was deeply anxious about a fawn. Thus regardless of what you are at present or what you may possibly become in the future, do not digress from the ideal of the Great in any circumstances: do not stray even a step away from the path of realization of Absolute Bliss. Ananda Marga or the path to eternal bliss is the only path for you." (4)
According to Baba's above directive, those from the eating contests in the case studies will be reborn into that thing which they were thinking about. If at the time of death they were thinking about a bug, insect, or Indian sweet, then after their death they will take that shape and form in their next life. That is the simple formula.
"No matter what circumstances you are in, never lose sight of the Infinite One. Degradation is impossible for those who have accepted the Supreme Being as the Ideal of their lives." (5)
Namaskar,
in Him,
Sanjay
The question arises, "Why do human beings do like this?" The response is that they are trying to satisfy their infinite desire with material indulgence. Their desire is to take an infinite amount of food, but alas the body is limited, so they die. Infinite desire can only be satiated by the realisation of Parama Purusa. So long as we are not teaching dharma sadhana to all, this problem will continue.
REFERENCES
1. AV-2, The Difference between Macrocosm and Microcosm
2. AMIWL-7, Form and Formless
3. SS-2, Intuitional Science of the Vedas - 3
4. SS-3, Vibration, Form, & Color
5. SS-3, Vibration, Form and Colour
DYING WHILE EATING
Namaskar,
Following is an example of a man who indulged in food and literally gorged himself to death in an insect eating contest.
This way of living is a misuse and abuse of one's human potentiality. One has been blessed to receive a human body and it should be used for following bhagavad dharma.
Nowadays, many use their human body as tool of indulgence. This is the sad reality. And when that indulgence is directed towards food, they will literally eat themselves to death.
The story does not end there. According to their inherent desire they will again take birth. But then it will not be as a human being, but as a pig, bear, bull or some other degraded being or worse than that. In such a way one will have to face the consequences.
Read below the tragic example as well as Baba's divine teachings that dictate that those who misuse their human body will take birth in a lesser form in their next life. They will have to suffer the reactions of their misguided desires and lowly thoughts.
When you desire something animalistic then you will get the body of that animal or bug etc. One will be reborn as an animal because the human body is unfit to satiate their chosen desire. For instance, in this example below, a many died after eating large quantities of worms and cockroaches. In his next life he may be reborn as bug-eating crab etc, since a human body was incapable or satisfying his desire in that way.
These are the extreme examples. But in day to day life, most members of the general society do not use their human body in the right manner for the right cause. Mostly they desire something mundane. That is why, when the moment arises most will not get a human body - let alone moksa.
REAL LIFE EXAMPLE:
MAN DIES IN EATING CONTEST - COCKROACHES & WORMS
Courtesy of Medical Daily by Makini Brice
MAN DIES IN EATING CONTEST - COCKROACHES & WORMS
Courtesy of Medical Daily by Makini Brice
A 32-year-old man downed an unreported number of live cockroaches and worms in a contest, before suddenly dying yesterday.
The contest was hosted by a local pet store offering an $850 python as a reward for the person who could eat the most live insects and worms. Edward Archbold was one of the 20 to 30 contestants who participated in the “Midnight Madness” event at a Florida store.
Archbold won, consuming an unspecified amount of roaches and worms. He was described as the life of the party. But the event soon turned deadly.
Soon after Archbold’s triumph, he became ill and started to vomit. Archbold’s friend called for medical attention, and Archbold himself dialed 911. Shortly afterwards, Archbold collapsed outside the pet shop. An ambulance picked him up but he was pronounced dead at North Broward Medical Center. The hospital is currently conducting an autopsy to determine the cause of death.
According to New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, officials say, “While walking on spoiled food in garbage containers, they [cockroaches] pick up various bacterial organisms on their legs that they can later deposit on uncovered food. Cockroaches themselves are not implicated in the transmission of any diseases. However, many disease-causing organisms can grow and multiply in their guts and can then be deposited on silverware, plates etc. during defecation.”
But cockroaches and other insects are eaten in various cultures all over the world. In addition, the insects used for the contest were safely raised so that they could later be consumed by reptiles. “I mean, it was a shock,” Ben Siegel, the owner of the pet shop, said. “Eddie was a very nice guy. We just met him that night, but everybody that works here was very fond of him.”
All participants had signed a waiver absolving Siegel of blame before being allowed to compete in the contest. Archbold was reportedly going to sell the python to a friend who had taken him to the event. Since his death, the pet store has put aside his prize to give to his estate.
NOW APPLY BABA'S BELOW TEACHINGS TO THE ABOVE
EXAMPLE
The above example does not exist in isolation. One's thoughts and actions affect not just the present but their future as well. Here following are Baba's teachings that clearly apply to all those who indulge in eating contests - as well as those plunged in other poor habits and lowly thinking.
YOU GET A BODY ACCORDING TO YOUR DESIRE
Yádrshii bhávaná yasya siddhirbhavati
tádrshii.
"According to one's desires one gets the fruits thereof. If somebody is a voracious eater and always hankers after food then it is quite likely that after the death of his physical body he may get the body of a pig in the next life. Suppose somebody wants to be a runner like a deer then it is not impossible that he will eventually get the body of a deer after the death of this present human structure." (1)
"One acquires a physical body according to the nature of one's sam'skáras. A human being who behaves like a goat or a dog may be born as a goat or a dog in the next life, because such an animal body is the proper base for the congenial expression of the latent saḿskáras. Hence it is not at all impossible for a human being to be reborn as a hog, a worm, a tree, or even a piece of stone. One's destiny will be decided according to the nature of one's karma – this is an infallible law. In this regard, neither Paramátma nor Prakrti can do anything to help. But Parama Brahma out of His Infinite grace, will reconvert these “Ahalyás” (those converted into stone as a result of crude actions) into glorious human beings in the process of pratisaincara [the introversive movement of the Cosmos], and provide opportunities for their movement towards the most exulted life." (2)
"According to human longings and desires or according to human propensive pursuit, their minds take form i.e., they will gradually acquire the like Saḿskáras or reactive momenta. They first see within themselves what they aspire for and then let their minds flow towards it. Thereafter the external organs i.e., hands and feet, etc., set about achieving it. And so it is generally seen that the desires that they had been giving indulgence to throughout their lives, come hurtling over to them in a condensed form at the last hour, i.e., their mind-stuff takes the like mental form for the last time in order to shape itself into a fitting medium of the like Saḿskáras. Even during the life-time as well it is seen that the mind-stuff of a drunkard, which imbibes within it an indomitable desire or Saḿskára for wine, turns into a vantage ground for undergoing the next Saḿskáras or momenta of pleasure and pain. That is to say, such a person gets scent of the wine shop by the sheer propulsion of his acquired mental propensity, if he happens to go to a new and unfamiliar place. A man who has cultivated dog-like or swine-like desires all his life, dies with the same dog-like or swine-like frame of mind. Thereafter with the help of Prakrti’s Mutative force he acquires the form of a dog or swine in order to undergo the dog-like or swine-like Saḿskáras. The great ascetic, King Bharata, died thinking of a fawn, and that was why it is written in the Puráńas (Indian mythologies) that he had to take the body of a deer at his next birth." (3)
INDULGING IN MEANING THOUGHTS
IS CAUSE OF BEING REBORN AS LOWER SPECIES
IS CAUSE OF BEING REBORN AS LOWER SPECIES
"Indulging in mean thoughts only engenders crude vibrations in the Citta, as the result of which you will have to take rebirth in lower species in order to suffer the lowly Saḿskáras created by those crude vibrations. Thus you must arouse higher vibrations in your Citta. Even a man of King Bharata’s calibre had to take rebirth as a deer because at the time of his death he was deeply anxious about a fawn. Thus regardless of what you are at present or what you may possibly become in the future, do not digress from the ideal of the Great in any circumstances: do not stray even a step away from the path of realization of Absolute Bliss. Ananda Marga or the path to eternal bliss is the only path for you." (4)
According to Baba's above directive, those from the eating contests in the case studies will be reborn into that thing which they were thinking about. If at the time of death they were thinking about a bug, insect, or Indian sweet, then after their death they will take that shape and form in their next life. That is the simple formula.
DEGRADATION IS IMPOSSIBLE
IF PARAMA PURUSA IS THE GOAL
IF PARAMA PURUSA IS THE GOAL
"No matter what circumstances you are in, never lose sight of the Infinite One. Degradation is impossible for those who have accepted the Supreme Being as the Ideal of their lives." (5)
Namaskar,
in Him,
Sanjay
Note 1: INFINITE LONGING, LIMITED BODY
The question arises, "Why do human beings do like this?" The response is that they are trying to satisfy their infinite desire with material indulgence. Their desire is to take an infinite amount of food, but alas the body is limited, so they die. Infinite desire can only be satiated by the realisation of Parama Purusa. So long as we are not teaching dharma sadhana to all, this problem will continue.
REFERENCES
1. AV-2, The Difference between Macrocosm and Microcosm
2. AMIWL-7, Form and Formless
3. SS-2, Intuitional Science of the Vedas - 3
4. SS-3, Vibration, Form, & Color
5. SS-3, Vibration, Form and Colour
PRABHAT SAMGIITA
"Phuler ha'site chile, manoma'jhe a'ji ele..." (P.S. 1898)
Purport:
O' Parama Purusa, You came in my mind today and You were smiling like a magnificent flower blossom. You know that I love You, so then why do You remain distant. O' my Lord, I do not call anyone other than You. In my mind, nothing else has any place; You are my Goal. You are my everything. And I do not think about anything else besides You. In spite of all these things, why do You remain forgetful about my existence - about me. O' Parama Purusa Baba, I understand this heart-breaking and difficult liila of Yours. You take my mind and play Your painful game of hide and seek. Sometimes You make me laugh; and sometimes You make me dance; and sometimes You make me float in my own tears. Baba, after such a long time You have graced me and come in my mind...
Purport:
O' Parama Purusa, You came in my mind today and You were smiling like a magnificent flower blossom. You know that I love You, so then why do You remain distant. O' my Lord, I do not call anyone other than You. In my mind, nothing else has any place; You are my Goal. You are my everything. And I do not think about anything else besides You. In spite of all these things, why do You remain forgetful about my existence - about me. O' Parama Purusa Baba, I understand this heart-breaking and difficult liila of Yours. You take my mind and play Your painful game of hide and seek. Sometimes You make me laugh; and sometimes You make me dance; and sometimes You make me float in my own tears. Baba, after such a long time You have graced me and come in my mind...
Friday, January 3, 2014
Be Aware: Hazardous Food From China
Baba
BE AWARE:
HAZARDOUS FOOD FROM CHINA
Namaskar,
As Ananda Margiis, we are all very careful about what to eat and what not to eat. Before putting anything in our mouths, we watch, smell, and see what it is and use our logic and reasoning to ensure it is sentient and good for both body and mind.
"What is pramitáhára? Pra – má + [kta + áhára] = pramitáhára. That is, the food that helps you in your spiritual and mental development and which is also good for your physical body is called pramitáhára. It must be sáttvika food, because sáttvika food will help you in your spiritual development and in your mental development. And it must be balanced food, because balanced food will help you in your physical progress and physical development, and in maintaining a good physical body." (25 November 1978, Mumbai)
In the height of this materialistic era, food travels across the planet from one corner to another. In the past, people used to eat locally so they were aware about how the food was produced and who was producing it. But now the situation is very different - i.e. everything is pre-packaged, produced on an industrial level, and imported from far away.
At the same time, to increase profits, agro-business corporations and large food companies are using more toxic chemicals. And they invest huge monies to cover up the defects and harmful aspects of their products. In result, innumerable innocent and unsuspecting people are harmed.
Nowadays, countless people are dying on a regular basis due to gradual or acute food poisoning. More diseases are cropping up on a daily basis which were unheard of previously - all due to food toxicity.
The biggest culprit in all of this is China.
That is why who are aware about the situation are keen and adamant to avoid any food grown and / or prepared in China. These days many health stores also avoid food that manufactured or grown in China because of lack of quality control and overall health concerns.
China's soil is like a wasteland and so many of the natural resources in China are completely polluted and ruined; food grown and produced there is bound to be poisonous and dangerous.
Yet, tragically, these days many foods are coming from China and many countries are importing both unprocessed and processed foods from China. So watch out - this following article from the New York Times gives insight into what is going on.
What info we get we should take seriously.
In Him,
Jayadeva
Pollution Rising, Chinese Fear for Soil and Food
By Edward Wong
Published: December 30, 2013
(Courtesy of the New York Times)
One-sixth of China’s arable land — nearly 50 million acres — suffers from soil pollution, according to a book published this year by the Ministry of Environmental Protection. The book, “Soil Pollution and Physical Health,” said that more than 13 million tons of crops harvested each year were contaminated with heavy metals, and that 22 million acres of farmland were affected by pesticides.
But the government has refused to divulge details of the pollution, leaving farmers and consumers in the dark about the levels of contaminants in the food chain. The soil survey, completed in 2010, has been locked away as a “state secret.”
“We think it’s always the right of the public to know how bad the situation is,” said Ma Tianjie, an advocate at Greenpeace East Asia who is researching toxic soil. “The Chinese public can accept the fact that our environment is polluted. The important thing is to give them the means to challenge polluters and improve the environment, and not just keep them in the dark.”
There has been some acknowledgement of... (read entire article)
PRABHAT SAMGIITA
"Marmaviin'a'y eki sur a'chi ba'je diva'nishi mor virahii hiya'r ma'jhe..." (P.S. 480)
Purport:
O' Parama Purusa, day and night, only one tune is resonating in the viina of my melancholic heart. O' my dearmost Baba please come. In the deep core of my mind only one tune is swinging: O' Baba, You are not far away, You are not far, You are so close, You are with me.
O' my Lord, when I see You in my karmayajina*, then I see You are remaining there also. You are with me in all the works. O' my Lord, please come, please come.
With the full longing of my heart, in whichever direction I look, there is nothing else that I can see except for Your divine form. O' my Lord of Formlessness, with the resonance of the ever-new song, dance, & form, please allow Yourself to be held in my heart.
O' Parama Purusa Baba, please come, O' Baba please come...
Note For Prabhat Samgiita #480:
* Karmayajina: The work done with cosmic ideation is known as karmayajina; that alone is proper action. Thus karmayajina is any action or service done with the sole motive to please Parama Purus'a. In contrast those things done devoid of cosmic feeling, such selfish activities are called kriya' - and that leads to bondage. So only those works done with spiritual ideation come within the scope of karmayajina.
Pollution Rising, Chinese Fear for Soil and Food
Pollution Rising, Chinese Fear for Soil and Food
By Edward Wong
Published: December 30, 2013
(Courtesy of the New York Times)
CHENJIAWAN, China — The farm-to-table process in China starts in villages like this one in the agricultural heartland. Food from the fields of Ge Songqing and her neighbors ends up in their kitchens or in the local market, and from there goes to other provinces. The foods are Chinese staples: rice, cabbage, carrots, turnips and sweet potatoes.
But the fields are ringed by factories and irrigated with water tainted by industrial waste. Levels of toxic heavy metals in the wastewater here are among the highest in China, and residents fear the soil is similarly contaminated. Though they have no scientific proof, they suspect that a spate of cancer deaths is linked to the pollution, and worry about lead levels in the children’s blood.
“Of course I’m afraid,” said Ms. Ge, in her 60s, pointing to the smokestacks looming over her fields and the stagnant, algae-filled irrigation canals surrounding a home she shares with a granddaughter and her husband, a former soldier. “But we don’t do physical checkups. If we find out we have cancer, it’s only a burden on the children.”
With awareness of China’s severe environmental degradation rising, there has been a surge of anxiety in the last year among ordinary Chinese and some officials over soil pollution in the country’s agricultural centers and the potential effects on the food chain. In recent years, the government has conducted widespread testing of soil across China, but it has not released the results, adding to the fear and making it more difficult for most Chinese to judge what they eat and pinpoint the offending factories.
An alarming glimpse of official findings came on Monday, when a vice minister of land and resources, Wang Shiyuan, said at a news conference in Beijing that eight million acres of China’s farmland, equal to the size of Maryland, had become so polluted that planting crops on it “should not be allowed.”
A signal moment came in May, when officials in Guangdong Province, in the far south, said they had discovered excessive levels of cadmium in 155 batches of rice collected from markets, restaurants and storehouses. Of those, 89 were from Hunan Province, where Ms. Ge farms.
The report set off a nationwide scare. In June, China Daily, an official English-language newspaper, published an editorial saying that “soil contaminated with heavy metals is eroding the foundation of the country’s food safety and becoming a looming public health hazard.”
One-sixth of China’s arable land — nearly 50 million acres — suffers from soil pollution, according to a book published this year by the Ministry of Environmental Protection. The book, “Soil Pollution and Physical Health,” said that more than 13 million tons of crops harvested each year were contaminated with heavy metals, and that 22 million acres of farmland were affected by pesticides.
But the government has refused to divulge details of the pollution, leaving farmers and consumers in the dark about the levels of contaminants in the food chain. The soil survey, completed in 2010, has been locked away as a “state secret.”
“We think it’s always the right of the public to know how bad the situation is,” said Ma Tianjie, an advocate at Greenpeace East Asia who is researching toxic soil. “The Chinese public can accept the fact that our environment is polluted. The important thing is to give them the means to challenge polluters and improve the environment, and not just keep them in the dark.”
There has been some acknowledgment of the problem by top officials. In January, the State Council, China’s cabinet, announced that it would set up systems to comprehensively monitor soil pollution by 2015 and promote pilot projects for treatment.
Scholars say soil pollution is especially acute in Hunan Province, China’s rice bowl. In 2012, Hunan produced 17 million tons of rice, 16 percent of the national total, according to one market research company.
The province is also one of China’s top producers of nonferrous metals. As a result, it is the leading polluter of cadmium, chromium, lead and nonmetal arsenic, according to data collected in 2011 by the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, a research group based in Beijing.
That year, the province was responsible for 41 percent of the nation’s cadmium pollution when measured by its presence in industrial wastewater; the number has not dropped below 30 percent since 2004, when the data were first collected by the group. The wastewater is discharged in rivers, where it flows into irrigation channels.
“There’s this pressure from the central government on Hunan to maintain a high level of yield for rice production,” said Mr. Ma, the Greenpeace program director. “On the other hand, rice production never gives you the same kind of G.D.P. growth that industrial development gives you.”
Hunan’s abundance of raw metals has led to a push by provincial Communist Party leaders to develop mining and smelting there further, leaving officials caught in what Mr. Ma calls a clash of two imperatives: “They have to feed the country with their rice, but they want to grow their economy.”
Among the heavy metals seeping into Hunan’s crops, the worst may be cadmium, which at high levels has been linked to organ failure, weakening of bones and cancer, scientists say.
“Cadmium has a tendency to accumulate in the kidney and liver,” Chen Nengchang, a scholar at the Guangdong Institute of Eco-environment and Soil Sciences. “When the accumulation reaches a certain point, it will pose a serious health risk for the organs.”
Cadmium that accumulates in rice plants gets not only into the rice on China’s tables, but also into animals’ meat, since the husks are fed to farm animals. There is no public data, though, that shows the level of cadmium pollution in food.
Increasingly, Chinese news organizations are reporting on clusters of villages that have high rates of cancer, raising questions about the potential link between cancer and various forms of pollution. Some scientists are now conducting studies.
In July, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Pollution published some findings from a study that drew a direct connection between pollution of the Huai River, which crosses several provinces in central China, and high rates of cancer among people living by the river.
Here in Hunan, and particularly in this area administered by Hengyang City, which includes Ms. Ge’s village, stories of cancer are common.
One woman in the village of Liujiacun said her husband had died in his late 50s of liver cancer. “He didn’t do heavy labor, didn’t smoke, and he would drink only a little bit,” said the widow, who gave only her surname, Li.
As in nearby villages, crops here appear wilted, and the village well is clogged with green muck. These were all sharp changes from Ms. Li’s childhood, she said.
Twenty people live in Chenjiawan now, down from a population of about 100 in 2007, most of them elderly, Ms. Ge said, adding that many recent deaths had been from cancer.
There is no public data drawing a direct connection between these cases and the factories that loom over the farmland. But a 2009 study published in a Chinese journal said that the area’s main crops were “at a high risk of heavy metal contamination,” and that only less than half could be rated “secure” or “good.”
Chinese farmers “have such a profound connection with the land,” said Mr. Chen, the Guangdong soil scientist. “Since China’s household registration system makes it difficult for them to relocate to other areas, there is a sense of fatalism, and they accept whatever comes their way.”
That sense of futility ripples throughout central Hunan. In one part of Hengyang, a mound of industrial waste that has destroyed adjacent farmland has drawn outraged comments from villagers on the Internet. But they expect no action because the nearby factories are tied to local officials, villagers said in interviews.
“There’s no way to close these factories because of local protectionism,” said one farmer, Wang, who wanted to be identified only by his surname for fear of retribution.
For Hunan officials, the mines and factories around Hengyang are central to maintaining the province’s leading role in the production of nonferrous metals, essential for industrial processes like the manufacture of lead-acid car batteries. “It’s difficult to lobby against those companies,” said Sun Cheng, a spokesman for Green Hunan, an advocacy group.
Hunan officials are eager to expand the nonferrous metals industry. In a development plan for the five years ending in 2015, officials have pledged to increase the industry’s revenue by an annual rate of 18 percent, and have approved 80 new projects that have a total investment of under $10 billion.
Given the nationwide health risks, some environmental officials in Beijing have praised recent experiments done by scientists that show certain plants could help clean the soil by absorbing poisons. Still, there has been no sign of action on the State Council’s announced goal for comprehensive monitoring and treatment of soil pollution. Many farmers working their ravaged lands remain fearful and fatalistic.
“You’re born on this earth, you grow up on this earth, and you can’t do anything about it,” Ms. Ge said, sitting in an alley next to a pail of carrots. “Those who are most vulnerable have died. We’re still here wasting away.”
Chris Buckley contributed reporting from Hong Kong, and Patrick Zuo contributed research from Beijing and Chenjiawan.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/31/world/asia/good-earth-no-more-soil-pollution-plagues-chinese-countryside.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Published: December 30, 2013
(Courtesy of the New York Times)
CHENJIAWAN, China — The farm-to-table process in China starts in villages like this one in the agricultural heartland. Food from the fields of Ge Songqing and her neighbors ends up in their kitchens or in the local market, and from there goes to other provinces. The foods are Chinese staples: rice, cabbage, carrots, turnips and sweet potatoes.
But the fields are ringed by factories and irrigated with water tainted by industrial waste. Levels of toxic heavy metals in the wastewater here are among the highest in China, and residents fear the soil is similarly contaminated. Though they have no scientific proof, they suspect that a spate of cancer deaths is linked to the pollution, and worry about lead levels in the children’s blood.
“Of course I’m afraid,” said Ms. Ge, in her 60s, pointing to the smokestacks looming over her fields and the stagnant, algae-filled irrigation canals surrounding a home she shares with a granddaughter and her husband, a former soldier. “But we don’t do physical checkups. If we find out we have cancer, it’s only a burden on the children.”
With awareness of China’s severe environmental degradation rising, there has been a surge of anxiety in the last year among ordinary Chinese and some officials over soil pollution in the country’s agricultural centers and the potential effects on the food chain. In recent years, the government has conducted widespread testing of soil across China, but it has not released the results, adding to the fear and making it more difficult for most Chinese to judge what they eat and pinpoint the offending factories.
An alarming glimpse of official findings came on Monday, when a vice minister of land and resources, Wang Shiyuan, said at a news conference in Beijing that eight million acres of China’s farmland, equal to the size of Maryland, had become so polluted that planting crops on it “should not be allowed.”
A signal moment came in May, when officials in Guangdong Province, in the far south, said they had discovered excessive levels of cadmium in 155 batches of rice collected from markets, restaurants and storehouses. Of those, 89 were from Hunan Province, where Ms. Ge farms.
The report set off a nationwide scare. In June, China Daily, an official English-language newspaper, published an editorial saying that “soil contaminated with heavy metals is eroding the foundation of the country’s food safety and becoming a looming public health hazard.”
One-sixth of China’s arable land — nearly 50 million acres — suffers from soil pollution, according to a book published this year by the Ministry of Environmental Protection. The book, “Soil Pollution and Physical Health,” said that more than 13 million tons of crops harvested each year were contaminated with heavy metals, and that 22 million acres of farmland were affected by pesticides.
But the government has refused to divulge details of the pollution, leaving farmers and consumers in the dark about the levels of contaminants in the food chain. The soil survey, completed in 2010, has been locked away as a “state secret.”
“We think it’s always the right of the public to know how bad the situation is,” said Ma Tianjie, an advocate at Greenpeace East Asia who is researching toxic soil. “The Chinese public can accept the fact that our environment is polluted. The important thing is to give them the means to challenge polluters and improve the environment, and not just keep them in the dark.”
There has been some acknowledgment of the problem by top officials. In January, the State Council, China’s cabinet, announced that it would set up systems to comprehensively monitor soil pollution by 2015 and promote pilot projects for treatment.
Scholars say soil pollution is especially acute in Hunan Province, China’s rice bowl. In 2012, Hunan produced 17 million tons of rice, 16 percent of the national total, according to one market research company.
The province is also one of China’s top producers of nonferrous metals. As a result, it is the leading polluter of cadmium, chromium, lead and nonmetal arsenic, according to data collected in 2011 by the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, a research group based in Beijing.
That year, the province was responsible for 41 percent of the nation’s cadmium pollution when measured by its presence in industrial wastewater; the number has not dropped below 30 percent since 2004, when the data were first collected by the group. The wastewater is discharged in rivers, where it flows into irrigation channels.
“There’s this pressure from the central government on Hunan to maintain a high level of yield for rice production,” said Mr. Ma, the Greenpeace program director. “On the other hand, rice production never gives you the same kind of G.D.P. growth that industrial development gives you.”
Hunan’s abundance of raw metals has led to a push by provincial Communist Party leaders to develop mining and smelting there further, leaving officials caught in what Mr. Ma calls a clash of two imperatives: “They have to feed the country with their rice, but they want to grow their economy.”
Among the heavy metals seeping into Hunan’s crops, the worst may be cadmium, which at high levels has been linked to organ failure, weakening of bones and cancer, scientists say.
“Cadmium has a tendency to accumulate in the kidney and liver,” Chen Nengchang, a scholar at the Guangdong Institute of Eco-environment and Soil Sciences. “When the accumulation reaches a certain point, it will pose a serious health risk for the organs.”
Cadmium that accumulates in rice plants gets not only into the rice on China’s tables, but also into animals’ meat, since the husks are fed to farm animals. There is no public data, though, that shows the level of cadmium pollution in food.
Increasingly, Chinese news organizations are reporting on clusters of villages that have high rates of cancer, raising questions about the potential link between cancer and various forms of pollution. Some scientists are now conducting studies.
In July, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Pollution published some findings from a study that drew a direct connection between pollution of the Huai River, which crosses several provinces in central China, and high rates of cancer among people living by the river.
Here in Hunan, and particularly in this area administered by Hengyang City, which includes Ms. Ge’s village, stories of cancer are common.
One woman in the village of Liujiacun said her husband had died in his late 50s of liver cancer. “He didn’t do heavy labor, didn’t smoke, and he would drink only a little bit,” said the widow, who gave only her surname, Li.
As in nearby villages, crops here appear wilted, and the village well is clogged with green muck. These were all sharp changes from Ms. Li’s childhood, she said.
Twenty people live in Chenjiawan now, down from a population of about 100 in 2007, most of them elderly, Ms. Ge said, adding that many recent deaths had been from cancer.
There is no public data drawing a direct connection between these cases and the factories that loom over the farmland. But a 2009 study published in a Chinese journal said that the area’s main crops were “at a high risk of heavy metal contamination,” and that only less than half could be rated “secure” or “good.”
Chinese farmers “have such a profound connection with the land,” said Mr. Chen, the Guangdong soil scientist. “Since China’s household registration system makes it difficult for them to relocate to other areas, there is a sense of fatalism, and they accept whatever comes their way.”
That sense of futility ripples throughout central Hunan. In one part of Hengyang, a mound of industrial waste that has destroyed adjacent farmland has drawn outraged comments from villagers on the Internet. But they expect no action because the nearby factories are tied to local officials, villagers said in interviews.
“There’s no way to close these factories because of local protectionism,” said one farmer, Wang, who wanted to be identified only by his surname for fear of retribution.
For Hunan officials, the mines and factories around Hengyang are central to maintaining the province’s leading role in the production of nonferrous metals, essential for industrial processes like the manufacture of lead-acid car batteries. “It’s difficult to lobby against those companies,” said Sun Cheng, a spokesman for Green Hunan, an advocacy group.
Hunan officials are eager to expand the nonferrous metals industry. In a development plan for the five years ending in 2015, officials have pledged to increase the industry’s revenue by an annual rate of 18 percent, and have approved 80 new projects that have a total investment of under $10 billion.
Given the nationwide health risks, some environmental officials in Beijing have praised recent experiments done by scientists that show certain plants could help clean the soil by absorbing poisons. Still, there has been no sign of action on the State Council’s announced goal for comprehensive monitoring and treatment of soil pollution. Many farmers working their ravaged lands remain fearful and fatalistic.
“You’re born on this earth, you grow up on this earth, and you can’t do anything about it,” Ms. Ge said, sitting in an alley next to a pail of carrots. “Those who are most vulnerable have died. We’re still here wasting away.”
Chris Buckley contributed reporting from Hong Kong, and Patrick Zuo contributed research from Beijing and Chenjiawan.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/31/world/asia/good-earth-no-more-soil-pollution-plagues-chinese-countryside.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Thursday, January 2, 2014
Re: Hindu Religious Pollution in AM
~ Baba ~
Namaskar.
It seems that the dogma of celebrating mahaprayan divas is extending its steps in those who have not eliminated Hindu dogmatic rituals of shraddha and not understood the Caryacarya rules given by Rev. Baba.
It is very common thinking for people to follow the example set by seniors or sadhus / pandits of the society. Our acharyas and avadhutas - by their acts / behavior / and deeds i.e. conduct - are the guiding factors to not only margiis but also the general people. Hence the general people start following them without any consideration of right or wrong as they have blind faith in Sadhus to be always true.
This should be opposed and truth should be discussed before all. There is no place for dogma in Ananda Marga. There are clear directions in Caryacarya about what should be done and what should not be done as a shraddha of the deceased .
As far as distribution of blankets and other edible things are concerned, they are also prohibited on the name of so-called mahaprayan, but it can be often done as narayan seva, i.e. providing full diet to the needy person with full honor and love, as we serve to our near and dear. But this narayan seva must be done on a different occasion - not on the death day or annual death day ceremony etc - otherwise that will be like following Hindu dogma, punya tithi (annual commemoration).
If this dogma of distributing blankets and food during shraddha ceremony is introduced and supported by our WTs in Ananda Marga, the day is sure to come when the WTs will become the professional pandits like Hindu priests. It is shameful.
Respectfully,
T.R. Sukul
Re: HINDU RELIGIOUS POLLUTION IN
AM
(Note: This letter is in follow-up to an
earlier posting - excerpts of which are appended below. A
link to read entire letter is also available below. - Eds)
Namaskar.
It seems that the dogma of celebrating mahaprayan divas is extending its steps in those who have not eliminated Hindu dogmatic rituals of shraddha and not understood the Caryacarya rules given by Rev. Baba.
It is very common thinking for people to follow the example set by seniors or sadhus / pandits of the society. Our acharyas and avadhutas - by their acts / behavior / and deeds i.e. conduct - are the guiding factors to not only margiis but also the general people. Hence the general people start following them without any consideration of right or wrong as they have blind faith in Sadhus to be always true.
This should be opposed and truth should be discussed before all. There is no place for dogma in Ananda Marga. There are clear directions in Caryacarya about what should be done and what should not be done as a shraddha of the deceased .
As far as distribution of blankets and other edible things are concerned, they are also prohibited on the name of so-called mahaprayan, but it can be often done as narayan seva, i.e. providing full diet to the needy person with full honor and love, as we serve to our near and dear. But this narayan seva must be done on a different occasion - not on the death day or annual death day ceremony etc - otherwise that will be like following Hindu dogma, punya tithi (annual commemoration).
If this dogma of distributing blankets and food during shraddha ceremony is introduced and supported by our WTs in Ananda Marga, the day is sure to come when the WTs will become the professional pandits like Hindu priests. It is shameful.
Respectfully,
T.R. Sukul
To: ananda-marga-universal-forum-3@yogasamsthanam.net
Date: Tue, 17 Dec 2013 11:37:35 -0000
From: Dr. Veda Prakash
Subject: Hindu Religious Pollution in AM
HOW PRIESTS FILL THEIR BELLY
WITH FOOD OFFERED TO THE DECEASED
"A priest may say that your father will die only once, and so after his death you should arrange for a sufficient quantity of food-stuffs, a sufficient quantity of edibles, a sufficient quantity of clothes, etc., for him. And that has been done in India for about five thousand years, since the time of the Atharva Veda. And people have generally offered rice and sesame, also honey and ghee, to be consumed by that person who has left the world."
"Regarding these things, Maharshi Charvaka (he lived in India about 2500 years ago, during the time of Lord Buddha. He was a bit senior to Lord Buddha. Charvaka’s disciple, Ajit Kusum, was a contemporary of Lord Buddha) said “If you are in a room, and another man is in the courtyard a few yards away, and you offer rice and sesame for that man, he won’t get that rice and sesame, and his hunger won’t be satisfied. And if a man is in another world, Aparaloka, and you are offering rice and sesame for him, will he get them? Is it reasonable? No, no. All these things are exploitation by the privileged class.”"
"After offering rice, sesame, clothes, etc., what do you find? The rice is consumed by the purohita in his house. Go to his kitchen, and all that rice is being consumed by his family. That dhuti which is being offered by you for your late father is being used by the purohita, and the sháŕii by the purohita patnii; and the gamci, the towel, if it is surplus, is sold in the market. And the utensils are also sold in the market. So your deceased father, your parents, who are now inhabitants of Aparaloka, won’t get anything."
"And the second thing you will see, or you will feel, is that they do not require these things. The microcosm, or unit spirit, does not require any food or clothes or sesame or utensils. All these ideas are scoundrels’ philosophy. And they have been doing this type of exploitation for the last five thousand years, since the time of the Atharva Veda." (1)
BABA'S DHARMIC DIRECTIVE:
HOW TO ATTEND SHRADDHA CEREMONY
Baba's instructions in Caryacarya for performing the shraddha ceremony are very simple and straightforward. There is the recitation of the mantra followed by a sharing of water, and that is the entire ceremony.
Instead of Baba's given system, see what is happening nowadays.
COMMON OCCURRENCE NOWADAYS:
OFFERINGS TO THE PUBLIC
These days several dogmatic trends have made their way into our Ananda Marga shradda (death) ceremonies - aka shra'ddhanustha'nas. Here following is a critical point that we see again and again - plus other issues are brought to the fore as well.
So that the deceased does not suffer in the cold or become hungry in heaven, family members engage in the mass distribution of blankets and clothing (see attached photos) - as well as food distribution (narayan seva). They think their offerings will actually reach to their dear one in heaven.
Yet Baba has strictly forbidden such things in our Ananda Marga system. Our shraddha ceremony is to be performed in a simple, dignified, and respectful manner, without any ostentatious, pompous display or costly arrangements, as happens in Hindu dogma. In our Ananda Marga, the occasion of death is a time to offer the departed soul to the all-merciful Parama Purusa. There is no scope in such a ceremony to offer material goods to the deceased. Yet that has suddenly been undermined by the presence of Hindu dogma.
Hindus think that by offering food and blankets then their deceased relative in heaven will get the virtue (punya) of that offering. Such persons actually believe they can enhance the stature and comfort of the deceased through this ritual. They think that blankets given to the poor will be automatically transferred to their loved one in heaven - thus the deceased will be warm. This is their motivating rationale.
Now in our Ananda Marga that same approach has been taken - tragically.
TO READ PROPER LETTER IN FULL CLICK BELOW
LINK
http://anandamargauniversal.blogspot.com/2013/12/hindu-religious-pollution-in-am.html
http://anandamargauniversal.blogspot.com/2013/12/hindu-religious-pollution-in-am.html
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