In nature there exists no democracy, nor equality

Mr.Natwar Singh’s mourning thoughts:

• Even today, 36 per cent of men and 45 per cent of women cannot read or write. Yet, almost all of them know their Ramayan and Mahabharat well. A couplet from Tulsidas clinches an argument.

• A striking linguistic feature of our national language Hindi is its undemocratic underpinning. Hindi-speakers address one set of people as aap, another group is demoted to tum, and finally there is the ubiquitous tu. No reform will change this linguistic Hindi uniqueness.

• In nature there exists no democracy, nor equality. Who have suffered the most in the floods in China and Pakistan? The poor. Who have been at the fiery end in Russia? The poor. Against nature’s arbitrariness and fury, we human beings have no armour or shelter. Nature holds all the aces. What about Surya Dev (the Sun)? Surely He or It shines over every one. Yes, but its divine rays produce a Sahara, a Greenland and the ever-dark forests of the Amazon. The conclusion is inescapable, nature triumphs. This is not fatalism. This is reality. We are at the mercy of nature.