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Joining me on this
debate tonight..
I have ofcourse
Law Mininister Salman Khurshid,
He is ofcourse an
MP from Uttar Pradesh
as well..
I am also joined by Malika Sarabhai
a well known
artist and activist from Ahmedabad
With me in studio is
Madhu Kishwar editor of Manushi..
and also professor at CSDS..
And Rahul Easwar..
Er..Mr.Khurshid..
Sri Sri Ravishankar in his
press conference says that the
congress is scared..
of his yatra..
What do you feel?
You feel that this something that..
Are spiritual leaders..
stepping dangerously close
into the political arena..
Are the lines blurring?
Is that a good thing?
Well..
its..er..
how they feel if we
started getting into spirituality..
Er..i think that..
each of of us have..
have our area of expertise
and our area of..
of operation..
And an area of accountability..
and..er..
And i would imagine that..
er..some of these things
should be best left to
politicians and people in public life..
But of course this is a
Democracy and nobody can
be prohibited or restricted or..
or confined to any area..
they want to participate in
public discourse in
which ever manner
they wish to do so..
Yatra is becoming very popular..
so..
I can only wish him best and..
and I hope that he succeds
in his objective..
because thats an objective
that we don’t disagree with..
The objective is that..
we must have..
good governance in
this country..
and no corruption..
Bring in Rahul Easwar
at that point..
power can always be heady..
When Baba Ramdev came in..
or tried to enter
the political arena..
we saw the whole weight
that came of the
government establishment
against him raising question of
where his money, etc
is coming from..
Do you think these tactics
actually are used to discourage
spiritual leaders?
Do you think spiritual..
or do you think spiritual leaders
should actually stay away
from whats seen as a
dirty game of politics..
Even thou it is not advisable
for religious leaders to
directly interfere or
endorse party A or B..
but spiritual leaders
should not shy away from
taking responsibility in social,
cultural and political spheres..
Spiritual leaders should
actively interfere,
intervene in uplifting
social and political arenas..
One example you
missed out in NDTV
or the example of the
Father of our nation who
was as much as
a spiritual leader..
as much as
a political leader he was..
So they should be
involved in uplifting..
Because India is a secular
as well as spiritually
rich cultural nation..
So the pulse of the nation
is spirituality and they
should not shy away..
Am not saying all
saffron clad Babas are good..
There are many people..
Even in the time of Ravana..
he wore a saffron robe
and kidnapped Sita..
to..
even nowadays where
swamis are more interested
in reality TV than
the reality of Indian situation..
There are many
fake and pseudo coins..
We should understand..
Always remember..
it is not a question of Godmen..
It is a question of
good men Vs bad men..
Its a question of
baba Vs black sheep..
So we should chose good men..
who can inspire people..
who can..
involve in socio cultural
and political arena..
And we should never forget..
one of the first Indian
freedom struggles is
the sanyasi rebellion..
Where hindu sanyasis,
fakirs have all joined
hand against the foreign rule..
So spiritual leaders
should actively involve
in social process..
More important to me Sonia..
the biggest challenge is
that our religious establishment
had allowed politicians..
To take over..
all the space..
For example..
politicians in every state
are presiding over..
the major religious devastanams..
Whether it is CPM in Kerala,
or its congress party..
coming to power in..
you know west Bengal..
whatever..
Each one of these parties have..
true laws..
dating back to the
British and then ofcourse
amending it..
taken over religious establishments
and their managements..
so bureaucrats and politicians
taking over and managing
our religious institutions is
far more dangerous than
an anti corrupt movement
being led be an assortment of..
er..spiritual gurus..
And considering that
the mass space that
Sri Sri Ravishankar or
the yoga guru Ramdev has..
They are not like
Swami Narendra Brahmachari..
no politician in this country..
can get together 3 4 or 5 lakh
people without..
spending crores of rupee..
And drugs to..
get them.. And drugs too..
There is an interesting point..
Actually the transition on
the spiritual gurus
we showed in the earlier days..
Indira Gandhi years and
Narasimha Rao years..
it was an almost parallel
or as you said..
er..
have more of a mass space
than the politicians..
And an independent financial base..
But..but..
I just want to bring in
Rahul Easwar on that point..
Sonia ji,
like you earlier said..
this..this is an artificial divide..
social and spiritual..
they are not contradictory..
they are complimentary..
materialism and spiritualism
are not contradictory..
they are complimentary..
It is a holistic approach
towards life,
nation building..
For example,
our father of the nation..
Mahatma Gandhi to
Anna Hazare was inspired
by Swami Vivekananda..
They said their love for
the nation has increased
many thousand folds
because of Vivekananda..
You know..
both you and er..
Rahul Easwar mentioned
Digvijay Singh and have
kind of said you know..
he makes..er..
these remarks..
bizzare remarks..
so the point is Digvijay Singh
seems to have a clear..
political aim in mind..
I think his aim is
to destroy the congress party..
no but..
because everytime he
opens his mouth..
he is really damaging his party..
and I’m saying
contrast it with Salman Khurshid..
er..
and Mr.Digvijay Singh seems
to be labouring under the illusion..
the moment he says X Y Z
is BJP inspired,
hes damned it all..
and hes said it all..
er..RSS..BJP..RSS..
It doesn’t work..
Today the entire country..
is deeply agitated
over corruption..
including those who
may not agree..
with the formula that
the team Anna has proposed..
And I think they would
have all stayed together
but for the fact that
Mr. Arvind Kejeriwal..
sidelines them one by one..
one by one..
where otherwise the main stay
on the anti corruption movement..
er..which later on came
to be known as
team Anna’s movement..
was Sri Sri Raviishankar
and Baba Ramdev..
If the BJP and RSS took
anti corruption movement seriously,
I’d rather they engage
in these..
serious life and death issues..
So for me RSS moving
away from all those
divisive issues..
into this..
would be..
honestly a happy sign..
Always remember..
by using the word politics..
the word politics is not bad..
it is very sad to say
that the word politics is bad..
politics is nation building..
serving the nation..
But..
but i agree..i agree..
i don’t disagree
with Madhu Kishwar..
I agree with that point..
They should not go
down to by partition politics
or party politics..
I agree with that..
But we should
always remember..
these people should be
allowed to critize
or comment or give feedback
to the society..
because they are well
connected to the ground..
And if politics
can be spiritualised..
what Gandhiji calls politics
with principles..
that will be ideal..
and I should..
I seriously believe..
I am..
I really like many
people in congress..
we respect people like
Pranab Mukherjee or
Salman Khurshid..
but for Sri Digvijay Singh
to say..
with contempt and irreverence
to Anna Hazare,
Sri Sri Ravishankar..and
call Osama..Osamaji..
it is nothing but double standard..
So we should not
take Digvijay serious..
we should..
i think even congress
should take a holistic
view of the situation..
and help spiritualize politics
and purify politics..