My Country, My life – L.K. Advani – Part 2

My Country, My life – L.K. Advani – Part 2

What are you? Which in a more straight forward way meant ‘What is your caste’ – LKA

About 1957 election:
Of the 3 places I contested from, I forfeited my deposit in one (Mathura), lost by a thin margin in another (Lucknow) and won handsomely in the third (Balrampur)
- Atal Bihari Vajpayee

If a political leader wants to succeed in conflict prevention and resolution,he or she should develop six basic qualities. Keeping one’s ears to the ground through constant interaction with the masses, impartiality, sincerity, patience, fairness and firmness
- LKA

Free press can of course be good or bad, but most certainly without freedom, the press will never be anything but bad – Albert Camus, Nobel Laureate, French Novelist

The pursuit of happiness is linked not to one’s rights, but to one’s duties. The first duty that is enjoyed on an adult individual is to take care of one’s parents – LKA

No, I cannot do it. For there will be too much of ‘I’ in it which I dislike – Deendayalji

I will write about issues, not about myself – Deendayalji

Deendayalji’s utter inability and unwillingness to think about himself was of a kind that is unimaginable today – LKA

Communist mentality – “ Who ever is not with them being against them”

I (Nehru) will crush Jana Sangh to which Dr.Mookerjee retorted “And we will crush this crushing mentality of the PM

Nehru did not show Dr. Rajendra Prasad the respect he deserved both on account of the high constitutional office he held and his significant contribution to the freedom movement

Kosygm said to Shastri- You will have to give up Hajipir & Tithwa. Shastri had even retorted, In that case, you would have to talk to some other Prime Minister

To put the world right in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right – Confucious 551-479 BC

The only CM who sent me back empty handed without contributing any amount to the Rock Memorial Fund (at Kanyakumari,Vivekananda Smarak) was the then Kerala CM, EMS. I can say this much about my abortive interview with him. It was like conversing with a sphinx. It was monologue all the way on my part. Only an empty stare from the other side – Eknath Ranade

I do not want to rest & rust. Life without work is like death to me – God will keep me as long as He wishes, let me work – Eknath Ranande

Let every man make known what kind of Government would command his respect and that will be one step toward obtaining it – Henry David Thoreau

Lord Macaulay’s remarks in his address to British parliament on 02 Feb 1835 –
I have traveled across length and breadth of India and I have not seen one single person who is a beggar, who is a thief. Such wealth I have seen in this country, such high moral values, people of such caliber, that I do not think that we could ever conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her cultural & spiritual heritage and, therefore, I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that all that is foreign & English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self esteem, their native culture and they will become what we want them – a truly dominated nation

In life, we shall find many men
that are great, and some men that are good, but a very few men that are both great and good – Charles Celeb Cotton 18th Century English Writer

There is a quotation that says: “ The younger generation these days has no respect for elders. They are not carrying forward the traditions of the past. They are getting corrupted. Things were so good when we were young – Socrates
“So now you see that this complaint against the younger generation has been going on since the past 2000 yrs and it will continue in the future too”

A monotonous life lived without any purpose or direction, is not worth much. To achieve anything big in life, you should be prepared to risk your all and take a leap of faith for whatever they believed in – Deendayalji

A flower is what it is because of its petals, and the worth of the petals lies in remaining with the flower and adding to its beauty

Democracy has a habit of making itself generally disagreeable by asking the powers - that be at the most inconvenient moment whether they are the powers that ought to be
- James Russell Lowett, an American Poet

Change is the only constant

Conscience in the singular is a virtue where as, in the plural, it is a conspiracy. It is tantamount to indulging in collective indiscipline

The map of Indian subcontinent was redrawn with the birth of Bangladesh,the delivery being mid-wifed by India

History repeats itself first and second time as a farce – Karl Marx

India’s victory in 1971 war was quite simply the grandest hour in the annals of our Armed forces

Today, politics has ceased to be a means. It has become an end in itself. We have today people who are engaged in power politics rather than aim at political power with a view to achieving certain lofty social and natural objectives – Deeddayal Upadhyaya

Youdhishthira commanded Arjuna to go for the rescue of the Kauravas saying “ Between ourselves we are five and they are hundred. But before the enemy, we are hundred plus five”

Autocratic power everywhere entrenches itself and tends to perpetuate itself in the name of public good. History records that abuse of constitutional despotism inevitably leads to absolute despotism
- K. Subba Rao, Ex- Chief Justice of India

Freedom became one of the beacon lights of my life and it has remained so ever since. Freedom with the passing of years transcended the mere freedom of my country and embraced freedom of man everywhere and every sort of trammel- above all, it meant freedom of the human personality, freedom of the mind, freedom of the spirit. This freedom has become the passion of my life and I shall not see it compromised for bread, for security, for prosperity, for the glory of the state or for anything else.
-Jayaprakash Narayan

Article 352 of Indian constitution – Clause for Emergency

I could not believe my ears when Indira Gandhi said that the country needed to be saved from a massive conspiracy by the opposition – LKA

Nation is more important than democracy. We felt that the country has developed a disease and if is to be cured soon, it has to be given a dose of medicine. The child may sometime cry and we may have to say “ Take the medicine, otherwise you will not get cured.” So we gave this bitter medicine (emergency) to the nation. Now when the child suffers, the mother suffers too. Thus we are not very pleased to take this step. We were also sad.
- Indira Gandhi on Emergency

If a person jailed during the Emergency is shot down by those in the authority for personal reasons, do you mean to suggest that his associates have no judicial remedy?? The attorney General is said to have replied,” I don’t feel happy saying this, but legally Lordship, that is precisely the position

A vigorous opposition, a free press & an independent judiciary are the three essential features of democracy

The hallmark of every dictatorial regime is that it is never honest and transparent with its own people

The relationship between the assassin and the victim is deep and enduring. Death only openly and finally brings them together. Of course, there are tyrants who turn virtually everyone in a country into a prospective assassin and leaders who build bastions against their assassination in the minds of men, there by reducing the circle of prospective assassins to the microscopic group of psychopaths & the mentally ill – LKA

A dictator must fool all the people all the time and there is only one way to do that, he must also fool himself _ William Somerset Maugham

I think the public sector should function only in competition with the private sector and where it cannot function in competition with the private sector,it should be allowed to die a natural death – Sanjay Gandhi