July 10, 2012

Age needs respect, not jobs for life

Sometimes, one wonders if the old Mughal technique of powerful princes imprisoning their Emperor-Dads and grabbing power is not a better way to ring out the old and bring in new ideas to governance.
In modern-day India, the thought processes on this score are ancient. The young are not leading, and the old are not retiring — or even receding gracefully into the background. Whether it is politics of sport or even business, old is oversold. We respect age too much, and have been paying a price for it.
The country’s median age is about 26. Some 30 percent of the population is minor — below 14. And 95 percent of India’s population is below 64, but we are ruled usually by people well above that age… When the old stay on for too long, they are likely to fail for want of better ideas, newer approaches to 21st century challenges. India is a young country, and the first reform we need to is to ask the old to retire gracefully to make way for new ideas. Age needs respect, not jobs for life at the cost of the young and fit.

The Ashram Trust was thus formed to safeguard the numerous Ashram properties which were in the name of the Mother, who remained a French citizen… Thus the Ashram Trust deed was not drafted keeping in mind the future of the Ashram. It was primarily meant to protect the properties of the Ashram in the changed political circumstances of Pondicherry, for the Ashram properties might have been even confiscated under the Indian law which had not yet come into force in 1955. The Trust Deed was thus hurriedly drafted and registered at Vanur, which comes under Tamilnadu… This is the reason why there are no bye-laws in it, no elaborate framework of rules except the most basic rules for sadhana, and no contingency plans for the future. There was no need for them at that point of time, because the Mother was very active and visited the Playground every day to oversee the physical education of the children. The Trust Deed was thus written keeping the Mother in the centre with absolute powers over the disciples and properties of the Ashram, and it does not anticipate the state of affairs in the Ashram in the case of the Mother’s withdrawal of her physical presence.
We have come here for Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and it is their work that we do. So how can anyone take away our work just because we are fighting those...
RYD wrote... Thanks for this lucid and plainspoken post. Such a note of clarification was overdue but now things can be seen with a better perspective. The post says:>>It is never too late for the... Continue >>
H Acharya wrote... Over the recent years, plenty of similar appeals have been made to the managing trustee, from the hands of senior sadhaks and devotees of all shades from far and near. Yet, all these pleas have... Continue >>
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