The country has hosted in the past a galaxy of statesmen, philosophers, orators, authors, academics, monks and also luminaries remembered for their lyrically expressed words of wisdom in many languages with or without script. Whatever is presently available in libraries of institutions and personal possessions of the country’s literati may be a small part of their contributions spanning several centuries. Although the times they lived is vastly different from our days on many counts, particularly emphasis on the principle of simple living and high thinking, the message of tolerance in a society marked by wide diversity is more relevant than at anytime in the past, considering the present scenario of public speakers with mass following sowing seeds of hatred and violence, purposefully dividing the people at large from the angles of their faiths, beliefs, tongues, ethnicity, regions and economic factors. Their voices, louder as they are tending to drown the voice of good samaritans, have left aam janata dumb-founded.
The genre of leaders, supported by the coterie of their mass following, not only take refuge under the land’s Constitution, highlighting only the provisions that suit their cause but also quote lines attributed to the land’s past social reformers, prompting one to liken their piety to the idiom Devil quoting the scripture.
