________________ VAISALI REMINDS US OF OUR PAST GLORY* DR. ZAKIR HUSSAIN VAISALI (Muzaffarpur), April 3, Paying glowing tribute to the memory of Vardhman Mahavir, Dr Zakir Hussain, Governor of Bihar, while inaugurating the Mahavir Jayanti Festival at Vaisbali fourteenth on April 2, 1958, recalled the ancient glories of the North Eastern Republics and the associations of this hallowed ground with Rama, Laksamana and Vissvamitra, with Mabavir and Gautam, and Faizullah Shattari, layer on layer, as it were, of spiritual endeavour, leaving its marks in the composite culture of which we are heirs--a precious heritage which we can never do too much to deserve and to build upon and enrich. Emphasising the urgent need for Indians and for the world to combine ethical and spiritual considerations with scientific insight and technical skill in order to assure the development of an ethically regulated and rationally efficient human life, Dr. Husain said : Two things have driven man out of his original paradise : excessive numbers and a miserly nature. Through the first, man lost his freedom in space, every where a clash with his fellowmen, at every turn a rubbing of shoulders with his kind, and thus man became the slave of society. Through the second, the miserliness of nature, man lost his freedom in time. An unresponsive nature forced him to spend long hours in unpleasant toil, robbed him of his leisure, and man became a slave of nature. World history, in a sense, is a record of Man's attempt to free bimself from the fetters forged by nature. (1) Different types of humanity have come into being in the attempt to discover and build the roads of return to the lost paradise of freedom and leisure. Chief among these, Dr. Hussain suggested were the way of emigration, (2) the way of exploitation of the weaker by the stronger, (3) the way of ethical regulation and self control, (4) the way of the conquest of nature. Dr. Hussain characterised them as the way backwards, the way upwards, the way inwards and the way forwards. The last two, the way inwards and the way of integrated personality and * (As reported in The Searchlight, dated April 4, 1958) Courtesy : Sri Nagendra Prasad Singh, Vaisali.
