The Book of Life

ARTICLES OF WISDOM with the tensions that prevailed at the UN only five years ago after the Soviet downing of Korean airliner flight 007, with the loss of 269 lives. The “Soviet foreign minister, Mr Andrei Gromyko, planned to come to the UN to explain his country’s actions, but the governors of New York and New Jersey denied permission for his plane to land at their commercial airports, and the state department insisted on a landing at a military base. Mr Gromyko cancelled his visit. In the meantime, homeless activists angered by Gorbachev’s plans to visit New York city’s opulent Trump Tower are inviting the Soviet president to a homeless shelter and food line to get “a more balanced and realistic view of our nation.” (The Times of India, December 7, 1988). A COMPARISON L ord Macaulay (T. B. Macaulay, 1800-1859) came to India in 1834. As a senior member of the Supreme Council of India, he introduced an education system that eventually spread throughout the country as the “English Education System.” In Macaulay’s own words, the aim of this system was to create a generation that would be Indian by birth but English in thought: “So that a generation may arise which will be Indian in birth and English in thought.” Almost all Muslim leaders, young and old alike (with