Page 61 - DENG101_Communication Skills-I

Communication Skills-I

Notes cooling in some regions, generally over and downwind of heavily industrialized areas.
Global warming has occurred in the distant past as the result of natural influences, but the

term is today most often used to refer to the warming some scientists predict will occur as
a result of increased anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. The usual method to
research about this phenomenon is to measure the surface-air temperature over time. Some
people blame the nature for the temperature increase while other points at human causes,
such as our cars, industries that pollutes the air with Carbon Dioxide and farmers in the
third world that pollutes the air with methane gas. Both Carbon Dioxide and Methane are
Greenhouse gases. Since the late 19th century, we have experienced a rise in average global
temperatures approximated between 0.6C and 0.2C.

11. Make notes after reading the following text. Use Linear method.
Spiritual Basis of Satyagraha
Gandhi is too near us in time to enable us to judge him from the perspective of history
and human thought. Patriots may call him “Father of the Nation”; historians may call him
the “Liberator of India”. However, it must not be forgotten that he was a Mahatma in the
line of the great men who have stood, fought and suffered for vindicating the moral and
spiritual values against the forces of barbarism.
The shifting code of behaviour accepted by one age or one civilization had little appeal for
him. He stood for the supremacy of the eternal Moral Order, of which the prophets had
spoken and the poets had sung. His achievements were all the more notable because he
lived and worked in an age which, by and large, ignores God and scoffs at morals in the
matter of social and political activities. He did not only stand for the Moral Order; he tried
to translate it into his individual life. He came to pledge himself progressively not only
to non-violence and truth but also non-stealing, non-waste and non-possession―ahimsa,
satya, asteya, brahmacharya and aparigraha―described by Patanjali in the Yoga Sutra
as the mahavratas (the great vows), which a yogi has to observe regardless of time and
place.
Truth was God to Gandhi. “Once I believed that God is Truth”, he wrote once. “I now
believe that Truth is God”. “God as Truth”, he wrote, “has been for me a treasure beyond
price. May He be so to every one of us.” His whole life was an experiment in living for
truth, a mighty effort to weld thought, word and deed into a unit. His achievements, great
though they were, were only a partial expression of this effort.

Living by Truth in this sense led him to two far-reaching conclusions: first, pursuit of Truth
in the individual life can only be the keystone of enduring creative activity; secondly,
whosoever seeks to realise Truth must be ready to back it up with his life. To use the
beautiful words of Romain Rolland: “A man’s first duty is to be himself, to remain himself

even at the cost of life.”
Truth, thus viewed, is the only spiritual charter for free souls. It is the assertion of the
dignity of man. It is a revolt against regimentation of life; against passive subordination
to dogmas, social, political or religious; against the despotic unity which is being imposed
by the political and social theories of modern Europe which deify the state. At the same
time, Gandhi felt that living for one’s truth may become unethical unless it is harnessed to
nonviolence. It was this alchemy of welding truth with nonviolence which led him to forge
the weapon of satyagraha (literally “insistence on truth”).

If one decides to stand up for the truth as one sees it and backs it up with one’s life, one must
also accept the limitations of nonviolence and abjure the use of brute force. If this is done,
the technique acquires a new edge and a fresh meaning. The use of satyagraha carries with
it many and varied implications. The man who adopts the weapon has to direct it against
the evil, not the evil-doer, a very difficult thing to do without a continuous process of self-

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