HEALTH-Disease or Starvation

Priests and Kings A Correspondent writes:
THE current phase of Hindu revivalism in India is at times both tragic and comic On the one hand, we find a young woman burning herself on her husband's funeral pyre in a Rajasthan village. On the other hand, newspapers entertain us with a picture of the Lok Sabha speaker, Balram Jakhar, his head touching in obeisance the skinny foot of a half-naked sadhu called Devraha Baba at the latter's ashram in Vrindavan! Yet another veteran politician of the party that is claiming to take us into the 21st century, Kamlapathi Tripathi, informs us that the Baba is 300 years old, and lets out the secret that even Indira Gandhi used to pay visits to the Baba to seek his blessings.