Politics is a disease

Question 1:

Milarepa, you are not a politician. You don't need any exposure. You are a sannyasin already dancing in the sun, in the rain, in the wind, not hiding anything from others.

That is one of the most fundamental principles of sannyas - not to hide. Just be open and available.

No doors, no windows of your heart should be closed, so a fresh breeze can go on coming, keeping you always fresh, always ready for any adventure, always waiting for something divine to happen.

You become a host who is waiting for the guest.

The people who close themselves and keep all their windows closed, all their doors closed, live in stale air and a stale life. No new breeze can come to refresh them. They never become young; they are born old, or perhaps born dead. They never go for an adventure looking into the unknown. They are so afraid that some window may open. They are worried about strong winds. They are worried about a man like me, who is nothing but a strong wind who goes on hitting on your closed window, knocking: "Please open the window." Closed from everywhere, you are already in your grave.

I have often told a beautiful Sufi story. A great king was very much afraid of death, afraid of being assassinated by his own prime minister, by his own sons, by his own army. He made a beautiful palace with no windows, no doors, just one door to enter by. And at that door he had put seven guards - one guard to guard the house, a second guard to guard the first guard, a third guard to guard the second guard... that way. He lived in paranoia. He could not trust anyone, could not love anyone, and naturally could not receive love, could not receive trust. And a life which is without love, without trust, is a life which has no juice; it is dry bones. The man is just a skeleton.

The palace was made, and he was very happy that now no enemy agent, no assassin, no murderer, no kidnapper, could enter into the house. The guarding was so guardedly done that even a guard could not do anything; the other guard would shoot him immediately.

The neighboring king heard about the palace. He was also in the same difficulty - insecurity, fear, death. And the more you have, the more you make people jealous, the more insecurity you create around yourself.

He came to visit the king just to see his palace, and it was marvelous. He said, "I have no words to appreciate your wisdom. You have done something nobody has done before - such a security measure!"

The owner of the palace was very happy. He went out to give him a send-off. Just before sitting on his golden chariot, the neighboring king again said, "I appreciate your palace and the architect and I would like you to send your architect to me. I want to make a similar palace in my kingdom. I am in the same difficulties - we are in the same boat."

The king said, "No problem. I will send the architect, and whatever help you need I am always available."

Just at that moment, when the neighboring king was appreciating the palace, a beggar sitting on the street started laughing. His laughter was very derisive.

The owner of the palace asked the beggar, "What is the matter? Why are you laughing?"

He said, "I am laughing because the palace is perfect but only almost perfect, not absolutely perfect.

I have been sitting here begging every day, and I was wondering: Are you aware or not that one door is still there and that death will enter from that door? - and your guards will not be able to prevent it.

And you don't have any other door in your house to escape from, either.

"My suggestion is that you go inside, and rather than putting guards, tell the architect to close up this door too and make a wall - then you will be absolutely protected; even death cannot enter."

The king said, "You must be mad! - because what kind of life will that be? I will be suffocated! And whether I live or not, it makes no difference; that will not be a palace, that will be my grave."

The beggar said, "You are a little intelligent. Now look at the whole mathematics of what you have done: you have closed all the windows, all the doors, and as you went on closing the windows and the doors you were cutting off your life. Your life is now only this small door. You could have been as free as I am. The whole sky is mine." He was a naked monk. The naked monks in India are called digambaras. Digambara means one whose only garments are the sky and the stars - otherwise he is naked.

The story is significant. A sannyasin has taken a path where he will open himself to people, to the trees, to the birds, to the ocean, to the river. He will not live in fear; fearlessness will be his flavor.

Death comes... to everybody it comes, and because it is so certain, there is no need to have fear about it. In life, except death everything is uncertain; it may happen, it may not happen. But about death you can be certain.

When it is absolutely certain - and nobody in the whole history of the world has been able to escape it - your worrying about it is absolutely unnecessary. It will come when the time is ripe; it cannot be prevented. So you can forget all about it. It is none of your business. It is part of existence to decide when to change your body and give you a new body, a new form.

Your concern is to live as totally now as possible, not being concerned with death but being totally in love with life.

Life affirmation is the essence of sannyas.

You do not need, Milarepa, any exposure. By becoming a sannyasin you have accepted to expose yourself on your own.

Politicians need exposure because in their cupboards there are many skeletons. Every politician is a criminal, but a successful criminal.

There are two types of criminals: successful criminals who become powerful and make history, and the unsuccessful criminals who are encaged in jails, in prison, and die an ignominious death... who live meaninglessly and die meaninglessly.

The successful criminal, once in a while you catch him. For example, President Nixon was caught.

If you had not caught him, you would have never thought that he was a criminal. In history, he would have remained a great president of a great country.

It is important to remember what Mao Tse-tung of China said when Nixon resigned from the presidency in utter shame. Mao Tse-tung said, "I don't understand at all what crime Nixon has done - because we politicians do the same things everywhere. His fault is just that the poor man has been caught - not that he committed any crimes, but that he has been caught."

And you must remember that even after Nixon was no longer president, Mao Tse-tung sent a special presidential plane from China to pick him up and bring him to China to have a holiday, to give him solace and to tell him, "You have not done anything wrong. Don't feel guilty. Every politician is doing the same; you just have to do it carefully."

Joseph Stalin killed over one million Russians, and Russia did not have one million rich people; those one million people were poor people - the people for whom the revolution was done, in whose name Stalin was the dictator, in whose name he was ruling the land. Why were those poor people murdered? They were not aware that in choosing the Communist Party and going through a revolution they were committing a mistake; they only thought that the communists were going to make everybody rich. They had no other idea.

Their idea was simple - they were simple people: that when the Communist Party is in power everybody will be rich and happy, employed. But when the Communist Party came into power thousands of other things started happening, which the people had no idea would happen.

They had not made the revolution, they had not fought the czar and his kingdom, for these things.

First they were shocked. The czar's whole family - nineteen people - were brutally killed, and one of them was only a six-month-old baby. They did not even let that small girl live... who has done no harm to anybody, who has not even known what life is, who was not concerned at all with the poor and the rich and all the jargon. They made them stand in one line and went on shooting them with machine guns.

When the people heard about it they could not believe it, because they had never thought that this is going to be so. And then soon other things started happening. The churches had to be turned into hospitals, into schools, because the Communist Party does not have God. And it does not believe there is a soul in man, nor does it believe there is anything to consciousness other than a combination of physical elements; consciousness is a by-product, so killing a man is not different from dismantling a chair - it is all matter.

The poor people were not aware that they are making the revolution and dying for it to bring about materialism. And when their churches were closed they started fighting; when their BIBLES were taken away from them they started fighting. The ultimate result was that one million people were killed because they were not yet ready to accept the communist ideology of materialism.

But nobody will think of Stalin as a murderer - he will be remembered in history as a great leader.

And ordinary murderers who may have killed one man are condemned by the society, by the law, by the court; whatever they have done, the society does to them. It still lives in that stone age, millions of years ago, when the law was an eye for an eye - if you throw a brick at me, I am going to throw a rock at you; that was the law. It is still the law. Although these words are not used, the ultimate result is the same.

Adolf Hitler alone killed six million people for a simple, stupid desire: to dominate the whole world.

And you will not believe it: I received a letter in America from the president of the American Nazi Party threatening me and saying that I am putting myself into danger by criticizing Adolf Hitler "because Adolf Hitler was the reincarnation of the Old Testament prophet, Elijah, and whenever you criticize him it hurts our religious feelings." Adolf Hitler, who killed six million people, is the reincarnation of Elijah!

Never before were people killed in such vast numbers and with such scientific accuracy. He made gas chambers. One thousand people could be put in the gas chamber; a switch just had to be turned on and you would see from the chimneys that all those thousand people have disappeared in smoke within seconds. Only the bones remained. They had miles-long ditches to fill with bones.

After the war, when those ditches were opened, nobody believed that any man could have done it.

But there are still people whose "religious feelings" are hurt! I had never imagined that criticizing Adolf Hitler is going to hurt somebody's religious feelings so much that he will threaten me that if I do it again he is going to kill me.

Politicians, all the politicians of the world, have so much to hide because to reach to the fulfillment of their ambition - to become presidents, prime ministers - they have done everything... whether legal, illegal, moral, immoral, does not matter. The means don't matter to the politicians, only the end matters; if the end is achieved then all means are right.

Politicians certainly need exposure because as far as I can see, if politicians are exposed completely, humanity - for the first time - will be able to be free from politics.

Politics is a disease, and it should be treated exactly like that. It is more dangerous than cancer and if surgery is needed it should be done. Politics is basically dirty. It has to be because for one post thousands of people are hankering, longing; then naturally they will fight, they will kill, they will do anything.

Our whole program of the mind is so wrong: we have been programmed to be ambitious. And that's where politics is. It is not only in the ordinary world of politics, it has even polluted your ordinary life.

Even a small child starts smiling at the mother, at the father - a bogus smile; he has no depth behind it. But he knows whenever he smiles he is rewarded. He has learned the first rule of being a politician. He is still in his cradle and you have taught him politics.

In human relationships there is politics everywhere.

Man has crippled woman. It is politics.

Women constitute half of humanity. Man has no right to cripple them, but for centuries he has been crippling them completely. He has not allowed them education. He has not allowed them even to listen to the holy scriptures. In many religions he has not allowed them to enter the temple. Or, if he has allowed them, they have a separate section; they cannot stand with the man as equal even before God.

But the beginning is with God himself. You may not be aware... because ordinarily everybody has forgotten. Christians don't mention it, Jews don't mention it. Adam and Eve are emphasized as being the first man and woman; Adam is certainly the first man, but Eve is not the first woman. God made Adam and Lilith, and he made them equal - the same height, the same intelligence, the same strength, the same mind.

But the gods of foolish people cannot be very wise. He made these two, but he could not make a double bed! He made a small bed, and the first night the problem arose of who is going to sleep on the bed and who is going to sleep on the floor. So - the pillow fight is not new, it is as ancient as man - they started throwing things at each other. Both were equal physically and mentally, and the woman was not to be subdued: Adam had to sleep on the floor.

Seeing that all kinds of animals are looking through the windows at what is happening - and the woman was adamant, as she always is - she slept on the bed and poor Adam slept on the floor, but he was very angry. He went to God the next day and said, "This woman won't do. It is too much trouble. Alone I was good. It was my fault that I told you, ?I am alone; give me a companion.'

"What kind of a companion have you given me? And couldn't you have been a little more understanding? How will two persons sleep on a small bed? I need a woman who is not equal to me in any respect."

Lilith was dismantled. Now Eve was created in a totally different way. The first surgery of the world happened. When poor Adam was asleep - perhaps he was given something similar to chloroform - God took out one of his ribs and made a woman out of the rib so that she would never be equal to him; she will be only a rib. And Eve became known as the first woman, but really she was the second.

I would have preferred the first woman; she had some salt, some strength. She managed on the first night to put Adam on the floor. He needed it.

But Eve was very much like a slave. All that she used to do was, whenever Adam would come home late and go to sleep she would count his ribs. She was afraid God may have created other women, taking other ribs. And man, since then... perhaps the idea of God is also man's. God is also a male chauvinist: in his trinity there is no place for a woman.

Man has tried to cut in every way the freedom of women.

This is politics; it is not love.

You love a woman but you don't give her freedom. What kind of love is this, which is afraid of giving freedom?

You encage her like a parrot. You can say you love the parrot, but you don't understand you are killing the parrot! You have taken the whole sky away from the parrot and you have given him just a cage. The cage may be made of gold, but even a golden cage is nothing to be compared with the freedom of parrots in the sky, moving from tree to tree, singing their song - not what you force them to say, but what is natural to them, what is authentic to them.

The woman goes on doing things which man wants. She, by and by, has completely forgotten that she is also a human being.

In China, for thousands of years, a husband could kill a wife. Only in 1951 has a new law been made which prevents it. Up to 1951 the husband was empowered - if he wanted to kill his woman it was his business; it was his woman, a possession. The law has no interest in interfering in your possessions. And, moreover, China thinks that women have no souls; only man has a soul.

That's why in the history of China you will not find a single woman of the caliber of Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu, Confucius, Mencius - not a single woman. If you don't have a soul you are just a thing; you cannot compete with man.

Half of humanity, in every country, in every civilization, has been destroyed by family politics. You may not be calling it "politics," but it is politics. Wherever there is a desire to have power over another person, it is politics. Power is always political - even over small children. The parents think they love them, but it is only in their mind, because they want the children to be obedient - and what does obedience mean? It means all the power is in the hands of the parents.

If obedience is such a great quality, why shouldn't the parents be obedient to the children? If it is such a religious thing, parents should be obedient to children. But it has nothing to do with religion.

All that it has to do with is hiding politics in a beautiful word.

Man needs exposure on every point, wherever politics has entered - and it has entered everywhere, in every relationship. It has contaminated the whole life of man, and it is continuously contaminating it.

In your schools you teach children to come first. But why? Have you ever thought about the psychology of it? The person who comes first starts becoming an egoist - that he is the first - and the person who comes last starts feeling inferior. Is there any need to do this? Examinations can simply be removed.

There is no need for examinations; teachers can simply give marks every day just as they take the attendance every day. They can give marks every day to every child and in the end whoever is more intelligent will move into a higher class earlier; whoever is a little lazy will move a little later on - two months later, four months later. But there is no examination, and there is no one who passes with "first class, second class, third class," which becomes a stigma.

And if a person, throughout all his career in the school, college, and university, has always been coming in third class, you have reduced his sense of self-respect. You have killed his self-respect; he knows that he is worthless. Now anybody can have power over him.

The very words "third class" have become so ugly in India that if you ask somebody, "What class have you passed with?" - if he has passed with third class he says "Mahatma Gandhi class" because Mahatma Gandhi never came in any other class. He always passed with third class, and then he traveled all his life in third-class railway trains. So nobody in India says, "I have come third class,"

but "I have come Mahatma Gandhi class" - covering up, trying to befool himself.

The ambition that is created is that you have to become someone in the world; you have to prove that you are not an ordinary person, you are extraordinary. But for what? What purpose does it serve?

It serves only one purpose: you become powerful, others become subservient to you. You are an extraordinary person. They are poor fellows - Mahatma Gandhi class; they can only be clerks, they cannot become anything more. They don't have guts. You have castrated the whole humanity in different ways, and this castration is very political.

So those who are in power go on remaining in power from generation to generation. Now in India, after forty years of the freedom struggle, one family has been dominating. It has become a dynasty, not a democracy. And it is impossible to remove them because in forty years they have managed everything so that they cannot be removed. They have become indispensable, and they have collected files - I have seen with my own eyes the files Indira Gandhi used to have against all the other politicians of her own party and of the opposition.

In those files are all the crimes those politicians have committed, all the bribes they have taken, all the illegal things they have done, all the misuse of power. That keeps that politician afraid that if he goes against Indira Gandhi he will be exposed. Now those files will go from one generation to another in the same family. And that is a great power.

You will be surprised: when Sanjay Gandhi, Indira's second son, died in an accident... she was a politician first and a mother second. His airplane had fallen just a few blocks away from where Indira lived. As she heard it, she rushed to the place. There was a crowd and the police. What she asked first was not, "How is Sanjay? Is he alive or dead? How did the accident happen?" What she asked was, "He had two keys: where are those two keys?" And of those two keys one was for the chest where all those files are collected and the other was for all the black money that is used for elections - millions of dollars.

A politician can sacrifice everything, but he cannot sacrifice his power - and it is unconscious. And when she was told that those two keys had been found and were at the police station, rather than going to the hospital to see the condition of her son, she went first to the police station to get those two keys - because those two keys were far more important than a hundred Sanjay Gandhis. It doesn't matter; he can be seen later on - and he was dead anyway.

When I heard this, that the first thing she asked about was two keys, I was shocked... but not by Sanjay Gandhi's death. People die - that is not much of a problem - and everybody has his own style of death. Somebody dies in an accident, somebody dies in some other way; a few people die in the common, usual way, just lying in their beds. The bed is the most dangerous place; ninety-nine percent of people die there! Never sleep in your bed, because ninety-nine percent of people die there and you go to sleep in the same place every night. It is better to sleep on the floor.

Sanjay Gandhi died in an accident - that was his style of dying. That was not a problem... but this woman, who is a mother, asked about the keys! - not about the death of the son or the accident.

And she rushed to the police station before those keys could be lost.

You will be surprised to know that Indira Gandhi never lived with her husband for long - and it was a love marriage. Indira Gandhi was a brahmin Hindu and her lover was a Parsee, so the marriage was very difficult for orthodox minds to accept. But Indira was the only daughter of Jawaharlal. He did not want to disturb her, and she was stubborn: if she marries she will marry this man, no other.

So she married the young Parsee man - Jawaharlal allowed her to marry him.

She pulled her husband into politics also. He became a member of the parliament, but she rarely lived with him - and he was very angry. I used to know him. He was really frustrated because Indira continued to live with Jawaharlal - the power was there, and she was the only daughter.

Jawaharlal had no son, his wife had died. Indira had every possibility of succeeding him. What could her husband give to her? Finally, there was a complete separation and he started drinking too much; perhaps he died of drinking.

But Indira continued to live with her father because everything was there; the whole power of the country was centered there. And from him she got all her training in politics, all those files. When he died she had all those files, she had all that money: the party could not afford to be without her. The party had to choose her - because even the people in the party, the topmost leaders, were afraid because she had the files. And she had the money.

How else are you going to fight an election? - particularly in a country like India where you can purchase a vote by just giving two rupees. No need to do anything, just give two rupees to a person and he will vote for you. He has no idea of any ideology, he has no idea of any democracy. For two thousand years India has been a slave, so he has no idea of freedom. Two rupees seem to be more important than anything - more solid, more tangible. Democracy and freedom seem only words to hungry, starving people; two rupees seem to be more significant. So whoever has the money, whoever has the resources and the right connections for bringing in money will continue to be in power.

It is impossible for India to get rid of Nehru's family. In name it is a democracy, but it is simply a monarchy, a dynasty. And this is the situation all over the world; it is how things work. People only see the facade; they don't see the inside of things.

I really want to expose the whole way of politics. I am not concerned with politicians but with the way politics functions: it is ugly, it is inhuman, it is barbarous. We should live in a nonpolitical way. Our relationships should be nonpolitical; otherwise we don't have relationships but only names, labels, and behind those labels the content is something else.

Question 2:

There is no need to worry. Nobody can take me anywhere for the simple reason that now even to touch me can create a danger to the person or to the party or to the nation.

It reminds me that when they arrested me in America - without any legal reasons, without any arrest warrant - they did not allow bail, just to harass me from one jail to another jail. I covered almost the whole of America: five jails in twelve days. But the strange thing was that every time I would get out of the airplane and sit in the police car, the man who was taking me, delivering me to the hands of the U.S. marshal, would whisper in his ear - and I was sitting just behind him, I could hear it - "This man is dangerous, so don't do anything directly. Don't even touch his body because the whole world is watching, and once he is out he is going to expose everything that happens in these jails. So be polite and be intelligent in behaving with him; don't treat him as a criminal."

That message was continually given each time I was changed from one jail to another jail. They did not touch my body; they did not do anything directly. They tried indirectly to do things, in which they failed.

For example, I reached one jail nearabout eleven in the night, and the U.S. marshal wanted me not to write my name on the form - he told me that I should write the name "David Washington."

I asked, "Under what law or constitution can you prevent me from writing my name and force me to write some name which is not mine? I will not write it.

"And you are supposed to be a law enforcement agency. On your coat there is written Department of Justice - but what kind of justice is this? In the middle of the night, I am tired... the whole day's journey, and you want me to write somebody else's name? You will have to give me an explanation."

He said, "I don't know any explanation. Don't be angry with me - I am just following directions from high above."

I said, "Then tell those people, whoever is giving you directions, that I am not going to write ?David Washington.' If you want to write, you can fill in the form with ?David Washington' and everything, and I will sign."

He said, "That seems to be a perfect compromise... because I also want to go to sleep. Unless you sign this form you cannot enter the cell and go to sleep." So he filled in the form in his own handwriting, and I signed with my own signature. He looked at my signature and asked, "What does it mean?"

I said, "It must mean ?David Washington' - isn't that my name?"

He said, "I cannot understand what you have written."

I said, "I write in my own language: this is ?David Washington.' " And I told him, "Tomorrow morning you will see on television your handwriting, my signature, and the idea behind it... in all the news media. Why do you want to hide my name? So you can even kill me, and there will be no trace - because I never entered the jail. David Washington you can release tomorrow; just the form has to be signed. But remember, you will not be able to copy my signature."

He asked, "But what makes you certain that the news media will know about it?"

I said, "You will see in the morning."

In the police car with me was a woman. She seemed to be a jailbird, very experienced. She told me that she was going to be released from the jail.

I said, "Then do one favor for me. Just listen carefully to whatsoever transpires between me and the U.S. marshal. All the press is surrounding the jail. When you go outside collect all of them and give them the information." And she did perfectly well.

The next morning the marshal came, hitting his head. He said, "What have you done? It is all in the papers, it is on the television! Now get ready; we have to move you from this jail. We cannot keep you here."

I said, "I love being here. There is no need to change. What is the point of changing? As long as you want, David Washington is willing to live here."

He said, "Don't make a joke of me. I am already condemned for forcing you to sign under a false name. But I am wondering, how did you manage to reach the media?"

I said, "You had completely forgotten that we were two prisoners and the other prisoner was sitting in the corner listening to the whole conversation. She repeated everything word for word."

They failed. They immediately changed the jail so they could say that I had never been there, that all these reports were false. I said, "You cannot do that. That form is there. My signature is there, and my signature is world famous - and it is not easy to copy it. Even I cannot copy it! Each time it changes."

In the second jail what they did was they put me in a cell with an inmate who was suffering from a fatal disease - a contagious disease - and who was almost dying. For six months the doctor had said that nobody should be put in that cell, that he should live alone because his disease was very contagious. They put me in that cell - and the doctor was present, the superintendent was present, the U.S. marshal was present.

But you see... the man could not speak well in English - he was from Cuba - but somehow he managed to write and tell me, "I am suffering, Osho, and I am almost on the verge of death with a fatal disease. For six months they have not put anybody in this cell. They have put you here knowingly. This is an indirect way to kill you."

I immediately called the doctor and the superintendent and the U.S. marshal, and I said, "Just read this."

I asked the doctor, "What kind of doctor are you? Are you here in the jail to take care of the prisoners or to kill them? For six months this cell has not been allotted to anybody else because of his disease; then why has it been allotted to me? I know you have been informed constantly, ?Do indirect harassment,' but you cannot even do indirect harassment. You don't even have the minds for that! You look almost like idiots. You can't see that this man here has a more human heart and more understanding than you all."

They immediately changed, and they said, "Please give us that piece of paper."

I said, "This will go to the news media, not to you."

It seems criminals are governing, criminals are holding innocent people. I was surprised to know that in all the jails, in all those five jails - and there were five hundred to six hundred inmates in each - all were black people, not a single white man.

I asked the jailer, "Does it mean that no white man commits a crime in America? Then why is there no white man in any of the jails that I have visited? And I have enquired of these black people. They say they have not committed any sin, any crime. They have just been picked up and forced into jail, and they are waiting for trial. Somebody has been waiting for nine months and every day they say, ?Tomorrow your chance will come.' But they are not presented in the court because the court will release them. They have not done anything. This is simply a torture against the blacks" - these were all young people whom they suspected of being revolutionaries.

So don't be worried; no government can do anything to me. If they do anything to me, it will be suicidal for them. Then my work of exposing the politicians will have been done.

They are really afraid of a single individual who has no power, but who has insight. They are all blind, and those blind people cannot do any harm to me. They are so afraid that they are creating lies against me, propagating absolutely absurd ideas about me. But this won't help, because I am going to take every nation which has been behaving in this way to court, and they will have to prove everything.

Just last night I came to know that Germany has been sending messages to all governments - they have been sent here too - that I propagate prostitution. It is just the opposite: I am against prostitution. And I have been saying again and again that your marriages are no longer marriages, they are prostitution, long-term prostitution. It does not matter whether you use a woman's body for one night or for your whole life; without love, just using the body of the woman for money, or for all the comforts that you give to her, is prostitution. And they are saying that I propagate prostitution, that I propagate child sexual abuse! That I heard for the first time... and in fact we don't have any child here.

I am going to court against the German government. They have to prove what child sexual abuse I have been propagating or have been participating in or am responsible for. I will not leave these people alone. They are powerful - I have no power - but they are full of lies and crimes, and I will expose them in their courts. They are creating lies about me which they cannot prove.

How can the British parliament prove that my staying in the airport lounge overnight was dangerous to England? However you stretch your imagination you cannot prove it. They have checked me: I was not carrying any bombs or any arms or any drugs. How, sleeping in the lounge, could I have been dangerous to England? They will have to prove it. Just once I get settled anywhere... then I will go against each of these nations one by one.

In Italy sixty-five world-famous, eminent people - poets, novelists, dancers, film directors, actors, scientists, Nobel prize winners have all signed a petition against the government saying that it is ugly that I should be prevented from entering into Italy just because the pope is against me.

I have informed my people, "You just go to the pope for his signature also. If he says ?no' that means he is against freedom, and that will be enough for us. If he says ?yes' he will be in a dilemma."

In Holland they are collecting protests. In every country it is going to happen, and finally it is going to be before the U.N. You cannot harass a single individual - without any reason, without any crime - all over the world. Such a conspiracy has to be brought to the notice of the people: "These are your leaders."

But you need not be worried - nothing is going to happen to me. I will complete my work. This is my promise.