English Language CLAT Sectional 12

Passage (Q.1-Q.5): In a welcome move, the Ministry of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, Sowa Rigpa, and Homoeopathy (AYUSH) and the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) have at last joined hands to undertake quality human clinical trials to generate evidence on the benefits of using ayurveda along with modern medicine (evidence-based medicine) in treating certain disease conditions of national importance. With its decades of experience in conducting human clinical trials, it makes eminent sense to rope in the ICMR to design and conduct these trials. To begin with, the collaboration will be restricted to ayurveda. The other systems of AYUSH — yoga, unani, siddha and homoeopathy — may be included, and each system will be tested together with modern medicine when the central councils of the respective AYUSH systems are ready to work with the ICMR.

An expert committee will soon decide the area/disease conditions to be included for detailed clinical testing using both ayurveda and modern medicine. Initially, clinical trials for each disease may have two arms — modern medicine as the standard of care as well as a combination of modern medicine and ayurveda. The arm that uses both ayurveda and modern medicine will, if at all, only be able to validate the superiority of combining the two for better outcomes. Scientific validation of superior outcomes of combined therapy using ayurveda and modern medicine will form the basis on which integrated medicine will be offered to patients. Encouraging trial outcomes might probably serve as a starting point to undertake further trials using ayurveda interventions alone to evaluate their effectiveness and understand the mechanism of action; this is currently not within the ambit of the agreement.

While the initiative may right away not provide scientific validation of ayurveda interventions in treating disease conditions when used singularly, it is the first major step in evidence-based approach of validating medical interventions. Though trials using ayurveda and other systems of AYUSH have been conducted in the country, they suffer from major limitations, thus making the outcomes meaningless. The ICMR’s expertise is sure to help in overcoming the major obstacle in scientific validation, which all systems of AYUSH currently suffer from. Evidence, as the practitioners of AYUSH refer to, is nothing but anecdotal, which is not an alternative to evidence-based approach. Lack of scientific validation, as a stand-alone intervention or as adjunct to modern medicine, has been the bane of alternative medicine in India. No sincere, large-scale attempts have been made to address this serious shortcoming. The collaboration with the ICMR is, therefore, a step in the right direction.

Passage (Q.6-Q.10): Although he was a poet, Diddinu was a wild and brutal man who dealt severely with his family, in particular with his daughters. His family respected him, but they all feared him. In the presence of her father, Maria Franzisca would hardly have dared to sit down close to her dear Predu. According to the custom of engaged couples, she kept a distance from her fiancé, only to charm him more, enticing him with the lovely movements of her body, veiled in the fleecy scarlet vest embroidered with flowers, and the blazes of her turquoise-green, almond-shaped eyes. Thus, it was Christmas Eve—a gray day, dimmed but mild since an east wind was blowing, carrying the enervating warmth of distant deserts and a humid scent of the sea.

It appeared that, somewhere among the mountains, their slopes green from the cold grass of winter, or in the valleys where the shaking almond trees prematurely bloomed, throwing to the wind the white petals of snow as if from harm, there burned a great fire, the flames of which were not seen, but which was the source of the heat. And the clouds incessantly issuing from the mountaintops and spanning the sky seemed to be the smoke of that invisible fire.

The country sounded from the ringing of feast; people, yielding to the strange Levantine wind, crowded streets and houses, gathering to celebrate the birth of Christ. Families exchanged their gifts: suckling pigs roasted whole, lambs of autumn, meat, sweets, cakes, and dried fruit. Shepherds brought to their masters the first milk of their calves, and the lady of the house returned the container to the shepherds, filled with vegetables or other things, having first carefully emptied it in order not to bring down ruin on the cattle.

Predu Tasca, who was a swineherd, had accordingly killed his finest little pig, painted it with its blood, filled it with bundles of asphodel, and sent it as a gift to his fiancée. And his fiancée returned the basket with a cake of honey and almonds, giving a scudo of silver [5 lire] to the woman who brought it.

Towards evening, the young man came to the house of the Frau’s and pressed his young lady’s hand. She blushed, radiant with joy, and withdrew her hand from his grip; but in her palm, hot from the amorous squeeze, she found a gold coin concealed. In the next moment, she went about the house discreetly showing Predu’s beautiful present. The east wind spread the metallic sound in the hand hot damp of the dusk.

Passage (Q.11-Q.15): I always adhered to the idea that God is time, or at least that His spirit is. Perhaps this idea was even of my own manufacture, but now I don’t remember. In any case, I always thought that if the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the water, the water was bound to reflect it. Hence my sentiment for water, for its folds, wrinkles, and ripples, and – as I am a Northerner – for its grayness. I simply think that water is the image of time, and every New Year’s Eve, in somewhat pagan fashion, I try to find myself near water, preferably near a sea or an ocean, to watch the emergence of a new helping, a new cupful of time from it. I am not looking for a naked maiden riding on a shell; I am looking for either a cloud or the crest of a wave hitting the shore at midnight. That, to me, is time coming out of water, and I stare at the lace-like pattern it puts on the shore, not with a gypsy-like knowing, but with tenderness and with gratitude. This is the way, and in my case the why, I set my eyes on this city. There is nothing Freudian to this fantasy, or specifically chordate, although some evolutionary – if not plainly atavistic – or autobiographical connection could no doubt be established between the pattern a wave leaves upon the sand and its scrutiny by a descendant of the ichthyosaur, and a monster himself. The upright lace of Venetian façades is the best line time-alias-water has left on terra firma anywhere.

Plus, there is no doubt a correspondence between – if not an outright dependence on – the rectangular nature of that lace’s displays – i.e., local buildings – and the anarchy of water that spurns the notion of shape. It is as though space, cognizant here more than anyplace else of its inferiority to time, answers it with the only property time doesn’t possess: with beauty. And that’s why water takes this answer, twists it, wallops and shreds it, but ultimately carries it by and large intact off into the Adriatic. Of course, for all its targets, its explosions are invariably self-inflicted: it’s your own heart, or else your mind that while the eye pops up from the depth of water to the surface.

Passage (Q.16-Q.19): The Shakyas who ruled Kapilavastu after Buddha’s Parinirvana did not have an army, and many were massacred in Sagarahawa. Eventually, the remaining Shakyas fled to different parts of Greater Magadha and to far-flung places like Gandhara (modern-day Afghanistan) and Burma (Myanmar). Many also went to the Kathmandu valley and were granted a status comparable to that of the Vajracharya priests, but they were not permitted to practise priesthood outside of their families. Therefore, in Hiranyavarna Mahavihara (Golden Temple) Shakyas alternate as temple caretaker priests and conduct all the rituals. Aside from the Kumari temples, this is one of the few temples in the Kathmandu valley where a 1,000-year-old tradition continues. When Nepal accepted a grant from the Government of India to renovate portions of the Golden Temple complex, it created a controversy. Many locals believe that India was only interested in this project because, after Lumbini, the birthplace of Buddha, this is the temple complex most frequently visited by Chinese tourists, indicating vested interests and strategies.

For India, Buddhism provided an identity of peace and tranquillity during the formation of the Republic, which was a time of intense violence and division between the country’s two key religions, Hinduism and Islam. Professor Naman Ahuja, curator of the Lumbini Museum, discusses the usage of Buddhist symbolism as a means of escaping difficult times, whether it be the Ashoka Pillar or the wheel in the flag. In addition, the inscriptions on the edifice erected by King Ashoka provided evidence of the life and teachings of the Buddha. Due to such usage and evidence, India likes to claim Buddhism as its own. It convened the Global Buddhist Summit in April primarily to provoke China by promoting Tibetan Buddhism and the Dalai Lama. There were no Nepal representatives present. The summit was hosted by the International Buddhist Confederation, a Buddhist organisation based in India, which has neither a patron nor a member of the Supreme Dhamma Council from Nepal. Nobody from Bhutan, a Buddhist nation, was present either. Therefore, the geopolitical tool for India seems to be the promotion of Tibetan Buddhism, which has greater Western appeal.

India’s overtures of Buddhism in Nepal began only after ‘Buddha is born in Nepal’ became a populist slogan of sovereignty in Nepal, which the Indian Prime Minister had to accept in a speech he delivered to the Constituent Assembly in Nepal in 2014. India’s claim over Buddhism by excluding discussions with the pallbearers of tradition and the larger Buddhist community will only serve the purpose of irritating China.