Awesome Toddlers 14(IO) Eye for an EYE. - Page 15

Pakistan team management says cricketer Haris Sohail was left "visibly shaken" after a ghostly encounter in a Christchurch hotel room.

Sohail fled what he believed was "a supernatural presence" which shook his bed at the Rydges Latimer hotel, taking refuge in the room of a team coach after the encounter earlier this week.

Team manager Maveed Akram Cheeva said Tuesday Sohail, 26, phoned a member of the coaching staff to say he had been woken by his bed being shaken. The coach rushed to Sohail's room and found him shaken and feverish.

Cheeva said management tried to persuade Sohail the fever may have caused a nightmare, but theplayer was adamant his experience was supernatural.

The hotel's management says it knew of "no active ghost" on the premises.

Pakistan media reports said Sohail, an allrounder who has played nine one"dayers and three Twenty20 internationals, was so "traumatized" by the experience he has been unable to train and was forced to miss a one"day warmup matchagainst a New Zealand President's XI.

Sohail took the field in a second warmup game in Christchurch on Tuesday and made 6 runs from 25 balls.

Cheema said Sohail was examined by the team doctor after his encounter and found to be in good health.

"He's OK and he's concentrating on cricket as he should be," he said. "He had a fever. We think it was the fever that caused it but the player still believes his bed was shaken by something and it was a supernatural something."

Sohail joins an elite group of international cricketers who have had ghostly experiences.

England fast bowler Stuart Broad switched rooms at London's Langham Hotel last year after a ghostly experience. Broad told the Daily Mail newspaper he had woken in the night and "all of a sudden the taps in the bathroom came on for no reason. I turned the lights on and the taps turned themselves off. Then when I turned the lights off again, the taps came on. It was very weird."

Australia allrounder Shane Watson fled to the room of teammate Brett Lee after becoming spooked in his own room at the Lumley Castle Hotel in England in 2005.

Even as the omission of the words secular' and socialist' from the Preamble text in a government advertisement has stoked a controversy, the Constituent Assembly debates clearly show why the words were omitted in the original text. The debates saw Dr. B.R. Ambedkar reason that there was no need to include the term secular' as the entire Constitution embodied the concept of secular state, which meant non-discrimination on grounds of religion and equal rights and status to all citizens.

On the inclusion of the term socialist,' he said it is against the very grain of democracy to decide in the Constitution what kind of society the people of India should live in.

"It is perfectly possible today, for the majority people to hold that the socialist organisation of society is better than the capitalist organisation of society. But it would be perfectly possible for thinking people to devise some other form of social organisation which might be better than the socialist organisation of today or of tomorrow. I do not see therefore why the Constitution should tie down the people to live in a particular form and not leave it to the people themselves to decide it for themselves," he had said. His words had influenced the final decision to omit the two words.

However, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi re-introduced the two words for political reasons in the 42nd Constitution Amendment of 1976. Constitutional expert Subhash Kashyap said: "The word socialist' was added to send a message politically that she stood for the poor. The word secular' was obviously meant for the minorities in the context of the birth control programmes of the emergency period. It was not as if the Constitution was not secular or socialist before the words were added. India has been secular before the 42nd Amendment and continues to be secular after it." "It was merely playing politics," Mr. Kashyap said.

He said the present controversy over the government advertisement was "innocuous." "The advertisement only shows the Preamble originally signed by the Constituent Assembly members with the calligraphy of the famous artist, Nandalal Bose."

It shows the Preamble as on January 26, 1950 when the country became a republic, he said.